Introducing Fellow Flounderers Colin and Davis...

Day 78, Thursday March 19, 9.30 pm: The real story of my day, though, was Colin and Davis.
Colin and Davis are fellow flounderers at Thursday's adult swimming class at the Dolphin Leisure Centre. I have met them before but we got talking today, in between crawl, breaststroke, doggy paddle and general floundering.
Davis is half Bulgarian, half Russian. Today he swam a full width of crawl for the first time. We all cheered. Davis says he wants to enter the Olympics. I'm not too conversant with the Bulgarian sense of irony, so I remained dead-pan. So did Davis. Perhaps he is indeed bound for London 2012, but I don't expect it to be as a swimmer. Perhaps, on the quiet, he's rather good at skeet shooting. Yes, that must be what he means.
Colin, meanwhile, said a few weeks back that he could only manage one length of crawl. Today he did two in a row, and looked rather good, as well as a lot less purple than normal after the event. He says I egged him on, which makes me happy.
Watching him, I realised we all begin to thrash about a bit as we get tired, gasping for air and shortening our strokes. You have to keep your technique and relax, says Margaret, our guru.
I duly got tired, gasped, shortened my stroke, thrashed and doggy paddled my way to a world record eight lengths of consecutive crawl (having managed seven the day before). Eat your heart out, Phelps. I felt immensely proud (it does not take much), went home and slept for two hours solid as the water cleared slowly from my ears.
Eight lengths! That's more than a third of my goal - in two and a half months!
Colin, meanwhile, says he will try and swim six consecutive lengths of crawl by the end of the year. A new TRSNYRC recruit! Grand.
I reckon I'll put him down for seven, though. Actually, let's make that eight.