Hampton Pool
Big C, Tom and I met on the train at Clapham Junction for a day out at Hampton Pool. We’d been wanting to go for a while, but it was a conversation with Ann Brimelow from SLSC that convinced us. She said there was a great cafe. The water was warm. After giving Tom some swimming lessons and setting him off to do some drills, we decided to do a 3km swim. We had a chat with Ann, who we met in the pool and later for lunch, before setting off, But we just got hotter and hotter and stopped after 2km.
Oddly the Hampton Pool is 39 metres long, so you need to swim 26 lengths for a km. We then splashed around, got Tom to show us his progress and then gave him a few more tips. I then introduced Big C to the notion of breathing sets and we went up and down a bit doing 11/9/7/5/7/9/11 strokes between breaths. You have to swim quite slowly to achieve them – otherwise you run out of puff – and the added advantage of these sets is that you can experience the quality of your stroke more finely.
Then indoors for both a hot and cold shower – unlike at Tooting they had force and heat – before the full monty plate of eggs, sausage, bacon, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes and toast. Washed down with two cups of tea and finished off with a lovely slice of carrot cake. Pretty good value at £8 for the lot.
Then back to the pool for a nippy 1km, some more stroke practice and a slower 1km. Before some lazy lengths and some more attention to Tom’s progress. All in all about 4.5km.
28 degrees C.
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