Owen the Modern Pentathlete: Week X

My struggles to achieve 200m freestyle in or around olympic record of 2:14ish has hit a series of walls and as such so has my modern pentathlete ambitions. I'll work through this section by section...

Pistol Shooting

I still have never shot a pistol. The closest I've come is half an hour of air rifle shooting easily ten years or more ago.

Show Jumping

While my experience of horse riding has increased exponentially over the last few weeks - we went on a horse treck while in Cuba. The closest I've come to actually show-jumping is asking a few people who've previously done it to explain it to me verbally in under 10 minutes... and for them to burst out into laughter. When they eventually calmed down they explained I would likely kill myself...

Fencing

Haven't fenced any Epee since about 30 minutes in February.

Running

I'm no middle distance runner. Built for short burst of energy and then long-bouts of sleeping, my 3000m times aren't really times as in something worth recording.

Swimming

The 200m freestyle probably has been the most frustrating element not only because of own shoddy freestyle abilities but because of my local pool.

Yesterday, for instance the fast lane contained 4 or 5 fat old women. One would alternately lie on her front or back clutching several floats while instead of doing a proper swimming kick she seemed to be cycling underwater. Needless to say she wasn't moving and several other women clutching boards would slowly queue up behind her. Another woman was doing back-crawl without using her legs and was dragging along in the water at a 45o angle. Yet another, was clutching several boards and doing breast stroke while completely vertical in the water - any forward motion she was getting was purely coincidental and may well have been the air-conditioning blowing her along.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

All this is firstly caused by the constant and ridiculous layout of the pool. A third of it is un-laned and a leisure area. The rest is divided into three lanes - Breast-Stroke, Front-Crawl and Back-Crawl and yet another Front-Crawl and Back-Crawl lane. What sense does it make to have two lanes which combine two strokes with possibly the biggest difference in speed? There is no indication of which is supposed to be the faster of the two and normally this seems to be decided just by how many terrible swimmers are in one over the other. The Lifeguards, who are numerous, since this is France and the state bears the responsibility of providing as many wasters as possible with pointless jobs, do nothing!

To top all this my own swimming is possibly the biggest source of frustration. Breast-stroke was always my preferred stroke. I can swim a large number of lengths no problem with breast-stroke but the technique of my front-crawl is terrible. Each time I swim a length or two I think of something else I should be focusing on. Of course the minute I do that I forget to do something else. I did enough breast-stroke when I was younger that it is automatic now and I can force myself into good technique when I get tired. On the other hand, front-crawl is still just a huge number of variables which I must try to focus on at once.

Anyway, I shall persist and push on through to the other side...

...

The final nail in the coffin for my local pool came today. I returned to a cubicle to dry-off from the shower. As I was drying myself, I felt an eerie feeling creep over me. Then I realised what was wrong... Michael Jackson was playing over the intercom. I shuddered, packed up my stuff and left as soon as I could.