There’s always someone swimming faster, and (almost) always someone swimming slower than you

Why I love masters’ swimming…

You’ll often find me here: a scruffy, nondescript swimming pool, housed in a uninspiring tin shed — the…

A perfect two lengths…

I arrive at at 8.58am precisely, 2 minutes before the shutters come down and nobody else can come in. I scurry to the…

Swimming myself sane

I’d only met Alice a few minutes previously, when I had plopped into the lane beside her, preparing to start my swim. She…

Being a swimmer

I can’t recall the moment when I realised that being ‘a swimmer’ was the thing that defined me. It wasn’t always this way.

I wasn’t thrown in the sea when I was two; I didn’t grow up by the water. I didn’t swim competitively as a kid. I don’t have grainy photographs of me…

Kastrup Søbad, Copenhagen: wind, rain, and swimming

Swims for the soul

For four hundred and sixty miles I sat on that train. And for two hours I looked to my right — my face turned towards the sea…

When you are sleeping this is what I do, and this is why

Each day is defined as a day when I have swum — or when I have not swum

How can you not understand?

Our coach frowns and yells from the poolside: “I said eight one hundreds! We just did four two hundreds, so isn’t it obvious?!” He looks at us, exasperated, mystified.

I look at you, standing beside me, screwing up your face in concentration trying to…