Don’t you just hate it when dates clash? Having hunted around for races to enter in my local area and found nothing, 2 pop up at the same time as the half marathon. The first I can still fit in as it’s the week before and can be used as my final warm up. The second race however is the day after and I am not sure how fluid my movements will be then. Its extra annoying seeing as it could have been my first triathlon. Being a weakly little nerd type being able to say well actually I’m an Iron man is quite tempting. My chances at making that statement are few and far between, mainly due the organiser’s instance at including a swimming section in the race.

At school I was what was referred to as a slapper capper. When the class had their weekly swimming lesson, I together with the rest of the outcasts had to don bright yellow swimming caps. The stated purpose of this was to make it easier to spot the weaker swimmers and make it easier to rescue them. As if the arms flawing around slapping the water and shouts of “I cant fucking Swim” were not enough. Though on second thoughts maybe the caps were a good idea as they would have probably thought that a lecture on the evils of swearing was more important than rescuing a drowning rat.

Never allowed out of the few meters of swallow water at one end of the pool, we could only watch as the chosen ones leaped through hoops, collected items from the bottom of the pool and generally did the things we couldn’t. I’m sure we musty have been given tasks to do but the only one I can remember is standing around feeling freezing in water you would never choose to go near.

In truth I could have probably passed the test which would have liberated me from the repression of the yellow cap. But then I would have had to go in the deep end, and maybe even have got in trouble. What really would have been dangerous, how could anyone have saved me without the protection of my yellow cap?