In the swim

I went swimming last week – the first time I've been to an indoor pool in years. I haven't swum at all recently, and was expecting to find it hard work. During the course of swimming thirteen lengths and a few underwater widths (all I had time for – I'm a slow swimmer), I made two surprising discoveries; my heart and lungs are working much better than expected, while my injured shoulder is not as strong as I'd believed. Whenever I was forced to rest at the completion of a length it wasn't due to shortness of breath, but weakness in the shoulder muscles. I discovered I can no longer do the crawl – for some reason, I can do the strokes as long as my head remains facing forward underwater, but can't complete the stroke with my injured arm if I turn my head to breathe. As not breathing isn't really an option, I resigned myself to breaststroke for the duration. After dislocating my shoulder in July 2005, it took a year to regain almost normal movement of my right arm. I spent a lot of time working on building up the muscles that had wasted while the arm was immobilised and now have only the occasional ache or twinge from it. I still worry about a repeat performance from slipping on ice or mud – redislocation is always a possibility in people with an active lifestyle. Although I've resigned myself to the use of trekking poles on Kilimanjaro for the sake of my knees, I won't be using the wrist strap on my right pole whatever the risk of losing it. A slip on scree or ice with my hand trapped at the upper end of a pole is precisely the manoeuvre that caused my original injury. The consequences of another dislocation on the slopes of Kilimanjaro are just too awful to contemplate. I intend to be *very* careful. But I still need to get those weak muscles working properly; so regular swimming has now become a necessity. Sidestroke, leading with the weak arm would seem to be the best way to improve things. I'll also be doing regular workouts with the elastic pilates band I originally used after the accident.