Dinosaurs, uh, *had* their shot, and nature *selected* them for extinction!

There should have been music playing.

Have you ever had one of those moments that seems so perfectly suited to the emotional music in particularly heart-rending scenes in Hollywood movies? Well, as Seb's face disappeared from view as I closed the front door to his house, a light, tinkly, minor key piano soundtrack was the only thing missing from the scene.

You see, this weekend, Seb and I are off to Barcelona, with Mike, the fellow mentioned early in this blog, to celebrate Mike's birthday. Seb has a lot of work to be done on an essay due in before we leave the country, for his University course. This is the reason he couldn't afford to take time out this week for our swim, and therefore the reason I went swimming all on my own. I had dropped in at his house before I went to the pool, to sort out flight details and payment, etc. Mundane stuff, but it happened to produce an oscar worthy farewell scene. Well, sort of.

With Seb temporarily out of the picture, I could, if I was so inclined, write anything I wanted in this week's blog, with nobody to deny what went on. However, I am the sort of person to stick to the truth, as I would feel not only as if I am cheating you, the reader, but also myself.

"Hmm....'Attractive Female Swimwear Models' night'" I read on the entrance to the leisure centre door as I went in. "That's not something you see everyday"

I realised I was reading aloud, and I was overheard by a group of 5 or 6 attractive female swimwear models.
"Have you never been to an AFSM night before?" the most attractive of them asked.
"No." I answered, plausibly.
"Don't worry," they attractively chimed, in unison, "We'll make you feel at home..."

Ahem. In all honesty, it didn't happen much like this at all. In fact, the pool was crowded, and I was a little too fast for the users of the slow lane, and a little too slow for the users of the fast lane. Yes indeed, I fell victim to what those in the know call "Two-lane frustration". I completed 60 lengths eventually, and by the time I had, at around 8:40PM, most of the swimmers had paired off and settled in the shallows to chat amongst themselves. It was the first time I had been swimming without Seb in about 5 months. It was different. The pool used to seem a lot more blue, I mused sadly, with Seb's cheerful face bobbing around in it. Still, now the lanes were empty, so I warmed down, silently, for half an hour.

One thing that did come of tonight's swim was yet another new swimming style (We seem to invent a new one weekly). I would swim from the deep end to the shallow end, and, as I approached the end of the pool, I would dive underwater and swim using only breast stroke kicks while extending my arms in front of me, with my hands never breaking contact with the bottom of the pool. I called it "The Bottom Feeder Stroke", and it did amuse me for a while. But when I had surfaced and there was nobody there with whom to share my new discovery, I sighed. My mind returned to an article I had read about swimming in the week:

Does swimming make you fat?

If you are exercising to lose weight, choose your sport carefully. New research shows that certain forms of exercise cause participants to feel more hungry than others - with the result that any calories lost are likely to be quickly replaced. Swimming in cold water, for instance, tends to make people crave high-fat foods such as biscuits, while mid- to low-intensity exercise such as walking has no impact on appetite. Meanwhile, running on a hot day actually suppresses hunger. The findings, said Dr David Stensel of Loughborough University, who led the research, are related to the production of the appetite hormone ghrelin, which is suppressed by running and stimulated by swimming. "The body tends to respond to exercise so it can do it more efficiently in future," said Dr Stensel. Runners perform better if they have a low body weight, he explained, whereas people who swim in cold water would benefit from protective fat.

With that in mind, I heaved myself out of the pool, feeling a combination of the natural endorphin-induced elation that comes from exercise, a sense of loneliness in the absence of my swim buddy, and that delicious hunger that seems to affect every cell in your body, that only comes from swimming. I bade farewell to the Attractive Female Swimwear Models, and drove home to get a biscuit.

At home, I texted Seb and told him swimming was lonely without him.

Seb 12-Mar-2009
00:39:10
Wasn't your new swimming buddy, Burly McRepface, there? Or how about Jiggling Joe the Jogger?