Hi - my short story is:

1976 - Bullied at school, swim lessons were a complete waste of time and a place of fear for me, so much that the smell of chlorine would set off panic attacks.

1984 - On leaving school and into my early twenties, I decided to work this swimming thing out for myself. I took myself along to the local pool alone and worked out the swim strokes (badly) from a dead-float position and I thought I was getting on quite well.

2008 - More recently, loving swimming now, I moved to Cornwall where I enjoy swimming in the sea and inland in safe lakes and rivers (with family and friends of course; never alone). Still, feeling a bit swamped at the local pools because everyone was lapping and overtaking me and I knew there was something wrong with my streamlining or techniques - always breathless in front crawl and painfully slow in breast-stroke. The pool was still a scary place and the smell of chlorine still making me feel fearful.

2013 - This year, just the past eight weeks, I booked onto some swim coaching sessions and had a coach look at my swimming techniques and found my strokes were kind of right but my own play on them. It took two sessions to pull the basiccs together and I am suddenly now (feeling like) flying down the lanes and loving it.

It took this coaching, an enthusiastic coach and committment to the appointments on my part to break through to my current absolute love of swimming. The pool is no longer a scary place because I can hold my own in the lanes a lot better - though still in the slow lane!

Sadly, my coach had to move on but we managed to work together enough to get me swimming properly before she had to move on. She asked me to text her when I can manage 100m front-crawl ontinually and in a relaxed style and that is what I am presently working on.