The perils of pools.

Pool training - in a much bigger pool than we use!

We're now well into the pool training season.  For us, up here in north-east Scotland, it will last until late March-early April, depending on the weather.  That's a lot of time to spend in chlorine! 

I'm currently doing my BSAC Sports Diver training, so on Monday we were learning the correct "pistol grip" for towing and giving rescue breaths. Not too much of a problem, though I kept forgetting that I should keep my ring finger and pinkie bent under the "casualty's" chin; also, because it wasn't a real emergency, everything was done in slow motion.  It wouldn't feel like that in real life!  And I'm sure giving rescue breaths in choppy conditions is much harder.

Now there are two things you need to know for the rest of the story to make sense.  Firstly, there's a problem with the lift at the pool (it's only designed to carry wheelchair users, not the combined kit of the whole club), so we have to carry all our kit up to the first floor to start with, then down several steps to the pool-side, and then reverse the process after training.  It certainly improves our fitness...  And secondly, because my fins are big enough for my dry-suit boots, I wear wet-suit boots at the pool. They have quite grippy soles that should stop me slipping on the steps and the wet tiles around the pool.

So after the class I hefted my BC and cylinder up the steps to the top of the main stairs and headed back down for my fin-bag.  Whoosh!  My boots slipped on wet tiling and I did the last three steps on my bum and left elbow.  Not very comfortable.  I now have a black bruise on my left buttock as though someone's ridden a muddy mountain-bike across it and another, slightly less dramatic but equally painful, just below my left elbow.

And we do winter training in the pool because it's safer than the open sea.  Ironic, no?