There’s this classic picture of me when I was little… aged about 3, with arm bands and flippers on in Cyprus. It’s how I learned to swim… the flippers gave me the confidence and power I needed in a deep pool, and the rest is history.

I learned on holiday mostly, and with 4 older siblings who could swim, I was last to learn, but I’m the one who’s gone on to swim the most (and I’ve taught hundreds of others to swim too, which is cool).

When I was about 8, I finally got the knack of front crawl in a pool on holiday. And then when I was 19 away at uni, I started going 3 times a week for fitness… and I got in the shape of my life.

I used to swim 3,000m… and I used the practice to improve my technique, streamlining and tumble turns. I shaved my time from about 1:20 at the start, to about 55 minutes. But best of all, I was the fittest I’ve ever been.

And now I’m back at it, two times a week at the moment, maybe reducing to once a week. We’ll see. 2,000m is just fine for me now.

The Gorbals pool has a rule that you can’t use fins, or flippers… as does Bellahouston I think… for ‘safety’ or some reason. But tollcross… as it’s a pool for competitive swimmers, doesn’t have that rule! So I got myself another pair of flippers or fins as they’re also known.

Just short ones… or training fins…. I got them from Amazon, they’re the exactly same as the slightly more expensive Maru fins, but a nice colour. So I’ll try them on my Sunday swim. Get my legs working some more.

And I also got a swim cap to keep my hair nice – my first ever one. I’ll see how I get on with that!

Here are my draft kick sets:

Session 9 ​(kick sets / with fins)
Warm up​200m FC swim / 200m choice
Set 1​​4 x 200m kick with fins – BC / FC
Set 2​​1,000m FC swim with fins, Time Trial

Cool down​200m swim easy / 100m choice

Total ​​2,500m (with fins)

Session 10​(kick sets / with fins)

Warm up​200m swim / 200m choice

Set 1​​800m FC with fins (odd easy / even effort)

Set 2​​200m FC swim with fins (timed) / 800m FC swim (timed)

Cool down​200m swim easy / 100m choice

Total​​2,500m (with fins)

Session 11​(with fins)

Warm up​200m swim / 200m choice

Set 1​​3 x 400m FC with fins
​​(1. Ev 3rd effort, 2. Ev 2nd effort, 3. 800m hard)

​​200m FC easy

Set 2​​10 x 50m FC swim with fins (timed)
Cool down​200m choice

Total ​​2,500m (with fins)

Session 12 ​(with fins)

Warm up​200m swim / 100m choice

Set 1​​600m FC swim with fins: 100m / 200m / 300m

​​600m FC pull: 300m / 200m / 100m
Set 2​​800m FC swim with fins (timed)
Cool down​200m choice
Total​​2,500m (with fins)