Swimming Test Done!

I finally got the chance to do my swim, tread water and dive.

It was done at Dive HQ Tauranga, in the murkiest pool I'd seen for a while. It's a dive pool that is 5 metres deep with a shelf at one end. The room is not that well lit so the water looks browny/green.

I'd phoned in a few times to sit it but the times never coincided when I was free from work. I took a day off work just for this and tee'd up a time at 3pm .. turned up and they asked if I could come back on Friday! It was all good though, they squeezed me in thank god. In fact the guys at Dive HQ were awesome, they made me feel really welcome.

The swim is 50 metres. I had been practising at my gym pool (2 x 25m) and could comfortably do it in 40 seconds. The required time is 54 seconds. I had the option of diving in but didn't want to lose my goggles! This pool was 15 metres long so had to do 3.5 lengths. I did 30 secs for the swim which exceeded my expectations.

I was worried about treading water (see my earlier post on treading water) but over the past few months I have been trying different methods and whilst I still cant do the "eggbeater' kick without looking like I am having a fit, I have developed a slow skulling motion.

I passed the test without my chin touching the water. The top mark for the test was to have the water at chest/nipple height for the 5 minutes. Sod that!

Then finally the dive to get a weight from a basket hanging under a float 3 metres down. It was hard to see the old white plastic covered basket and at first I dove right past it! The water was so murky I panicked and struck it on the way back up. Damn.

Lined it up and got it the second time, then it was a matter of swimming on my back with the weight on my chest for 10 metres. Piece of cake. I was given strict instructions not to drop the weight in the 5 metre pool!

I've surfed for 24 years and am confident in the water but I still took too long to do this part of the assessment. Now that I have done it now I really don't know why it took so long!