Saturday 2 February 2008

Swim-EAR required

On Thursday I went for my second swim of the week, I missed Wednesday due to a 7.00am conference call at work, and very nearly made a complete idiot of myself. To be fair it is not entirely unusual for me to make an idiot of myself but this had the potential to be even more embarrassing than usual.

I was part of the way through my swim session and had just finished swimming one repetition of an interval set. When I stopped at the end of the pool I had some water in one of my ears so I put my head on one side and gave it a bit of a shake. Unfortunately, I managed to crick my neck. This was not an ordinary cricked neck this was a full blown, pins and needles inducing, I can't feel my legs, my head is falling off, type of cricked neck. For a few seconds I really thought I had done some serious damage to myself.

As I was at the shallow end of the pool by the wall I was not about to drown but I did consider asking the life-guard to get the back board and help me out of the pool. Luckily, my fear of looking stupid over-rode my fear of being paralyzed and I just lent on the wall resting my head on my hands for a couple of minutes. Within a minute or so the pain passed and I was able to (very gingerly) continue with my session.My poor technique when breathing (head in the wrong place etc) was even worse than usual but apart from that there were no after effects and I don't think anyone noticed what happened. In future though I will just put up with water in my ears and only try to get it out when I am nice and safe on dry land. Perhaps I should invest in some Swim-EAR as well so I don't have to risk my neck again.

No comments: