Losers

- "I think I may have forgotten my wallet at home", says Martin sheepishly.
- "but I did ask you minutes before we left if you had it and you said yes", I  say shout. " I mean, it is not like we often go out, this is silly."

This was us, a few days ago, getting annoyed, Martin with himself and me with Martin.

Fast rewind. For the past two summers, we did the most of the Annecy Lake. Last year, with Martin in full training for the Annecy triathlon and me expecting Malo and entering the last trimester, we were in the lake days in days out pretty much until Malo was born.  Martin discovered that, with training, he was actually more than decent at it (not a mean feat coming from somebody who was pretty much going backwards when we started swim training back in our London days). I discovered I enjoyed it, which is saying something coming from somebody known to have what we may call a slight bias towards running and cycling when it comes to endurance sports.

Full of beginners' enthousiasm, we vouched to carry on swim training in the pool during winter, and to start swimming in the lake as soon as weather would allow this year, and to act on it, two days after Malo's was born, I received a brand new wetsuit for my birthday. 

The swimsuit got used twice before I needed to store it because the lake had become too cold. Then any plans we had had of training at the pool got binned. We tried to keep evenings as a family time. Martin was working during the day. As for me, running and cycling were things I could do during the day with Malo, but swimming was not. Not that I was desperate to go anyway, as I find swimming in a pool akin to running on a treadmill, ie: dreadful.

Then summer arrived and we got all motivated again, except that, with Malo to be fed and put to sleep by 7.30pm, that did not seem to work.

Then last week we had a great idea: just as we occasionally do on Saturday mornings, we would splash out on a baby sitter some evenings during summer, bath and feed Malo, put him to bed then go swimming for an hour, and maybe even go for a pizza afterwards, like inthe good ol' times. That way, we would not have to give up spending time with our Petite Boule, would not have to feel guilty leaving him when he is awake, and would still get to swim and enjoy the lake.

So a few days ago, we got into action. We booked a baby sitter, I got our swimming stuff ready, Martin took the evening bath with Malo, I gave him dinner, and the minute we were sure he was asleep, we were on our bikes heading to the lake.

Then Martin realised he had forgotten his wallet at home. Oh well, no after-swim pizza then. Shame because, in all honestly, that may have had helped with my motivation to dive into the lake. 

We got into our wetsuits (not that it was cold enough to truly need them, but because we figured we could do with the added buoyancy).

Put swimming caps on. 

Then googles.

Googles? Where are my googles?

-"OH NO, I have forgotten my googles", am I crying to Martin seconds after having telling him off for being so disorganised we would have to skip dinner.

So that's how our first attempt of the year at getting back into swimming and enjoying the lake ended up. Martin swam 10 min  before giving up, feeling he had somehow forgotten how it worked between last year and this summer. I did not get to swim at  all. We both did not get pizza.

Just losers.

Just in case you are crying already, don't, as this story eventually got a happy ending. We booked the baby-sitter again for last night, decided not to cancel although it started pouring, got there with wallets and goggles, got our asses kicked in less time you need to read it, and came home home happy bunnies...

The way things go, Petite Boule, already in training, will soon swim better than his parents.

That's why we wait he's asleep to go training ourselves, pretending we're doing it for his own

good and to respect his sleeping patterns, but actually secrtetly hoping we'll still be a bit

stronger than him for a couple of years...