Free Reflection

Swimming

Swimming is something like a hobby for me. I cant call it a hobby "directly". The reason is that I actually don't enjoy the sport itself much. I have always found it too difficult. I cant swim fast as my style suffers from a few fundemental errors embedded in it due to learning how to swim on my own at age 20, without any expert coaching. Actually my motivation to start it was an advice of a friend in the university who said that if somebody swims an hour twice a week, he would be in need of no additional exercise to keep fit. Normally I dont give a f.ck to every advice of everybody. But the foresaid advice was an advice of Şamil Baba, who was a fitness champion of great personality with a Chechen origin. We were recruits of him in the fitness saloon of the university. And he was our idol. After graduating, I started swimming and in the last 10 years I have been swimming regularly. Sometimes just once a week, sometimes as much as 3 times a week. And joining the Bosphorus Intercontinental Swimming Race was a dream for me for the last a few years. Last year I prepared hard for it when I was in İstanbul from late march till mid June. I was staying in Beyazıd and going to an olympic pool of the IBB in Aksaray for the first month. After the first month I went on with ITU olympic pool in Maslak campus. I tried hard by going to the pool three times a week during the god damn rush hour of İstanbul. But my best time was 20 minutes and 33 seconds for 800 meters. It was still 3 minutes slower than the required time in the qualifications of the bosphorus race. So I decided not to try anymore to get faster and forget about the race. Now I swim for pleasure, it takes all my electricity and stressJ And to note, I have always been using university pools; Bogazici, Erciyes, Tobb ETU, METU and ITU are the universities whose pools I have enjoyed much. And let’s not forget the IBB pool in Aksaray, old city, Istanbul.