Swimming Club

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 Pain. You cannot comprehend the pain emanating from my arms. My muscles yell their frustration at me as I once again push them to their very limits. I am speaking of course, of my swimming club. My coach, Anne O'Neill, used to be a maths teacher, and the characteristics of pushing me and ensuring I complete the entire four-and-a-half kilometre set.
 The one hour and forty-five minutes is some of the hardest time I spend throughout the week, second only to the two hour sessions on Wednesdays and Fridays. I'm not the best swimmer in the world and there is no way I will ever make it to severely competitive competition. I'm satisfied with Graded Meets and Open Meets. That's good enough for me.
 My only objection to my contiuous lugging of my frame up and down the pool, up and down, up, down, up, down for often two hours at a time, is ... why? Why do I continue to do so for so long? What's the point? What the hell do I achieve from the activity. To keep fit? I could just run to school every morning. That would do the same job.
 There is a quote from John Green's 'The Fault in our Stars' that summarizes my feeling.

At the time of this quote, Augustus was talking about why he gave up basketball (for anyone who isn't a nerdfighter).

"All at once I couldn't figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a toroidal object. It seemed like the stupidest thing I could possibly be doing."
 

 In the pool, while thrusting myself off the wall at the deep end, I suddenly wondered why I was doing so. What could I possibly be getting out of this? I didn't know. I suppose if I was ever hurled into the Hunger Games arena from 'Catching Fire' and I had to swim to the Cornocopia, I could perhaps find a use for my skills. Otherwise, wouldn't my time be better spent writing, or reading, or playing video-games.

 Now I know the reason I swim, the reason anyone does any exercise. For fun. There is no use to many things we do in life, but we do them anyway. For fun. And that's why I swim.