The last time I updated this blog was in November 2017, when I had just completed my 5K half-marathon swim at the London Aquatics Centre.

In many ways, it was the perfect place to end the story. I’d started the blog more than a year earlier with a mission statement to swim in the iconic 2012 Olympic pool, and accomplished that with what remains my proudest physical endeavour.

But the real truth for stopping the blog is simple: I just stopped swimming.

Having begun a new job in Worcester in February 2017, by November I was already struggling to incorporate a dip into my morning routine. Roadworks on the M5, which ultimately would go on for almost three years, were steadily extending my already lengthy commute, and swimming had to take a back seat.

Having become fitter than ever before in the pool, being out of it, predictably, saw me relax back into bad habits. Eating the wrong things, mainly bought from motorway service stations, hitting me in the wallet as well as the waistline.

A spot of five-a-side football and semi-regular trips to the gym kept me ticking over, but the truth is that the weight I lost through swimming quickly piled back on.

My nightmarish 80 mile round trip on a stretch of road that more closely resembled a building site continued until March this year when, to my delight, I secured my dream job as the Social Media Manager for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, a role that has brought me much closer to home.

With a three month notice period ahead of me I started counting down the days until my lengthy commute was a thing of the past, and to having more time to look after my wellbeing.

Little did I know that my long journey to work would be done a little sooner than that. The Covid-19 pandemic meant that I spent my final three months in my job working from home, and suddenly I had time on my hands to think about my fitness.

While that was one of the personal positives of the situation, one of the negatives was the fact that the doors of my local leisure centre were shut.

In those heady early days of lockdown, of course, we’d been granted a solitary form of outdoor exercise to enjoy each day, and I decided I should make the most of it. So, the Sleepy Swimmer became a Reluctant Runner.

Now, when it comes to me and running, I have a past. I was good at it when I was in my teens, a very promising middle-distancer. My dad, a former competitive marathon runner for Birchfield Harriers, had set his sights on me following in his footsteps and joining the storied old club at Alexander Stadium. Unfortunately, various knee and ankle knacks put paid to that. I quit running, gained weight when I went to University, and have never quite arrested that decline.

In the intervening years, I would attempt a jog every now and then, but found that the pain of shin splints was prohibitive to progress.

But this time, I had no option. So I downloaded Couch To 5k, and off I went.

Predictably, my progress was painful. My shin splints were all too often screaming at me, but were eventually quelled somewhat by my natty knee-high and fluorescent yellow compression socks. I always was a trendsetter…

But, as I ploughed on, something incredible happened. From struggling to run for 60 seconds in the first week of the plan, each week I was getting better. The complete elation of running for ten minutes without stopping almost brought me to tears, purely because it was something I never imagined being able to do. And then it increased to 15, then 20, then 25, then… bloody hell, I was actually running for half an hour non-stop.

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I know people who post on social media about their fitness routines are the biggest dullards on the planet, but my #CouchTo5k updates on here were my way of holding myself accountable, of making sure that I didn't give up when I was making a big deal of it for all to see. What I wasn't expecting was how important everyone's support would be. Such nice, supportive comments really helped me through when I had to dig deep. Particular kudos to @richmitchell86, who I've not seen or even spoken to enough in the last few years, but who has been a constant support throughout the past nine weeks. Best of all were the messages from people to tell me that my posts were inspiring them to take up exercise, which was a lovely feeling. Thanks to Anna, who has been bored to tears with me regurgitating the stats courtesy of my Garmin watch, but who has been my biggest cheerleader regardless! 😂 Weirdly, thank you to my virtual coach, @mjgold4. To him, Couch To 5k was probably just an hour in a recording studio a few years ago. For me, having one of the greatest athletes of all time in my ear really helped along the way. I have a #5kto10k app ready to go, but you'll be happy to know I'll no longer be posting photos of my sweaty head every time I put on a pair of trainers. From now, I need to be my own motivation. If, for some reason, you're keen to keep tabs on me, you can find me on Strava. Yes, I'm fully one of those people now. 😬 Thanks for being with me along the way! Onwards! . . . #Running #Jogging #Fitness #WeightLossJourney #QuarantineFitness #QuarantineExercise #LockdownFitness #LockdownExercise #quarantine #lockdown

A post shared by Tom Parker (@thomastparker) on Jun 6, 2020 at 5:14am PDT

All through the Couch to 5k I was posting a selfie on Instagram for every run. Yes, I know that people who update constantly about their fitness routines on social media are unbearable, but doing this, I found, had a profound impact on my motivation. By posting the pictures people knew what I was doing, and conversely, if I stopped, they would know I had quit. And I didn’t want the disappointment of that.

However, I knew I couldn’t keep spamming friends’ feeds with my sweaty face, so after Couch to 5k was complete, I decided from that point I would be plodding the pavements in private.

That’s when I really started finding it difficult. Whether it was the fact that I was no longer using social media to hold myself to account, or simply that I didn’t have that end goal of completing Couch to 5k anymore, I found myself unable to ignore the pain in my legs any longer.

My running, very quickly, went from a relatively assured 30 minute amble, to a stop-start ‘run-a-bit-walk-a-bit’ battle in my own head.

Worse still was the pain I felt when I wasn’t running. My old knee troubles were flaring up again, with arthritic pain causing me real discomfort during simple tasks like getting up from a chair or walking up the stairs.

I couldn’t help but ask myself: “What is the point in getting fit and losing weight if it’s affecting my day-to-day mobility?”

And yet, I didn’t want to quit. I’ve given up on so many attempts to get fit in the past, did I really want to consign this one to the scrapheap too?

I was fully in the throes of having this debate in my own head when, thank God, the Government opted to open the gyms and pools again.

So now, I’m seeing this as a chance to recapture what I had. Swimming is the one form of exercise I picked up and kept at for a long period of time. I felt better, more alive, and lost weight when I was doing it. I only stopped because I literally couldn’t fit it into my routine. Now I have no excuses.

The first swim post-lockdown felt right. By the third, I had reclaimed my place in the fast lane of the pool. Getting a bollocking from the lifeguard for overtaking gave me life.

This is the activity for me. This is how I’m going to continue my fitness and weightloss journey.

I’m a swimmer. It’s good to say that again.

I’ve never been able to even tentatively explore a new sport without investing in some sort of expensive equipment I probably  don’t need.

Despite this relentless commitment to the spirit of ‘all the gear, no idea’, as I set out on my new guise as a daily swimmer, I was less keen than usual to attire myself in the sort of apparel usually preserved for the professionals. And it was all down to body confidence.

You see, whereas my previous temporary attempts to be a runner or a footballer have allowed for gear baggy enough to at least partially disguise the fact that I don’t possess the body of an athlete, the attire associated with professional swimming doesn’t allow for any such cover-up.

It was bad enough to have to be topless. For years I’ve been somebody who’s barely been able to cope with being shirtless in my own company, let alone in front of other people. And I was hardly going to compound that by hanging my gut over the waistband of a very tight pair of lycra shorts, was I?

Jealousy

Back in my past life working for Speedo’s PR agency, I remember writing a piece about a new range of women’s swimwear that had been designed in-line with research showing that women felt self-conscious when walking from the locker room to the pool. To combat that feeling, the new collection had a number of contouring features to improve the wearer’s perception of their own body shape.

Writing that piece made me jealous. Not because I have any desire to don a ladies’ swimming cossie, obviously. But the issue of body confidence was all too real a struggle for me… and, sadly, no good solution was forthcoming when it came to men’s swimwear.

Between then and the time I began regular swimming last summer, my issues regarding body confidence had improved somewhat. I’d met my fiancee, Anna in that time, and I suppose the fact that I get dressed in front of her every morning and she doesn’t recoil in horror reassured me that I wasn’t all that repulsive.

But still, my morning routine would see me struggling to get ready at poolside in a way that meant I was topless out of the water for the absolute minimum amount of time, before plunging into the pool wearing a very baggy pair of shorts.

The Epiphany

As I started to enjoy and feel the benefits of my daily swim, my ‘all-the-gear, no idea’ tendencies came to the fore. As I read more around my new specialist subject, one thing that struck me is that anyone who’s actually serious about swimming, be it competitively or purely for fitness, wore tight fitting apparel rather than loose-fitting togs.

What really compounded it, though, was when a lady turned up at the pool one day wearing a pair of leggings beneath her swimming costume, together with a t-shirt on top of it, presumably to mask her larger than average frame. And the pity was, I realised, that her own lack of body confidence had led to a scenario where she had effectively drawn more attention to herself than she may have done had she opted for more conventional attire.

It’s like the comb-over hairstyle. Often, the more you attempt to hide something you don’t like, the more obvious it becomes.

Noted purveyor of the comb-over, Bobby Charlton

It was at that point that I realised nobody particularly cares about what you’re wearing other than yourself. I went home, fired up the Sports Direct website and ordered the cheapest pair of plain black Speedo jammers I could. “Feck it”, I thought.

A couple of days later, I found myself squeezing myself into them, and trotting to the pool. As I disrobed at poolside, to my eternal surprise, I didn’t feel like a fat lad in lycra, as I’d assumed I would. I felt like a swimmer.

I took the plunge, and suddenly felt sleeker, sharper, shapelier and speedier. Whether it was hydrodynamics or just the placebo effect, I’m not sure, but I immediately felt better for donning my new outfit.

The baggy shorts haven’t been touched since then. Not only that, but I’ve also increased my array of jammers with new additions that feature more elaborate, more eye-catching patterns. I take this alone as evidence that my once significant issues with body confidence have all but dissipated.

For the first time in my adult life, I’m comfortable in my own skin, and it’s a very nice feeling indeed.

Over the last few months, I’ve realised that embarking on a new exercise regime is not so much about how you look, but how you feel. Which is just as well, given I still possess all too many wobbly bits that aren’t generally associated with the stereotypical swimmer’s body.

However, if looking the part can help you feel the part, then it doesn’t hurt to try, does it? Looks like there’s something in the philosophy of ‘all the gear, no idea’ after all…

You know there is. There really is.