It has been 19 years since I have done butterfly. Maybe 20.

I was never very good at butterfly, and I was definitely not good at diving (I am still scared of those racing blocks!) but I could do butterfly. 50m of it anyway. So somehow, on my high school swim team, I got roped into doing butterfly for the Midget Girls relay. And even though I was all of 13, I also got roped into doing butterfly on the Junior Girls relay team, and on the Senior Girls team because no one else wanted that daunting task. Little 13-year-old me doing butterfly with 19-year-olds. Amazing. 

(Needless to say The Martingrove Bears did not win any relays).

And as soon as there was someone else to fill the butterfly spot on all three swim teams, I bowed out and stuck to back crawl (no diving with back crawl!)

Butterfly is so hard. And that is an understatement. It is so hard.

But I love it. I really do, especially when actual swimmers do it. It's so beautiful, and the rhythm is so perfect – two kicks to every stroke. It is just a wonder.

My triathlete friend at the pool is trying to learn butterfly. She practises her dolphin kick while I do my last-10-minutes-of-the-swim sprints. So on the weekend, when we had the pool to ourselves, I joined her.

I only made it to the deep end, and it wasn't pretty, but it was fun and impossibly hard and we laughed and laughed at our half-drowning, terrible butterfly.

(I can't stop watching that Michael Phelps video. 200m of butterfly in 1:51:51. Epic. Just, epic!)