What do you think about when you think about swimming? For a long time I thought of damp changing rooms, wet hair on a cold walk home from the pool and soggy towels in my bag.

I thought about the sting of water going up my nose, being pulled out of the water by a lifeguard, coughing and spluttering on the side of the pool, embarrassed and scared.

Being starving as soon as I got out the water and salt and vinegar crisps from the vending machine. Summers at the lido where dead flies and plasters floated past and water so cold it took all day to get in.

A year ago today, with those ideas of what swimming meant in my head, I headed to my first swimming lesson. I wanted to learn how to swim properly so that I could complete a triathlon. I didn’t expect to learn to love swimming.

Like learning to love running, feeling good about swimming didn’t happen overnight. It was more slow-burner than love at first sight. First came the basics, floating and body position in the water, then the beginnings of a stroke and finally how to breath.

After eight weeks I could swim two lengths of the 25m pool in Victoria using my newly build stroke, but I wasn’t yet a swimmer. It took another eight weeks of drills and practice until I was swimming up and down the lane without stopping.

The lessons happened in the depths of winter when it was dark outside and there was no natural light in the pool. It was dingy, noise echoed around under the tinny roof and sometimes the water smelt of the strong aftershave of a swimmer going in the opposite direction.

Falling in love requires a series of positive experiences, good memories that you associate with a name or a word. A different pool, recently restored to its Victorian splendour with a vaulted glass ceiling and (one Saturday afternoon) jazz musicians playing from the viewing area above.

A bright blue saltwater lake in Croatia and swimming up and down watching fish underneath me going about their fishy business. Bobbing about in a wetsuit in the middle of a coldlake while it blew a gale but feeling safe knowing the wetsuit and my companion wouldn’t let there be a repeat of that coughing and spluttering and lifeguard rescue of 20 years earlier.

Being the last person in the 1500m swim stage of triathlon but not caring about my position, only that I’d done it, I’d learnt to swim. Because a year ago today I couldn’t swim, and now I can swim 1500m without stopping. That’s what I think about when I think about swimming. And I think I love swimming.