Messages from a floundering swimmer. Part 2, The company I keep.

I’ve gone swimming a few times now. Monday nights are my swimming nights. I go to a smaller facility, one that doesn’t seem to be too busy around 8:30 PM, which is when I tend to pull up. By the time I get to the pool, the water toys have been put away, the families are gone, and the lanes have been marked off: Slow, Medium, Fast. I hop in the slow lane and survey my fellow waterborne humans. There are a few faces that I’ve already come to recognize. There’s the Asian woman whose side stroke rivals mine; the Asian man who wears the flotation device around his torso; the 6 ft.-something Caucasian who swims effortlessly in the fast lane; the Saddam Hussein look-alike who stays propped up in the corner of the deep end all evening; the Polish guy who flirts with the lifeguard and looks like a Cold War era Bond villain; and his friend, the Spanish guy who wears biking shorts and is convinced of Barcelona’s superiority in football. There are others, but they spend so much of their time actually swimming that I see only their moving limbs and bobbing heads. There are also the extras; the group of men who don’t actually seem to get into the pool, but rather migrate back and forth between the steam room and the whirlpool. Then there’s me, the short, hairy guy who still hasn’t got around to buying a proper lock and so has an orange locker key pinned to his trunks. Occasionally others come and go from the water, but other than a very few, I am the youngest occupant by quite a bit; and I’m fine with that. I must admit that I did feel a bit odd at first, sharing the sparsely populated pool with a group of middle- and senior-aged folks, but the more I thought about it, the more I came to accept their company.

A couple of weeks back I went to the gym to exercise. I hated it. I hated the feeling I had being there. The moment I set foot amongst the myriad of devises and the fit specimens that occupied them, I felt completely out-of-place. I felt inadequate, embarrassed, and awkward. I’ve always had the feeling that I have no business being in a gym unless I’m already in phenomenal shape. Yes, I know that one of the purposes of the gym is so that people can get into shape; it rarely seems that way to me. Looking across the floor at the guys lifting weights only served to reinforce this.

“What’s that?” you say, “Yet another instance of low self-esteem? Surely not you?”

Ha ha. Very funny. Shut up.

Yet here, in the pool during the evening lane swim, I fell relaxed. I won’t say that I don’t still feel awkward or inadequate, because the truth still remains that I am a shit swimmer; but these feelings are not debilitating or prohibiting the way they are in the gym environment. Rather, I take a breather when I need one and look around to notice that most of the others in the pool are doing the same thing. I stay to the slow lane and leave the fast lane to those who are able to utilize it the best. I eavesdrop occasionally as the Polish guy and the lifeguard compare differences of the Slavonic languages. I focus on completing one pool length at a time, at my own pace; all the while taking delight in the fact that my fellow poolmates have made the effort to get out and spend some time this evening and do some swimming, or at the very least, some floating.

I still have not reached the point where I can say I enjoy swimming, but I can say that at least I found a place that I can exercise and feel at least somewhat comfortable in my own skin; which is good, because I just happen to have a lot of skin showing.

Messages from a floundering swimmer

I swim like my mother.

Last Monday I went for what I hope to be my first regular swim. Now that I have, for the foreseeable future, hung up my running shoes (yes, it still pains me to think about it) I desperately needed to find something to fill the void. In the weeks since I stopped running I noticed a marked change in my emotional, psychological, and, of course, physical self. As my agitation and my weight continued to grow, I knew that I needed to find out outlet soon, or I might regress back to the version of me that I swore I would never again become; and so I decided on swimming. The thing is, I’ve never been a strong swimmer. Swimming has, in fact,  never been something that I overly enjoy doing. I can’t time my breathing well enough to do a front stroke, I’m paranoid of running into people and/or walls when I swim on my back, and my legs are forever pulling me to the bottom like some sort of lead weight. Yet, I own a pair of swim trunks, the pool has hours that accommodate my schedule, and I can get a discount as a City employee, and I did take lessons as a child and am capable of not drowning; therefore, I went swimming on Monday night.

Before I left for the pool, I was determined to spend 90 minutes in the water. I didn’t know if this was feasible, but I wanted something concrete and challenging to keep me going. The first half hour, I soon realized, was still in the midst of public swim time, and so I did my best to swim laps whilst dodging other swimmers, inflatable balls, and stray flutter boards. As 9:00 came round the pool started to clear out, the swim lanes were marked, and the serious swimmers took to the pool; and by serious swimmers I mean senior citizens, but I had no problem with my company as we all seemed to be equally focused and respectful of each other’s space.

I had been swimming for about 45 minutes and feeling good. Sure I wasn’t breaking any speed records and I was taking a moment between laps to rest, but for the most part I was feeling quite pleased with my progress, except for one area: my actual progress in the water, that is to say, my ability to propel myself forward in an effective manner. It was ay this point that I realized two things. First, the particular strokes I was using, a modified breast stroke and side stroke, were not very powerful; and secondly, these very strokes are the ones that my mom always used when she swam. Yes, I swim like my mother. For a half moment I was slightly mortified, but that quickly passed as I realized that it really didn’t matter what I looked like. In fact, as I was slowly gliding on my side I had a brief flash of nostalgia of being a kid again in the pool with my mom; so much so that when I got to the end of the pool I rested with my arms along the pool deck, slowly bicycling my legs in the water, just like my mother used to do (I also made a point of phoning my mother and telling her just that. She seemed pleased.)

With that, it was back to the lengths.

I finished up my 90 minutes and left the pool feeling satisfied with my effort, but with a singular, nagging notion. This was no replacement for running; a substitute, yes, but not a replacement. I’m not sure how long it will take for me to get passed this; how long it will take me to stop looking longingly at runners who pass me by; how long it will take for me to stop telling people how I used to run, but can’t any more. However, I am looking forward to my next swim, of that I am sure. I remember how awkward I felt when I started running, so I have to expect the same with my time in the water. Maybe I’ll add a couple of different strokes to my repertoire in the future, but until then I’ll just take it one pool length at a time, knowing that I will make it to the end; it just might take me a while…

… after all, I swim like my mother.