I didn’t intend to be writing about swimming again so soon (see my post from a couple of weeks ago – I’ve started lessons). Indeed, one of the reasons I wanted to learn properly was so that I’d have another way to not think about writing – to switch off my busy brain and bring forth those moments of creative clarity that arise from activities that are both mindful and mindless, rhythmic and repetitive; as is the case with running, vacuuming, doing the dishes, collaging, planting bulbs. But so far, unlike with, say, mopping the floor, the first thing I want to do when I come out of swimming is to … write about swimming. So here are my diary entries from some of my latest sessions:
My first practice outside of the lessons – still alive
Seven weeks in, it felt like the right time to take the literal plunge and go along on my own to the pool, outside of the lessons, to try to practise what I’d learnt.
Near the entrance to the changing rooms (actually, it’s called the Changing Village), there’s an area where you have to ‘please remove your outdoor footwear’. As I sat on the bench and struggled with my inexplicably knotty trainer laces (where do those extra little knots come from?! The ones that work their way into the individual lace, never to be undone), a woman who was getting ready to leave came and sat next to me to put her shoes back on. ‘Uff,’ she said, ‘that’s the worst part, isn’t it? Getting changed again’.
I laughed; it’s so true – the worst part is no longer the anxiety beforehand (not that that’s totally gone away) or worrying that I’ll snort up some water;1 it’s the faff of having to get showered and dressed again. Everything seems to take longer than it should. For example, you know when you’re undressing and you whip off all your layers in one go? Vest, t-shirt, jumper. One big chunky clothing sandwich. But then, when you try to put it all on again in one go, you get both arms back through the jumper okay but only one arm through the vest, plus the other arm’s through the neck of the t-shirt. So then you have to take them off again and re-layer one by one, which would have been the smarter thing to do in the first place. There’s also that strange game of reverse strip poker as fate asks: Which item of clothing can you no longer put back on because it’s fallen splat down on the damp and not-very-clean-looking floor? (This week, it was a sock; surely the worst of all items to go without?)
Often it’s these small interactions with people I don’t know that can bring the greatest insights. I instantly felt lighter and more relaxed about the prospect of getting into the pool.
However, the actual swim was a bit flat. In the lessons, I follow every instruction unquestioningly (not always correctly, but certainly on cue). But without the instructor there telling me what to do next, things felt much more stop/start; at the end of each length or half-length, I paused, trying to remember the menu of strokes and drills. Next time, I’ll make a plan beforehand.
Back by the lockers, a woman getting ready to go into the pool asked me how my swim was and whether I did a lot of swimming. I said I was having lessons, and it turned out she had too, a few years back, and some of her friends are learning now.
‘Have you done butterfly yet?’ No.
‘Tumbleturns?’ No.
‘Do you know my friend Marion?’ No.
‘Oh well, anyway, well done you. The trick is to relax in the water and remember: you won’t die.’
Changing rooms observation: someone before me had really gone to town with the talc!
At home – corridor lengths
The weirdly long and narrow corridor to our bathroom finally has a purpose! At 30-foot long by 2-foot wide it provides the perfect indoor space for practising the ‘high elbow’ technique of front crawl. Because of the narrowness, there’s no option but to keep those elbows high. I’m hoping that by ‘swimming’ to the bathroom and back I’ll develop some muscle memory that will help me when I’m next in the water.
Swimming lesson – got moved up to Advanced!
‘This week, we’ll learn the breaststroke’, our tutor said. So I was a bit bemused when the first thing we were asked to do was ‘two lengths of front crawl’. But, as I said, with swimming I unquestioningly follow instructions, so I set off down the pool. It turned out that this was the warm up. The warm up! Two whole lengths of front crawl.
Next, we did breaststroke legs. A nice practice because the instruction was to lie on your back, hold your float ‘like a teddy bear’ and then have a go at doing the leg movement (point, flex, and snap). I felt like a frog, in a good way.
Near the end of the session, our instructor came over to me and said I was ready to move up to the next group! My first internal reaction was ‘but I can’t even swim yet’. Sensing my uncertainty, she said ‘would you like my colleague to assess you?’
Obvously the only sane answer to the question ‘would you like to be assessed?’ is ‘no’ but instead I nodded and dipped under the barrier into the ‘advanced’ zone. The assessment was essentially a whole other half-hour lesson! I found it a challenge, and accidentally did front crawl with breaststroke legs, but it was undeniable (even to myself) that I was managing to move through the water with my head below the surface line, i.e., I was swimming.
Changing rooms observation: two salt sachets on the shoe bench
Practice session – winter toes and children
There was a notice up in the foyer, in front of the entry barriers:
DUE TO AN UNFORESEEN INCIDENT IN THE SPLASH POOL, CHILDREN’S LESSONS WILL NOW BE TAKING PLACE IN THE MAIN POOL.
Unforeseen incident. We all know what that means, don’t we?
I head on in. As soon as I get my flip-flops out of my bag, I realise I’ve made an error. The last couple of days have been the first frosty ones of the season: woolly tights weather. To get dry-footed from the shoe bench to the changing room, there’s only one thing for it:
I styled it out, but note to self: wear leggings in future.
After the high of getting moved up a group, I was frustrated to have a pretty unsuccessful practice. I was just not getting into a rhythm. It helps, though, to think about it in the same way as how creativity works. Some days it happens, other days it doesn’t, but ‘when inspiration arrives, I want it to find me at my work’ (is that what Picasso said? Something like that). When my swimming rhythm is there, I want it to find me in the pool. Hmm … maybe it’s not the perfect analogy – I can’t just spend all my time in the pool, prune-like, waiting for swimsperation to strike.2
Changing rooms observation (things I heard the children coming in for their lessons say):
‘But mum, it’s thirty whole minutes of pain and suffering!’
‘Bum cheeks! Bum cheeks! Bum cheeks!
‘My swimsuit’s on back to front!’
Anytime my head is underwater now, I’m breathing out through my nose – such a simple solution; it’s a mystery that I didn’t think to do this until my instructor told me the big secret.
