One Utah

We’ve had a lot of high level discussion around here the last few days and that’s a good thing. I’ve got lots of different ideas bubbling around my brain and since I can’t pick one of them . . .

After a long interim of not doing it, I’ve gotten back into lap swimming as a form of exercise.

I was on swim team in middle and high school. I’m a strong swimmer with excellent form; I’m not patting myself on the back, I well taught by top-rate coaches and teachers and given the opportunity to practice. As a thirteen year old, I attended a week long swimming camp at the University of Utah. At the time, I was so painfully shy that the idea of staying in the dorms with the other kids made me physically ill so I stayed with my grandparents the entire week and arrived each morning at the U’s pool for workouts, then grandma or grandpa picked me up in the afternoon. I learned more about swimming in that week than I ever thought I could learn.

As a college student, I considered joining the swim team and in fact got their workouts from a coach and tried to follow them. I eventually chose not join. Again that damn shy thing - I was so afraid of the overnight trips, of sharing a room with other swimmers that the thought of it was more than I could face. Although I swam laps for all four years in college, I did it on my own, not as part of the team. The lap swimmers at the PEC got to know each other. There was a faculty member who swam with me many a day. The two of us wore identical, black speedos and used to pace against each other. I still remember the day that I finished my mile, lay against the wall gapsing for air and said “I could barely keep up with you today” and Professor Bateman look at me and said, gasping, “I was trying to keep up with you.”

I’ve spent a lot of time in pools and I love it. The smell of chlorine and the feel damaged hair and the sight of faded swim suits drying on the rack are an integral part of my experience. When you swim on a regular basis, your body gets thoroughly chlorinated. It’s not unusual to sneeze and smell chlorine.

Most people jump in the pool and splash around. A lot of people I know would rather walk on their lips than swim laps.

Unlike most forms of exercise, with swimming you have to stretch your whole body into the movement and keep it steady - you reach your arm for the wall and stretch your legs behind you. Power in most exercise comes from concentrating he body then exploding; in swimming it’s all about reaching out as far as you can and pulling your arm through the water. The body lengthens itself into the water and your power comes from a steady, deep stroke.

A good lap swimmer takes long, even strokes and moves their body in a rhythm. Even at the turns, they flow rhythmically into the flip turn and out of it away from the wall. The best lap swimmers don’t swim for speed - although they get seriously fast. Good lap swimmers develop an extremely efficient stroke that moves them through the water at a steady pace, the best lap swimmers can be demons at short distances because their stroke is so powerful and their turns so efficient. Good lap swimmers have a kind of zen about their swimming. For me, no matter how hard I swim, I’m almost never sore the day after, unlike weight lifting.

The pool becomes a refuge - a place of inner quiet in which one resets one’s mind.

This entry was posted Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 3:05 pm and is filed under People Are Nuts, This Blog. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.