At the start of writing this blog I did my pool rules and some people called me a Nazi. It was water off a laminated Nazi’s back. The last rule I wrote was, “Be nice to the people doing head-up breaststroke. That might be you one day.” The feeling was that I was demeaning the head-up breaststroker but the truth is, head-up breaststrokers are very close to my heart. Until seven years ago, I was one.
Seven years ago I would never have classified myself as a swimmer. Sure, I’d been swimming in my own fashion all my life but to me it was the same as singing: just something I did, without it being a Significant Label. (I never understand when contestants on TV singing competitions say, “I’ve been singing since I was three.” ALL children sing. It’s more rare to find a child who occasionally shuts up.) I would no more have called myself a singer than I would a swimmer – I did both badly. It never occurred to me that things could be any different.
Being in the school playground again got me back in the water in a more dedicated fashion. After drop-off, a few friends would regularly go to Tooting Bec lido; but these were good swimmers, fast swimmers – the girls who always got picked. I was never one of those girls but one day, when one of them said patiently and for the umpteenth time, “Do you want to come?”, I thought, why not? What’s to stop me? So I went, and poddled up and down the long length (91m) doing my head-up breaststroke, grinning at everyone who came by, so glorious did it feel. The length was so long that I stopped at each end for a good rest and a bun. At that point, I didn’t wear goggles – my face is wrong for regular goggles and I didn’t know there were sorts. But I knew I liked it. I really liked it. I liked the freedom. I liked being in the middle of the water and nobody asking anything of me. And watching other people swim properly, I knew I wanted to be in that gang. This time, I picked myself.
Then I found big goggles for which I had the right face, and I started to put this right face in the water like normal swimmers, learning how by dint of watching. I thought maybe I could learn front crawl too through that “watching” technique, thought maybe I could learn it just by being in the water with good swimmers, like homeopathic swimming lessons. But in this instance [holds your gaze] homeopathy didn’t work. It just would. Not. Stick. It was the breathing that got me every time. And the legs, and arms. I couldn’t co-ordinate. So when the opportunity arose (OK, when I created the opportunity) to go on an “improvers” holiday I grabbed it with both sun-spotted hands.
A week in Greece with two expert teachers was a turning point, not least because it was the first time I left my kids and partner at home to go away. It felt better “deserting them”, somehow, when I was off to learn something. At the start of the lessons we were asked what our goals were, and mine was to front crawl a length of the lido. While some people were finessing minor points, others including were at a fairly basic, even nonexistent level. I’d envisaged becoming an immediate expert, but the reality was more painful, slower. At the end of a week practising endlessly in pool and sea, counting and chanting in my head, trying to get my arms and legs and lungs to work how I wanted them to, I started to think I might get it one day. It was within my reach (roll, relax). On the final day we swam bay to bay, and I front crawled some of it. I concentrated hard every second of the way and was so far from instinctive, but I was happy. It felt like an achievement. I went home with a little nugget of unexpressed belief that I might actually front crawl that length one day.
Back at the lido I told my friend Al, a really good swimmer who was Channel-training at the time, what my goal was. He didn’t laugh or mock, he gave me a pool buoy and said, try it. Go on. I’m here.
So I tried it. OK, I had a pool buoy shoved between my legs, and if you want to call that cheating feel free, I don’t care. I did it. Halfway along, Al said “keep going”, so I did. He was at the deep end when I got there, cheering. It felt fantastic. I’d done it. I could have cried. (I may have cried.) Thank you, Al.
The moral, if there has to be one, is that if I can, you can too (if you want to). Try lessons; if you can, find an Al. I’m an uncoordinated, slow, late learner but I love having a new skill. Since that first length, I’ve practised and practised and practised. I’ve poddled on and on and on. I train and learn and listen and still hope a little bit that by being in the water with fast people, I’ll get faster. I can’t for the life of me work out why I’m not. But I don’t really care. I have sussed one thing: I’m now officially proper serious about swimming because when I’m swimming, even slowly, I’m not standing on the periphery of life, I’m absolutely at the heart of it. Do join me.
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