Swimming

One of the many changes that moving our whole lifestyle to another country has brought about is the ability and desire to make other changes to our lives. Yes, a lot of it feels the same, like cooking family dinners and working in schools, but the option of doing things differently feels much more real now. For example, I now live less than a 10 minute drive from the trailhead of my favorite hike, and have already been to the summit half a dozen times since we've been here. Hiking was something that was never on our radar in the UK unless we went to the Lake District.

All of this ruminating on change brings me to swimming. I always talked about how I used to swim competitively as a kid (up to the age of 16) and indeed I'm still in touch with some of my swim club buddies on Facebook. I've religiously carried around all the medals that I won during my youth (now all knotted and tangled) and more interestingly my PB book which my mum kept for me, with all of my best times. I toyed with the Leeds Masters a couple of times, but our lifestyle never seemed to suit a return to swimming, and our behaviour patterns as a married couple got a bit more set as time went by. I still maintained a dream somewhere of going back to the pool and working on my PB (for a year or so, my password for non-essential accounts referenced my 100m freestyle goal)

When we moved here, I started looking for ways to get back into shape. I had used the parkrun 5k runs in Leeds as a way of maintaining my fitness and keeping in touch with friends (indeed, Facebook keeps prodding me with memories of me and Jake in a running stroller), but after Jake was too big and we had Sophie, I found finding time for exercise to be tricky. The idea of swimming came back to me when Jake picked up my box of medals and asked me about them, so I told him about swim meets.

A bit of online research later took me to Great Bay Masters, and the glory that is Amazon provided a new pair of swimming shorts (no more Speedos for me!) and a good pair of goggles. Thus armed, I went to my first session at the Jenny Thompson outdoor pool in Dover one Sunday morning. I didn't realise it's a 50m length (my least favourite kind of pool) and that this was a serious swimming team. I think I lasted around 1500m before I couldn't take it any more, and my poor muscles ached for days after, especially those that hadn't had a serious workout since 1998.

I think I surprised our coach when I came back the following week given how miserable I must have looked getting out of the pool the first time. Despite one bad case of sunburn (who knew you needed to wear sun cream when swimming outside in 30 degree sunshine!), I managed to make a few appearances over the tail end of the summer, but started to pick up my game once school started. I'm now training twice a week (for the most part) and have even invested in a pair of fins as they seem to get used in just about every session.

The biggest shock that I've had is how bad my stroke was. When I was a lifeguard in New York in the PBE and PKE, I took advantage of a local swimming coaching course, part of which taught us how to do each stroke "perfectly". I've been using this as the basis for coaching a lot of my friends and family, but in the intervening 13 years, strokes have changed and my coach at Great Bay has worked with me on a lot of different bad habits and ideas that were slowing me down. I remember returning to swimming for a while, only for a familiar shoulder pain to stop me after a few sessions. With my stroke corrected, my shoulder pain has gone and I can feel myself becoming fitter and stronger with each passing week.

I had forgotten how much I love the sensation of my body moving quickly through the water. Whenever I've been splashing around in a pool or lake, I always feel at home in the water, but it wasn't until we started doing short sprints that I realised how good it feels and the thrill of trying to beat a time (whether it's set by yourself or a coach). I've managed to get myself down to just under 14 seconds for 25 yards on a good day, so we'll see if I can keep that pace up over 100 yards!

The next big meet is on 10/11 December, and I'm still trying to work out if I want to enter or not. It's a long way away in Massachusetts and the timing means that I'd be swimming in mid-afternoon, leaving my wife with the kids for the majority of the day. I may wait for something closer to home to re-enter competitive swimming, but when I do, keep your eyes on here for my progress!