swimming

My heart was pounding as I walked toward the mostly-unmarked side door of the building. I always get overly nervous when going to something alone for the first (or fifth, or sixth) time. I wound through parents waiting for their kids and entered the pool area, and luckily saw two people who looked like they were there for the same thing I was. “Hi, this is my first time and I don’t know anything”- I like to lay the facts on the table from the get-go. The woman, who definitely knows stuff, chuckled and pointed me to the women’s locker room, warning me of the hoard of under-10s in there. I decided to brave it, temporarily deafened by their heedless shrieking and screaming (I don’t think it was at me), and I headed straight for the toilet stall. I started to take my things out of my backpack, and quickly found there was not nearly enough room in there. I put my bathing suit and rain jacket on top of the toilet paper dispenser, then turned to take off my shoes. I heard a splash. My rain jacket had fallen on the ground, but my bathing suit fell in the toilet. Which some girl had not flushed. Well this is starting out smoothly, I thought. I was at once cursing and praising myself, because I had had the forethought to bring an extra bathing suit. This I put on immediately and kept everything away from that dastardly toilet. Most of the girls had left so I got out, put my things in a cubby, and headed out to the pool.

There were more people there now, including a guy who was wearing regular clothes, so I took him to be the coach. I introduced myself, quickly telling him I had bunion surgery so had not really moved in four months (it was really more, but I could only blame four of those months on the surgeries). I told him I had never swum competitively but had swum a lot in general and had always been fairly active. He sent me over to lane 1 and told me to start out with some freestyle. “All right,” I thought, “at least I’m good at freestyle.” The coach quickly put to rest my delusions of greatness, or at least of minor ability. I probably shouldn’t have told him I taught swim lessons for the last four years, I think it worried him after he saw me swim.

Anyway, a couple laps in I’m feeling good, lost count of how many laps I’ve done and how many I’m supposed to do, and he stops me. I’m excited for the guidance and opportunity to improve my technique. “Your kick is good,” he says, “but you need to push your arms through the water instead of letting them just drag along. Keep your hands closer to your body and rotate more, really reaching your hands out before they enter the water. And look ahead of you a bit as you swim, not straight down.” So I say okay, lower my goggles, and get ready to go. I’m mostly focusing on pushing the water with my hands, and I really start to feel it in my upper arms. I do probably another hundred yards like that and stop to rest. Everybody else has stopped swimming so I guess they all finished whatever we were supposed to be doing. The coach tells everyone to do a 3-2-1, whatever that means, and luckily he comes over to me. “You were pushing more, but you still need to lift your head up.” “Oh, right,” I say, “I forgot about that.” “Do another 300 of freestyle.”

Lap one, reach out, rotate, lap one, push back. Oops, gotta breathe. Lap one. Reach out, rotate, push back. This is going okay. Lap one. Oh right, look forward. Wait, now I’m not pushing back. Lap one. Push the water back. Oh, there’s the wall. Flip-turn, oh-I-really-should’ve-taken-a-breath-before-that, lap two. Look forward, reach arms forward, lap two, push the water back. I’m feeling good, my triceps are burning, and eventually I complete the 300 yards. The coach comes over. He looks disappointed. “You’ve got to push the water harder. I really want to see almost a small explosion as your arms come back. You’re taking almost 27 strokes per lap, when you should be doing 18 or 20.” “Okay,” I say, and I get ready to start swimming. Over the next few laps, my mind is a jumble of counting strokes, laps, and remembering to breathe, to reach out, look forward, push the water, and rotate. I eventually find that counting the strokes makes me automatically do many of the things he told me to do, which serves to tire out my poor tiny arms quickly. I take breaks, pretending I’m adjusting my goggles. The lowest I get is 22. I might have done 21 once. He has us all do an IM (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle)- I got through maybe half a lap of a barely-recognizable butterfly. I was glad there wasn’t a lifeguard at the pool so they wouldn’t have thought I was drowning. The coach came over with ten minutes to go, telling me that I can take it easy now; I did more than he expected me to do. I’m happy to hear something good and make a note to set peoples’ expectations low at the next activity I do for the first time, so I can easily exceed them. He had us cool down with whatever stroke we liked- I picked freestyle, still trying to reach the elusive 18-stroke lap. It didn’t happen, even with my probable mis-counting.

It was time to get out of the pool, so I looked around for the stairs, or a ladder. I saw nothing. Feeling my jello arms and panicking, I attempted to get myself out of the pool. I could barely lift myself out. I pulled myself up enough to get my butt out, then kind of rolled over onto my knees. I was the epitome of grace. In the locker room I’d tell anybody I could about my bunion surgery. “It’s so nice to move again, even though I’m so out of shape because of the surgeries.” Yes, definitely because of the surgeries…

As I rinsed myself off in the shower and struggled to get my jeans back on, I was glad I went. Sure, I wasn’t entirely confident in my ability to turn my steering wheel just then, but eventually I’ll get stronger. Though all the swimming lingo and equipment is still very foreign and unintelligible to me, everybody there is really welcoming and encouraging. I’ve gone two more times to the Master’s swimming practices, and I’ve gotten more comfortable with the whole thing. Now I only have to resist the urge to buy obscenely colorful bathing suits!