SWIMMING

Sometime late last spring, on a Saturday when MJ and I were getting ready for Fremont market, the mail included a card announcing that my health insurance plan paid for unlimited access to the YMCA.  Initially casting it aside with the rest of the ad flyers, I had a second look later and decided to log onto the Silver Sneakers web site.  Not the sales pitch I expected.  Printed out my card, filled out a simple form at the Y, and there I was sitting on a stationary recumbent bike in the cardio room.  Found a cool pair of baggy basketball shorts at Goodwill. Bright red.


Beautiful new facility in Stanwood.  Double gym and two or three dance studio like rooms for classes, spacious cardio room, two pools.  Noticing couples working out together I thought having a girlfriend myself would be fun, so I got a summer membership for MJ and we started swimming in the recreational pool.  Walk against the current in the lazy river.  Fun.  

Found me three or four swim trunks at the thrifts along with several colorful tees.  Getting a little metro about how I dress around that place.  Half the fun.

Had swimming lessons once with I was a kid.  Me and Justin checking into the old brick YMCA in Walla Walla, winter of fifty-four.  Wide cement steps up from the street into the lobby, chicken wire fence floor to ceiling, dime on the counter and the door buzzed us in.  Someone had said everyone at the Y swims in the nude. Tradition. Glad to find out that wasn't true.

Downstairs and its cold and we shiver in the water while a tall thin late teen swim instructor takes us through the steps.  Hold breath with face in the water, blow bubbles out the nose, float and kick.  I remember seam boat float, hands out in front kicking feet. If they had kick boards then we never saw them.  Tuck your chin when diving so the water will flow past your nose.  Still see his hand coming past his face, fingers splitting on either side of the nose.  Seen that hand every time in my life that I got water up my nose when diving - which is every time.

By the end of the lessons I could freestyle nearly all the way across the pool in the shallow end, but never managed to get my face turned to the side to catch a breath.  Had to stop and stand up before taking off again, lots of fun but not really swimming.

The next year we moved to Great Falls, Montana where we swam all winter at the 'nat'.  Public natatorium in a small park near the downtown.  Icy Montana evening, steamy warm, crowded with screaming kids and lifeguards yelling not to run and making sure you could swim across the pool to be in the deep end. Which I couldn't do until I saw our friends the Betz boys paddling around with their heads clear out of the water.  Instantly I could scoot around the pool with the best of the kids.

Never gave up on the notion of doing a proper freestyle, swim laps.  Took Max and Emma swimming at the Y in Bellingham when they were kids and tried to practice a little but never made any headway. 

In Stanwood Y aquatic center the hot tub is located between the two pools, sit on one side and watch the folks in the recreational pool frolic in the current of the lazy river, sit on the other side and watch lap swimmers in the completion pool.  One day I looked over and saw someone swimming laps breathing with a snorkel.  Is that ok? Won't the real swimmers scoff at a snorkel swimmer?

Yes scoff, but I always try to go in the water after the hardcore adult swim team clear out, and besides YouTube verified that the snorkel is used as a training tool, so why not.  Get me in the water working out and having some fun.  

At my favorite thrift store diving masks and swim goggles are two dollars and the snorkel set me back another three. Start of the second week in July the workout log shows me trundling up and down the pool eight to twelve times three or four, sometimes five days a week. 

Each workout included breathing drills and by the third week in August I no longer needed the snorkel.  By then I averaged ten laps each workout, five hundred yards.  Each lap is fifty-yards.  Up the lane and back without stopping at the turn.  

Early on in the process someone in a YouTube video mentioned swimming a birthday set, one lap for each year.  I'll be seventy in December, maybe I should shoot for my own birthday swim on December 9.  Keeping real, the goal was set at seventy pool lengths, just short of a mile, thirty-five laps.

Setting goals and following through with the plan has never been my thing, but nearly every time I got in the pool a voice in the back of my head encouraged us to push things along toward the thirty-five lap swim.  By early October I was getting twenty to twenty-five lap workouts three or four times a week.  Well within striking distance of the goal.

So close yet so far.  Somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five laps, I started getting cramps in my calves.  Even when I keep a water flask at the head of the lane I have to force myself to drink during a swim.  Lots of attention focussed on keeping the damned water out of my mouth, don't especially want to take a big slug of the stuff during the short break between sets.

I've never been very flexible, so careful stretching has always been an important part of any workout routine. In the pool, I always do a warmup lap, stretch the leg muscles, then continue on with the plan for the day.  Forcing myself to take drinks and do additional stretching throughout the swim helped with the cramps, but didn't really extend the duration of the workout.  Hit the wall around twenty-five to twenty-eight laps.  Everything from the knees up felt just fine, but the calves and feet refused to participate.

By then, in every respect except doing the actual swim, I had reached the goal.  Rather than feeling at the end of endurance when a cramp stopped the workout, I was getting into a kind of groove in the water, feeling as if I were almost effortlessly gliding along through the pool as if it were a state of meditation.

Then, the last day of November, less than ten days before the planned birthday swim the dermatologist treated a dozen or more actinic keratosis spots on my face and hands.  Have to stay out of the pool until new skin fills in under the blisters.  When those are healed I start with a cream that really makes a mess out of the face and skelp, probably won't get in the pool until the middle of January.  

By Friday, day before the birthday I noticed the skin had healed enough for me to go in the water, and I decided to have a swim.  Still imagining the thirty-five lap birthday swim had to happen on Saturday, I figured carefully pushing into the mid-twenties, lots of water and stretching, would be a good warmup.  

Out of the pool for ten days double check everything in the swim bag, favorite trunks earplugs and goggles.  Realized while jumping down into the pool that the all-important water flask is missing.  Shit.  Took extra drafts of water at home and from the fountain which is just five feet across the deck from my lane.  We will haul ourselves out at ten laps for a drink, stop for stretching every two or three laps during the early going as well.

Turning the corner at lap sixteen the decision was made to go all the way, not stop again at least until twenty-five.  The original game plan for the next day had been to do three sets of twelve, even getting into the hot tub between sets.  Like a hockey team regrouping back in the room under the stands between periods.

Not now.  Finish in one set, with this image posted in the center of my mind's eye: 

Intrigued by the idea of a twenty dollar pint of beer ever since seeing the display at QFC, I told myself if we can pull through to the thirty-five lap mark, I'll get you that beer and a bar of the best chocolate on the way home.  At each turn of the lap the mental voice called out the number - saying to ourselves this is legitimately twenty (whatever) - thirty-one.. two...

Set out on lap thirty-five with a half dozen hard strokes bilateral breathing, sprint home.  By the turn, I settled into my usual slow right breathing pattern, pushed off the back wall and POW!

Both calves locked in excruciatingly painful cramps.  Were it not for the vision of that beer dancing ahead of my nose I may have settled to the bottom of the pool.  Right leg trailing like a king salmon ten days on ice in a trollers hold, foot distorted from the muscle spasm, left leg able to kick just enough to keep me flat in the water arms to pull us through to the end.

For a while, I thought the lifeguards would have to fish me out of the water, but after catching my breath for a moment I ducked under the lane markers and climbed out the elderly person stairs, made it over to the hot tub under my own power.

Double reward.  Cute, age appropriate woman chatted with me in the hot tub, got to tell my seventy pool length on seventieth birthday story.  And the twenty dollar beer may have been the best tasting liquid ever to cross my lips.  At the price, I would have lied, including to myself that it was good even if it had been Kambuchia nasty.  But no, aged in whiskey barrels smooth as those trendy nitro beers, thirteen percent got me pleasantly drunk.