A mile is 80-plus lengths of a large pool in about 52 minutes. You're looking for efficiency and that means crawl, breast-stroke is a non-starter. With proper crawl the head is underwater for 95% of the time and this means learning to breathe in an entirely different way. Taking in sufficient air in a quick twist of the head lasting no more than 2 seconds; breathing out into the water.
The problem is psychological; fighting the mind's belief that such breathing cannot be sustained. When I first completed an all-crawl half-mile the endorphins surged through my body in a fine fizz.
Although the municipal pool had a section for length swimmers, most were there for social reasons; it was too crowded. A local hotel had a pool but it was irregularly shaped and intermittently crowded. I joined a proper leisure centre with two large adult pools and a smaller one for children. Most swimmers were there to do lengths. Just one problem: there were no straight lines on the pool-bottom to keep crawl-swimmers on track.
For two years I did my careful lengths but then a disabled woman swam into me. That was traumatic. The possibility of another such crash - especially involving a woman - weighed heavily and I gave up my membership.
Alone, off Karpathos in the Dodecanese, I used to swim a mile to a small beach, then back again after a short rest. But that was just two weeks of the year. I dreamed of winning the lottery and buying a house with a pool. I no longer swim.
Do you still dream of winning the lottery?
ReplyDeleteMy fantasy would be to go outside and set my car on fire - not many people seem to understand this. By the way, I am not a pyromaniac.
Here in Central Florida, many people have pools. It seems the Florida-born often choose houses without pools because they are so much work. All of us Northern transplants are the ones who buy houses with pools down here. It is a luxury, and I never imagined we would have one, but we do. In Florida the pools are covered with elaborate screened structures as tall as the house to keep out the bugs, armadillos, frogs, opossums and sometimes alligators, too (if you live near a lake or a large holding pond). Ours is not heated, so we normally swim from April 1st until Halloween. It is a joy. I wish you had one; however, these home pools are probably not long enough for the kind of swimming you like to do.
ReplyDeleteI shudder at the thought of what loss you will write about next (teeth?, smell?, that other one?).
ReplyDeleteI miss swimming, too. In the years we lived in paradise I had a swim every day in the Indian Ocean, after work and before sunset at 6 pm and longer on weekends. Often in the rain. We all did, my toddler had webbed feet, sort of.
It has been impossible to replace that experience, the water, the temperatures, the coral sand, the smells and so on. A small beach in NW Sicily came close once but the Mediterranean is too tricky for longer swims and anyway, the distance. In an unusally hot summer, the volcanic lakes nearby can be bliss but only for a few weeks.
Indoor pools? Nightmares and off limits for my medically suppressed immune system.
I am lucky, I can still cycle to make up for this loss.
Sir Hugh: We seem to think along parallel lines. I offered the proposition: Suppose you discovered, at about 8 pm on a Saturday night, you had won £10m on the lottery. How would you celebrate this fact? This is more difficult than it seems. Who, for instance, would want order a taxi or a helicopter, to fly to London or Paris and arrive about midnight? In Hereford I'd be hard-pressed to buy a truly celebratory bottle of wine at that time.
ReplyDeleteMy solution: get into my car and crash it into a BMW.
Colette: By the way, I wanted to compliment you on your BlogPic. It captures all those minor emotions such as yearning, doubt, uncertainty, etc, that are entirely absent from the way you write.
I'd still like a pool even if lengths consisted of three strokes then turn, three strokes then turn. For the last decade we've rented villas in the Languedoc always with a pool for our summer hols. As a result of my grandson moving into high school we now rent in July rather than June when it is scaldingly hot. The pools are rarely more than 10 m long, not much good for length swimming, but OK for total immersion during the almost unbearable afternoons.
You say you are a northern transplant. We lived in Pittsburgh and Philly during our six years in the USA; to us the summers there were excessively hot. Did you live further north? I appreciate your wish (on my behalf) but a length-swimming pool would ideally be 25 m long, an inordinate expense; to a length swimmer the pool is not seen as a social asset, merely a container for the medium necessary for swimming.
Sabine: Restez tranquille! Loss 3 was the last one. In fact I am presently working on Gain 2 which completely changes the goalposts.
I've only swum once in the tropics, off Mauritius. Snorkelling of course. We had a boat take us out to a reef and it was everything everyone has claimed for such phenomena, right down to the abrasiveness of the coral.
I agree about indoor pools - unhealthy, noisy and generally uncongenial.
I'm from the Finger Lakes Region of New York State. Not all that far from Syracuse. The winters were quite cold and snowy, and the summers were extremely hot and humid. A short growing season, but the variety of flowers made up for it.
ReplyDeleteColette: Anywhere near Wayland, NY? I was usher at a catholic wedding there in the sixties. An idyllic occasion; the bride's father was a beer distributor.
ReplyDeleteI lived in Tompkins County. It was not all that far away from Steuben County, where Wayland is.
ReplyDeleteYou no longer swim. But you sing.
ReplyDeleteWhen you win the lottery (Sir Hugh reveals your secret desires!), perhaps you can have an infinity pool with an underwater rock-climbing wall and curvy down-hill slope. And hire your brother a chauffeur.