Monday morning, 6 A.M. I fidget on the pool deck, beside a dozen other swimmers, mostly middle-aged. Some people know each other. I feel like the new kid at school.
A woman squats, cups her hands, and fishes a brown object from the water. “An insect?” I ask. “No,” she says. “A frog.”
At 6:15, Meg arrives and welcomes us to Adult Swim. We’ll be swimming here at the municipal pool three mornings per week for the next five weeks. Then I’ll attempt to swim across the Hudson River. Other people have their own goals: fitness, long-distance swims, triathlons, etc. We’re not a swim team; we’ve come together for communal swim practice.
Meg asks if I’ve ever swam in a 50-yard-pool, a.k.a. an Olympic pool.
No, I say.
Later, I remember two summers ago when I swam at the 50-yard pool in Montreal at Parc Jean-Drapeau Aquatic Complex—literally a Summer Olympic venue—and could not complete a single lap.
“Today’s the hardest day,” Meg says to the group. “So let’s start easy.”
Easy means: two laps with a kickboard, two laps with a pull buoy—a flotation device you squeeze between your thighs, and two laps of swimming.
I adjust my purple cap and clear goggles, grab a blue kickboard, and slip into the pool. The water is warm after a brutal heat wave. This week last summer our local pools were closed due to noxious air quality caused by smoke from wildfires in Canada.
We start kicking. I putter. The swimmers flanking me zoom ahead. I have to remind myself: we’re not competing with each other. We’re competing only with ourselves.
Atlas of the Heart
In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown says swimming hits the trifecta: “exercise, meditation, and alone time.” I didn’t know Brown was a swimmer until I read the book . But I’m not surprised. In her mega-popular books, podcasts, and lectures, Brown dives deep into courage and vulnerability: skills that can be cultivated by swimming. I also suspect that swimming gives Brown a reprieve from the intellectual and emotional demands of work and life, a place to process ideas and emotions.
Or maybe I’m projecting
Brown herself admits that swimming helps her maintain perspective.
At the pool, Brown can’t help comparing herself to the person swimming in the next lane, competitive behavior that she recognizes as unhealthy.
To remind herself to stay focused on her own journey she keeps a photo of a lap pool in her office.
Maybe I should do the same.
Learning to Swim (Again)
After warm-up, Meg assigns us each our own workout. Mine is the shortest and simplest. 40 laps freestyle, with a rest every eight laps. With double length laps. Eek.
I swim slowly, trying to pace myself. Still, the laps feel endless. The deeper half of the pool is shady. The shallower half is sunny, which makes me squint. Should I have worn tinted goggles? Or would that make the shady section seem too dark?
During the first break, Meg tells me I wiggle when I swim. She pantomimes a sinusoidal shape with her hand. Really? I thought I swam straight. She says I wiggle for two reasons. One: my arms angle slightly inward; they should be shoulder-width. Two, my hand enters the water parallel to the surface; it should be perpendicular, thumb down, palm out.
Apparently this is called Vertical Entry.
Mimicking her motion feels awkward and tight in my shoulder. After swimming regularly for two years, including a few lessons last summer, I feel as if I’m learning to swim—again.
In the water, in life, we don’t know what we don’t know.
“Let your legs help you,” Meg tells me, after another break.
“How?”
“Kick!” She laughs. “Keep it constant.”
I swim back and forth across the infinite pool, thinking: I can’t go on. I must go on.
Afterward, as I’m leaving, Meg asks how the session went.
“Hard,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “You’ll thank me later.”
Later, taking my son to school, he asks me about swim practice.
I tell him the Olympic pool felt ridiculously long.
Did it feel like swimming in open water?
Not exactly, I say. But more so than a regular pool.
Then I tell him about the vertical entry hand technique.
“I already do that,” he says, nonplussed. “I learned last summer in camp.”
I smile. It’s only a matter of time before he laps me—in the pool, in life.