What I Have Learnt About Swimming, Part 2

And so my tortuous “education” continues. Thursday night was my first swimming lesson and, as I write this on Monday evening, it’s taken me that long to recover.  I remembered correctly – swimming absolutely destroys you and leaves you in an incapacitated heap, fit only to stagger to bed and pray for the sweet gods of sleep to take you.  Fortunately it didn’t take me too long to drive home – I was so profoundly exhausted, I was in bed and dead to the world by 9pm.

But, back to the beginning.  As part of my training for my Machu Picchu hike, I’ve decided to take swimming lessons as an work colleague had told me that that was an excellent way to increase your cardiovascular capacity, particularly for high-altitude stuff.   Something about the intermittent nature of breathing while swimming that gussies up your red blood cells to grab hold of more oxygen and get a bit more circumspect about giving it up.  Now, for background, I can actually swim.  I think I learnt to swim as a kid (Mumsie, please chip in here to correct/supplement my truly atrocious childhood memory) so I can actually make my way from one end of the swimming pool to another without completely drowning.  However, for full transparency, I should probably tell you, dear reader, that my swimming “technique” is even more desperate than my zombie shuffle of a run – basically, throw a dog into a swimming pool with less than the usual requisite number of limbs and there you have me, spastically thrashing about trying both to stay afloat and propel myself in a forward direction at the same time.    If swimming style was measured on a sliding scale of “completely shite” to “how the hell has she not drowned yet?” I would fail to place.   How on earth I managed to qualify and get my PADI scuba-diving certificate 10 years ago is beyond me.  Maybe because diving basically involves controlled sinking?  

Anyway, you get the gist.  I am as uncomfortable and crap in the water as my sister is a natural water baby and sleek dolphin-human hybrid.  So it was not without a considerable degree of trepidation that I rocked on up for my first swim lesson, the least-horrifically unflattering swimsuit in hand that I could find, and checked in at the front desk for my lesson with Elia.  (SIDENOTE: how come is it that, for an article of clothing you will instantly and forever despise, it costs so much bloody money??  Its like adding insult to injury.  It simultaneously drains both your will to live AND your wallet).   As with all things in A-mur-ica, I’d had to fill in a rather lengthy disclaimer and pre-lesson questionnaire whose purpose was to assess my likelihood of suing their asses should I actually manage to somehow drown myself.  It also asked me a myriad of questions about my swimming “ability” and what my goals were for my sessions.  Here are my responses to their questions:

If these are the first lessons that you have scheduled with us, please take a moment to answer the following questions so that we can better prepare for your appointments. You may reply to this email to provide us with the answers.
1) Is this lesson for you or someone else? ME
2) Is this lesson for an adult or child? If a child, how old are they?  ADULT
3) Is the person taking this lesson afraid of the water?  A BIT
4) Does this person put their head in the water when they swim? NO
5) What, if any, of the major swim strokes is this person familiar with? (Freestyle / Backstroke / Breaststroke / Butterfly) VERY POOR VARIATIONS OF FREESTYLE AND BREASTSTROKE
6) What, if any, of the major swim strokes would this person like to learn?  PROBABLY FREESTYLE OR THE ONE THAT MAKES ME LOOK THE COOLEST WHILE SWIMMING
7) In your opinion, what is the swim level of the person taking the lesson? (Novice / Intermediate / Expert) CRAP INTERMEDIATE
8) How long or far can this person swim before they begin to tire?  NOT VERY LONG
9) What are your goals with the lesson(s) (e.g. "I want to feel safe in the water when I go on vacation;" "I'm training for a triathlon;" "I'd like to use swimming as a means of exercising;" etc.)
10) Anything special, unique or atypical about this person, their swimming background or their goals that might help us during the lesson (e.g. "I had a traumatic experience in deep water as a child," "I have a severe allergic reaction to chlorine," "I want to swim across the English channel," etc.)?  ALSO I WANT TO INCREASE AEROBIC CAPACITY TO HELP ME WITH A HIGH ALTITUDE HIKING VACATION IN JUNE

I’m sure they didn’t read the form otherwise I’m sure I’d have gotten a call back from them to say that the available timeslots for hydrophobic smartarses were already taken for the next eternity or so but, lucky me, here I was.

After checking in, I met the poor bugger who was to be my instructor – a thin slip of a girl called Elia who couldn’t be any more than 25 at the oldest.  She pointed me in the direction of the changing rooms and said we could get started a little early (oh yippee), so off I trotted to go push the technical boundaries of Lycra’s expansive capabilities and to shoehorn a gigaton’s worth of hair into an even more improbably tiny rubbery casing. 

Duly suited and booty-ed, I squeak squeaked back out to the pool area where Elia was waiting for me.  Bless her heart, she managed not to laugh (at least to my face) at the sight of this ridiculously cone-headed Smurf-in-training (I have a LOT of hair to cram under a swimming cap – its gonna make my head look a weird shape, OK?!).   Now, I am going to confess the following, just for you, my dearest blogwatchers.  Given I was there for a swimming lesson, I was expecting….ohh…maybe a full-size swimming pool to swim in.  Instead, the facility consisted of two square pools, each probably no more than about 10 square meters.  On seeing these pools, my first thought was “well, blimey, those aren’t very big, are they?  Even I could manage a length in those – how am I supposed to get a workout in those?!”   Yes.  For that moment, I really was that dim.  I blame the lack of circulation to my head, given the intense silicon compression that my frontal lobes were fending off from my swimcap.  Well, yes, DURRR – of course I hadn’t realized the pools had the spinny rotor things in that cause the current that you then swim against (like the rehabilitation pools they have for pedigree racehorses).  Sigh.   And – as it turned out – my fears of not getting a decent workout in were completely unfounded.  No worries on that score.

I won’t take you on a blow by blow account of my lesson because a) I can’t remember OR b) its exhausting just thinking about it again or c) I’m too damn lazy to write it all down and its almost bed-time.  So, instead, here are some riveting highlights about what I now know to be true about swimming:

•  It’s still ridiculously hard work that will absolutely destroy you.  Even if you don’t think you are working very hard, it’s a sod and creeps up on you.  One minute you’re fine, the next you are so utterly exhausted, your legs no longer work and you’re starting to dribble slightly.   Swimming is like the tequila shots of the exercise world.
• Learning to swim properly is like that game of “Simon says”.  Elia will teach me to do one little thing (“OK, we’re going to learn how to paddle backwards with our legs”), which I’ll do and get right.  Then she’ll add on something else (“right, now we’re going to add in the arms”) which I’ll duly make a mental note of – and do it and get it right.  Then she’ll add in something else (“OK, great – now lets add in a twist so you can flip over”) and I’ll just about keep my shit together and manage to do that too, and again, and again until she finally adds just one thing too many – which then trips a switch in my brain and I forget absolutely everything she’s taught me up to that point and my body shuts down completely and forgets how to float, let alone swim. 
• Don’t – under any circumstances – drink chocolate milk before a swimming lesson.  I learnt the hard way that dairy and dunking don’t mix.  I’d not had much to eat during the day, so I stopped off at a Starbucks to get a little something to eat before the lesson.  As it was during the week, I was eating clean, so the healthiest choices I could find were a banana (fruit!) and, I figured, a carton of chocolate milk (healthy protein, fairly light, chocolate flavored – whats not to love?).  Well, dairy and strenuous exercise in heated swimming pools are NOT a match made in heaven.  Within about 30 mins, I was starting to feel slightly nauseous; by 45 mins, I was ready to hurl.  Blowing chunks into the swimming pool was not the first impression I was after, so I did finally mention to Elia that I was feeling a bit dicky (steady) – fortunately she replied that we’d already finished everything for the day, so we could – mercifully- stop.   Note to self – don’t do that again.
• It really is advisable to look in a mirror after you take off your swimming googles, before you go shopping in Whole Foods to buy supper on the way home.  Its really not great for the ego to realize you have been out in public looking like Gollum due to the profound suction marks that encircle your eyes, making you look like you haven’t slept in eternity and earning you an impressive collection of pitied and slightly worried looks in equal measure.   I have dark circles under my eyes anyway, but this took the exhausted raccoon look to a whole other dimension. 
• Getting water up your nose burns like an absolute bitch.  It is the single biggest incentive to improve your technique, stat, so it doesn't happen again.  

So, dear reader, that’s it for now on swimming.  My next lesson is next Thursday (the same day I’m moving house, so perhaps swimming will be marginally less stressful?), so I hope I’ll remember at least a modicum of what I’ve been taught already.  In the meantime, I’ve become a Person With Running Gadgets – one of which is a new GPS-enabled fitness tracker watch that, unlike the 4 others that are in various drawers around the house, I will actually use.  I ran 4 miles – FOUR MILES, I TELL YOU – on Saturday and my coach, Bill, told me that the reason I was huffing and puffing like an asthmatic elephant was that I was “running too fast” and that I needed to “back off the pace”.  I was encouraged that there was a slightly more uplifting reason for my being out of breath than you’re an overweight, out of shape knacker – although going slower than my current running pace does present a bit of a logistical challenge and will continue to stretch the definition of “running”.  I guess as long as people out walking their dogs don’t outpace me, I still get a passing grade.  

Anyway, I just got this new Polar watch, complete with heart rate monitor band thingy, so am actually making an effort to learn how to use it and for it to guide my training as I get ready for “race” day in July.  Just wearing it should improve my overall strength – its bloody massive.  Its like having an iPad strapped to my wrist.   I took it for its first spin this morning, a little 2 mile trot on the treadmill downstairs.   Its already proving to be immensely useful.   I now know by how much my heart rate increases when I simply bend down to tie my sneaker laces.  Winner.  Machu Picchu, here I come.

So that’s that for now – tomorrow, I will post the link to my donation website so that you, dear blog-watcher, can invest in my training, be with me to support me on my arduous journey of fitness and – probably more importantly for you all – to ensure I lose my bet with Daniel and have to model this piece of wearable art for your entertainment.   I can’t believe I’m setting myself up for this….http://printallover.me/collections/womens-swimwear-one-piece-swimsuits/products/0000000p-kodiak-bear-2