Running and, more recently, swimming have shown me time and again that things I thought I couldn’t do are actually within reach. Running a marathon was something I though was impossible for me. Now I’ve run five. I couldn’t swim more than a couple of lengths. Yesterday I swam for half an hour. And the new discoveries keep on coming.
While I’ve swum as much as 1500 meters in one swim session before, I regularly stop at the end of a length. Sometimes there’s someone waiting to set off and it’s polite to wait for them. Sometimes I have to empty water out of my goggles, and sometimes these are excuses because I don’t think I can keep going.
I stop at the end of lengths because I think I need to – that I need to catch my breath, have a rest or that my lungs will burst.
Yesterday I went to the pool. As I was swimming along I swallowed some water, so I rolled onto my back to cough it up before I started going again. In that brief pause the swimmer behind me (who was swimming on his back) started to swim into me. I ducked under the water and briefly panicked.
I panicked because it was unexpected, it hadn’t happened before and because it was at a point in the pool where I couldn’t reach the bottom or the sides easily. But I recovered, coughed some more and was soon on my way swimming the rest of my length.
I carried on swimming, thinking about my unexpected dunk. What would I do if this happens in a race, in open water where the sides are even further away? I doubted I could do it, that I could swim 750 meters in a river. I carried on swimming. I’d now swum 600 meters up and down the pool.
I had panicked for the same reason I stop at the end of lengths: because I still see myself as a non-swimmer.
I stopped one last time, adjusted my goggles, shook the water out of my ears and waited for the person in front of me to push off. Then I did the same. I pushed off from the wall and I swam up and down the lane, and I didn’t stop until I’d swum 10 lengths totaling 310 meters. and it felt great.
I’m not a non-swimmer any more. I’m a swimmer.
I love this post – I never think of myself as a runner despite having run a half marathon, 10ks, 5ks and rarely going a week without a couple of runs. Even when I got my Garmin and fitted for running shoes I still refused to believe it. I had the same thing when I was swimming and when I used to horse ride.
Hey there Lazy Girl Swimming. That sounds like an ace swim. Do you crawl all the way through or do you mix up your styles? I can’t crawl to save my life and so I do a breastroke, which doesn’t feel very hard or efficient.
Hey JJ. I do front crawl all the way. Had lessons and now, although I’m not very fast, my crawl looks quite like I know what I’m doing.
Get some lessons it really does help!
Laura.
You are inspiring me to give swimming a shot. I am NOT a swimmer by any means. But maybe I can change that.
Watch this space.