Boring, boring, boring

Here's the central chicken-egg question: is it all the time spent going back and forth under water that makes swimmers a little nuts or were the swimmers already nuts to be doing this willingly to begin with?

One thing that is going to come out of this blog is how...unique swimmers are. Swimmers are a...special breed of people. One of the things that makes us so special is that we tolerate swimming back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back over and over again for hours and hours each day. We stare at the little line on the bottom of the pool, turn at the "T," repeat. If you're a lucky swimmer, like I was, and you're a backstroker, you get to stare at the ceiling, watching for the flags, flip, repeat. And we just keep doing it over and over and over...

Well, you get the point.

Outsiders don't get this. (On an aside, we should come up with a clever name for people who don't swim, like muggles. Any suggestions?) They don't get how we can do it, day in, day out, for hours and hours at a time, sometimes more than once a day. And to that I say, neither do we. We all hate that damn black line and the "T" at either end of the pool. We hate that we know every crack in the bottom of the pool and every leaky spot in the ceiling. You get to know you're pool so well, you know all of the quirks and personalities, like which block is the "best" or which gutter typically stinks the worst. We can let the coach know exactly what's wrong with the pool at any given moment and how to fix it (jiggle the second knob, it'll unclog the drain and make the water warmer).

And so for hours a day, swimmers spend their time under water, looking at nothing that is interesting at all, and so begin to spend too much time in their own heads, listening to their own thoughts as they wander aimlessly through 4000 yard sets. Because at a certain point, once you've figured out how long the set is going to take, what pace you need to maintain during the whole set, how many strokes per length you should be taking, there's really not much left to think about. Swimming really is like riding a bike in a lot of ways; you get a certain level and it just becomes automatic, for better or for worse.

And so you think about everything. You sing songs, you have fantasies involving not being a swimmer, you relive every single moment of the past day, second guessing yourself at every turn, you try to solve life's biggest questions, you write stories, etc. Basically everything except think about the next two hours of mind-numbing swimming boredom.

This is the central tension in swimming: you should be paying attention and thinking about your swimming but you take it for granted so you don't. You should (this coming from someone who has coached so has seen swimming from the other side) be thinking about your stroke, your breathing, your turns, your breathing, your body position, your heart rate, your breathing, everything your body is doing. Not to mention how many lengths you've swum (more on that later). But you don't. It's just unsustainable for almost everyone who swims.

How many other sports allow you to tune out to what your body is doing so completely? Team sports are out, as are highly technical sports. Running (ugh) and cycling (gah) are perhaps the only other two I can think of. But those are only for those who train the distance parts of those sports. Only swimmers have the distinction of practicing a sport where you aren't actually paying any attention to the sport for extended periods of time.

But isn't that the best part? Looking forward to the two (or three or four) hours at the end of the day to just go under water where it's finally quiet? Where you can actually hear yourself think, rather than pay attention to the millions upon millions of distractions that you are bombarded with daily? No phone, no texting, no TV, no radio (not really), no homework, no parents, no school friends, no kids, nothing, except you and the water. Your lungs might be burning, your muscles may be screaming and you feel like crap, but at least it's quiet.

Now, for an hour a day, I get to swim and just "relax" while trying to kick my own ass into shape. Which came first? Oh, I'd say the swimmer came first; the swimming just made it worse. Or better. Definitely better.