I will never forget sitting in math class first thing in the morning, one day in Grade 10 (so I was 15). Class hasn't started yet and I overhear a "cool" girl complaining that she smells something funny. She's looking around, sniffing and turning up her nose. I sheepishly offer that it is probably me, that I had swimming that morning. Ew, didn't you shower? she asked. Yes, I showered, washed and conditioned my hair, put on lotion and deodorant. And, yes, I still reek like chlorine. God, she exclaimed, I'm so glad I don't swim.
We all have that story. I also remember one of my older teammates complaining about how at a school dance, the cute guy she was dancing with asked what that smell was. Or having friends over and all they can smell in your room is chlorine. This is one of the many reasons swimmers tend to stick together; we're the only ones who can stand the smell. It's also how all swimmers find each other without saying a word; we can sniff each other out.
Pool chemicals are way less corrosive and stinky then when I first started swimming. But forever, the only way to ensure that the pool was safe for swimming was to dump a ton or six of chlorine in it. It ate our suits (see this post), it bleached our hair, it dissolved our skin and the smell stuck to us like permanent marker. The smell was the stain that we couldn't get out, the thing that always marked us as swimmers. At one point there was even a theory that swimmers had worse teeth than the rest of the population because the chlorine ate away at our tooth enamel.
We were in athletically the best shape you could be, but our immediate physical appearance was nothing short of repulsive. Picture it, if you will, a teen with overly-broad shoulder, hair whose color and consistency resembles straw, skin that is visibly flaking off of all exposed areas, and a smell that precedes the person's appearance and lingers once they're gone. And possibly bad teeth. It's a miracle I ever dated at all (more on that later).
Many swimmers deal with this reality by giving up on making any effort at all in their appearance outside of the pool. Why bother? You're fighting an uphill battle and in practically no time at all, you'll be back in the pool again, negating any and all progress you may have made. I would make the joke that at least I was cleaner than clear; I was sterile. There's no way anything, good or bad, could survive on my body long enough to be transmitted to anyone who ever got close to me. Again, why did anyone date me while I was a swimmer?
I felt especially bad for my friends who were swimmers and still had acne (it was more common than you would think). They were often put on a medication called Accutane by well-meaning doctors. This was a particularly nasty drug for swimmers. It made your liver act strange and limited the natural oil produced by your skin. So, these swimmers had the chlorine and a powerful anti-acne medication attacking their skin, leaving it in a pile on your desk in math class. But there we were anyway, every morning and every night, in the chlorine bath for hours at a time. Willingly. Hell, we paid to do it.
And then something weird happens. You stop swimming and you find that you miss the smell of chlorine. You can sniff out the pool at hotels and sports clubs, and all of a sudden find yourself standing beside it. The air is heavy and humid, and it hugs you like a long-lost friend. You go swimming and when you take a shower later, your bathroom fills up with chlorine fumes, and you relax for some reason. I've started swimming again, and I crawl into bed loving that I smell like pool again. I can't believe it, but like any cherished memory from the past, smell is a powerful trigger. It might be disgusting, but it's a disgusting that I love and (gulp) miss when I'm away from it for too long.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The other "S" word
Here in North America, if you swam in the 80s, there was only one make of swim suit: Speedo. The word became like Kleenex or Fridge; it didn't matter what make of suit you were wearing, it was always referred to as your "Speedo." Of course, this was a very specific type of suit: the racing suit. Before polymer materials and full body suits, (which are now all illegal), there was the advent of Spandex and the rise of the Speedo.
It used to be that in order to swim fast in a race, there were really only two ways to go: a paper suit or a really, really, really tight regular Speedo. The paper suit was dubbed that because it stuck to you like wet paper, stretched about as well as paper would (in other words, not at all) and lasted about as long as you would expect wet paper to last. If you made it through one swim meet with one paper suit, it was an accomplishment. Thus most of us suffered through wearing a suit that was about four sizes too small for us, boys or girls.
This was probably the most uncomfortable you would ever be in your life. The boys' suits barely covered anything, and while the girls' suits offered more coverage, you worried that at any moment, the fabric would give and reveal significantly more. Imagine if you will, being 15, standing up on a block, in front of family, friends and strangers, in a suit that leaves little to nothing to the imagination. Now, take your marks. In other words, bend down.
Exactly.
Speedo has (at least as far back as I can remember) been used as a derogatory terms, especially when talking about boys' suits. Ew, he's wearing a Speedo. Now, this never bothered me, as training suit technology had not yet really advanced much either. Basically, your "drag suit" was your old racing suit, which had stretched out and lost all shape, layered over other suits in various stages of disintegration. Because that's what chlorine does to Lycra: eats it. While we raced in uncomfortable suits that were too small, we trained in the least flattering versions of the same suits: faded, baggy and ripped with knots all over it. Gorgeous! So while I get where everyone else is coming from when it comes to looking down on the Speedo, that's all I ever grew up seeing. For me, the swimming trunks were worse: when they stuck to the wearer when they got out of the water, it was way less flattering. And that's saying something.
Now, technology has made racing suits that don't need a full four sizes less and cover more and training suits that last forever and flatter besides. But when I was training (where's my cane, so I can wave it at you while I say this), we had to deal with our body issues head-on and get. over. them. Because the flip side of wearing a Speedo on the block is wearing three that stretch down to your knees when you get out of the water.
If there is one thing that I am glad that swimming did for me as a teen was to remove any and all hesitation about wearing a swim suit in public. While other girls kept themselves wrapped in a towel, blushing and giggling, or over-compensating by flaunting and strutting, I was able to pull on my suit and just jump in the water. This did not endear me to these other girls, but I did have a lot more fun. I'm not saying I didn't have my issues about my body, but being a swimmer forced me to get over them, at least enough to get out in public and do fun things.
It used to be that in order to swim fast in a race, there were really only two ways to go: a paper suit or a really, really, really tight regular Speedo. The paper suit was dubbed that because it stuck to you like wet paper, stretched about as well as paper would (in other words, not at all) and lasted about as long as you would expect wet paper to last. If you made it through one swim meet with one paper suit, it was an accomplishment. Thus most of us suffered through wearing a suit that was about four sizes too small for us, boys or girls.
This was probably the most uncomfortable you would ever be in your life. The boys' suits barely covered anything, and while the girls' suits offered more coverage, you worried that at any moment, the fabric would give and reveal significantly more. Imagine if you will, being 15, standing up on a block, in front of family, friends and strangers, in a suit that leaves little to nothing to the imagination. Now, take your marks. In other words, bend down.
Exactly.
Speedo has (at least as far back as I can remember) been used as a derogatory terms, especially when talking about boys' suits. Ew, he's wearing a Speedo. Now, this never bothered me, as training suit technology had not yet really advanced much either. Basically, your "drag suit" was your old racing suit, which had stretched out and lost all shape, layered over other suits in various stages of disintegration. Because that's what chlorine does to Lycra: eats it. While we raced in uncomfortable suits that were too small, we trained in the least flattering versions of the same suits: faded, baggy and ripped with knots all over it. Gorgeous! So while I get where everyone else is coming from when it comes to looking down on the Speedo, that's all I ever grew up seeing. For me, the swimming trunks were worse: when they stuck to the wearer when they got out of the water, it was way less flattering. And that's saying something.
Now, technology has made racing suits that don't need a full four sizes less and cover more and training suits that last forever and flatter besides. But when I was training (where's my cane, so I can wave it at you while I say this), we had to deal with our body issues head-on and get. over. them. Because the flip side of wearing a Speedo on the block is wearing three that stretch down to your knees when you get out of the water.
If there is one thing that I am glad that swimming did for me as a teen was to remove any and all hesitation about wearing a swim suit in public. While other girls kept themselves wrapped in a towel, blushing and giggling, or over-compensating by flaunting and strutting, I was able to pull on my suit and just jump in the water. This did not endear me to these other girls, but I did have a lot more fun. I'm not saying I didn't have my issues about my body, but being a swimmer forced me to get over them, at least enough to get out in public and do fun things.
Friday, January 22, 2010
1, 2, 3..wait, how many is that?
As I was swimming (ok, resting) on my own next to the local high school swim team, I overheard the following exchange:
Girl 1: You're brother messed up.
Girl 2: We were supposed to do a 200, right?
Girl 1: Yeah, and you're brother messed up.
Brother: Why did you guys stop?
Girl 1: You didn't count right. You were supposed to do a 200.
Brother: Shut up, I didn't mess up, you didn't do enough.
Girl 2: You can't count.
Brother: I can count, you can't count. At least, I was following Dave, and he can count...
I had to submerge my head underwater to muffle my laughter. All over the world, in all different languages, swimmers are having the exact same exchange. And I know this because I've trained in three different languages. In China, in Brazil, at the top clubs and teams around the world, no one can count to eight reliably.
For whatever reason, swimmers can't count to eight (that's what a "200" is: 8x25 yards/meters=200). I have a PhD, and I still can't count to eight (was that four or six? Am I done, or do I have two more laps left?). We all have (and you know you do) the story of when we were racing a 200 (short course) and we slowed up coming up to the turn after length six because we weren't sure if we were done. The worst is if we actually stopped, only to be yelled at by the timers, the coach, all your teammates, not to mention the other swimmers in your heat after the race who were confused by your stopping and began to question their own counting because no one can reliably count to eight.
Even if you're doing a race or a set longer than eight, it's always at about eight that you lose count. It's at that point in any race or set that your mind wanders just enough (see previous post) to lose track of how many laps you've swam. Actually, the magic number for sets would seem to be four. After four 50s, 100s, 200s, whatever, you completely lose track of how many of them you've done. Note how eight in 4x2, thus the theory still holds, however tenuously.
Thus begins (at practices anyway) the frantic exchanges, and then arguments, between lane members who are all trying to survive another long and difficult workout. There is almost always one person in the lane who can figure out how many you've done through "logic." I've place the word logic in scare quotes because it's swimming logic, which can provide some of the most convoluted reasoning you've ever encountered. You can tell how many by how long you've been swimming, what interval you're leaving on (this is provided you've used the clock correctly, which is another mathematical shortcoming many swimmers have), what pace you're currently going, what stroke or drill you're doing, how dizzy you currently feel, how many cramps you've had in your foot, how many times you've had to adjust your goggles, how many times someone has lapped you, etc...This isn't always scientific and can devolve into an argument of differing interpretations between swimmers.
Now, the argument can devolve (especially late in the week, late in the workout, about mid-season) into a fight over who wants to be there more, who takes swimming more seriously, who is holding up whose progress as a swimmer, whose the bigger idiot, and then the expletives come out, and if you're really unlucky or the timing is just right, someone will end up crying. It's really the perfect storm of teenage angst: take two over-tired (mentally and physically) teens, who are already sensitive and hormonal, add the confusion of getting lost in the middle of a set with the fear of being humiliated in front of everyone and/or chewed out by the coach, and voila! You have a breakdown.
Did I mention how drama is one of the many draws of swimming (or at least training)?
I'm struggling to find the upside to all this, and reliving some of my most humbling moments as a swimmer is not helping my motivation for going back to the pool today. I guess the most comforting part of this is that we all experienced it, and if the above overheard conversation is any indication, swimmers will continue to experience it over and over again. It's another one of those shared experiences that all swimmers have, that transcends time, space and place. We are all in the same pool, and we all have no idea how many laps we've done.
Girl 1: You're brother messed up.
Girl 2: We were supposed to do a 200, right?
Girl 1: Yeah, and you're brother messed up.
Brother: Why did you guys stop?
Girl 1: You didn't count right. You were supposed to do a 200.
Brother: Shut up, I didn't mess up, you didn't do enough.
Girl 2: You can't count.
Brother: I can count, you can't count. At least, I was following Dave, and he can count...
I had to submerge my head underwater to muffle my laughter. All over the world, in all different languages, swimmers are having the exact same exchange. And I know this because I've trained in three different languages. In China, in Brazil, at the top clubs and teams around the world, no one can count to eight reliably.
For whatever reason, swimmers can't count to eight (that's what a "200" is: 8x25 yards/meters=200). I have a PhD, and I still can't count to eight (was that four or six? Am I done, or do I have two more laps left?). We all have (and you know you do) the story of when we were racing a 200 (short course) and we slowed up coming up to the turn after length six because we weren't sure if we were done. The worst is if we actually stopped, only to be yelled at by the timers, the coach, all your teammates, not to mention the other swimmers in your heat after the race who were confused by your stopping and began to question their own counting because no one can reliably count to eight.
Even if you're doing a race or a set longer than eight, it's always at about eight that you lose count. It's at that point in any race or set that your mind wanders just enough (see previous post) to lose track of how many laps you've swam. Actually, the magic number for sets would seem to be four. After four 50s, 100s, 200s, whatever, you completely lose track of how many of them you've done. Note how eight in 4x2, thus the theory still holds, however tenuously.
Thus begins (at practices anyway) the frantic exchanges, and then arguments, between lane members who are all trying to survive another long and difficult workout. There is almost always one person in the lane who can figure out how many you've done through "logic." I've place the word logic in scare quotes because it's swimming logic, which can provide some of the most convoluted reasoning you've ever encountered. You can tell how many by how long you've been swimming, what interval you're leaving on (this is provided you've used the clock correctly, which is another mathematical shortcoming many swimmers have), what pace you're currently going, what stroke or drill you're doing, how dizzy you currently feel, how many cramps you've had in your foot, how many times you've had to adjust your goggles, how many times someone has lapped you, etc...This isn't always scientific and can devolve into an argument of differing interpretations between swimmers.
Now, the argument can devolve (especially late in the week, late in the workout, about mid-season) into a fight over who wants to be there more, who takes swimming more seriously, who is holding up whose progress as a swimmer, whose the bigger idiot, and then the expletives come out, and if you're really unlucky or the timing is just right, someone will end up crying. It's really the perfect storm of teenage angst: take two over-tired (mentally and physically) teens, who are already sensitive and hormonal, add the confusion of getting lost in the middle of a set with the fear of being humiliated in front of everyone and/or chewed out by the coach, and voila! You have a breakdown.
Did I mention how drama is one of the many draws of swimming (or at least training)?
I'm struggling to find the upside to all this, and reliving some of my most humbling moments as a swimmer is not helping my motivation for going back to the pool today. I guess the most comforting part of this is that we all experienced it, and if the above overheard conversation is any indication, swimmers will continue to experience it over and over again. It's another one of those shared experiences that all swimmers have, that transcends time, space and place. We are all in the same pool, and we all have no idea how many laps we've done.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
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.
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.
Why I created this blog
I've been involved with swimming my whole life. I swam 50 meters all by myself for my second birthday. I've swam, I've coached, I've officiated, everything. Recently, after a few years coaching, I've gone back to swimming. And every single emotion, good and bad, that I've felt about swimming over the last 30 (!) years came flooding (ha ha) back over me.
I used to do this thing after particularly terrible workouts when I was a teen. We would all be bone tired and mentally worn out on some Friday night, knowing that all of our friends were getting ready to go out while we were looking forward to getting up at some ungodly hour the next morning to do it all over again. And I would start to rant about the practice, about our lives as swimmers, about everything. Now, I am either really, really funny (not likely) or everyone was so tired that they laughed hysterically. Either way, it was cathartic and we all felt better for at least a few minutes.
That's what this blog is. It's remembering and appreciating all the reasons we love to hate swimming and all the reasons we keep going back to the pool. I hope that this becomes a forum for swimmers young and old to laugh and vent about the sport that ties us together. I've lived in a lot of different places and one of the things I've learned is that swimmers, no matter where you are, are all exactly the same. And I love it!
I used to do this thing after particularly terrible workouts when I was a teen. We would all be bone tired and mentally worn out on some Friday night, knowing that all of our friends were getting ready to go out while we were looking forward to getting up at some ungodly hour the next morning to do it all over again. And I would start to rant about the practice, about our lives as swimmers, about everything. Now, I am either really, really funny (not likely) or everyone was so tired that they laughed hysterically. Either way, it was cathartic and we all felt better for at least a few minutes.
That's what this blog is. It's remembering and appreciating all the reasons we love to hate swimming and all the reasons we keep going back to the pool. I hope that this becomes a forum for swimmers young and old to laugh and vent about the sport that ties us together. I've lived in a lot of different places and one of the things I've learned is that swimmers, no matter where you are, are all exactly the same. And I love it!
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