A New Dawn: 5:30 Swim Today

In a vein of self-discovery - or rediscovery, which would be more accurate - I got up at 5 and drove over to the college for the 5:30 AM workout.  I hadn't made the effort to get going before dawn in about six or seven years, maybe more.  It felt strangely exciting to do again.  I guess that's a good sign.

The sky is black at 5:15 and it was very cold for our neck of the woods.  36 degrees.  The edges of frost were beginning to cut at living things, put some real teeth into the night.

A pool at 5:30 with the air at 36 degrees looks haunted.  Steam whisps and whorls were rising from the boiler room, the deck and the pool itself.  Two tall light standards flood the area with just enough light, dark enough to focus attention on the pool and swimming.  The locker room is not heated.  That's where it gets a teeny bit challenging.

The water is 79 or 80 degrees, like having Hawaii in the middle of cold winter.  As soon as you jump into the water, you're good.  The coaches, left on deck bundled in parkas and layers of clothes, are the ones who suffer.  That would be Mark Temple and Mary Hazdovac, coaches of Monterey Bay Swim Club.

What I found as I swam was that I felt really good.  I was enjoying the water, the movement, the rhythm of the various strokes.  Moving up and down the lane was much different than in daytime when everything and everyone distracts me from my stroke.  In the dark of predawn, I barely saw the other swimmers in other lanes.  They seemed like phantoms.  I only saw trails of silvery bubbles whirling from the turbulence of their kicking feet or stroking arms.  A flash of an arm whose skin was lit by the beaming light, undulating bodies in the far lanes doing butterfly or turning at the wall to reverse back to the other end.  Quick looks at merpeople, swimmers moving at 6 AM in the wintertime dark.

With nearly all my visual input reduced to my own lane of water and the darkened underwater view of the bottom below me dim and uninteresting, my mind focused easily on the work at hand.  Today, the focus was on pulling drills using drag buckets that emphasize the smoothness of the entire stroke, the symmetry of the pull and recovery.  When you take the bucket off, you feel fast and powerful.  Tomorrow, I won't be feeling so fast.  I'll be feeling sore.  My muscles will adjust, but it's going to take awhile.

By the time the workout ended at 7 AM, dawn was beginning to creep over the far horizon and Venus was dimming in the southern sky, a bright beacon that winked at me.  "Good morning, old girl," I said.  "We're up early, you and I."  The morning light growing in the east was like stage lights coming up on a play.  A sense of anticipation and possibility filled me.  It was simple, beautiful, quiet and I'd missed it all those years.

The showers were hot and breakfast was very satisfying.  I'm still thinking about possible swims, places to travel and challenges for myself.  A dawn morning in winter is an inspiring thing.