A Blaze of Glory: Reward For Hard Work

I had been swimming for over an hour when the world went up in flames.  Or so it seemed.

Unfortunately, a lot about life is actually pretty predictable and even boring.  Life is pleasant here, and I am happy.  But, I don't want to be complacent and ordinary.

That may be one reason I get up early in the morning and shake my own tree, so to speak.  The idea is that you have to find some way to push your own boundaries or challenge yourself or you end up going through life half asleep and dulled, a plodder.  No thank you.

This morning the house seemed cooler than usual.  I went through my routine of preparing to go and then drove across town to the pool.  It feels colder there.  And very dark.  Campus lights don't come on until 6 AM.  The only ones on are at the pool.  As you approach, you see steam from the boiler room  backlit by the floodlights and when the pool covers come off, the pool glows a pale blue.  The pool is a creature unto its own, it seems.  It's old, worn, used hard and very little improvements made to it over its 50 years of existence.  This early morning swimming thing is not for neophytes.  You jump in because you know the pool and how it feels, not because its especially attractive or appealing.  You have a relationship with it, know its quirks, and you begin a sort of conversation with it in a way that's especially noticeable when your vision is limited by the darkness.

This was the last workout of the week, but that does not mean the work was any lighter.  It was, as it has been, meant to build strength.  Hello, tubes and paddles.  Tubes are small inner tubes you inflate and put around your ankles to emphasize stroke faults so you correct them.  That's the hope you have, that the suddenly magnified swaying of your hips from side to side will be much more detectable and you can then correct that.  Easier said than done.  You swim more slowly with tubes on your ankles, and you feel much more of a flopper than ever before.  Today, I flopped a lot.  My pride went and sulked in the locker room while I plodded on, back and forth in my lane.

I was game to do the work and make myself a faster, smoother swimmer, but the truth is I never felt that way today.  I felt tired, slow, hopelessly uncoordinated.  I wondered when the strength would ever show up.  The tubes dig into my skin if I don't have them on just right, and the younger swimmers on the other side of the pool looked ridiculously fast and unconcerned with the myriad challenges presented by using an inner tube on one's ankles at 6 AM in the dark on a cold morning.  What the heck?  I wondered. Why was I going through all this discomfort anyway?  Some questions are better not asked.  Not at 6 AM anyway, in the cool pale steam of a winter morning.

I stuck with the work as best I could, imagining myself finally getting more fit and more capable of doing the whole workout.  It was a mental morning.  The bear was jumping up and down on my back and considering a piano when, eventually, Mark, the coach, took a little pity on me and had me do some breaststroke work.

That felt better.  I had more focus, more interest in the drills and understood the reasons for them.  I thought maybe there was actually some hope for myself in the long run.  Maybe there is a God.

Then I noticed a beautiful thing.  Far over in the east a big heavy cloud formation was lurking ominously.  It glowered and threatened a change in the weather.  I had begun to notice it at about 6:30 and during a break between swim sets.  I looked up without my goggles on and there it was - the blaze of glory - the clouds had turned blood red and were streaked with orange.  A fabulous sunrise was spreading itself from north to south, from the far horizon to overhead and reflecting off the surface of the pool.  It looked like a furnace turned sideways and magnified by a million.  The colors kept changing from crimson to scarlet to vivid shades of orange and then gold-edged fantasy.  A technicolor show on the highest order, and I had paid the admission price.

If I hadn't been up to swim in the cold and dark, I'd have totally missed the entire extravaganza.  I paid with some humbled pride and tired arms and shoulders, but what a way to end the workout, eh?  I'd do it again in a second.