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.

Hapa Helps Me Celebrate

I think I'm going to take a day off from writing and celebrate.  (Wait, wait, wait, why am I writing? hmmm...)

I had a final swim clinic workout today and got some positive feedback on my breaststroke work from that wacky swim coach putting us all through various paces.  That would be Monsieur Temple, here from the hockey-loving nation to our north.  Lucky us.  For a change, I put a few lengths together to the point that he noticed an improvement.  That was pretty gratifying.  Too bad it was on the very last day, and I'll have to go back to my usual swim time to continue fitness improvement.  But, I'll take the compliment; they don't come that often.

Age-group swimmers (adolescents) were zooming back and forth in the first four lanes and we oldsters in the other four.  Then, those groups were subdivided by ability (fitness and coordination) or by stroke.  Most of the oldsters are freestylers, but a couple of us were working on "strokes."  I do breaststroke better than the other strokes.  Of course, I had to kick with the bucket and then pull with various other implements of evil (paddles, tubes, pull buoy).  There are all sorts of things that have been dreamed up by diabolical demons (coaches) to emphasize the areas of the stroke that need special focus.  For me, it's timing and strength.  When is it ever NOT timing and strength, right?  (swimmers are all rolling their eyes and nodding heads yes).

Two other things:  First, I bought a new CD by Hapa called Surf Madness, after having been on Kauai in December and hearing a cut from it that I liked a lot.  The song sounds grand and celebratory to me.  The other is that I am sitting here looking out at gathering clouds and feel the air cooling down.  Rain is possible tomorrow, but so what, right?  Here's why I don't care:  I'm playing Hawaiian slack key music and getting in a Hawaiian groove, and I'm happy I put in the time to get fit again and do some bucket drills in the predawn hours since that's what it takes sometimes.  Check out Hapa, the cut called He'eia, and channel some ancient Hawaiian power.  Pretty cool.  (I saw this group play ten years ago and have been keeping an eye on their music, always feel it has a special energy and reach.  Hapa, by the way, means half in in Hawaiian.  One guy's haole and the other is Hawaiian, both talented and worth a listen.)

Feeling the Pressure: The Focus of Swimming

I've been learning how to swim all over again these past two weeks.

When you walk around your town, you're not usually too aware of how you move through the air.  It's only when it's windy that you feel it.  During any swimming motion, water is moving around you, and you have to become aware of how it's moving.  As I am paying closer attention to water and my body as I move around in the pool, I am thinking about water pressure and my hands and arms. Without pressure, you don't go forward.  

A long time ago, I was told to take a look at a good swimmer stroking from one end of a pool to the other and notice this:  They seemed to stick their arm into the water out in front of themselves and the hand extended out there stayed put while the body moved to it, over it, and past it.  I thought it was an optical illusion at first, but it's true.  The swimmer's body was moving so well in the water that it actually moved past the point where his hand entered while the hand stayed in that one spot the whole time.

Anyway, a swimmer has to have a very certain focus on how the water pressure feels at all times.  For me, keeping my mind on what I want my hands and arms to feel is sometimes a lot like herding cats.  I think about a million other things when I swim and have to keep bringing my mind back on track.  When I get my mind in the game and really zero in on the sensation of pressure on my palms, forearms and head, it feels great.  Then, I feel like I'm flying.