FIFTY METERS OR BUST

Goals.  Dreams.  Targets.  Many people have them, surely not everyone achieves what they wish to.  Fresh from my mild success with running, I translated my enthusiasm to swimming.  My goal right now is to swim 1600 meters non-stop.  Unlike running, for a beginner swimmer, I cannot just swim anywhere but am limited to pools, or indoor pools, to be exact, during the cold months.  The places that I visited offer 25-meter pool so out and back then you would cover 50 meters, 2 trips = 100 meters, and so on.  Like running around tracks, I easily lose count of the trips but usually my son is with me and he helps with keeping track of the laps.  Today and last Sunday I ventured out in my own to do lap swims and, not surprising, quickly lost tracks.  I think I at least last week reached the new goal of 50-meter continuous swimming.  Today, I felt less energetic and mostly did 25 meters and rested then swam back. I did get a new achievement of 400 meters total, not continuous, of course, but a new personal record nonetheless.  Just a quarter of the way to my seemingly unattainable goal of 1600 meters, but the human body, especially an old one, becomes stronger and more efficient ever so slowly.

From what my son and other swimmers told me, I have to keep the face underwater, hold breath, and come up for air periodically.  It helps to wear goggle while underwater so I started to use one today, even though I still kept my head above the water.  So many things I am doing wrong with swimming.  The only thing that I can correct is to keep my palms closed while "paddling", instead of having the fingers apart.  It makes perfect sense and easy to follow. On another occasion in a shallow, open swim I will give a shot at swimming with the face in the water.

Swimming is not that much different than running. You start out with a short distance. You practice to get better and last longer. Eventually you can swim a really long distance without stopping. Of course, the big difference is that with swimming in some pools of certain depth if you stop swimming you sink.