Back in May, I wrote a post about my first swim of the season, my goals for the season and just generally my thoughts on swimming. The season has now come to an end; the pool has closed for the winter and I guess I’m now not swimming again either until it reopens next May or June, or until I feel safe enough to go to an indoor pool. So it’s time for my 2021 swimming review.
1) to swim 20 lengths non-stop
2) to swim 80 lengths in one session six times
3) to swim 90 lengths in one session twice
Did I achieve these? Well, I can say a definite yes to one and a sort-of-yes to the other two.
Swim 80 lengths in one session six times
I not only managed this, I’d achieved it by June 24th. I let up a bit after that. I had quite a busy July and having achieved my goal, I was happy to mostly just settle for a mile per session after that, which is 72 lengths in this pool.
Swim 90 lengths in one session twice
To swim 90 lengths in a session meant increasing both my speed and my stamina. My first week or two, I’d stop for a break after every ten lengths. Getting to that 80 meant decreasing those breaks, thereby increasing my stamina. I’m pleased with that. 80 was a bit of a challenge last year and it was relatively easy this year.
Now. I did swim 2.06km+ twice this year. One time I was let in more than ten minutes early. I saw my opportunity and I seized it and I swam those 90 lengths in one hour and two minutes. The second time was at the Shepton Mallet Moonlight Swim. Their pool is 25 metres, not 25 yards but really, isn’t it about the total distance, not the length of the lengths? But also it was a two hour session, in a very full pool. I hadn’t calculated in advance what the equivalent of my 90 lengths was because I regarded it as a bonus swim where I didn’t have to worry about distance, until I realised that I suddenly had a lane to myself. So I did the distance but I did it in nearly an hour and a half so I don’t know whether I count it or not. On the one hand, swimming for an hour and a half rather than an hour is surely improvement in stamina? But it was so much slower because of the other swimmers that it didn’t really require any stamina at all. I don’t like shades of grey.
Swim 20 lengths non-stop
And to swim 20 lengths non-stop… well, these days I swim 60 lengths non-stop. The only reason I’m dubious about whether to count it is the “non-stop” bit. In order for it to count as a full definite length, I want to touch the end with at least two body parts. I grab the end, turn, push off and swim back in the other direction. Does that count as non-stop? In the triathlon I was thinking about when I set this goal, I wouldn’t have the luxury of a push-off every length. But on the other hand, I’ve seen people training for triathlons and they do tumble turns. So if it’s ok for them, it’s ok for me.
Whether I met the interim goals is another matter. I set myself a load of them (swim 4 lengths non-stop, 8 lengths, 12, 16, 16 again and so on) to build up to 20 non-stop. Without actually counting that, and if I’m allowed to turn, then I must have done this plenty of times but I didn’t count it. But I can and I do swim 20 lengths without a pause and so I guess I achieved this goal?
I deliberately made my goals SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based. That means I should be able to say with absolute certainty whether I achieved them or not and yet here I am dithering over them.
But beyond the goals… how did swimming go this season?
Did I enjoy it?
There were definitely evenings when I actively looked forward to it and was excited about getting to go swimming. But I admit that there were also evenings when it was a chore, when I’d committed myself to swimming twice a week and I was tired or busy or just didn’t want to. I don’t think I ever came out of the pool grumbling about how much I’d hated the last hour, though. Sometimes the swimming was more of an effort than other times but I don’t think there was a single session when I didn’t go to my locker beaming over the nice swim I’d just had, except possibly the day the entire pool was overrun by really slow people.
The exercise
It’s a bit like going to the gym, committing to an hour of good heart-raising exercise twice a week every week. I’m not a gym person. I tried it. The weights are intimidating and the treadmill makes me seasick. But swimming a mile twice a week, that’s enough exercise that I’ve met very few people who actually do it, apart from when Greg at work was training for triathlons. I can feel my heart rate and breathing going up and there have been times when my legs have been wobbly afterwards. I wish I could see more changes to the exterior of my body but I know I’m fitter for these 37 swims. I know I’m faster, I know I take fewer breaks, I know I’m less tired. I know my legs are stronger – they’re disinclined to join in so I use a kickboard to force them and I do a lot more back-swimming where my legs have to help propel me. If I did this twice a week all year instead of just during the summer season when the open-air pool is open, I’d be proper fit.
The community
There were a handful of us who turned up regularly for evening lane swims. I never really got any names but I soon learnt to recognise faces. The lady who came with two floats and a pair of fins and didn’t ever actually put them on. The lady with the shaved head and the waterproof music player on her goggles. The grey-haired lady who reminded me of someone who I still can’t identify. The two larger ladies with the skirt-swimsuits. Father Christmas, who shot up the pool and then panted loudly for four of my lengths before doing it again. Mr Tuesday, who appeared two Tuesdays in a row and then started turning up on random evenings that happened to match my completely random evenings. The lady who came earlier on in the season who did the sea swimming and bought the silver cap during the first session. We were a little community. Not everyone came every time but those faces I saw multiple times until I learned to recognise them. We chatted outside and occasionally in the water.
I took to becoming the unofficial welcomer for new people, unless those new people saw me waiting outside to be invited in and walked straight past me. Folks, I’m not standing outside for the fun of it. Wait behind me until the lifeguards pops his head out and says “do you want to come in now?” But if anyone looked new or asked questions, I became friendliness personified, I welcomed them to the pool and to the community, I explained how it all worked and where everything was. I prefer the pool to remain quiet but at the same time, I want people to feel welcome so that they use the pool and it doesn’t get closed down. It makes a loss and people are starting to mutter about the environmental friendliness of the gas boiler. Therefore people in the town need to use it more and that means when people turn up, they need to come back again and that means being friendly.
I enjoyed how quickly the lifeguards learnt my name – you book in advance online and then when you arrive, you tell them your name and they find you on the list. By June, they were telling me my name and by July, I’d often be greeted merely with “perfect” and a nod and no names mentioned at all. I especially enjoyed that when they checked the names of the regulars behind me.
In theory, you swim circuits. In practice, there were rarely more than two people in the middle lane and we took a side each and just swam up and down. The middle lane is nice and civilised. Nine times out of ten, if a third person joined us we all silently and without even looking at each other, went back to swimming circuits and if the third person left, we equally silently went back to our own lengths. Most people are pretty good at letting you overtake at the ends when we’re swimming circuits so I don’t mind it too much. It’s just occasionally when you get someone who doesn’t understand overtaking that it gets irritating. I did swim six lengths the other day where I spent more time backpedaling to avoid smacking someone’s feet than swimming in the traditional forwards direction, muttering “lady, you have to let me overtake this time, otherwise I have to drown you”. But most people are very good about it.
I’m very firmly settled in the middle lane. Oh, there are some nights when I’m the fastest by a long way and there have been a few nights when I’ve been the slowest. But by and large, I’m a middle-laner. A faster middle-laner than I was last year, judging by the fact that my average lengths per session has gone from 69.4 to 74.8. If I can do a similar increase next year, I might have to move into the fast lane!
Mindfulness
As it’s 2021, this bit should have come first but never mind: I personally can’t think and count my lengths at the same time. The moment I stop concentrating on “…..44…..44…..44….”, I’m completely lost. Literally, if something disturbs my counting on length 44, I couldn’t even say for certain that I was somewhere in the 40s. What that means is that if I want to count my lengths, and I do, I get an enforced hour off thinking about anything else. Was work a catastrophe today? Got to forget it. Was I practising my Finnish while waiting outside? Forget it. I caused myself havoc once by trying to mentally calculate the volume of water in the pool. Imagine trying to think about numbers and count at the same time! Swimming means utter mental emptiness, just for an hour.
Shall I finish off with some statistics? (averages don’t include the Moonlight swim, which was an hour and a half and therefore an outlier.)
2021: 37 swims
2020: 14 swims
2021: average distance 1.72km
2020: average distance 1.59km
2021: average speed 1.28mph
2020: average speed 1.07mph
2021: total distance 63.67km
2020: total distance 22.22km
(and just out of interest, an average of 5.2 people in the pool. Once I had the pool entirely to myself!)
So that’s how my swimming went this summer, that’s how my goals went and that’s how I felt about the swimming. Maybe I’ll do another next year. And maybe I’ll be at the Olympics in 2028! (I won’t.)