Illustration by Dola Sun
When I started swimming laps in 2017, I didn’t know what I was doing. I knew I had to do something instead of running, since a bout of tendonitis had made every step excruciating. I figured water would give my legs a break but keep my lungs challenged.
I had no inclination about what kind of swimmer I would be. Would I become obsessed with gadgets that counted laps? Would I start a collection of fins and paddles and snorkels? Would I start buying fancy shampoo and skin care products to counteract the effects of chlorine?
Honestly, it was a pretty ballsy move back then to declare that I would become a swimmer. I was 43 and didn’t actually know how to swim in any proper way. My movements in the water only resembled swimming—floating, treading, and playing with my kids at the pool. I knew that in real swimming, your arms did something and your legs did something and at some point or another you had to breathe.
I usually moved around in the water with a combination of side stroke and doggy paddle, rarely putting my face in the water since I wore contacts. I could get from one end of a pool to the other, but not with any kind of grace or efficiency.
I booked a 30-minute private lesson at the Blue Ash Y to learn proper technique for a basic freestyle stroke, officially known as the front crawl. I knew it could take 100 lessons to really hone technique, but I thought I’d start by seeing what $20 could get me. A lot, it turns out.
There are times in life where you need to know things. The speed limit. What time your kid’s school starts. How to do a hard reset of some system not working properly. Then there are times where not knowing something is the best possible thing. That was the case with me and swimming.
I had no bad habits because I had no habits at all. I imagine it would be the same if someone was teaching me to write computer code, where every piece of information was brand new.
The instructor asked, “What kind of breathing do you want to do?” To which I said, “The kind where I take in oxygen at some point?” So she taught me bilateral breathing—breathing every third stroke, which means you alternate sides.
Next I learned what to do with my arms (not a windmill motion but a zip up movement) and how to hold my hands (like a loose claw). Then I learned what kicking should feel like (much more like a tiny flutter than the big movement I thought). Finally, I learned I could do whatever I wanted to turn around at the wall and not to worry too much about that at first.
If someone asked me what’s the best $20 I ever spent on fitness, I’d point to that lesson. Within a week, I was swimming a mile (66 lengths), which may seem like a lot, but keep in mind I was used to running 30 miles a week. I also wasn’t a fast swimmer. It usually took 45 minutes. (For comparison, elite swimmers can crank out a mile in under 15 minutes.)
Swimming became a regular part of my routine as my injury healed. Learning something new was exhilarating. And it was a good distraction from the mundane stage of life I was in. Heading to the pool one day, I had a thought that swimming was better than having a mid-life crisis. At the time, I was writing a lot of snappy first-person pieces for The New York Times. I wrote one about how swimming was helping me navigate mid-life challenges and not succumb to the crisis I could feel beckoning me. I talked about how learning something new helped me rethink the possibilities of midlife.
A few commenters thought I was smug. Apparently, my can-do tone when it comes to exercise grates on some people’s nerves. Journalist Ada Calhoun, who writes about Gen X women, actually pointed to my piece as Part of the Problem. In her book about Gen X women having mid-life crises, she reduced what I wrote to a dismissal of women having mid-life crises. As if my point was that all anyone needed to do to fix everything was swim! I did not say that, Ada. But great cherry-picking.
Anyway, the point is that eight years ago, swimming helped me get through a tough time. I spent less time in the pool once I returned to regular running. I kept swimming, though—some months more, some months less.
Another running injury recently sent me back to the water more regularly. I’m swimming several days a week, just like when I first started, except it’s different now. I’m past the tumultuous 40s, that odd bridge decade. I’m past the potential mid-life crisis. I’m past being a beginner. I’ve even cut five minutes off my mile time, thanks to YouTube videos that helped me refine my technique. I now have experience and skills and ideas about swimming.
This is to say I know what kind of swimmer I am now. It turns out I’m old-school.
I arrive at the pool with only a cap, goggles, and a towel. Other swimmers have bags of tricks. Underwater watches and waterproof ear buds. Multiple bottles, one with water and another with a sports drink in shades of blue or pink. I don’t even bring a water bottle. I’m letting my hair go gray, so who cares about the chlorine stripping out color. I twirl my hair into a bun, tug the cap over it, and go.
It’s just me and the lane, counting every lap, one to 66. I breathe on every third stroke, every other side. I count in my head but also kind of out loud, because no one can hear you in the water. One, one, one all the way down the lane until I turn around, and then it’s two, two, two…. For 40 minutes, I’m all numbers and breathing, breathing and numbers. I don’t take my mind off the number for more than a second, lest I forget and have to swim extra.
Being old-school has nothing to do with age. Many of the regular swimmers with their gadgets are older than me. They look like they’re having fun, and I admit I do like the idea of sailing through the water with fins on my feet. Maybe I’ll try it at some point. But for now it’s just not about that. It’s about the feeling of facing the insurmountable thing.
Every time I get into the water, I don’t know how I’ll do it. My God, it’s so many laps! And sometimes it’s cold! And my goggles are too tight! But I start at one and go from there. The focus on one number at a time and one breath at a time forces me to keep bubbling my thoughts into the water. Despite writing numerous stories about meditation and interviewing top experts about it, I’ve never actually been able to make myself meditate. Boring. Except, apparently, it’s what I’ve been doing in the pool all along.
I’ve been thinking lately about how swimming and the forced rigidity of the numbers is the exact opposite of running, where the numbers are mostly unimportant and the whole point is to let my thoughts flow. I love my long runs, that free space for thinking. Like driving or showering. Those wide-open spaces for grand contemplation.
But swimming makes me stop thinking. I would not have been interested in that when I was younger. I was sure I could think my way out of anything. Even in my 40s—or perhaps especially in 40s—I thought I was still in charge. How hilarious that seems now.
Ada may have been right that I was a little smug. I didn’t know the hardest times were still ahead. I also didn’t count on thoughts being cumulative, like compound interest. I’ve arrived at 50 with exponentially more in my head than when I was 30. Not just 20 years’ worth, but 100 years’ worth. I need the “off” switch more than ever now.
The other day at the pool, a woman about my age asked if she could share my lane. “Of course,” I said, tucking my long hair into my cap. Lane sharing is a given most days at the Y. As long as my lane partner isn’t doing butterfly—please don’t ever do that stroke if you’re sharing a lane—I never mind.
“I promise I won’t be in the way,” she said. Like me, she didn’t have any gear. I could tell she would be faster than me. You can always see it in the shoulders. But it didn’t matter. I had 66 laps to count, and I let the blue pool swallow me. One, one, one…
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