Lap Swimming

This is something I've been doing for a number of years now. I've never really been a good swimmer. I don't like to get my face wet, something essential to serious swimming. But I'm fortunate enough to live in a condominium community that has as one of its best amenities an indoor pool, or actually three pools, a lap pool, a sizable exercise pool, and a very large hot tub, where swimmers often gather after swimming laps.

I don't swim every day. I used to, but then I found that despite my precautions I was getting ear infections. So I've been using wax earplugs and swimming only about three times a week. On other days I go to the fitness center, which overlooks the pool, and I watch others swim as I walk on the treadmills or ride the recumbent bicycles or the elliptical trainers. Sometimes I just lift weights, rather light ones, but with many, many repetitions.

For me exercise is all about repetition. I don't really enjoy it, but I do it to keep my weight down and my diabetes under control. So I rely on routines. Twenty to thirty minutes of riding, or walking, or swimming. It's all about putting in the time. At least thirty minutes of some sort of exercise at least five or six days a week. Sometimes I spend fifteen or twenty minutes lifting light weights before doing sit ups and other sorts of exercise on the various machines in the fitness center. I once had to undergo a few months of physical therapy for a pinched nerve in my neck, and the therapist gave me a good light exercise routine which I've incorporated into my exercise program.

But my favorite exercise is lap swimming. It's my break from the other sorts of exercise, the ones that require strain, and effort, and sweat. In the pool there is no sweating. At first it's cool, even though the pool is heated and maintains a constant temperature of about 83-85 degrees fahrenheit year round. Then within a few laps it's comfortable, even warm, as your body adjusts. I swim at a very constant pace. Fifty-three lengths of the pool are a half mile, and I usually swim about that in thirty minutes. Sometimes I stop after fifty lengths, but I always keep an eye on the clock, even when I lose track of the count. After my thirty minutes, which is all that is allowed when someone else is waiting for a lane, I emerge and either go to the hot tub, or go to the men's changing room and sit in the sauna for a while. Those few minutes of heat are my reward for exercising.

In good weather, which means warm weather, I walk around the condominium's parking lots on a walking path that measures almost exactly one mile. I like to go around at least twice. And while I'm walking I listen to my iPod, set to shuffle, so that I'm presented with a random selection of music, mostly popular tunes from my youth, classic folk and rock, golden oldies, plus a few classical numbers as well as a selection of jazz, mostly Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. It's just about the only time I listen to music on my iPod, but now I find I really depend on it to pass the time, that and looking at the strange variety of cars and motorcycles parked in the parking lots.

But when I swim I enjoy the solitude. I have my earplugs, and I also use goggles. There in the relative isolation of the lap pool I like to think and carry on conversations with myself as I methodically swim my laps. Being a relatively poor swimmer, I concentrate on consistency. I rotate three strokes, none of which would be recognized as classic. I have a breast stroke, a side stroke, and a back stroke I picked up from watching some of the women swimmers. I alternate the strokes to help me keep track of my laps. First the breast stroke, then the side stroke, then three lengths with the back stroke, which has become my best and my favorite.

As I said, I'm not a strong swimmer. A half mile an hour must be a pathetic pace. But I'm not going for speed or distance, I'm there to get in my thirty minutes of healthy exercise. I'm nothing if not methodical, back and forth. Sometimes, if no one else is in the pool I tend to swim rather lazily, or if the other swimmers are really very good, I just let them lap me again and again. But on some occasions, I discover that the swimmer in the next lane is just about my speed, and then I try to outdo them. One man who swims about the same time as me every Sunday morning swims at just about my pace, but slightly slower, using a single stroke, a very methodical crawl. I like to swim one direction while he is going the opposite. But after a few laps I find I'm actually gaining on him, and then eventually we are in sync -- something I don't like because it makes the water rough. So I exert myself to get back to swimming in opposite directions.

When I'm swimming, I prefer solitude. As I swim my laps I like to think about my life, plan things to do, think about my reading. Sometimes I just imagine that I'm on vacation at some resort, and not just swimming laps in my condo in Northern Virginia. Now that I'm retired, that's not such a stretch.