Water girl

I could be described as being many things during my adolescence, but “athletic” would not be one of them. While I participated in a range of sports, including t-ball, soccer, and softball, my participation was usually limited to a year or two at the most. I was never particularly coordinated or skilled and I could never run very quickly. In Grade Eight, I tried out for the volleyball team to be with my friends; the coach, in an effort to be encouraging, took pity on me and gave me a spot on the team, but I spent most (80%) of the season as a benchwarmer. In Grade Nine, I wised up to the fact that I wasn’t especially talented on the court, and instead decided to concentrate my energies on other important matters -- namely, boys. I convinced the boys’ basketball coach to let me serve as the water girl, and I traveled to all of the high school meets with the team (on which my fourteen year old boyfriend was the star player) to ensure that fresh, cold water was always on hand. With that, I concluded the sporting involvements of my youth.

The only sport in which I participated for more than one season was competitive swimming. Somewhere around second or third grade, my mom enrolled me in a top competitive swim club (which has produced a handful of Olympic medalists and with which my own niece and nephews are now swimming). I didn’t last for more than three years because I wasn’t, in fact, a very talented swimmer (no surprise there). In retrospect, I probably should have stuck with it, because I now appreciate that success in athletics (especially during adolescence) can sometimes take many years to cultivate. Nevertheless, I always enjoyed being in the water, and what I lacked in speed and technique I more than made up for in endurance and determination. I recall a few times in the pool swimming lap after lap, sometimes long after my team mates had already showered and gone home. There were fringe benefits, too: I enjoyed the early Saturday morning workouts if only for the McDonald’s Egg McMuffins that we picked up on the drive back home, and after I actually placed in a meet in Grade Three, my school principal announced it over the PA system to the entire student body.

In the past 15 years, though, the number of times I’ve swam dedicated laps for exercise purposes has probably numbered less than twenty. In the last two years alone, I think I’ve been in the pool a handful of times -- despite the fact that one reason Zdenek and I pay for an exorbitantly priced gym membership is to have access to the only 25 meter pool on the UWS. Part of the problem is that swimming today seems much fussier than it did when I was a kid. Back then, I’d get out, rinse off, put my clothes on over my wet bathing suit, and be driven home to a find a hot dinner waiting at the table. Today, I have to either haul all of my toiletries to the gym or be forced to shower a second time when I get home, my skin feels tight and flaky from the chlorine, I worry about wearing flip flops on the pool deck and in the shower lest I pick up some funky foot disease, and if I get home too late then dinner will consist of a bowl of cereal. Running is infinitely less cumbersome, and even the preparatory work required for cycling is minimal by comparison. Combined with the crowded lanes and too-warm water of our gym’s pool, the thought of staring at a black line for 45 minutes or more is never very appetizing when Central Park is only 1/2 mile from my doorstep. (For Zdenek, who was once a mighty competitive swimmer, the prospects are even worse: he finds the pace of the lanes at our local pool to be a tad on the slow side, and he’s been reprimanded by the lifeguards for everything from going too quickly to doing the butterfly stroke (his specialty).)

Yesterday afternoon, however, Zdenek and I headed to the pool for our first swimming workout of 2010. Today, he hurts in all the places where he used his muscles to power him through the water, and I hurt in all the places that I stressed my joints from poor technique. This said, I’m going to try to make a commitment during my current marathon plan to devote more cross-training days to swimming. For one, it will make better use of my gym membership. Secondly, it will (hopefully) develop new muscles and upper body strength with limited injury risk. Thirdly, I am married to a former competitive swimmer who also happens to be a great coach, so I have hours and hours of free instruction at my disposal.

All things considered, it’s time I tried to become a water girl once again.