fredericks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fredericks) wrote2004-07-06 11:49 pm
fredericks) wrote2004-07-06 11:49 pm
For you can be my white whale...
or, "Swimming Lesson, Part Two
This week's trek for my lesson started out similar to the last. I got to the Y disgustingly early again, so I spent the better part of an hour and a half sitting outside the pool area (glass separator) reading my new great find, Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison, and observing the adult lappers. It seemed so effortless, the swimming thing, and I felt confident, even after last sessions debacle, that I could tame this beast. Yes, I wanted to take this pool like it was Season One Beecher.
I get dressed, headed to the pool, and jumped in in an attempt to get acclimated to the water. The sign said the temperature was 83 degrees Fahrenheit. That sign LIED. Even then I just felt different, like I really *could* kick and go somewhere. The instructor's direction to "keep [my] legs straight and point [my] toies [sic]" weren't cutting it for me. I visualized a movement in my head that didn't consist of me keeping my legs rigidly straight, which is what I'd been trying to do last week.
I didn't realize how well the visualization worked until we were well into the class. The progression this week was the same as last, which was somewhat comforting. Same steps, same progression. Only thing this week the instructor seemed to have less patience with us. Her heart's in the right place, but, yeah, she's really bad at helping you determine what the hell you're doing wrong. We got to a point in class where the instructor asked us to swim the length of the pool with arm movements and kicks without breathing. I ended up going first, thinking I'd go nowhere and embarrass myself (again). When I finally did stop to take a breath, I realized I'd made it more than halfway down the pool without using only my arms and (apparently) in excellent form. I got applause from the class! Me to the pool at that point - "Yeah, prag, and what?"
It was the later stuff, the coordinating of breathing and arm movements, that did me in. No one in the class was able to fully get it today. I ended up taking a wee bit too much water into my mouth and nasal cavity. But when I got out of the pool I was happy. I learned something, and I don't have "weak legs", I just needed to figure out what worked for me. Ha, pool, I have harpooned you!
Heh. With all the Oz, "harpooning", and Moby Dick thoughts that were running through my head, the inevitable crossed my mind as I stood in the shower, trying to wash the taste and smell of the pool from my mouth and hair: didn't the damned whale kill Ahab when all was said and done? Who exactly is whose bitch right about now? And what damned gutter did my brain crawl out of tonight?
This week's trek for my lesson started out similar to the last. I got to the Y disgustingly early again, so I spent the better part of an hour and a half sitting outside the pool area (glass separator) reading my new great find, Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison, and observing the adult lappers. It seemed so effortless, the swimming thing, and I felt confident, even after last sessions debacle, that I could tame this beast. Yes, I wanted to take this pool like it was Season One Beecher.
I get dressed, headed to the pool, and jumped in in an attempt to get acclimated to the water. The sign said the temperature was 83 degrees Fahrenheit. That sign LIED. Even then I just felt different, like I really *could* kick and go somewhere. The instructor's direction to "keep [my] legs straight and point [my] toies [sic]" weren't cutting it for me. I visualized a movement in my head that didn't consist of me keeping my legs rigidly straight, which is what I'd been trying to do last week.
I didn't realize how well the visualization worked until we were well into the class. The progression this week was the same as last, which was somewhat comforting. Same steps, same progression. Only thing this week the instructor seemed to have less patience with us. Her heart's in the right place, but, yeah, she's really bad at helping you determine what the hell you're doing wrong. We got to a point in class where the instructor asked us to swim the length of the pool with arm movements and kicks without breathing. I ended up going first, thinking I'd go nowhere and embarrass myself (again). When I finally did stop to take a breath, I realized I'd made it more than halfway down the pool without using only my arms and (apparently) in excellent form. I got applause from the class! Me to the pool at that point - "Yeah, prag, and what?"
It was the later stuff, the coordinating of breathing and arm movements, that did me in. No one in the class was able to fully get it today. I ended up taking a wee bit too much water into my mouth and nasal cavity. But when I got out of the pool I was happy. I learned something, and I don't have "weak legs", I just needed to figure out what worked for me. Ha, pool, I have harpooned you!
Heh. With all the Oz, "harpooning", and Moby Dick thoughts that were running through my head, the inevitable crossed my mind as I stood in the shower, trying to wash the taste and smell of the pool from my mouth and hair: didn't the damned whale kill Ahab when all was said and done? Who exactly is whose bitch right about now? And what damned gutter did my brain crawl out of tonight?