By: Blonde Two
This title sounds remarkably like the rather melancholy poem ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ by Stevie Smith. I watched an informative video the other day about what someone who is drowning actually looks like (I hope I never find out first hand but it pays to be prepared). The Outdoor Swimming Society has some top information and advice.
Anyway, I haven’t been drowning during my morning sea swims, rather the opposite problem in fact. I can currently only stay in the sea for 15 minutes because of the cold, but trying to use that 15 minutes for actual swimming is proving difficult because I can’t get used to the level of floating I am doing.
I’m not complaining about floating, generally speaking it is a good idea, but floating and swimming front crawl seem to be mutually incompatible. I am getting there but every now and again I come out of a stroke on the back-side of a wave and find myself swimming in a pit of mid-air. It is all good fun and to date I haven’t swallowed too much sea. My biggest dilemma however, is my feet. Feet in wetsuit booties float, feet not in wetsuit booties don’t.
Yesterday morning I opted for not freezing but floating!
I noticed that all long-distance swimmers (typically the cross-Channellers) swim what I call crawl but seems to have been renamed front crawl. I could swim a mile but only by mixing up the strokes; continuous crawl seemed too exhausting. By crawl I’m not talking about the bastard form with the head permanently out of the water; that’s far too tiring, and inefficient. I mean the real thing where the head is mostly submerged.
In the delighful state of nothingness that is retirement, I decided to learn crawl as my default stroke. Quite soon I discovered that the difficulties were as much psychological as physical; after a length and half in the pool I experienced a slowly rising state of panic which seemed to be saying “you cannot do this”. Having managed to suppress this tendency I found it returned, but in a different form, after ten lengths – a conviction that I might drown, even though I knew the water beneath me was shallow enough to stand up in.
The problem was, of course, related to oxygen starvation. I wasn’t getting enough air into my lungs during the two-second period when my head had rotated during the cycle and I could open my mouth above water. (Strangely this problem has recurred – but much more severely – as my singing gets more ambitious. Here the problem is not only psychological and physical but also aesthetic. No one wants to see a singer sucking in air while warbling Schubert’s sublime Abschied).
The solution lies in establishing a rhythm: inhaling with an audible “Gahhh.” and then exhaling underwater bubbles with a “Bluhhh”. I remember the first time I managed a continuous half-mile of crawl and felt the fantastic surge of endorphins throughout my body as I got back into the car. Later, off the coast of a Greek island, I used to swim a two-mile round trip from the harbour to small beach and back, knowing that the only limitation on distance was stamina.
I trust all this is unnecessary, that you understand the mechanics of crawl. That the temptation to float is a temporary aberration.
One thing about crawl: once you’ve mastered it you never want to swim any other stroke.
Swimming off a Greek island… seems like an impossible dream from Torbay’s chilly waters, but I shall imagine and be grateful that I didn’t make that considered move to Scotland!
Of course, you should swim on your back, feet first, so that you can see that lovely sunrise! In my case, however, it would be a waste of time as my feet would obscure the view – Clementine, eat your heart out!
If you must swim on your front, the best thing to do with those floating feet is still to make them go first. This is achieved by extending your arms in front of your face and waving them around, so you had better warn the assembled company that you are not drowning, but waving.
If you’re really concerned about watching sunrises, acquire a paddle and use a herring box as a coracle. Or stay ashore. This post is surely about mortification of the flesh and/or flirtations with hypothermia.