I do my best to find time to swim a mile as many days a week as I
can. Except Saturdays, because the kids are home in the morning and I
work all day and it’s just too much. And then there are days my
swimming ambitions are thwarted because either I or one of my kids is
sick, or a project gets in the way, but typically I would say I swim at
least three times a week. I don’t know how much good it’s doing, but it
can’t hurt, and it sounds like something I should be doing, so there we
are.
Anyway, since all that time at the pool is taking up a sizable chunk
of my life it seemed worth a blog post. At least, it seemed like a good
idea in my head as I was going back and forth in the water for 45
minutes one morning. Here’s everything I have to say about swimming:
The big advantage to swimming is that even when something hurts
during any other exercise (like my left knee, which I think one of my
kids leaned on too hard when I was sitting cross legged and it’s been
painful for months while I walk) I can still swim. And I like a form of
exercise where I come out cleaner than I started. The disadvantage is
I’m dependent on going somewhere specific to do it. (I envy that a
runner can just kind of open his or her door and go.)
There are two places I swim. The first is the Y. (I joined the Y
back when Ian was deployed the first time because there was a free
six-month membership offer for families of active duty soldiers at the
time. We didn’t do much then beyond hang out in the play room when the
weather was bad and I needed to get the kids out of the house, or
occasionally sign out a racket ball court and let the kids have at it
smacking balls off the walls and ceiling. Anyway, we’re finally getting
our money’s worth out of the place with as often as Ian and I go now,
so that’s good.) The pool at the Y is small, and it takes me 36 laps to
do a mile. There are three lanes (out of six) designated for lap
swimming that get squeezed down to two during water aerobics in the
morning. The Y is usually crowded in the morning. Sharing a lane at
the Y gets a little tight but most of the time it works out okay. The
exceptions are if I end up with Splashy Guy (who is a middle aged man
who swims at a good clip but lets one of his arms drop straight down
onto the water in such a way when he does the front crawl that he sends
water everywhere) or Blind Andy. I like Blind Andy, and I’m impressed
by anyone who can swim blind (although I suppose crossing the street
blind would be scarier) but he uses flippers and a snorkel and moves way
faster than I do. I know I slow him down when I share a lane with him
because he waits to hear when I get to the end so he knows when it’s
safe to move again. Ian uses the treadmills and the weight room at the
Y, so I go there when the two of us are able to get out and exercise at
the same time.
The other place I sometimes swim is the county pool. It’s closer to
home and it’s bigger. The lanes are wider, there are eight of them, and
it only takes 32 laps to do a mile. If I go there to swim in the
afternoon I sometimes literally have the whole place to myself. There
have been days I’ve seen the poor lifeguards watching me paddle back and
forth and wondered if they hate me for making it necessary for them to
stay there, or if I give meaning to their lives by being the only
swimmer to potentially save. (I suspect the former, but can’t prove it
because they are always unfailingly polite.) The county pool also has
diving boards and a basketball hoop. I go to the county pool if Ian and
I are exercising at different times and I don’t need to go all the way
to the Y, or after school when we can fit it in our schedule with the
whole family. I do laps while Ian and the kids play, and then I join
them when I’m done. The big advantage of family swim is if I get the
kids’ hair washed in the showers it counts as bath night.
The biggest differences between the two pools are the amenities. The
Y has towels (although I tend to think of them as ‘exfoliating towels’
but they are still towels I don’t have to lug there myself), more
private showers, a scale, a hot tub, bigger lockers, lotion, a TV, hair
dryers…. Plus if we go to the Y with the kids there is a small pool for
them nearby that they prefer because it’s warmer. The county pool is
more utilitarian, but in some ways smarter. I’ve never understood the
carpeting in the locker rooms at the Y because they just generate a damp
mildewy smell, and the county locker room is all tile which seems more
practical to me.
The Y also has a thing that’s like a salad spinner for swimsuits.
There are all these instructions on it about pushing your suit far
enough down before pressing on the lid which starts it spinning to get
the bulk of the water out of your suit. I learned the hard way that it
really means what it says, because I nonchalantly put my suit in there
any old way one morning and the thing ripped my suit to shreds. Now I’m
kind of paranoid about shoving my suit all the way down.
Luckily I buy my suits online so it wasn’t hard to replace. I hate
shopping for swimsuits, but doing it online is less painful. The great
irony about wanting to swim to get into better shape is that so few
suits seem designed for swimming, particularly if you are not a size
eight or under. There are serious swimsuits for people already in
shape, but bigger suits tend to have goofy straps that fall off your
shoulder if you move too vigorously.
To keep my hair from becoming completely fried from chlorine I put a
bunch of conditioner on under my swim cap. I’ve seen no difference
between special swimmer’s shampoo and what I normally use in terms of
helping my overly chlorinated hair, but the conditioner under the cap
thing helps more than anything I’ve tried.
My skin always smells like chlorine, so I started using a floral
scented body butter for when I get out of the pool. Now I smell like
flowers that have been watered with chlorine.
For the most part swimming is a fairly safe activity, but once I left
my razor in my bag facing the wrong direction and sliced the crap out
of my thumb in the shower at the Y one morning. That was no fun. I
couldn’t stop the bleeding long enough to get my bra on without making a
mess, so I ended up heading home essentially naked under my coat which
was way less sexy than it sounds.
One of the more unexpected results of all my swimming is that the
bottoms of my feet aren’t cracked anymore. I’ve had problems with
cracked heels my whole life, and as a kid my toes and heels used to
bleed. I’ve always wanted cute feet and have tried any number of
lotions, but I think the regular soaking in chlorine has killed whatever
caused the problem. Who knows? Anyway, I finally have cute feet. Not
the bodily improvement I was expecting for all the effort, but go
figure.
The biggest obstacle to fitting exercise into my life isn’t time so
much as boredom. I hate wasting time, and I find exercise frustratingly
dull. It’s very hard for me not to think about all the other things
I’d rather be doing. So I’ve been arming myself with gadgets to help
combat the elements of exercise that I find irritating.
My first, best gadget is a lap counter. I Googled the idea one day
when I couldn’t stand spending all my time in the water keeping track of
what lap I was on anymore.
I found this,
which is a waterproof device I can wear like a ring, and I push the
button on it with my thumb every time I reach the wall at the shallow
end of the pool. Now I can think about whatever I want, and somewhere
around the 45 minute mark I check the lap counter to see if I’m done or
not. I love the thing.
The more extravagant gadget I treated myself to for Mother’s Day this year. There is
a company that waterproofs regular iPods,
so I ordered one with a set of waterproof ear buds. I’ve never owned
an iPod so it took awhile to figure out exactly how to get it going.
The first problem was that my laptop’s version of iTunes was more than
five minutes old so my iPod Shuffle was mystified. We got that solved,
then had to figure out how to find what I downloaded once we got it onto
my player. My first swim with the thing I listened to a 15 minute
Freakonomics show and then it started repeating. Now that I’ve had some
practice I’m on track and can listen to interesting things like This
American Life or Fresh Air. I know most people would probably use it to
exercise to music, but I have to choose music very carefully or it will
bother more than it will entertain me. (A few years ago I used to go
to Curves, and as much as I liked the exercise routine I don’t think I
could go back there and literally face the music again.)
Swimming while learning something and not having to count laps has
been a big improvement. Anything that helps me keep it up and not want
to quit is useful. And I feel good on those family swim days that my
kids see me diligently getting my workout in. Plus it’s more fun to
watch them splashing around and waving to me as I go by than it is
watching the synchronized feet of the water aerobics people at the Y.
I have no idea how Ian and I will fit exercising into our lives once
school lets out because that three hour block of time in the morning has
been so great for us getting out together. Above and beyond my gadgets
the biggest motivation to exercise has simply been that my husband goes
to do it with me. His encouragement has made a huge difference, and
that extra time we get alone together on the drive to the Y and back has
been really nice. With summer vacation comes the return of our tag
team lives, but we will find a way. Besides, I’ve gotten used to
smelling like a bottle of bleach. How can I give that up?
(No way could anyone ever pay me enough to get me to post a picture
of myself in a swimsuit, so here is Mona a few years back during her hat
phase. Nothing says born in Wisconsin more than a winter hat in the
pool. Or something.)
We've been going there for a long time. Here are my kids in the playroom at the Y when we first signed up:
