ENDGAME, PART III: FIRST SPLASHES
One
of the things the University of Virginia enjoys telling potential
students about, along with its time-tested honor system, our historic
Lawn, our refusal to use conventional terms such as "campus" and
"freshman" to describe our school and related subjects and all things
Thomas Jefferson is that the University is home to the largest hot tub
around. I can't quite recall if it's the largest hot tub in the
mid-Atlantic, the largest hot tub in the South or the largest hot tub on
the east coast. It's the largest hot tub of some geographic region.
Let's just leave it at that.
After four months at the school, I still haven't actually been inside the hot tub.
The hot tub can actually best be described as a hot pool. It has a basketball court. It's at least three feet deep. If you aren't very picky about how long the laps you swim are, you could swim laps in it. It has its own lifeguard station. In short, it actually looks fairly impressive.
For those wondering, the hot tub isn't a particularly arduous journey from my dorm room. Actually, it's about a two or three minute walk down the hill (this is after I lazily take the elevator from the fifth floor to the ground floor because stairs are overrated), followed by a mad dash across the street. In theory, I could be out of my room, changed and in the hot tub in less than fifteen minutes without coming anywhere close to hurrying.
But I just can't quite motivate myself to soak up the hot tub.
The hot tub is located in the Aquatic and Fitness Center, a large, fairly new gymnasium (at the very least, it's better than the across-the-street-without-having-to-walk-down-the-hill Slaughter Recreation Center, which is dim and fluorescent and distinctly lacking in pools and a good deal closer than the basically-not-in-Charlottesville North Grounds Recreation Center). I spent copious amounts of time in the AFC this semester. I just never made it into the hot tub.
Perhaps I should back up a little bit.
Headed into my first year of college, I decided that I really had just one goal: I wanted to run a 5K by the end of the year. In May, I thought that meant running a 5K in March 2014. In July, I still thought it meant running a 5K in March 2014. But in order to run a 5K, from the start line to the finish line, taking no breaks, never walking, I'd need to train.
I decided my goal was to swim about an hour a day four or five days a week, hopefully building up to being able to swim my hour straight through. In retrospect, I'm not sure is the most logical path to a 5K (from what I've gathered in the months since, swimming for an hour straight isn't exactly a low bar to set). Add the fact that I didn't have a real swimsuit, just a pair of what my actual swimmer brothers derogatorily referred to as "deck shorts." Also add the fact that I was years removed from anything resembling proper swim instruction and therefore completely lacking in a certain area called "technique." Oh, and add the fact that I couldn't actually complete a flip turn. Also, as it turned out, I couldn't swim the 25 yards across the pool without needing to take a 30-plus second breather. I'm sure the biking helped out, but in late August and early September, when I was starting out…let's just say it wasn't a pretty picture and leave it at that.
With all that said, I still started swimming. On the day I moved in my brothers helped pick out a pair of goggles and a swim cap for me. The goggles were an improvement over my then-current pair. The swim cap has helped prevent me from having my hair chlorinated, bleached and transformed into a mess with the rough texture and consistency of a Brillo pad.
And I headed down to the pool.
Technically speaking, you're supposed to pay and rent a towel at the AFC. I prefer to smuggle my own towel in a plastic bag (it's not particularly subtle, so I'm not sure "smuggle" is really the right term). Unfortunately, while not renting a towel saves money, it also means that you don't have a key for the locker room, which meant that for at least the first month I spent a solid few minutes testing locker after locker to see if it was unlocked and empty.
After slinging my stuff into the locker, I'd change as quickly as possible. I'm not going to pretend I was incredibly comfortable with the thought of showing my still-soft, still-slightly-repulsive body off to strangers. While the deck shorts aren't quite as revealing as, say, a legitimate swimsuit, it still involves not wearing a shirt, letting the old gut hang out, basking in the open air.
Before dropping me off, my mother told me to just get over it. Just don't feel too embarrassed, get in the water, swim. Get in shape.
I'd had enough with being grossly out of shape.
I swam.
The frequency of my swimming wavered from week to week. Some weeks I was excellent at getting down to the pool, other weeks I felt overwhelmed with my homework, tired, irritable, sore, whatever. I did my best to avoid making up excuses to not swim. Me and my bright green deck shorts became a common sight at the AFC. I learned which lanes I liked (the deeper ones) and started to get some grasp on what time of day was best for me to swim.
In the beginning, I'd thought about waking up early—6:00 a.m. early—to get some morning laps in. I actually did a couple of days, but increasingly found that I preferred swimming in roughly the pool's final operating hour of the day (it closed at 10:00 p.m. on weekdays).
But as interesting as the time of day I chose to swam may be, that isn't the main narrative here. The main narrative, after all, started almost a year ago when a certain metal frame was affixed to my leg. Or maybe it started earlier with the long string of events and happenstances which led to my decision to take on the device.
So. Back on track (somewhat).
I swam. I tried to ignore the fact that I had perhaps the single most distinctive swimsuit of anybody in the AFC. Most people, after all, had something reasonably skintight, probably some shade of black. I had a pair of shorts made out of a tragically unmistakably green material which was okay in chlorinated water and salt water alike. I tried to ignore the fact that I was wearing far less fabric than I prefer wearing (preferred: long pants (shorts okay post-frame), t-shirt, sweatshirt and/or jacket, scarf, hat, gloves optional).
I just pulled on my swim cap (it wasn't as hard as my brothers tried to make it sound), yanked on my goggles, dropped into the water and started kicking.
The actual timeline of my swimming is hazy. Generally speaking, I don't think while I swim. At times, I count. I count the minutes left in my set or the distance I've swum or I just count to count. I feel the rhythm of my stroke and the movement of the water. I feel the liquid pulling on my suit and I try to avoid flooding my goggles. Sometimes I tell myself to think about this story or this class, but really I just focus on my surroundings. It's a much-needed break from the rest of college and quite possibly the only reason I managed to remain sane throughout the semester. But it also means that I don't have an exact timeline for this post.
Still…I know the general phases of swimming I went through, which is good enough.
Phase One: The Awkward Phase
In The Awkward Phase, I was only able to swim for 25 yards (the distance across the main AFC pool) at a time. This was partially because I couldn't do a flip turn and thereby keep going after my 25 yards, partially because 25 yards did me in. While I was able to get from one side of the pool to the other, it involved a lot of splashing and random motion and didn't happen particularly fast. I generally allowed about 60 seconds per 25, including rest. In case anybody was wondering, that's not particularly stellar, though as a starting-point…well, while not amazing, it's functional.
Phase Two: The Noticeably Less Awkward Phase
Eventually, the rest breaks between 25 yard trials started to decrease. I wasn't swimming non-stop (that involves learning how to do a flip turn), but my confidence was up. The days where 15 minutes of halting 25s started taking on the appearance of something from a distantly forgotten past even though (of course) they weren't, seeing as those days were a week or two prior.
Phase Three: The Almost Capable of Doing a Flip Turn Phase
By then, I figured I might as well learn how to do a flip turn. My dream of just being able to get in the pool and swim for an hour without stopping was appearing closer than ever. I just needed to learn how to avoid taking breaks. A few YouTube videos (and some serious trial and error later), I sort of got the hang of it one Sunday afternoon. Granted, it was a wildly inconsistent sort of flip turn. Sometimes my body would crash into the pool's hard tile wall. Sometimes my feet would manage to miss the wall and strike the bottom. I couldn't exactly share a lane and still manage to flip turn. But I could come at the wall from one way, flip and come out facing the opposite direction, the basic idea of the thing.
Phase Four: Burgeoning Distance
After I figured out a few basic tricks to attempting the flip turn, I started going after various distances. The first day I went for a relatively humble 250 yards, which was pushed to 400, reaching 1,000 within a week. I kept track of the distances in dark green Sharpie on the calendar on my desk. Sometimes I'd get excited and tell my roommate about my progress. My roommate told me it wouldn't last. I ignored him and felt celebratory anyway.
One day towards the end of September, I got in the pool and, halfway through my first 25, decided to go for a 1650, the swimmer's mile. My bright green suit billowing out behind me, I started to swim. More accurately, I started to not stop swimming. Turn after turn, length after length. Sometimes I lost track of how far I'd swam and repeated the most recent 50 or so yards for good measure. Ten minutes went by, then twenty, then thirty.
Forty-five minutes later, I was done. I felt good, too—I'd been going at a fairly gradual pace and still had enough energy to splash around for more than twenty minutes, studiously avoiding the hot tub just a few feet over. I called my parents to let them know that I'd finished a 1650 (which was possibly an 1800, depending on how badly I counted).
My initial goal for the school year was to run a 5K in March. I was very certain that I'd get it done in March. But sometime in September, I decided that I might be ready by January or February.
One or two days after the 1650, my goal became much more ambitious.
After four months at the school, I still haven't actually been inside the hot tub.
The hot tub can actually best be described as a hot pool. It has a basketball court. It's at least three feet deep. If you aren't very picky about how long the laps you swim are, you could swim laps in it. It has its own lifeguard station. In short, it actually looks fairly impressive.
For those wondering, the hot tub isn't a particularly arduous journey from my dorm room. Actually, it's about a two or three minute walk down the hill (this is after I lazily take the elevator from the fifth floor to the ground floor because stairs are overrated), followed by a mad dash across the street. In theory, I could be out of my room, changed and in the hot tub in less than fifteen minutes without coming anywhere close to hurrying.
But I just can't quite motivate myself to soak up the hot tub.
The hot tub is located in the Aquatic and Fitness Center, a large, fairly new gymnasium (at the very least, it's better than the across-the-street-without-having-to-walk-down-the-hill Slaughter Recreation Center, which is dim and fluorescent and distinctly lacking in pools and a good deal closer than the basically-not-in-Charlottesville North Grounds Recreation Center). I spent copious amounts of time in the AFC this semester. I just never made it into the hot tub.
Perhaps I should back up a little bit.
Headed into my first year of college, I decided that I really had just one goal: I wanted to run a 5K by the end of the year. In May, I thought that meant running a 5K in March 2014. In July, I still thought it meant running a 5K in March 2014. But in order to run a 5K, from the start line to the finish line, taking no breaks, never walking, I'd need to train.
I decided my goal was to swim about an hour a day four or five days a week, hopefully building up to being able to swim my hour straight through. In retrospect, I'm not sure is the most logical path to a 5K (from what I've gathered in the months since, swimming for an hour straight isn't exactly a low bar to set). Add the fact that I didn't have a real swimsuit, just a pair of what my actual swimmer brothers derogatorily referred to as "deck shorts." Also add the fact that I was years removed from anything resembling proper swim instruction and therefore completely lacking in a certain area called "technique." Oh, and add the fact that I couldn't actually complete a flip turn. Also, as it turned out, I couldn't swim the 25 yards across the pool without needing to take a 30-plus second breather. I'm sure the biking helped out, but in late August and early September, when I was starting out…let's just say it wasn't a pretty picture and leave it at that.
With all that said, I still started swimming. On the day I moved in my brothers helped pick out a pair of goggles and a swim cap for me. The goggles were an improvement over my then-current pair. The swim cap has helped prevent me from having my hair chlorinated, bleached and transformed into a mess with the rough texture and consistency of a Brillo pad.
And I headed down to the pool.
Technically speaking, you're supposed to pay and rent a towel at the AFC. I prefer to smuggle my own towel in a plastic bag (it's not particularly subtle, so I'm not sure "smuggle" is really the right term). Unfortunately, while not renting a towel saves money, it also means that you don't have a key for the locker room, which meant that for at least the first month I spent a solid few minutes testing locker after locker to see if it was unlocked and empty.
After slinging my stuff into the locker, I'd change as quickly as possible. I'm not going to pretend I was incredibly comfortable with the thought of showing my still-soft, still-slightly-repulsive body off to strangers. While the deck shorts aren't quite as revealing as, say, a legitimate swimsuit, it still involves not wearing a shirt, letting the old gut hang out, basking in the open air.
Before dropping me off, my mother told me to just get over it. Just don't feel too embarrassed, get in the water, swim. Get in shape.
I'd had enough with being grossly out of shape.
I swam.
The frequency of my swimming wavered from week to week. Some weeks I was excellent at getting down to the pool, other weeks I felt overwhelmed with my homework, tired, irritable, sore, whatever. I did my best to avoid making up excuses to not swim. Me and my bright green deck shorts became a common sight at the AFC. I learned which lanes I liked (the deeper ones) and started to get some grasp on what time of day was best for me to swim.
In the beginning, I'd thought about waking up early—6:00 a.m. early—to get some morning laps in. I actually did a couple of days, but increasingly found that I preferred swimming in roughly the pool's final operating hour of the day (it closed at 10:00 p.m. on weekdays).
But as interesting as the time of day I chose to swam may be, that isn't the main narrative here. The main narrative, after all, started almost a year ago when a certain metal frame was affixed to my leg. Or maybe it started earlier with the long string of events and happenstances which led to my decision to take on the device.
So. Back on track (somewhat).
I swam. I tried to ignore the fact that I had perhaps the single most distinctive swimsuit of anybody in the AFC. Most people, after all, had something reasonably skintight, probably some shade of black. I had a pair of shorts made out of a tragically unmistakably green material which was okay in chlorinated water and salt water alike. I tried to ignore the fact that I was wearing far less fabric than I prefer wearing (preferred: long pants (shorts okay post-frame), t-shirt, sweatshirt and/or jacket, scarf, hat, gloves optional).
I just pulled on my swim cap (it wasn't as hard as my brothers tried to make it sound), yanked on my goggles, dropped into the water and started kicking.
The actual timeline of my swimming is hazy. Generally speaking, I don't think while I swim. At times, I count. I count the minutes left in my set or the distance I've swum or I just count to count. I feel the rhythm of my stroke and the movement of the water. I feel the liquid pulling on my suit and I try to avoid flooding my goggles. Sometimes I tell myself to think about this story or this class, but really I just focus on my surroundings. It's a much-needed break from the rest of college and quite possibly the only reason I managed to remain sane throughout the semester. But it also means that I don't have an exact timeline for this post.
Still…I know the general phases of swimming I went through, which is good enough.
Phase One: The Awkward Phase
In The Awkward Phase, I was only able to swim for 25 yards (the distance across the main AFC pool) at a time. This was partially because I couldn't do a flip turn and thereby keep going after my 25 yards, partially because 25 yards did me in. While I was able to get from one side of the pool to the other, it involved a lot of splashing and random motion and didn't happen particularly fast. I generally allowed about 60 seconds per 25, including rest. In case anybody was wondering, that's not particularly stellar, though as a starting-point…well, while not amazing, it's functional.
Phase Two: The Noticeably Less Awkward Phase
Eventually, the rest breaks between 25 yard trials started to decrease. I wasn't swimming non-stop (that involves learning how to do a flip turn), but my confidence was up. The days where 15 minutes of halting 25s started taking on the appearance of something from a distantly forgotten past even though (of course) they weren't, seeing as those days were a week or two prior.
Phase Three: The Almost Capable of Doing a Flip Turn Phase
By then, I figured I might as well learn how to do a flip turn. My dream of just being able to get in the pool and swim for an hour without stopping was appearing closer than ever. I just needed to learn how to avoid taking breaks. A few YouTube videos (and some serious trial and error later), I sort of got the hang of it one Sunday afternoon. Granted, it was a wildly inconsistent sort of flip turn. Sometimes my body would crash into the pool's hard tile wall. Sometimes my feet would manage to miss the wall and strike the bottom. I couldn't exactly share a lane and still manage to flip turn. But I could come at the wall from one way, flip and come out facing the opposite direction, the basic idea of the thing.
Phase Four: Burgeoning Distance
After I figured out a few basic tricks to attempting the flip turn, I started going after various distances. The first day I went for a relatively humble 250 yards, which was pushed to 400, reaching 1,000 within a week. I kept track of the distances in dark green Sharpie on the calendar on my desk. Sometimes I'd get excited and tell my roommate about my progress. My roommate told me it wouldn't last. I ignored him and felt celebratory anyway.
One day towards the end of September, I got in the pool and, halfway through my first 25, decided to go for a 1650, the swimmer's mile. My bright green suit billowing out behind me, I started to swim. More accurately, I started to not stop swimming. Turn after turn, length after length. Sometimes I lost track of how far I'd swam and repeated the most recent 50 or so yards for good measure. Ten minutes went by, then twenty, then thirty.
Forty-five minutes later, I was done. I felt good, too—I'd been going at a fairly gradual pace and still had enough energy to splash around for more than twenty minutes, studiously avoiding the hot tub just a few feet over. I called my parents to let them know that I'd finished a 1650 (which was possibly an 1800, depending on how badly I counted).
My initial goal for the school year was to run a 5K in March. I was very certain that I'd get it done in March. But sometime in September, I decided that I might be ready by January or February.
One or two days after the 1650, my goal became much more ambitious.
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