Pool a glorious return to pre-pandemic life
Finally, shortly after Memorial Day, we resumed our favorite fitness activity. Lord, it hurt. Sorry, walking and barbells do little to prepare the body for the aerobic and strength demands of swimming. The ordeal was worsened by multitudes of floating cicadas, but we would not be deterred. Tragic as their brief open air existence may be, we shed no tears at their passing.
For the first week or so, you might have renamed us “Flotsam” and “Jetsam,” but, hey, we were back in the water and misery loves company. Swimming is one of the many passions Sandy and I share. I knew she was the “one” when, after I pushed her into the pool at one of my Union College swim meets, she just smiled and showed off her excellent stroke.
Gradually, the agony has evolved into mere pain. The pace? Well, consider that in the time it took me to do a 1,500-meter swim a month ago, Katie Ledecky could have swum twice that and been showered and dressed.
Swimming has never been just exercise for me. During my teens, it was the core of my identity and key to my social, emotional and physical development. More than that, it determined my fate. During a rare Philadelphia snowstorm, my decidedly non-helicopter mother encouraged me to drive my jalopy with bald tires across the city to swim practice. There, I encountered the Union College swim coach who had, by chance, been in town and looking to recruit good student athletes. Everything that followed, the great luck of meeting the girl of my dreams, a superb education and the wonderful life we shared as residents of the Capital Region flowed from that serendipitous event.
Our 50 meters long community pool is a true “Olympic” pool. It’s a long, long way from one end to the other, more than twice the distance of our YMCA indoor facility and astronomically longer than the average backyard bathtubs people deign to refer to as “pools.”
I don’t begrudge non-swimmers their pleasures, but as far as I’m concerned the only reason to get in a pool is to swim laps. If you enjoy baking in the sun around a glittering body of water, jumping in from time to time to cool off, horsing around tossing balls, dunking and splashing friends or yelling “Marco” and “Polo” ad nauseam, bless your heart but count me out.
I don’t begrudge non-swimmers their pleasures, but as far as I’m concerned the only reason to get in a pool is to swim laps. If you enjoy baking in the sun around a glittering body of water, jumping in from time to time to cool off, horsing around tossing balls, dunking and splashing friends or yelling “Marco” and “Polo” ad nauseam, bless your heart but count me out.