Swimming...

I was lucky enough to be born in Australia in 1960, at a time when learning to swim was considered an essential skill, as important as learning to read and write or cross the road safely. Looking back over the long years since that time I am a little suprised to see what a major role swimming has had in my life and the joy it has given me. This for a man who had no special skill in the water.

A swimming timeline...

I am 66 years old as I write this page now so I will be looking back over about 55 years of memories, trying to see the pattern and perhaps also preserving the memories themselves in case the foolishness of old age takes them away from me.

Swimming in the 60s...

My younger years were spent in a small country town with a population of about 30,000 people in a sub-tropical climate. There were long hot summers and shorter winters and with a local swimming pool, a river and the beach nearby there was ample opportunity to learn to swim and be involved in water activities.

I went to swimming lessons at the local pool and became a proficient swimmer of freestyle, breastroke and backstroke. I also qualified for the base level life saving qualification which I did not take too seriously at the time as I had convinced myself at the time that I was physically quite a weak swimmer; how could I ever save anybody from the water? The stories that you tell yourself when left unexamined can follow you around for such a long time!

I also spent some time swimming in the surf on family holidays and this sort of swimming I look back upon with great affection. I always remember many decades ago being pummeled by the waves, spun upside down and churned under the water before eventually coming up for air with salt water up my nose and a considerable deposit of sand everywhere else.

There was not such a great appreciation of the effects of the sun back then and I also have memories of sunburn: cracked lips and scabby noses vast swathes of peeling skin. This has paid back richly in more recent times with all the pre cancerous skin changes to burn off my luckily nothing more sinister. But the waves booming on the beach, the scrambles across headlands, these memories are still with me...

Swimming in the long years...

But like many people with this exposure to swimming much of this dried up when the later teenage years claimed me and after this there was the arrival of responsibility in all of its varied forms. I had to work, I married and had children of my own; there seemed little time for swimming for myself and I confess, Gentle Reader, that for several decades my own swimming efforts were intermittent. Anybody reading this who has assumed the role of an adult in this modern world will know of the sacrifices that need to be made for family. Just remember to keep something for yourself iin this time.

My own children went through swimming lessons and and had substantially less skin exposure to the Australian sun that I suffered in my youth. And despite my self imposed label as a weak swimmer yet I still managed to save one of my children when she was swept out in a rip way beyond the headland on a lonely beach. A life saved but still I believed that I was not a strong swimmer and that it was luck and not skill that saved my child. That child now has children of her own and there is a great joy in seeing these children in their own swimming lessons.

Squad swimming...

With my children grown up and moved out I gained a membership to a very flashy local gym that had a 6 lane, 50 metre indoor, heated pool. And so for the second time of my life I had formal classes on swimming and stroke correction as I thrashed up and down in a class for enthusiastic but not particularly skilled swimmers.

But after some considerable work I landed in a squad group of mostly triathletes who were truly an incredibly fit, focussed and hard-working bunch of people. 0500hrs to 0630hrs three times a week throughout the year with sessions of 4 to 4.8 kilometres. I remember that Monday was usually distance, Wednesday strength and Fridays were sprints although the crafty coach would mix this up a little to keep swimmers on their toes. I did not become the fastest swimmer in the pool but, Gentle Reader, I became a very strong swimmer! And thus the false message I taught myself all those years ago was gone.

Swimming in retirement...

Covid shut the pools down and soon afterwards I retired from the front line of the Covid effort in ICU. And at that time I decided that the time was also over when I would hammer myself so hard in the pool. I had accomplished what I came for as well as picking up much experience, much joy and many, many good memories. And letting go is a useful skill as you age.

I still swim in the local pools and my plan is to continue swimming there until I turn 75 and then beyond (old people get free entry at 75!). My previous pace from the squad days has largely gone but I still feel the strength and more importantly the joy of swimming. My focus has shifted to road marathon running but still I feel the pull of the water and I am hoping that health and circumstances will allow me to continue into a truly old age. And always I will watch for the narratives I spin for myself, my true takeaway message from my long swimming life...

And in conclusion...

Please feel free to contact me with any errors of fact that you have found on this page, any errors of opinion will probably remain uncorrected. In the meantime I am having a great time in my retirement, what about you?