Swimming for me has never been for fun, it’s been a battle for survival.
I learnt to swim as a kid, but I guess I did the bare minimum to get my certificates. I even got a photo of me sitting next to the British Olympian David Wilkie.
Clearly there was more that I needed to do if swimming was to feature in my future, which I didn’t, so it wasn’t.
I don’t float I tell people. I sink.
Now that’s a real confidence blow, a weight on the mind if you like. A reason to stay in the safety of the shallows or attach yourself to the magnetic reassurance of the poolside.
This isn’t to dismiss watersports. I like floating around on the water; canoeing, paddleboarding, kayaking all get a big tick from me. But in these sports the buoyancy comes from the toys.
I don’t float I tell myself, I have got to keep moving but this comes at a cost. High energy expenditure, short breathing, constant awareness of how deep the water is, nervoulsy monitoring how far to the nearest bank takes it toll.
Everyone can float is what I read on the internet. Boy that just makes it worst. Just relax is what swimming friends say. I AM relaxed I glug back.
No I haven’t done anything to debunk my ingrained belief. I haven’t sought out the advice of a swimming coach or joined a club. I have done nothing because swimming just wasn’t fun.
I have thought for the longest time that swimming just isn’t for me, but a couple of recent experiences have made me reconsider.
The first was in Anglesey this summer. I was fooling around in the bay, fully clad in a wetsuit as I always am when confronting water in the wild.
This year it felt different, there were warm patches in the shallow water that felt, dare I say comfortable. After I had fulfilled my duties of paddling the kids around in the canoe I grabbed the full face snorkel and proceeded to scope the bay.
Never getting out of my depth, head down I swam parallel to the shore. I could see the sandy sea bed clearly, right down to the ripples in the sand. I saw a couple beady eyed crabs scuttle away as I floated over them. Yes I was floating.
As I got closer to some rocks I was met by seaweed suspended vertically from the ocean floor, swaying in the gentle tide. It was beautiful, a million miles away from the creepy mess that washes up on the beach. It was like something out of a natural history programme, was I enjoying this?
The second time was in the public bath. Can you believe the non swimmer had been designated swim tutor, a task I had been dutifully carrying out weekly for some months with a break over the winter.
We were getting somewhere. Luca had discovered he could put his head under the water and it was still there when he came back up. The key was accepting goggles.
Our swimming sessions became as much about exploring the underwater world as it was trying to propel ourselves across the surface.
I was also taking full advantage of what ever floatation devices came my way, and as Luca was becoming more confident I could float up and down the pool just finding my own space.
It slowly dawned on me that instead of fighting my body to do something it clearly didn’t want to do, a small amount of additional buoyancy was completely transforming my experience in the water.
I could float without expending energy, I could breathe easy, I was relaxed.
Now my time alternated between floating on the surface, nattering away without a care in the world and diving under, enjoying the experience of swimming underwater. I challenged myself to see how long I could go without touching the bottom.
I caught myself rethinking the activity of swimming. I had always seen swimming as either lane swimming or free chaos. But I was enjoying something different, the shear pleasure of weightlessness, of suspension in the liquid medium.
Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if I could go to a pool and just float around. No one would frown at me if I chose to wear a wetsuit or a buoyancy aid and there were no lanes, no balls flying over my head and I could just paddle around with a snorkel.
There would be activities to keep me interested of course, floating platforms I could swim around, arches for me to swim under, tunnels I could swim through and objects to explore underwater. Yes that’s it a water exploration park.
I was liking this. Bubble columns and foam kelp gardens to swim through, caves to swim into, irregular shaped pools, areas of light and dark, still water and moving water.
My vision, no doubt a health and safety nightmare. As a climber I can see parallels with the kickback to indoor climbing . Why do you need to turn something that exists in real life into something artificial and indoors?
Is all of this just a distraction, am I just fooling myself and trying to avoid the hard work of learning to float?