Crawling

I'm a strong swimmer, in that I have stamina: I keep going and going. However I am not fast. If I were to compete in a race, I'd cut a woeful figure. Primarily this is because I only do breast stroke. I love breast stroke. Though I've changed my technique over the last few months - improving it, finessing - my love for the essential way my body moves through the water remains the same. Slow and smooth, it allows me space and time to bring my mind into regulation with my body. Dare I say it, it is meditative. 

     Lately, however, I've had to face a fact - I can't get by anymore without a good front crawl technique. Recently I was reminded of this when I rang up Brighton Swimming Club to join their sea-swimming group. Talking to their head, Fiona, about my swimming abilities, everything was going  well - she even proposed we 'test the waters' together with a swim around Brighton Pier.  A couple of months ago I swam easily the around the West Pier so I knew this would be no problem. But then I told her that I don't do front crawl. Silence. We can't accept you unless you can do, well, at least sixty lengths of it. 
     So there it was - my dreams of sea swimming daily, pier to pier, dashed.  I know it makes sense. Any sea swimming club needs its members to be able to shift into front crawl when waves become unruly, when the current tugs in unfavourable directions. Breast stroke is never going to get you to shore in a storm. Sometimes it's wild out there, and Brighton Swimming Club swims every day, all weathers. How naive could I be? Perhaps it can be your winter project? Fiona suggested tentatively. I'm sure you'll be up to sixty by new year. 

     Fiona hasn't seen my front crawl. Essentially, it resembles someone drowning. However I took  the bull by the horns and two weeks ago I had my first swimming lesson. James, a young instructor,  began the lesson by saying, Let's see what you can do - go on, do a length, any stroke. I breast stroked up and down the end lane of Kind Alfred's, calm and swift. Then he asked me to show him my front crawl. I managed quarter of a length before sinking -  mouth full of chlorine, lungs full of water. We tried me using a float. Then turning just to one side. Half an hour sped by. What I learnt is that I know virtually nothing about how to do the front crawl and that learning in the King Alfred pool is a horrible, humiliating experience - lifeguards gathering at the poolside to witness my failure. 

     So I've taken to teaching myself, with a little help from a friend. I do my regular sixty lengths of breast stroke, and then try out half a length here, quarter of a length there. I've even tried in the sea. It's hard. My body is a jingle jangle of movements, desperate to come together: feet, behind, head, mouth, elbow, fingers. Sometimes one or more of them does, and then I'm off, tasting the freedom of what it might be like to really be able to swim this way. However mainly I thrash about in the water, swallowing too much of it - panicking, exhausted. 

     But I'm determined. I will learn. I have until April. I taste the desire for it, to change my stroke and experience the water in a different way - to speed gracefully through open water.