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learning to swim

Learning to Swim at Seventy (part 3)

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Progress and Swimming The English Channel

I was moved up to the next class a couple of months ago. I get to learn in the big pool now. I have a different teacher, and am learning different things. He is trying to teach me to become a swimmer, not just helping me not to drown.

Swimming the English Channel for Diabetes U.K

I was diagnosed as a diabetic about forty years ago. Living with it can be a challenge at times. But, as my wee sister, who is a nurse, once told me, “Diabetes doesn’t have to be a pain in the arse, John. There are lots of other sites you can use to inject your insulin.”

Diabetes UK has an annual find raiser, which involves swimming across the English Channel. Not actually swimming the channel, though I supposed you could do that if you wanted to. The idea is that you swim the distance over a period of three months.  You can swim all the way across, across and back or half way. So I have also signed up to swim half way across the English Channel.

I’m not exactly a strong nor a fast swimmer, but I thought that over the three months of the challenge, that I should be able to manage the eleven miles in bursts of twenty-five or fifty metres. So far I have swum just over nine miles in a bit over month, so I might see if I can make it all the way across.

My information and donations page can be found here.

You can use it to see how I am doing.

learning to swim

Learning to Swim at Seventy (part 2)

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Getting there

I am now seventy. I can swim. Not very well, nor very far but I can actually swim.

In my last post, I mentioned that the teaching pool at the Malden Centre has a great feature. Its greatest depth is only one meter. Its less than great feature, is that the depth quite quickly becomes half a meter. Drowning is difficult, but so is swimming once the water gets shallow.

I found a solution to this.

My wife Diane is a member of The River Club (not as posh as it sounds). It is a gym which has a swimming pool. The pool is about eighteen meters by six meters, but only one point four meters deep. So drowning is almost as difficult as in the Malden Centre teaching pool. Nevertheless, it has the great advantage being 1.4 meters deep over its entire length.

I had a trial session and liked what I saw. The facilities and gym equipment are good. The staff are friendly. The pool allows me to swim without finding myself out of my depth or running out of water. So, I signed myself up.

Since then, I have continued my weekly lessons at the Malden Centre. I also try to fit in a swim at the River Club at least twice per week. This has helped a lot. It lets me try out the things that Sue teaches us on a Monday night. It also allows me to concentrate on one aspect, for example my breaststroke kick.

I can now swim a full length of the pool comfortably, using breast or back stroke. I still struggle with front crawl (freestyle). Coordinating kicking, breathing and arms is difficult, for me. I haven’t tried butterfly yet.

River Club Swimming Pool

Another feature of the pool is that the roof is retractable. During the summer it is pulled back, and you can swim in the open air. It also allows access to an outside deck, where you can sunbathe.

So, I learned to swim by my seventieth birthday. I have lots of room for improvement, but I am getting there, slowly.

How breaststroke should be done
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Learning to Swim at Seventy

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First steps (or strokes)

I’m not actually seventy just yet. “Learning to Swim at Seventy” has more of a ring to it than “Learning to Swim at Sixty-nine and three-quarters”. I am learning to swim though.

A lot of people are surprised that I can’t swim. I did spend about twenty years at sea and most people assume that seamen should be capable of swimming. I used to rationalise my inability to swim by saying that being capable of swimming would prolong the agony. Why swim around for an hour and then drown anyway. Just get it over with. Besides, we had life jackets.

I began to feel I was missing out. Last summer we had a holiday in Croatia. We cruised around the islands on a small (thirty-five passenger) ship. Every day we would anchor in a bay, to allow us to go swimming. Diane loved it. I only watched and felt I was missing something.

As part of my Christmas present Diane paid for a series of swimming lessons at our local leisure centre.

I started the week before Christmas. Our instructor, Sue, asked me a few questions. Was I afraid of the water? – no not really. Could I swim at all? – again, no not really. With that, she gave me a float and told me to get in the teaching pool. The teaching pool at The Malden Centre is great in one respect. It is a maximum of one meter deep. This greatly reduces the possibility of drowning.

The first exercise was learning to kick holding on to the float. Kicking was easy. Kicking, moving and breathing, all at the same time, less so.

Over time, I started to improve. The first thing I had to learn to do was how to stand up. Initially I had a great deal of difficulty in putting my legs down when I wanted to stop. When I wanted to swim, they would sink. When I wanted to stand up, they would float. I also needed to learn to breathe air rather than water.

I find it easier to swim on my back. Breathing is easier this way. But, I veer off to one side.

The main disadvantage of the teaching pool is that it’s depth reduces to less than half a meter. This means that, especially when swimming breast stroke, your feet end up hitting the bottom.

Nevertheless I am improving.