Adult Swim

This is Pieter van den Hoogenband.
He is the world record holder for the 100 meter freestyle.
I'm catching up.

Yesterday, being Tuesday, saw me head down to the ol' Berkley Carrol School for my weekly swim class. I'm now sitting at home writing a post my blog, which means I once again didn't drown. Yay!

Last night's class had a much lower attendance than usual, which was nice, as there were only three people in most of the pool's four lanes. Work yesterday was slow, which left me feeling exhausted by the time the store closed at 8 p.m. I always have a hard time getting motivated to exercise when I'm feeling tired, but having co-worker Troy also going to class left me no escape, and we walked over to the pool after closing the store.

Class started out as it usually does, with coach John Stewart having us swim warm-up laps. Afterwards Stewart had us swim with pull-buoys. I'd seen these when I worked as a life guard at the Eastern Athletic Club, but had never used one before. It's essentially two tubes of Styrofoam connected by nylon webbing. To use one, you pinch it between your thighs and swim with your arms as you ordinarily would, except you don't kick, because you're holding the float between your thighs. The effect was amazing. Suddenly, I felt like my body was floating effortlessly on top of the water. My swimming instantaneously went from doggy paddle to tiger-shark. It was awesome!

After a few extremely satisfying laps, Stewart had us put the floats away, and announced that we'd be doing a time trial. As a cyclist, time trialing is one of my best events. I even won a collegiate TT way back in March of 2006. I love the the event's honesty. There's no where to hide in a TT, it's just you, the road, and the task-master on your handlebar. But it's all very different when the TT is of the topless-aquatic variety.

We were divided into two waves of eight, and I found myself in the first of these. I had no expectations for myself, but I also know how competitive I am. The event was 100 yards long, or 4 lengths of the pool. Stewart told us to pace ourselves during the first 25 yards, and then "open the throttle." Well, anyone who knows me knows exactly what I did with that piece of advice. Let's just say the throttle was open all the way from the word "go."

Out of the corner of my eye I was able to see both the man I was sharing a lane with, and a woman with a red bathing cap in the next lane. By the end of the first quarter I was at least a length ahead of the man in my lane, and even with Red, who seemed to be moving effortlessly through the water. By the end of the first lap the man in my lane was well off the pace, and I was still even with Red, who seemed to gliding as easily as I had been with the buoy. At this point, I was thrashing the water just about as hard as I thought I could, probably wasting all kinds of energy that should have been going into my propulsion through the water. All of the technique and form that I'd been taught in the previous weeks went straight out the window, and still, I couldn't pull ahead of Red.

With one quarter left to swim, she was well ahead of me, so I started kicking harder. In the end, I finished with a time of 1 minute, 36 seconds. Red (whose name turned out to be Nadia) finished six seconds ahead of me. Of course, I immediately felt that I could have gone faster, and maybe I could have, but that's the nature of a time trial. You always feel like you could have gone faster. And in any case, Nadia is clearly a superior swimmer.

When the water had settled, Nadia had posted the fastest time in the class, and I was second, just one second ahead of another woman, whose name I didn't catch. I put it all in perspective by looking up world records for the 100 meter freestyle. The record, set during the Sydney Olympics, is 47.84 seconds. That's a whole lot faster than 1 minute and 36 seconds. I've got a long way to go.

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