On Tuesday 25 March I’ll be swimming 3km to raise money for a local charity. That’s only two days away. Two! Oh bugger!
When I made the decision to do the swim I didn’t really think it through fully. I have a habit of seeing a light bulb appear above my head, and whatever idea is sitting there in that bright, and sometimes rather misleading light, I take hold of it and I run as fast as I can. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my unusual mind I think I can outrun sense and logic, when in actual fact I can’t even run for a bus.
I was originally inspired by the Sport Relief Swimathon, and while I was procrastinating (very probably in the hope that if I did that for long enough there would be no spaces remaining in the swim) it appeared that my sister was considering doing it, too. It turns out that we’d also been thinking of doing our own swim so that we could each raise money for local charities, instead of our sponsorships ending up in a big pot with no idea who it might be helping.
I confess that part of my reason for being unsure about the official Swimathon was the number of people who would be swimming at the same time. I’m someone who would rather be the slow one in the lane letting other people past, than the quicker person who feels like she’s fighting her way past the painfully slow, frustrating people. And it would be choppy! Someone who did a previous Swimathon actually reported that she’d felt a lot of motion sickness due to the large number of people contributing to the extra movement of the water!
So all things considered, it felt right to find a way to complete the swim in a different pool away from the hordes in their mandatory, unattractive swimming caps. I hate those, by the way. Not because they’re unflattering, but because I love the feeling of the water rushing through my hair. And they make me feel too hot. Yes, okay, it’s partly because they’re unflattering.
My sister worked her magic and found us a location to swim, which means I’ll be joining her in Sheffield. The bonus here doesn’t just involve extra family time and having the support of someone who ‘gets it’, but also the possibility of a recovery Jacuzzi afterwards. Are you reading this, sis? Don’t forget… Jacuzzi!
It’s well known amongst our wider family and our friends that we’re a competitive family. I don’t think my in-laws had the full grasp of just how competitive we can become before they joined our family, but it didn’t take long for them to realise. From backgammon and scrabble in holiday sunshine, to SingStar and poker in gin and whisky induced states, we play to win. We always have and we always will, and it will be taught down the generations that this is a positive thing. But we also have a sense of pride, and while we are (usually) humble winners, we’re also (usually) gracious losers, and this will be taught, too. So upon realising that for the first time I’d be achieving something alongside a sibling instead of competing against her, I didn’t know quite what to do. It hadn’t happened before, working together like this!
What transpired was that we’re really rather good at being mutually supportive. Emails and texts here and there to check on progress, and encouraging, “get yourself there, you’ll feel better for it” moments helped immensely. I have to admit to a tiny bit of competition in the early stages. One text from my sister told me she’d managed 70 lengths, and my immediate (though not vocal) response was to attempt to swim 80! I did it, too, and at that time it was a personal best. I quickly reported back to her about reaching 80, but my achievement was short-lived when 150 was announced. So that was that, defeat admitted and the only person remaining to compete against was me.
Since that day I’ve made a conscious effort to concentrate purely on myself in the water. It’s ridiculously easy to start trying to push past my boundaries depending on who’s swimming around me. Do the slow pensioners spur me on? Nope, not in the slightest. Does the nice bloke I see intermittently with a cheery good morning and on whom, I admit, I do have a teeny crush, spur me on? Hell yes! It’s been a while since I’ve seen him and I want him to see how much I’ve improved!
Oh dear.
I’m a lot more controlled now with my training, though. I’ll be swimming 3km. That’s 120 lengths of a standard 25m pool. It’s not a sprint, not by any stretch of my imagination (and I think by now we all know I have an active imagination!), so focussing on endurance has been key. Pushing through the initial pain in my arms and shoulders has been my biggest hurdle, but I know it’s possible because I’ve done it over and over. It wasn’t until I started swimming again this year that I realised how much pain I have in my fingers, so instead of whinging about that and making excuses, I found exercises and different positions to help and now, during the swim at least, my digits are significantly less stiff and sore. Back pain is present all day, every day (and has been for decades), just to varying degrees. Instead of making the excuses that I used to, I’ve adapted my sessions to cause the least stress possible and aide quicker recovery. Just changing most of my swims from mornings before work to evenings has helped. My back has had time to ease itself out of the initial scream of the morning, and even just five minutes in the Jacuzzi makes a huge difference to my mobility afterwards.
Small adjustments to my training, a highly competitive streak and the stubbornness not to let something beat me have all allowed me to reach the point at which I am today.
When I first started this challenge I decided to swim 2.5km (100 lengths). Well, I’ve reached that goal twice and the second time was less physically stressful than the first so I started to think, ‘okay, I’ve got to 100 but can I reach 120?’. That right there is my competitive side channelled where it should be; towards me.
Now the words of Sharon Gayter, an ultra distance runner in Teesside who recently spoke at International Women’s Day, keep going round in my head. She spoke of how she started running. A colleague gave her a pair of running shoes and she decided to try knowing she wouldn’t get very far. Her first attempts barely saw her manage a mile, but she kept trying and she kept moving her goal just a little step further away. One day she would run one mile, but with perseverance she was running two, then three, then four, until now… she holds countless world records for running across countries and up mountains, and that’s only the start! All because one day someone gave her the right shoes, she put them on and she tried.
So that’s why I’ve moved my challenge from 2.5km to 3km. I know I can reach 2.5, now I want to see not whether I can reach 3 (because I know I can), but what time it takes me to reach 3! I know it’s likely to be around the same time as my sister swims 5km, and that’s absolutely fine by me. I’m not swimming against her, I’m swimming with her.
Today my shoulders are aching and I often have the remainder of 'chlorine headaches' , but they pass quickly enough. Each time I stand up my legs ache in the only way they can when the muscles have been worked harder than they can ever remember, and that’s fine because I know it’s the best kind of ache. Every shift and shuffle in my chair, and every stretch, reminds me that my back is suffering, but that’s fine because it’s a different kind of suffering; it’s a good exercise ache that’s slowly overpowering the broken ache that I’ve felt for so many years. These are all aches that may never disappear entirely regardless of how fit I become, but while I feel them they’re reminders that I’m doing something good for myself so I’ll just keep going.
I’m not superwoman and I never have been, I’m just a normal (erm… ‘normal’) person with aches and pains like everyone else. For now, I choose not to let those aches and pains beat me, and instead to push them over and stamp on them with a huge steel toe capped boot and let them know who’s boss. I choose to do this while begging people for money so that my local chosen charity can help a few more people put their lives back together. I have no doubt that I’m annoying people with my repeated requests for money, but I don’t care. Don’t look, block me, or sponsor me so I’ll shut up and go away.
I don’t think for one moment that this is the last swimming challenge I’ll set for myself. In a few weeks I’ll need to take a break from it while minor surgery on a toe heals properly, and I already know that it’s going to mentally challenge me not to be underwater for a while. I’ll even miss trying not to see old men’s bits in their ill-fitting trunks, and avoiding facial contact with suspect-looking random things floating in the water, and I’ll need to find a way to keep these dodgy bones and muscles from relaxing too much and getting used to doing nothing. I can’t do nothing.
I know it sounds cliché, but I’ve discovered a few things about myself in the last month that I didn’t know, and I like what I found, and that’s just from a little swimming challenge that many people could probably already do with barely a second thought. For me, though, it’s already an achievement and I haven’t even completed it yet.
Two years ago when I started swimming again after a break of about 20 years I was tentative and slow. I kept my head above the water because submerging my face terrified me, and my hair hardly became wet at all. My first visit to the pool saw me swimming 12 lengths in the same time it takes me to swim 60 now. I swam like my mother, scared and hesitant.
Today I will put on my goggles, take a deep breath and glide under the water (as much as an overweight girl in polyester and elastane can glide) for most of the time I'm there, and I'll enjoy every moment. There was a point at which I didn’t want to be scared anymore, and I read advice and watched youtube videos to find the best ways to breathe while swimming, to improve my stroke and hopefully make the whole experience something to anticipate instead of dread. It only took a few weeks to teach myself not to be scared of being under water, and I haven’t looked back since (well, perhaps at the nice bloke who spurs me on!).
I suppose what I'm trying to say, albeit in a long-winded way while asking for money(!), is that I’m just one normal person in a world full of normal people. We can all do these things if we really want.
Any one of us can climb a mountain if we only take that first step.
If you’d like to sponsor me you can do so here: http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/KirstyBaillie
The page will be open for donations for a month after the swim, so if you’re reading this afterwards it would be lovely if you would click on the link and give as much as you can.
The local charity is My Sister’s Place in Middlesbrough. You can read all about them here: http://mysistersplace.org.uk/
