The Fifty-Nine Minute Mile

I know some people just can't understand it.

"How can you do it? Isn't it just SO boring?"

I think meditation would be boring and yet some people swear by it. I never find swimming boring.

The only bit I don't like about early-morning swimming is when the alarm goes off and I get out of bed. I hate that bit. HATE it. So the key is to do it as fast as possible, so I'm up before I can think about it.

I eat a huge bowl of porridge first, so I'll have time to digest it a bit, and then I get dressed. It only takes nine minutes to drive to the pool if I'm earlier than the rush-hour traffic.

When there was all the snow and ice recently, there was something very strangely pleasant about the car temperature saying minus 4 in the strange early-morning snowy light. And then into the sudden warmth of the leisure centre - I loved it.

I love the first few strokes and the feel of the water. Then I get going and actually the first few lengths are the hardest - I feel not quite co-ordinated somehow. Between twelve lengths and twenty lengths I feel a bit tired - - still not going properly, and still a lot of lengths to go. But after twenty I feel - - hey, suddenly I'm nearly half way. Even more nearly at thirty! And then, by the time I get to forty I have really got into the rhythm of it, and feel I could keep going all morning.

What do I think about? The honest answer is not much. I just enjoy it. I am so busy generally in my life that I have to think about something or other most of the time - - always preparing, always planning. This is one time when I don't have to. So - if I think at all! - I think about how to improve my stroke, and try different ways of doing that. When I'm swimming in the sea - my favourite - I think a bit more - about the waves and the people and boats and sunshine and seagulls and anything else that's happening. But in the pool, I really don't think much.

Yesterday, when I'd done fifty lengths, I looked at the clock and suddenly realised that I'd been going rather faster than usual - - and that perhaps, if I put a bit of a sprint on, I might just be able to achieve my goal of swimming the mile in under an hour.

So I concentrated on swimming as fast as I could - - still not very fast, I'm not a fast swimmer and I swim breast stroke - but faster than normal! I didn't look at the clock again until I was on my final length - number sixty-four. It's hard for me to see the clock until I get near it, because even with my prescription goggles my eyesight isn't brilliant. But as I got nearer, I realised I was going to make it. Fifty-nine minutes!

I've never done that before. In my twenties and thirties, I never usually swam more than half a mile and in my forties I slowed down a bit because I was diabetic and hadn't been diagnosed, and just didn't have so much energy. More recently, I increased my swim to a kilometre - forty-two lengths - but I just didn't realise how easy I'd find it to increase it to a mile.

I tend to be a bit slow in some ways. It often takes me a while to discover things. I'm so pleased I have discovered this early-morning swimming. It sets me up for the rest of the day - I feel far more relaxed, and much less anxious. I feel so lucky that my Mum taught me to swim when I was little, and that my parents took me swimming such a lot.

I can't go swimming again until Sunday as I have lots of early-morning work this week. Some of it has been moved to this week from a couple of weeks ago when it was so snowy. I'll miss the swimming: but I'll be back at the pool on Sunday morning. It feels like a sneaked-in holiday: a secret pleasure.