Swimming
knocked me out yesterday evening, and I’m still beat this morning…and
sore. Lots of stroke work and kicking, not to mention the all-important
breathing. I’ve made enough progress to begin putting all three
elements together. I’ve made nowhere near enough progress, however, to
put them together properly, smoothly, correctly, or anything close.
Chop, chop, thrash, flail, gasp. Maddening. When I was young, learning
most of my sports, this would have driven me to a kind of frustrated
rage, usually unattractively expressed in a kind of monomaniacal
obsession. Now, though, I’ve achieved the wisdom that descends when frustration becomes a constant, rage requires
too much energy, and obsession is a distant memory. So I’m trying to
just churn along doing my best and, I hope, improving slowly.

On
the other hand, when my teacher was talking to me about the way I was
lifting my arms out of the water during recovery, she said, “there’s a
drill for that, but I don’t want to get you bogged down with drills.” I
imagined all my old friends laughing. I got my drill. Of course, having achieved the wisdom of old age, I’ll do it
reasonably. Pretty reasonably.