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Me Time
Swimming Becomes a Fit Escape for One Mom
By Jenn Director Knudsen
Determination kept me returning to our club's pool. Fear of looking like an idiot to the other regular swimmers pushed me to ramp up the number of laps of crawl I could do in a row. After eight weeks of swimming and constantly wearing the walking cast, my stress fracture healed and I slowly, slowly, returned to jogging. Yet I didn't abandon early-morning swims.
Being suspended in water feels so good and so right on my bones. No pounding the pavement, no uncomfortably tight leg muscles, no sore feet.
Now, nearly a year after my stress fracture and first few tentative forays into the pool, I spend 45 minutes swimming, doing the crawl stroke the entire time. I no longer mind the drive downtown, and now I own a Speedo swimsuit and a swim cap. I even use a shampoo and conditioner for swimmers.
Our club has nearly 20,000 members, yet I'm often only one of four early-bird people in the pool; on weekend mornings I sometimes get the 25-meter pool to myself.
Swimming is much like jogging: It's a solo activity and it affords time to think and reflect. The rhythmic movements involved in doing the same stroke over and over are similar to how the feet strike the pavement, footfall after footfall. And there's something very calming about the muffled, somewhat warped underwater sounds of exhaling bubbles and legs and arms churning water.
A friend who'd also healed from a running-induced stress fracture once told me she hated swimming. It felt too much like rehabilitation therapy, she says. She was only partially right. Swimming is therapy, for the brain and the bones.
