Lifestyle: Can swimming make you be more mindful? - Worcester Mag

I’ve avoided indoor pools for years — abandoned gurgling basins, eluded lapping gutters, sworn off turbid deck air.

The smell of chlorine exhausts me. One single sniff causes my arms to levitate into a streamline while my legs pirouette for the door. It’s the scent of irrecoverable talent. A bouquet of fear.

I joined the world of competitive swimming when I was 8 years old and from that day forward, dry land remained a rarity. At my peak, I was practicing nine times a week and teaching lessons on my only day off. My swimming career stopped being fun long before it ended.

I have not felt the urge to suit up in over a decade, a notion that took me by surprise when I arrived at WPI a few weeks ago to interview one of my former coaches — the legendary Don Lemieux of Greenwood Swim Club. A facility of WPI’s caliber hadn’t existed in Worcester during my swimming career.

"How unfair," I found myself thinking as I made my way down the polished pool deck.

It took less than five minutes with Coach Lemieux for him to remind me that life is not fair. And, furthermore, that the Worcester Area Masters program would probably appeal to me if I was willing to put in the work. I decided to lift my personal ban on bathing caps, if only for one last practice.

There was so much I had erased from my memory.

First of all, I had clean forgotten the way swimming demands complete attention in the present moment. It is one of the only activities that imparts an acute awareness of one’s own breath. I am a person who is prone to thinking my way out of most uncomfortable experiences, but I realize now that 5 a.m. practices taught me the tenets of mindfulness long before Oprah or Gwyneth. In the pool, there are no escapes or distractions, save the bold linear markers along the bottom of each lane. It's the only environment where I allow myself to perceive excruciating pain with sharp attention.

I had also lost sight of my affinity for storing data sets in my head. For years, intervals, splits and yardage totals had propelled my internal calculator. Every second under water required a level of mathematical grappling I now reserve for tax season.

Competitive swimming increased my endurance both physically and intellectually. There was a time in my life when I could tell you exactly how long it took for a minute to pass without counting the seconds or consulting a clock. I possessed an intimate knowledge of time. I knew what one minute felt like. Now, my brain is so nurtured by iPhone algorithms that it struggles to compute more than one thing at a time.

The part I had blotted out, almost entirely, was the euphoric feeling of touching the wall at the end of a race or a workout. There is a weightless, tingling sense of self worth that nothing but speed inspires in me. Swimming is punishing in the moment and blissful after the fact — the opposite of bourbon. It is its own reward.

As a young swimmer, my teammates and I were fiercely competitive, but I’d also like to think we were respectful. We shook hands at the end of our races and cheered each other on. We pushed one another to be better. We shared a vehement admiration for oxygen.

When I posted a photo on my Instagram story after completing my second WAM practice, I received multiple messages from former teammates relaying the same reaction. “I feel instant anxiety when I look at that pool,” they all said. I could sympathize.

I have accepted the fact that I’ll probably never PR again. My best times are etched in my mind as achievements, but they’re no longer goals. The difference is that my agency has returned. I can choose the agony of training if I want it. And, to my own surprise, I do.

I wrote this column to hold myself accountable, but you can do that too. It’s just $10 to drop in for a single practice and cheaper if you commit to unlimited monthly workouts with Worcester Area Masters. The team practices seven days a week at WPI. A detailed schedule and more information is available online at wam-swimming.com. Jump in with me and remind yourself what it feels like to come up for air.