Kevin Helliker wrote a wonderful
article in the Tuesday Wall Street Journal about swimming as
exercise. I swim for exercise three days a week (and walk two days).
I never thought to write an article about it. I started off with a
distaste for swimming laps, as did Helliker.
Swimming was difficult for me to start doing, having been a runner for thirty years. I started in a small pool, early in the morning, doing the breast stroke one way and a breast stroke on my back the other way. For more than four years I did this daily, enjoying the stars and the clouds.
Finally I was forced into a real pool
in a lap lane and I learned to crawl one way and do a real backstroke
the other way. I learned to love it. It turns out to be more
meditative than other exercises and also good for thinking. I like
the camaraderie of the locker room and the strange stilted
abbreviated language that prevails there.
I love swimming wherever I travel in the world. I've been in many oceans, lakes and know the ceilings of dozens of pools on many continents.