Time to get wet...

Tonight, I went to Swan Pool for the first time this year - not to swim, but to take my turn doing the register. After what has been a fairly oomph-less couple of months on the swimming front, I felt quite jealous watching every swim round in the rain. I surprised myself by itching to jump in, so perhaps it's all still in there somewhere. So, on Saturday, it's time to get wet.

But in the mean time, what's with the weather? Something a little more enticing would be nice.

Citizen, not subject

This is a very un-swimming post, but I thought I might as well get it out in the open now, since I'm probably going to get steadily crosser as the Queen's Jubilee approaches and it's best that you know why.

P and I divide our time between the two cities that we inhabit (Coventry and Bath), and we have now received invites in both locations to Jubilee Street parties. I don't want to offend anyone by putting up posters, or (as we have considered) putting republican postcards through neighbourhood doorways late at night. But good heavens.... let's stop with the fawning adoration of the public parasite-in-chief and her band of unmeritocratically over-privileged descendants.

So, now that street parties are going to be taking place near both our abodes, I see no alternative but to swim out into a suitably large stretch of water (see, it is partly about swimming) until it is all over.

In the mean time, in case it wasn't already obvious, I support a democratically elected head of state, and an end to the constitutional role of the monarchy. The monarchy is unaccountable, expensive, and relies on birthright as a means of accessing power and privilege. It just isn't good enough.

So, for the record, I am a....

And if you need me on Jubilee weekend, I'll be off swimming somewhere and most definitely not turning on my TV.

There, I feel better now that's off my chest. Normal service will be resumed shortly with some swimming book reviews and a summary of the research data on why people choose to swim the Channel.

Tempting...

Okay....so ... not two posts ago I was vowing to think seriously and carefully about whether or not I have the time to train for more long swims. The demands of work plus the complications of living in two places mean that I've been seriously reconsidering my plans to have a crack at MIMS  and / or have another go at the Channel. It's time, perhaps, to be sensible and not spread myself too thin; a good moment to concentrate on my career.  

But then this came along - the newly formed Xtrm Baleares Open Water Swim Services (XBOSS). In particular, they are providing support for the swim from Menorca to Majorca (the Menorca Channel), which looks very alluring indeed. 

Hmmm.

Paddling...

This is a little sentimental, but I thought I'd share one of my favourite pictures, and also one of my earliest memories - paddling in the sea with my Dad. Dad couldn't swim and I can't imagine what he would have made of what I've been up to over the last few years. He died 24 years ago next week, and I feel sad that he didn't get to see just how great my life turned out and to share that with me. But I love the fact that we seem like we're having a lot of fun in this picture.

Plus, you've got to love that swimming costume I've got on!

Time, time, time...

The good news is that after my recent swimming slump, my oomph is back and I'm itching to get outside and into the open water. I had another session with Keith at the Swim Shed yesterday, and there are some hopeful signs of progress. My left arm is no longer flailing wildly into the air, and I have managed to tame the downward and outward drift of my right arm into something approximating a catchy-looking catch. My two new points of focus are: (1) the tendency for my leading arm to move inwards towards the centre line when I breathe, which I then have to correct with a little outward sweep before catching, creating a little stopping point; and (2) my stiff little hands, which seem to be rigid with tension most of the time, rather than relaxed on recovery and entry, then gaining some tone into the catch and pull. Hard habits to break, but it's good to have something to work on.

But in the mean time, there has been a slight blow to my best laid, and rather over-optimistic longer term plans. Ideally, I have been hoping to do the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim and another English Channel swim in 2013 (all assuming that I can get into MIMS, of course). However, this plan was also somewhat dependent on me getting one of the fellowships that I had applied for, which would have given me a year out of teaching to write my swimming book. Sadly, I just found that I failed to get either of them - missing by a mile for one fellowship and not even making the first cut, and missing by a whisker on the second, making the final shortlist but not the final cut. I'm disappointed because a year to work on the book would have been wonderful, but it would also have given me the flexibility in my working time to train for a summer of swims. Instead, I'm going to have a full teaching load, plus the book to write, and I'm just not sure that I can do the swim training as well, and still do everything to the standard that I would like. I don't have to decide yet, but it's definitely something that I need to think about very carefully.

This is a wonderful sport, but it's very time-hungry, especially when you live as far from the sea as I do.

Mind over matter?

One of the most commonly repeated 'facts' about marathon swimming is that it is 80% mental and 20% physical. Now, I understand that this is partly rhetorical - an attempt to stress the importance of psychological preparedness - but I've always been slightly uncomfortable with it.

Firstly, it relies on a separation of mind and body that doesn't really hold up - think, for example, about how tiredness affects your mood and cognitive function; how hunger does the same. Conversely, psychological stress manifests itself in profoundly physiological ways - loss of sleep, skin problems, blood pressure, digestive problems etc. It's the same with fear - the pumping of adrenalin, the prickling of the skin. So, thinking about it in sociological terms (as i'm bound to do...), a mind-body split is a quite impoverished way to think about the complexity of our embodied lives and activities.

Following on from this, the opposition of mind-body is never a division of equals, but rather, a hierarchically structured binary. In this case, "mind" traditionally holds the superior position. Philosophy and the social sciences have shown how this binary pair then maps on to a whole series of other binaries: science / nature; reason / emotion; black / white; man / woman. From this perspective, a reliance on a mind-body split relies upon a whole set of problematic social values and relations that limit how we think about particular bodies and the opportunities that are then made available to them. (Think, for example, how women are conventionally categorised as innately 'emotional', and therefore suited to some kinds of work, but not others).

And finally, the reliance upon mind over matter effectively minimises the very real physical and social constraints for some on action - whether that's training to swim the Channel, or a significant personal challenge like trying to get educational qualifications, or break an addiction. It's never simply a question of self-belief and commitment, as is suggested by the 80:20 division. The problem with this comes when an individual fails to complete whatever endeavour they are aiming for, which then becomes a failure primarily of will (the privileged aspect).

Of course, I recognise that there are times when a failure to complete a swim feels very much like a mental collapse; and similarly, I know from my own experience that at times of physical suffering or struggle during a swim, it certainly feels like you are marshalling psychological resources to get through it (mind over matter). But I still find it an uncomfortable way to think about what marathon swimming is. As a habit of thought, it has worrying implications both in terms of how we think about unsuccessful swims, and also, how wider society and its challenges are then conceptualised. It's simply not true that people can do anything if they really want to. I think this matters a lot at a time when, in the UK at least, people are being harried to pull themselves up by their bootstraps without any real understanding of the constraints they are living under.

So instead, I choose to follow the proposal of feminist scholar, Anne Fausto-Sterling. Writing about attempts within science to delineate between the relative contributions of genetics and environments (nature / nurture), she argues instead that it is better conceptualised as 100% of both. This works better for me both within and outside of swimming; I think it's kinder, less hierarchical, and most of all, completely captivates the embodied complexity - both struggles and pleasures - of a challenge like a Channel swim.

Dark and Lonely Water

Remember this public information film from 1973? I was only 5 when it came out, but it still sends shivers down my spine. But on the bright side, some splendidly over-exaggerated estuary accents from the "sensible" children, and some charming 1970's knitwear.