I was just looking for information on the French swimmer, Malia Metella.  Unsurprisingly, I found little about her.  But I did find an interesting article written by David Owen in 2005.  What caught my attention was that in addition to  asking Metella about herself and her success as a swimmer (she won silver in the 50 free in Athens 2004), Owen asked her why there were so few black swimmers.

My immediate thought there is, why would she know that?  What does that have to do with her, really?

And then the article forgets her altogether and goes off in search of its answer.  Owen cites studies which point to blacks having denser, heavier skeletons, blah, blah, blah.  Then he finds another researcher who said that skeletons change quickly, and the reason for the dense skeletons may be the lifestyle of the person. So this thing perpetuates–black people generationally don’t swim, and their skeletons are denser because of the stress and work black people generationally do, and so on. In other words, because black people don’t swim, they don’t have ‘swimming skeletons,’ not the other way around.

Then they bring up the socio-economic reasons again, ignoring the one point Malia Metalla did have to make about the issue.  There’s just not a lot of encouragement for black swimmers, because they don’t see a lot of other black swimmers.  That is neither a poverty argument, nor an evolution argument.

It smacks of the truth.

I first heard this name back in 2006.  USA swimming was so serious about raising its minority profile. I didn’t think much of it at the time; certainly didn’t expect it to last.

But now I’m finding just what John Cruzat has brought to swimming in the US.  The former Army   Infantryman  was awarded the Bronze Star for actions in combat Desert Storm. After retirement, he was Vice President of the Urban League of the Pikes Peak region until USA Swimming recruited him.  He is the mind behind the Make a Splash program I talked about yesterday.

What I think is cool is that Cruzat is not just focused on the bottom end of the swimming scale–learn to swim initiatives.  He also created a Diversity Select Meet where children aged 13-18 had to post certain times before they would be accepted. This is from the application for the camp, held this year in March.

Purpose of the Camp: To instill a vision of success and inspire athletes from ethnically under-representedpopulations to become leaders in the sport of swimming. Coming to the Olympic Training Center to train with other selected athletes and meet with other coaches in a great environment is certainly motivational. The Camp also seeks to further empower the athletes and their coaches to achieve performance excellence and assist in recruiting more swimmers and coaches of color to the sport of swimming.

When Cruzat first got on board at USA Swimming, he was very excited and acknowledged that he couldn’t make changes overnight.  It’s been a few years now, and he has made some positive changes in the National Swimming scene.  I can’t wait to see what else he has up his sleeves!

It feels like all swim workouts have an element of swimming while tired, but today I was above and beyond tired.  It was a combination of having gotten up an hour earlier than I had hoped, and the heavy dinner I felt on my stomach in the 6 o’clock hour.

But that was too bad.  I pushed through the fatigue to do my set.  The one place I gave myself grace was on my yardage.  Rather than push myself to swim 1500 total yards, I swam 1400 again, as I’d swum on Friday.

My IM times were slower than last time:  2:51.56 and 2:51.51–at least I was consistent!

I also worked on my flip turns, but I isolated it to the front to back variety, rather than the other way around, or back to back or front to front.  I got the hang of taking one last big breath before going into a turn, hurrying up as I went into the turn, and then, after the turn, doing butterfly kick to get myself up and floating on my back properly.  I was more comfortable doing these turns by the end of my set.

Ever since I started going swimming with my daughter, I have been pulling harder in my freestyle, and it has made all the difference.  Rather than stroke with bent arms, I fully extend them, having them almost straight when they enter the water.  I feel myself gliding better, moving across the water faster, and my breathing is even coming easier.  What a relief!  It has been a long time coming.  I ended up with 450 yards total freestyle and backstroke again today.  Next time I go swimming, I want to push the freestyle up to 500.  I might do the same thing with the backstroke.

Even as I wrote last time about every workout being swim practice, there was a part of my training I’d neglected.  I am really bad at flip turns, and it is a source of embarrassment for me.

My swim team trained kids haven’t been much help in the past.  My son just thinks I’m pitiful, while my daughter would admonish me not to flail my arms so much.

But now she’s swimming with me, and she is much more helpful.  She even went down the lane with me, she on kickboard, I swimming freestyle.  First she corrected my error of taking a last ditch effort front facing breath before going into the turn.  She had told me not to do that before, that it slows you way down.  But this time, she also told me what to do instead:  take a big breath on the last breath and then go into the turn.  I’ve been working on my breathing enough that this is doable now.

Turning from the back is tricky.  I’d watched Coach Vince tell the kids to count their backstroke to the wall and turn around on the last stroke.  I know that after the flags, I have five strokes before I should turn over to go into my flip turn.  But my turns, especially in shallow water are very clumsy.  In the shallow water, I go way too deep after the turn and brush the bottom of the pool.  In the deep water, I try to come up too soon, and inhale water through my nose.  Talk about a chlorine headache!  And a mistake like that usually means I’m done practicing flip turns for the day!

I was driven to perfect them this time.  My competitive drive got the better of me.  I saw another black woman in the pool.  She was a good swimmer, who did effortless flip turns.  Here I am with my stroke getting more and more refined, yet I can’t do a basic flip turn.  Flip turn, thy time has come!

On another note, I decreased my back stroke by another stroke, sometimes 2, and it did translate to better IM times.  My first IM came in at 2:45.88, and my second time was even better, if only slightly:  2:45.05.  I also increased my freestyle and backstroke yardage to 400 each. My total yardage for the day was 1300.

I still feel so exhilarated when I  get to go swimming!  Even when every stroke feels more sluggish than the last one.

Today was one of those days.  I felt my dinner weighing on my stomach even at 6:30 AM when I took to the pool.  It didn’t help that the pool was so crowded that my daughter and I shared a single lane.  I hugged the wall so tough that I even hit the ladder on my flip turn.

I did manage to swim 1200 yards overall, though, and I swam my second IM faster than my first.  My IM times were:  2:50.60 and 2:48.08.  I was feeling triumphant shaving my time like that!  I felt so good that I gave my daughter my watch, (and her goggles, which I now use), and told her to time her IM while I did my cool down lap.  Mind you, she hadn’t planned on swimming an IM.  Chilling is her MO in the pool these days.  But she swam a 100 IM faster than I swam a 50 elementary back.  Her time?  1:33.83.  I have no idea how competitive that is with serious swimmers.  But compared to me?  Get outta here!  I love to have that time to motivate me.

I am reminded that every swim workout (for me, at least) is actually swim practice.  I am practicing my strokes, modifying here and there, working on being consistent, shaving seconds or strokes every chance I get.

One thing I definitely need to practice is flip turns.  I am no good at them.  I usually panic and avoid them altogether, but today, I forced myself to practice them.  At one point I found myself thrashing around, inhaling water as the result of pulling out of a flip turn too soon.

It reminds me of my days as a music major.  A music major must spend hours a day practicing, and the practice area consists of hundreds of tiny rooms adjoining each other.  It is impossible not to hear the person in the room on either side of you practicing.  I was always scared someone was listening to me, critiquing my skills.  Then, one summer, I got a job at the school, and had an office in the practice room area.  I heard this horn player working on the same solo over and over.  I started wondering if he knew that everyone had already heard his solo ad infinitum.  Suddenly, it clicked for me that he was only concerned with refining his performance, not whether someone was listening!

The same is true in the pool.  As much as I worry that everyone is watching me and laughing, it’s more likely that no one is paying me any attention.  They are busy following their own black line at the bottom of the pool.  Not even my own daughter, sharing a lane with me, noticed everything I was doing.

So, self consciousness is no excuse for not learning flip turns.

Now, fatigue, on the other hand. . .

The last couple of times I’ve been swimming, I’ve had my oldest and youngest daughters tag along.  The oldest, because the youngest won’t sleep all the way through like she used to.

I had hoped in the back of my mind that it would make my oldest want to get in the water again.  After all, she’d put in years swimming on  a team, and I thought somewhere deep inside, she missed it.

I was right.  After watching me swim a couple times, she was itching to get back in the pool.  So this morning, we left the baby home with her big brother, and we two went swimming.

Now you know from last week, I can’t help but race the person in the lane next to me—unless it’s my daughter.  Oh my goodness, she swims so fast.  At one point, during my first IM, she beat me getting down the pool on a kickboard(!) versus my butterfly, my fastest stroke!  My times were slower today, too.  My first IM clocked in at 2:50.30, and my second one at 2:57.20.  I did notice that I’ve managed to shave one stroke off my backstroke, meaning, it used to take me 18 strokes to get to the flags, and now I can get it done in 17, so I should see better times soon I hope.

My daughter borrowed my watch to time herself swimming a 25 free.  She swam it in 17.68, which is faster than her old time of 18 something.  I don’t expect her to get back into competition anytime soon (I wish), but she is interested in lifeguarding, so that’s good.  She could swim the 500 yards necessary for lifeguard training in her sleep.

In the meantime, I’m working on my 10,000 hours.  That’s the time Malcolm Gladwell calculates it takes to master something.  At the rate I’m going, it’ll be a while.

But then I think about the older people going back and forth in the pool.  Most of them look like they’ve been swimming their whole lives.  They have the whole bouyancy thing down.  They don’t have problems with breathing, and their stroke looks good.

I don’t think I’ll run out of time.  And I’m sure having fun along the way.