Ebola Swim

The day dawned bright and sunny. It always does here, but it still makes a good start to a story. My wife and I grabbed our bags, sunglasses, and 20 pounds of collapsed cardboard boxes, and headed out the door. The boxes had nothing to do with swimming, FYI. We had them along so we could wrap furniture after my swim. That's another story.

We marched down to the corner, hailed a taxi, argued over the price, stuffed the boxes into the trunk, and off we went. On arrival we dug the boxes out of the trunk and marched into the school with them tucked safely under our arms. To their credit, the guards at the school doors said absolutely nothing about our stacks of dirty banana boxes.

The preparations had taken longer than expected, as did walking halfway across the school campus with 20 pounds of banana boxes, and by the time we got to the pool it was already 10 minutes to 9:00. I dropped my boxes, ran to the bathroom, and then did a quick run around the nearby track so I could at get my heart rate up a tiny bit while my wife filled in the paperwork for me (she's a great wife!).

Then I made my way to the pool. It was a four-lane pool. In the middle lanes were two girls with swim caps; I guessed they might know what they were doing. I was in lane 1. I have to admit that I thought "But lane 1 is the SLOW lane." Then I realized that I probably WAS the slow one and got over it.

The bell rang- a literal bell- and off we went. I had a beautiful start off the block. I figured that even if they rest of the swim was dismal I should at least make a good show of the start. The first couple of lengths felt great. Nice, easy swimming just like I used to do. When I came out of my third flip turn I was leading everyone else in the pool but I began to realize that breathing every 5 was not going to be enough. I tried breathing every 4, then every 3. As I started my third lap I realized that my arms were feeling very weak and heavy. I could feel my swim trunks dragging me down. My wife had sewn the pockets shut the night before (did I mention that she is a great wife?) but there was still a lot of fabric billowing around my midsection.

I tried breathing every other stroke but that much twisting made me start to feel a little bit nauseous.  And my arms still felt dead. I needed more oxygen. So I flipped over onto my back and swam 75 yards backstroke. That felt much better. I got enough oxygen. But backstroke is definitely not my strongest stroke. I flipped back over and tried freestyle for another 25. I quickly hit oxygen debt, fatigue, and general BLAH feeling. This was only about 5 minutes into the swim.

I wasn't sure what to do. So I did what came naturally- I rolled onto my back and kicked my way down the lane in "recovery" position. I figured if nothing else I could just keep doing that for the next 10 minutes.

After 25 yards of recovery I felt a lot better, though. I tried breaststroke, which felt fine. I was getting plenty of oxygen and most of the work was being done by my legs, which are in much better shape than my arms. I swam a good 100 yards of breaststroke. But breast stroke is not the fastest way to swim, especially when you are anchored down by swim trunks. So I decided to try freestyle again.

I don't remember how far I got. Probably 50 yards. And then I was feeling weak and weary and strange again. I tried flipping into backstroke but I couldn't swim straight. I kept bumping into the wall and the lane line. So I went back to breaststroke.

I did breaststroke for several minutes, occasionally switching to front crawl when I felt like I had the strength. Every time I got to her end of the pool, my wife held her fingers down into the water to tell me how many minutes were remaining (she's a great wife, remember?). When she held out three fingers I considered switching into freestyle. But I was feeling weak and I didn't want to hurt myself. I kept doing breaststroke. Then on the last lap she yelled out "half a minute" and I couldn't resist the temptation to give it a try. I didn't know whether "half a minute" meant 45 seconds or 25 seconds but I thought that if I swam an extremely fast 50 I might make it. It turns out I had 35 seconds and no, I didn't make it. My wife says I was 3/4 of the way back when time ran out. Considering the swim trunks and the fatigue, I think that was a pretty good finish.

I felt gross when I got out of the pool. It took a good 15 minutes for my heart rate, head, and tummy to all settle down to normal. Fortunately there were some shade trees nearby so I just walked around under them until I felt okay.

Then, as I sat down to put my clothing back on, I made a fascinating discovery; I had a clothes peg in the pocket of my swim suit! So there you go, my excuse for not making 14 laps is that I was weighed down by a clothes peg.

And that was about it, other than wrapping all of our furniture in cardboard. But as I said, that's another story. I was a bit sore last night, especially in my hips. I haven't done the breaststroke kick in more than a decade. Today my shoulders are a bit sore. But other than that I'm feeling great.

Between friends here, friends back home, and a matching gift from the organization that sponsored the swim, we raised $555.50. Thank you so much, and praise God!