Last night was not a good one.
Incipient back ache developed during the night into one of those pains that while it wasn’t truly bad, it was bad enough to preclude the possibility of sleep. And whatever position you choose, it is never the right one for any length of time.
It reminded me of the horror (there really is no other word that captures it) that comes with trying to sleep in a horizontal position after having a complete knee replacement. At its worst, my ‘sleep’ was limited to ten minutes from the time of hitting the mattress – not that’s not the right word, getting onto the bed was a tortuously slow process, as was getting up again – and giving up.
Salvation during that period came from the reclining chair in the living room. Although the foot rest part of the reclining process was never long enough to accommodate my height, it did allow me to adopt a three-quarter’s prone position that allowed at least fitful sleep – the sort that only occurs through exhaustion.
What worked once for knees was pressed (literally with the reclining switch) into service for the back. And to be fair, it did, sort of work. The pain was still there, but it was almost like a ‘noises off’ effect and it allowed something approaching unconsciousness – a state I would not equate with real sleep.
Because I go for a swim every morning during the week at 6.30 am, I am programmed to wake early and, even though the pool does not open until 8.00 am on the weekends, my internal body alarm does not differentiate, and I wake up at 5.45 am.
Which I did this morning, and that gave me one and a half hours to debate with myself whether or not it might be a good thing to go for a swim or simply to stay at home, as, after a few tentative stretches it demonstrated that the pain in my back was still there.
Eventually, I decided to go, as I reasoned that the water is supportive and I could adapt, tailor and truncate my pool activity to fit my pain threshold.
The reality when I got into the pool showed that my decision not to skip a session was correct. Not one of the exercise or stokes was so painful that it could not be done, and so I ended up completing a fairly normal session, with one or two of my exercises extended as I felt that the stretching might be beneficial.
I cannot say that my swim has helped lessen the pain, which vividly reminds me of its presence when I move in certain ways, but I tell myself that I have exercised, and I have done my stretches, and so, even if I cannot feel the benefits immediately, it will help in the long run. And in the short run there is the ever-present help of Paracetamol and pungent smelling unguent. And looking at those two words ‘pungent’ and ‘unguent’ there must be some sort of linguistic link, that I am far too lazy to look up.
Anyway, none of the above is the point that I set out to write about. If you are in pain and the drugs and creams have had little effect, then you search for other ways to lessen the affliction. And the swimming pool offers many.
Ever since Covid our 25m swimming pool has been roped off into five lanes, and there is a booking system so that the lanes do not get overfull. In theory each lane can take three swimmers as long as they swim in circles, or rather squashed ellipses. This system depends on the three swimmers understanding the speed of the people sharing the lane and make due allowances, for example, allowing a stronger swimmer to overtake from time to time. In theory this system works well. In theory.
In practice lanes are jealously guarded and any perfectly reasonable sharing is regarded more as an invasion.
For example, I swim in lane 1, or lane 5, depending on how you look at it. I have chosen (!) this lane because there is a hydraulic chair which lowers me into the water and the ladder that accompanies the equipment is particularly difficult to use. With my two wonky knees I feel that I am more than entitled to use this ingress and egress, and I further feel that such a flamboyant entry surely entitles me to enjoy the lane in splendid isolation – and anyone sharing the lane will have to contend with the steps that jut out into the water and make a straight line difficult to keep.
Although the basic stokes of swimming are well known, you only must compare two people swimming say crawl to see that their approach to the stroke is different. In some cases, it is difficult to say with any confidence what particular official version of the common crawl or breaststroke that they are using. The position of the hands, the length of the stroke, the turn of the head, the time underwater, the breathing, and the use of the legs and feet make an individual’s technique just that, individual.
And then there is the amount of space that a person takes up when executing their brand of stroke. The lanes are delimited by floats, they are, by definition, floating. There is no separation vertically from the floats to the floor of the pool, only observation and consideration keep flailing hands, arms and feet inside the imaginary boundaries of an individual’s lane.
Crawl is usually (just about) contained within the body’s width – though I have seen some versions of crawl where it is impossible to tell the difference between that and energetic drowning. Breaststroke goes well outside the body’s width and if you are swimming your squashed ellipse in a lane with three swimmers and are near the floats then your hands and feet are almost certainly going to make your swimming into a contact sport.
And then there is butterfly. The sine qua non of selfishness in communal swimming – apart from one extraordinary occurrence I witnessed of a person swimming a width of backstroke when everyone else was swimming lengths!
So, to lessen the paint of my backache I observed the tensions, the threats and the resentments that are inevitable when people seek to join an already crowded pool.
As I start and end my session with a series of exercises based on the instructions from the physio who saw me through the first awful weeks after my operation, I have the opportunity to watch various dramas unfold with the barely concealed distate of people who think they are being hard done by.
And it works. I was more concerned about the human drama swimming around me than the pain tickling my back!
