Another rejected essay by 'The Globe and Mail'

My and my swim buddy plowing through Lake Windermere.

The Big Swim

The summers in the fifties in St. Pierre de Wakefield came flooding back as I looked out over Lake Windermere before embarking on my annual 2K open-water swim.  As a child, I had learned to swim in that beautiful Gatineau lake, eventually graduating to swimming across it when I was nine.   Now, many years later, I was once again about to challenge myself in open water, only this time in a glacial lake in the Kootenay Mountains with 60 other swimmers much younger than I.  The youngest was 14; I was the oldest.  Would I be the slowest?  We were about to see.

Swimming has become my sport, my hips having given up the ambulatory fight.  Years of aerobic and speed walking saw to their demise, but thankfully swimming remains painless.  As with most native-born Canadians, I swam seriously when I was a child and teenager – even competitively.  I was also a lifeguard and swimming instructor, but all that fell victim to a busy life working and raising children.  Cottage life settled into an early morning dip, followed by quick flop in’s throughout the day to cool off.  But actual swimming?  That activity had faded altogether until I visited a friend’s cottage about 15 years ago and encountered two women who swam around the island every afternoon.  “Are they crazy?” I asked as I lazily sipped my drink while they set off.  But I only had to glimpse them rounding the point for my competitiveness to kick in.  I had to get into that water and actually swim.  So I did.  That resulted in my joining a local pool and continuing into the Fall and Winter.  

The first lap was a killer.  “I may need a gurney,” I said to myself as I gasped for air.  “This is ridiculous,” I whispered, as I pretended to adjust my goggles in a stalling effort to breathe.  But after a couple of weeks, my heart-lung capacity responded and I was actually able to complete many laps without stopping.  I am now up to 50 every morning, which convinced me to register for my first ‘Heart of the Rockies Open Water Swim’ two years ago – a terrifying event with all the spotter boats off with the other swimmers way ahead of me.  Looking around, I realized I was on my own in a huge, deep lake with nothing but my swimming ability to get me through.  It did.  I lived.  Didn’t even come last that first year, beat a woman 20 years my junior.  It was all heady stuff indeed!

I really had had no idea what I was getting myself into when I registered for that first race.  But that didn’t stop me from stupidly blabbing about it with all my friends at the pool where I swim every morning.  Arriving at the Lake Windermere beach in Invermere, I took one look at the orange 1K buoy WAY OUT THERE and said to my daughter, “I can’t do this.”  “Do you want to go back to Calgary and tell your friends you backed out?” she replied.  No, that was absolutely not possible.  So I plunged in and did it.  And did it again the next year.  

Now I was facing my third swim and this time I wasn’t nervous in the least.  I actually ate some breakfast and felt very confident as we drove to the beach start.  As usual, everyone was wearing a wetsuit save I.  I was not going to spend $300 for one swim a year and having been raised in those freezing Quebec lakes, Windermere was positively bath-like.  Everyone was also “12”, my new age for everyone I encounter now that I am in my late sixties.  “Oh, I see you’re a naturalist,” said a forty-something, wetsuit clad man.  “That’s amazing.”  For a moment I thought he took me for a nudist, but he was simply referring to the fact that I only sported a bathing suit.  “Can I borrow your Vaseline,” was another refrain I heard as everyone struggled into their latex gear.  Vaseline?!  Please.  The truth is that wetsuits are almost like rubber rafts, they help you stay afloat, but I was going to do this swim “au naturel” as I had in other years.  

We waded into the starting area, the horn sounded and we were off – or they were off.  I was still adjusting my goggles.  The very worst thing is leaking goggles in a long swim.  Once they start leaking, they can’t stop.  You need a tight seal from the first stroke or you’re doomed to constantly having to clear them.  I was not going to face that.  Finally I started out and didn’t stop until I had reached the 1K buoy, when I paused to thank the lady in the kayak who had stayed with me while everyone else was miles ahead.  But the thing about that bloody orange buoy is that you have the illusion you’re finished, forgetting of course that you have to turn and start back and do the whole swim all over again.

Finally, I reached the beach, triumphant in my third completion of this swim.  When my arms were scraping the bottom, I stood up and ran to the finish line, handing over my time chip.  Everyone clapped at this older woman who had completed her 2K swim.  The best moment was greeting my daughter, son-in-law (both Iron Men) and grands who had patiently waited for me to beach myself.  

Was I the slowest this time?  Yes, but the feeling of accomplishment superseded everything.  I could now greet my swimming buddies back home with my head held high.  You might be in your late sixties, but never let them see the whites of your eyes!     

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Just re-read this and I think it's bloody good; apparently 'The Globe' didn't agree.