In July of 2005, I officiated at the World Masters Games in Edmonton - over
1600 swimmers age 25 to 98 from all over the world. I went home pumped because
the next games were in Sydney Australia, top of my wish list for places to visit. I had
the perfect plan - I would officiate in swimming, my husband would compete in
running, and we would spend as much time as possible exploring Australia and
New Zealand. His response was that he would run if I would swim...
It took six months to gather up my nerve, buy a swim suit and pool pass and
actually get in the water. 1 February 2006 (7 years ago today) is my
anniversary.
Of course I created a quilt to celebrate getting in the water and here too are my thoughts at the time. And yes, I have a penguin tattoo, but that's another story.
On Becoming a Penguin:
Tranquility and Other
Thoughts Along the Way
Last February, I started to swim in
the mornings before I go to work. It’s
reached the point where I enjoy getting up early, challenging myself to swim a
little more efficiently, and get grumpy when I can’t get to the pool for some
reason. Three days a week for almost an
hour, my mind is free to wander. Because
quilting is a passion, most often I’m thinking about a work in progress or some
other fabric related subject. One day, I
found myself calculating the size of a quilt (or how many quilts) could be
created from the fabric that is wound through the beams above me for
soundproofing. Twenty five meters of two
meter wide fabric times five colours would make a lot of quilts!
My vision of tranquillity is very much
an active one and tied to the changes that have come from beginning to see
myself as an athlete. The early
mornings, the cool water, the structure and discipline of swimming lengths as
well as I can, and even the pervasive eau de chlorine that clings to my skin
and hair are all tied to a genuine feeling of wellbeing.
The idea for my Patchwork Cottage Challenge quilt
really did come to me in the pool. I was
delighted to discover that the challenge fabric was going to make perfect
water. For about a month, I let the idea
simmer as I thought of how to translate the basic idea – water, swimming,
penguins – into a project that matched my skills and interests. It’s been a joy to combine my newly
discovered passion as an adult – onset athlete with my passion as a quilter.
I actually
created the back first. I’ve been
playing with Sashiko and other Japanese designs this year and Kitty Pippen’s
Japanese Garden Path was the perfect design for the dark blue lane line I
follow as I swim. The Japanese idea of
asymmetry was also appropriate as I swim just to the right of the line to give
way for the swimmer coming in the other direction. The shadow appliqué gave a water-like
shimmer.
One of my secret pleasures over the
years has been to read John Bingham’s “The Penguin Chronicles” on the last page
of my husband’s Runner’s World. I’ve had
the pattern for the front of the quilt for about a year and it has symbolized
for me my strides to become a Penguin (an adult-onset athlete). The calculations to reduce the bed sized
quilt to a wall hanging, the deliberation over choice of fabric and how to
introduce the challenge fabric all happened during early morning swims. Even ideas for quilting the project were
auditioned in the pool.
There are things I would do
differently next time, but in the words of John Bingham, “Improvement is
defined as being closer to where you want to be than you are right now.”
If I had been writing in my journal…
1
February 2006 (On Becoming a Penguin I)
After thinking about getting back to
swimming for six months and REALLY thinking about it for two (I needed to order
a suit, buy a swim pass, find the schedule and all those other details), today
is my first early bird swim in almost ten years. I really like swimming, the watching of it
that is, but I’m here on a dare. “Sure,
let’s plan to go to Sydney
in 2009, as long as you plan to compete, too.”
I recognize some of the swimmers as
I get in the water and I’m not the slowest one in the pool.
1
June 2006 (On Becoming a Penguin II)
OK, I’ve made the commitment and
bought a three month swim pass. I have a
routine – 1500 meters in 45 minutes – which energizes me for the rest of the
day. I’m one of the regulars at the pool
and have my lane that I usually swim in.
I’m even making plans for what I need to learn to get better – flip
turns, dives, how to get out of the pool more gracefully. At work, I’ve started to admit that I go
swimming regularly, which commits me to do so on days I don’t feel like it.
8
July 2006 (Body Image I)
Had a great birthday present today
and my husband is still shaking his head over the whole experience. He had bought an outfit for me, after raiding
the closet and going to our local ladies clothing store with sizes in
hand. The outfit, black stretchy capris
and summer top in my favourite colours, was lovely. The present, though, was that I needed to
exchange them for a size 12, which I haven’t worn for years.
19
July 2006 (On Becoming a Penguin III)
Against my better judgement, I’m
going on a 16 km mountain hike with my husband and friends. They are athletes, I am not (I’m just
swimming three days a week because I enjoy it).
Not only did I get up above the treeline and back down again, but I’m
glad I went.
9
September 2006 (Body Image II)
We are having a “mother daughter
bonding” afternoon. I’ve promised to
make my tall athletic newly adult (she’s graduated from university and has her
first “real” job) daughter a quilted jacket from fabric she had chosen when we
went to Festival of Quilts in Calgary. Today, we are drawing our body silhouettes on
paper and measuring all the areas needed to fit the pattern when she returns
home. It was Kati’s idea to do both of
us and then take pictures.
I’ve been getting hints from people
around me, but today I finally get what has been happening to my body over the
last year. The funniest thing is that
I’m actually taller than I believed – the story about not being over weight but
under tall… I begin to wonder why, if
our body measurements are so similar, she is a size eight and I’m a fourteen?
12 September 2006 (On Becoming a Penguin IV)
I go to my first Body Sculpt
session, a group weightlifting class for ladies. Impulsively I registered for this when I was
at the pool last week, and I tell my friend (who is the instructor – she’s one
of those people who work out for the sheer joy of getting sweaty and building
muscles) that my goal is to get enough upper body strength to get out of the
pool with grace. I feel horrid,
everything aches and I’m so uncoordinated.
My friend promises the class that the first two days are the worst and
then it gets better.
18
December 2006 (Tranquility I)
It’s just after 7:00 on a Monday
morning and I am swimming lengths in the pool.
As is more often the case these days, the water is supporting rather
than fighting with me, and the instructions from my brain to my muscles – kick,
pull, one two three four breathe, reach, turn, count – have faded into the
background. I move without thought, my muscles are relaxed and I finish the
hour exhilarated and ready for the day. My mind is free to wander from thought
to thought and this morning I’m thinking about the Patchwork Cottage challenge
that came out in the newsletter over the weekend.
Tranquility, I muse, as I easily
glide through the soothing water. The
classic images come to mind – a tropical beach (sunburn and itchy sand), a cool
forest (tents, bugs, no indoor plumbing), a snowy mountaintop (I’m terrified of
heights and it would be a lot of work to get there) – and I discard each one.
But of course, my element of
tranquility is water and the meditative like simplicity of early morning
lengths. Thoughts of pool water and how
I would/could/should depict it lead to penguins – could I create penguins
swimming in a pool, will I ever swim like a penguin, could I even learn to get
out of the pool like a penguin gets out onto the ice? How could I create the impression of ghostly
penguins waddling out of the mists and becoming real?
January
2007 (On Becoming a Penguin V)
I signed up for the next session of
Body Sculpt. People are talking about how
I’m losing weight, but for me the reason that I’m keeping up with this is that
it has improved my swimming. The problem
I’ve had with my neck for years has also disappeared – makes sense that
stronger muscles are supporting the degenerating discs. I’m even getting secretly competitive about
how much weight I’m lifting.
Chatting with people in the change
room at the pool has been interesting.
The first time someone commented on my strong swimming, I was taken
aback. In my head, I compare my times to
natural (childhood onset) swimmers and place myself in the midpack of first
year swimmers! On the other hand,
perhaps they are noticing something I’m not…
Oh yes, I’ve replaced all my dress
pants with a size 12 and my jeans are too big.
2
February 2007 (Tranquility II)
It’s my first anniversary of getting
back to swimming and I’m celebrating with a new suit (purple), silicone swim
cap and new goggles. My element of
tranquility has a whole new sound to it.
With my new goggles, I can see the bubbles my hands make as I pull
myself through the water. The cap
changes the sounds as I swim – freestyle gives me aquarium bubbles in stereo,
first one side then the other as I turn in the water with each stroke. On my back, I get the gentle waves lapping on
a beach as each arm enters the water and my breath is the breeze in the
trees. I consciously work to relax my
breathing to gentle the breeze. My
breaststroke reminds me of the theme from Jaws, but that’s at the end of my
morning swim anyway.
Even when I’m away from the pool, I
can bring myself to that sense of relaxation and tranquility by imaging that I
am swimming. In my minds eye, I bring
myself back to the pool for a five minute break when I’m frustrated or to make
the transition back to sleeping at night.
I AM becoming a Penguin.
What's a
Penguin?
In the running lexicon, the word
"Penguin" has come to mean a person who runs more for the joy of
running than for recognition and public rewards. Some of us are perpetual
Penguins. We are consumed by the pleasure of movement.
Other Penguins find their joy in the
challenge of reaching their own potential, whatever that is. For some it has
meant running the Boston Marathon, the only U.S. marathon that has qualifying
standards. For others, it has meant finding an independence and freedom in
their daily runs that expands their limits.
Can there be such a thing, then, as
a Penguin athlete? Or an athletic Penguin? Can people who are fighting to lose
thirty or forty pounds be athletes? Of course they can! Can people who have
waited until their forties to become physically active be athletes? You bet.
Can people who finish last in a race be athletes? Yes, they can. And yes, they
are.
Improvement is defined as being
closer to where you want to be than you are right now. Remember, I couldn't run
for more than a few steps in the beginning. Improvement for me was running
farther than my driveway. You'll have to decide what improvement means for you.
Is it to walk around your block without stopping? Then work toward that!
For better or worse, you are the
only you that you will ever get. What you decide to do with you is up to you.
Tomorrow you will still be you. The question is whether you will move closer
today to who you want to be.
If you are patient, if you are
persistent, if you are consistent, an amazing transformation will begin to
occur. Your wonderfully adaptive body will begin to cooperate. It will happen
in your own time and at your own pace, to be sure, but the transformation will
take place
Movement, which may have seemed so
foreign to you, will become more natural. Being active every day will stop
being something that you want to end and become something that you can't wait
to start. It isn't just a matter of going farther or faster every day. It's
knowing that you are in control of your body and, for a few minutes every day,
your life.
But, I now see that being a penguin
is more about what's inside that out, more about what I feel than what I
accomplish, and more about what a can do than what I can't. Being a penguin
isn't about what someone does, but about why someone does it.
-John Bingham
