I first learned of the Masters swimming program in December 1971, when I was twenty-eight. At the time, I was divorced, living in Connecticut with my three-year-old son, and working as the publisher of a small educational publishing firm. I had had chronic back problems for the previous four years—debilitating periods every six months or so, during which it hurt just to turn my head. Even so, I felt I was in reasonably good shape for a guy my age. I didn’t smoke, and I drank only occasionally. Once a week or so, I played a game of touch football at lunchtime or managed to get in a brief jog, a regimen I thought made me a pretty active fellow for my age.
But I was playing a perilous game of self-delusion. A physical examination revealed that my weight had crept up, as had my cholesterol. My blood pressure, marginally high, was still waving a red flag of danger that I was ignoring. Moreover, the emotional and physical pressures of trying to be both father and mother to a young child while advancing in a highly competitive profession with a difficult boss were taking their toll. I often found myself feeling anxious, harried, worried, and depressed.
Had I taken the life-expectancy test then, I would have discovered I could expect to live to the age of 60.1, barely enough time to see my son into manhood. Even less than poor Ponce de León.
Today my life has changed dramatically. At the age of fifty, I am physically much younger than I was at twenty-eight. In fact, it may be that at fifty I can look forward to more years of life—healthy, vigorous, productive life—than I could have at twenty-eight!
How did I bring this about? In December 1971, after my physical exam, I decided to try to do something about the state of my health. I began swimming, and I have been swimming ever since, about two miles a day, five days a week. Results: as pointed out in Chapters 3 and 4, since resuming swimming I have improved my health by many measures. My weight is down to 180, about the same weight I carried as a competitive swimmer in college. My body fat has decreased from over 17 to less than 10 percent. My blood pressure has dropped to an excellent 116/74. My overall blood cholesterol has dropped to 209. More significantly, my HDL level is 90. My resting pulse rate, which was 64 twenty-two years previously, is now a strong 42. What is more, I have not had a single back problem since I started swimming again.
My son, Russell, graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1991 and is now studying to be a chiropractor. Raising him was one of the great pleasures of my life, an incredibly rewarding experience. As a result, there is a bond of love and respect between us that can never be severed.
I am still working hard—as a writer, lecturer, magazine editor, and university professor. But these days I feel relaxed, happy, and in control of my life. Recently I remarried, and Donna has added an extra dimension of happiness to my life. I find it significant that I met my wife-to-be at a swim meet.
Just how much difference swimming has made to me is revealed by the life-expectancy test. I can now expect to live to the ripe old age of 92, an increase of over thirty years.
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