“Four years ago,” Lynda Myers told me, “the pathetic portrait you’ve painted described me to a T. Outwardly, I’m sure I seemed the epitome of the successful woman: I was moving up rapidly in my profession, and I had a ‘good marriage’ with two kids who were popular, did well in school, and never gave me any grief. As we used to say in the eighties, it seemed like I had it all. But inside,” she admitted, “I was seething with anger and frustration, and I didn’t know why.
“I had been smoking two packs a day for eighteen years and had put on a good twenty pounds since my college days. Whenever I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t believe that the frown-lined, frumpy image that stared back was really me. I knew, of course, that smoking was bad for me. But whenever I tried to stop, I put on even more weight. I didn’t want to blimp out.”
Lynda recalls that she was constantly yelling at her kids at the slightest provocation. “And my sex life with Bob can best be described as almost nonexistent—once a month at most. Even that was quick and unsatisfying. We were both too tired, and we just seemed to be going through the motions. The spark was gone.”
Like so many people, Lynda tried jogging for a while, but all she got for her efforts were shinsplints, sore legs, and a pulled Achilles tendon. “And that wasn’t the worst of it,” she reports. “I hated breathing in all those exhaust fumes and having dogs nipping at my heels. But most of all, it was boring. Just plain B-O-R-I-N-G.”
Lynda’s boss had been in the Masters swimming program for a few months, and when he suggested she join up she wasn’t very enthusiastic. But he definitely seemed more relaxed than he had been and looked much trimmer, so she figured, “Why not give it a try? What’ve I got to lose?”
Lynda found that it wasn’t all that easy at first. “I had learned to swim as a kid,” she told me, “but my first time back in the pool I barely made two laps. There I was, huffing and puffing and feeling sorry for myself. Then this sweet old lady who had been swimming next to me stopped to give me some encouragement. She told me to stick with it, that she hadn’t been able to swim a stroke when she’d started two years before. Then she went back to finish her mile. Later I found out she was eighty-three! Eighty-three, for Chrissakes! I figured, if she can do it, so could I.”
Now Lynda tries to swim at least a mile a day—more if she is feeling really good. She has learned to swim all the strokes, even butterfly. “And I’m even thinking about competing in some Masters meets,” she says with a laugh. “I’ll never be mistaken for a potential Olympic champion,” she goes on. “I’m no Summer Sanders. I’m not even one of the fastest swimmers my age on our team. But it doesn’t matter. The people are fantastic—friendly, supportive, always willing to help me with my technique. The atmosphere’s just great.”
Lynda claims that swimming has made her a new woman. She hasn’t lit a cigarette, or even wanted to, in over four years. It didn’t happen all at once, but after a while she just stopped smoking. Even she isn’t sure why: she just knows that she gradually lost the desire to draw carbonized tar particles into her lungs.
“Swimming has also firmed me up,” she says. “I’m back down to my college weight, and for the first time in years I feel proud of the way I look. I’ve even gone out and bought a two-piece for the beach this summer. Bob started noticing the difference in me after a few weeks. Our sex life has been reborn; it’s exciting, and I think we are closer now than we’ve ever been. He even began swimming with me last year, so now it’s something we share. You’ve got to know Bob to realize how radical a change this is. Before he started swimming, his idea of exercise was to plunk himself down in front of the boob tube for the afternoon, six-pack in hand.”
Lynda Myers is delighted with the ways swimming has enhanced her life, but it has done even more than all this: it has lengthened her life.
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