I am not that good with numbers. At some point, however, if I’m to become more of a ‘serious’ swimmer, I’m going to have to get better. I’m going to have to get on top of how far I swim, in how many strokes and how long it takes me. There is even the prospect of having to calculate my “perceived effort” on a scale of one to ten at the same time as all of the above!
Yesterday I reported that I had done a length in 14 strokes. I am not sure, now, that that was true, but I have confirmed, today, that I can do a length in 15 strokes, which is basically, good, especially for the technique that I am following. Actually, I can do several lengths in 15 strokes. Which, again, is good. But what I am really happy about is that I can count and swim at the same time! Until recently, in spite of being a half-decent swimmer and a generally physically and mentally able man, I would struggle to keep focused on the number of strokes, the type of stroke as well as remembering to breathe. But now, since I am more relaxed in the water, I am starting to get a handle on the numbers.
At some point, I suspect, I am going to want a watch that tells me the time, measures how far I swim and all the things that involve numbers that I cannot possibly calculate, and when I go “wild” swimming, I can see what sort of a swim I have done.
All this talk of calculating brings me round to the realisation that today’s main task still awaits me; my tax; the yearly angst-fest that is my book-keeping. Ever since April 6th, I have been attempting to set aside enough time to gather my receipts and put together my payslips and remittance advice slips. It is the same every year, like with so many self employed people; I try to get efficient with it and I set myself targets and goals and still am usually fretting about it shortly before the January deadline!
I used to hate doing it because I would have to come face to face with what I had done with my year; literally, bringing myself “to account”, but I am more at peace with myself nowadays and am calm about how I have earnt and spent but now my frustration comes, more simply from the business of getting all the paperwork to hand and also my slight inability to fully understand the relationships between NI, tax, and the peculiar way that it is all documented. I have, finally, after years, got rid of my very nice, very good, but very expensive West End show biz accountant, and am facing doing it myself or finding a local accountant to help. Accountants seem obsessed with getting me to pay to as LITTLE tax as possible, and my London ‘bean-counter’ certainly went into maximum detail to make sure that happened, but that only helped to heighten my anxiety about it all and so I am hoping to find someone who is legal but, perhaps, not quite as forensic as my previous guy. In the end, I would rather have less anxiety and pay a bit more tax. There seems to be a general obsession with paying as little tax as possible, across the board, and not that I want to get political, but perhaps some of our woes, as a nation, would be alleviated if we re-adjusted our psyches on what the point of tax is. It is not a punishment; but a way of caring for one another. Naive; possibly, but it is something I shall contemplate as I go on longer and longer swims.
Now, a slightly tenuous link, but Terry Laughlin’s method of increasing speed and power through the water is a system of “swimming golf”, whereby you repeat your stroke count and over longer distances you attempt to keep the stoke count as low as possible even as you get more tired, as you do in golf, and this morning is the beginning of this year’s Open Golf Championship. This is an event I love and if I could, I would watch the whole thing! The TV is, dangerously, already on, and today is going to be a test of my will power as I attempt to do my tax and not watch the golf too closely, but I shall certainly be watching at 9 am when it starts, because, particularly one of my heroes, Nick Faldo, is teeing off then. An odd hero you might say, and not a very fashionable one, but I have always been in awe of what Faldo did in the 1980s. He was a top golfer, but he knew, that if he did not make some big changes he would never make it at the highest level, so he teamed up with a “swing guru”, David Leadbetter, and asked him to “throw the book at him”. He did. Faldo had to completely start over and fundamentally change his swing. He slumped in form for 2 years (which is a very long time in a young golf professional’s life) and then the reward came; the Open Championship win he craved, at Muirfield, where he is going to tee off at the age of 56 after no competitive golf for years! I will be glued!
The reason for this golfing aside is to remind myself that, in swimming, I am going to play a long game and trust that real success in swimming is going to come from a re-building, a re-imagining of my my stroke. Fitness and strength will play their part but fundamentally I am interested in how swimming with awareness is the thing that is going to lead to increased skill and pleasure and even..success.
Till tommorrow.
A Swim a Day 