The best thing about swimming is how you can do it when you’re young, old, or in between. You can swim if you’re fat or thin. In fact, if you’re fat, you may even have more buoyancy. You can swim if you can’t walk, if you’re pregnant. . .you get the idea. watching my kids swimming back and forth for years made me really anxious to get in the pool myself.

But starting out in the pool over 40 can be intimidating.

Where to start?

I like the idea of the 0 to 1650 plan, which quite literally takes you from ZERO swimming at all to swimming 1,650 yards every week in nice bite sized chunks that anybody can handle. They even help you get over the Fear of Water, if that’s a problem for you. Like Cool Running’s Couch to 5k program, the 0 to 1650 plan can get you from not swimming at all to swimming a mile in about 6 weeks.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

But then I read that plan. I have never swum more than twice a week, and it has you starting out swimming three times a week. So right away, I see I have to condition myself just to get up to speed in this beginning level. If you are in that same boat, give this a try.

1. Just Get Wet

Start out swimming one day a week, or even one day every other week, or two days every other week. Something unthreatening enough. Then set a goal for how many lengths you want to swim. The pool can be divided into lengths, which is one way down the pool, from deep end to shallow end (or visa versa), or laps, which is down and back, or yards/meters. When my kids were in swimming, they counted yards. 25 yards is half the length of an Olympic pool, and is the standard high school/YMCA pool length. I usually count my swimming in yards.  So a 50 is 2 lengths is a lap.  Dig? 

2. Set a Goal, Any Goal

A mediocre plan done will beat a superb plan not done. Set a goal for yourself. Make one up. Like, today I want to swim 500 yards, no matter what.  Again, any goal is fine. If you have you start with, I’m getting in the pool today, no matter what, start there. But set a goal. Trust me, you’ll be so glad you did. Then, you reach that goal, no matter what.  If you’re like me, the ‘what’ would be “I can’t breathe!  I can’t catch my breath!  I’m so tired!” So you can sit at the end of the lane and pant after every 25, or you can do some recovery strokes, like anything on your back.  You can swim elementary back stroke and breathe deeply.  You don’t completely erase the tired feeling, but you do recover your breath, and in the process, you’re building endurance.  You could also do sidestroke, or doggie paddle if you want.  The point is to keep moving.  And each length you do, no matter what the stroke, counts towards your goal.  Bonus! 

3. Build on Your Success

Before you know it, you’ve reached your goal.  Now you have success you can build on.  Commit to increasing your goal at a regular interval.  Say you want to increase by 100 yards each week, or each time you get in the pool, or each month.  It matters not.  It is just another goal you set and reach.  Say your ultimate goal is to swim a mile.  You can do that 100 yards at a time.  Then you’re ready for someone else’s workout plan.

Where do we go from here?

Come back next week when I will give you an actual workout routine that anybody can get started with. And if you’ve got a “getting started” routine you’d like to share drop a line in the comments.

Last night, I saw what I was waiting for in the Olympics. I don’t have to harass my family with endless hours of footage, hoping to glimpse Cullen Jones. I missed him set the world record at the prelims, swimming with three others who ultimately didn’t swim in the finals.

But I watched him as part of the world record breaking 4 x 100 US men’s team.

Swimming superstar Michael Phelps had his hopes hung on this race. The gold medal in this race would be his second in his quest for eight medals. He swam the lead off leg of the relay, clocking in below the world record, and still coming in second behind the French, the favored team. Garret Weber-Gale, in his first Olympics, took the lead from the French, giving Cullen Jones a good lead off. Cullen swam fast and hard, but lost the lead again to the French. Jason Lezak, swimming the anchor leg for the second time of his Olympic career, had an axe to grind. He had been on the team in 2000 when the Americans won the silver medal. He’d also been part of 2004′s bronze medal team. It was time for gold.

He said, “people do extraordinary things in the Olympics.” Indeed. He was in second place all the way to the 20 meter mark. He out-touched the stunned French swimmer by .08 seconds–the shortest margin of victory in Olympic history.

My husband and I were jumping up and down and yelling, like everyone in the stands, and especially Michael Phelps and Garret Weber-Gale. Where was Cullen Jones? He is quoted as saying he was shouting things that were not suitable for TV, as was Weber-Gale. But Jones was off-screen during the exciting final seconds of the race.

We were disappointed that he lost the American team’s lead, and made for a really tough leg for Lezak. But he won a gold medal. He was part of that history making team. I hope he continues. He’s a good 8 years younger than Lezak, and about 16 years younger than Dana Torres. Swimming is a good sport for longevity. I hope to hear of bigger and better things from Cullen Jones in the future.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. . .

I remember going to college as a music major. As a double bass player, I was used to borrowing someone else’s instrument. I only got an instrument of my own for the purpose of taking it to college.

I wasn’t in school long before I needed a new instrument. The plywood instrument just didn’t do much to showcase my skills. As a matter of fact, it hindered me. When I got a better instrument, my playing improved markedly.

They’re saying a swim suit can do the same thing for elite athletes. In spite of myself, I couldn’t help but be skeptical. Come on, don’t swimmers win races, not swim suits?

But then I read that of the 41 world records made since late May, When Speedo introduced its new LZR (LASER) suit, 37 were made by athletes wearing the LZR suit. The suit applies science to keep within the rules. The Olympic rules state that you can’t make a swimmer more bouyant. Speedo instead makes the swimmer smaller by compressing the areas of the body more prone to drag. Ah, the dreaded form drag, where your body actually works against you to slow you down in the water. This LZR suit addresses that issue, and top athletes are trying to wear it, no matter which company they endorse. It’ll be available to the public this fall. I’d like to try it, even though it looks painfully tight.

Remember that Spike Lee Nike commercial?

That’s what they’re saying about this suit.

Ok.  So I was really disappointed in the Olympic swim trials.  Not only did I see nobody black but Cullen Jones, but I didn’t even see our local folks.  Yes, there was a boy and a girl from Great Lakes Aquatics that made Olympic swim times, and Brie even said she was going, but if you’re not a superstar, or an emerging one, NBC won’t even show you at all.

Which is where we find Cullen Jones.  There he was, with all that speed and potential. . . and he finishes third.  A few times.  So he’ll be on the relay team, like Maritza in 2004.  Btw, when I was scouring the  internet looking for proof that our local girl, Brianne Powers was actually going to the Olympic trials, I found that Maritza Correria was # 3 in the 100 M free,  time-wise.  I was doubly disappointed that she retired in May.  And where was Brielle White?

It must be awfully frustrating to be a pioneer.  I heard that Anthony Ervin, who’s credited as the first African-American man to make the Olympic team has said, “I don’t look black anyway.”  Which is true enough.  And although he tied with Gary Hall, Jr. in the 50 free for gold in 2000, Ervin is more lauded as being black, while Hall jr. is lauded for being a decorated swimmer.

It must have been like that for the early basketball/baseball/football integrators.  Nobody thinks anything of a black man excelling in basketball anymore.  That probably wasn’t the case in the early days of that sport’s integration.

So now it’s up to the kids in the swim clubs to keep plugging away.  We knew a determined black swimmer in our local club.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Kiya Mitchell make a big splash nationally in a few years.  And Kalamazoo is far from a black city.

So it starts with these pioneers.  And then others get the glint in their eye about swimming.  And maybe black folks can get a glimpse of a different life, and escape generational poverty.

And America has a chance at remaining dominant in swimming in the years to come.

The first thing they did at the city pool was introduce us to the deep end. I decided that the worst thing that could happen was that I could die, but I didn’t think that was very likely, so I just got over myself and went in the deep end. My brother liked to swim along the bottom of the 12 foot water. I wasn’t going there, but I could at least jump in the water and swim along the surface.

The miracle was actually swimming a whole length of the pool without stopping to walk, like I’d done at Girl Scout camp. In fact, that one skill—not touching the bottom of the pool—was what separated the two of us who passed from the rest of the class. Only two of us—both black—received our advanced beginner certificates that summer, but all of us could now swim.

My brother and I surprised our parents that summer on vacation. They took us to Mexico, and during a sight-seeing cruise, the boat stopped a few yards from the shore. We were given the choice between swimming to shore for lunch and waiting for a small rowboat to take us ashore. While our parents waited for the rowboat, my brother and I jumped overboard and started swimming shoreward. My mother shrieked. Neither she nor my father could swim well enough to go after us. A man on the boat offered to swim after us to make sure we were ok. I would stop swimming every so often to check how deep the water was. My brother talked about fighting a piranha on the way to shore, but I didn’t believe him. We made it! It was like a curse had been lifted. Now we could swim, and we could really enjoy life!

Well, there you go. Watching the Olympic trials and trying to follow a swimmer who is not the one NBC wants you to follow can be tricky. Gary Hall jr. cast a big shadow over Cullen Jones in the lead-up to the 50 free finals. They followed him with his big superhero cape. They did the brief bio of him. . . ‘and there’s Cullen Jones, the American record holder in this event.’ So there was that.

Then the two hyphenates, Wildman-Tobriner and Weber-Gale were so competitive in the 100 M finals and the 50 M preliminaries. The hype was longer than the race itself. It was over in 21.47, as Weber-Gale took the race. At 21.65, Wildman-Tobriner out touched Cullen Jones, who finished third at 21.81. Mind you, as I was only watching the black arms, I thought Cullen Jones had won the race. In the slow-mo replay, I saw that he took an extra stroke at the wall, as he had done throughout the Olympic trials, coming in 3rd each time. When he won his heat in the prelims, that extra stroke was absent.

So, I am disappointed that Cullen Jones didn’t dominate at the Olympic trials, but I am glad that he made the team in the 100 free, and will likely be on the 4 x 100 relay team.