Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [3]
Getting out of the water was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I hated doing calisthenics with the team. Usually we did them five days a week for an hour, after our two-hour swimming workout. A typical workout included five hundred sit-ups, two hundred pushups, five hundred leg extensions, five hundred half sit-ups, two hundred leg lifts on our backs, and two hundred leg lifts on our stomachs. As we did the exercises, Coach Muritt counted and we had to keep pace with him. Between each set of fifty repetitions, he gave us a one-minute break, but if anyone fell off pace or did the exercises incorrectly, he made us start the set all over again. He wanted to make us tough, teach us discipline and team unity. And I didn’t mind that. I liked to work hard, and I liked the challenge of staying on pace, but I detested having to start an exercise all over again because someone else was slacking off or fooling around. Brooks and Laddie McQuade were notorious for that. They were always trying to see how much they could get away with before they got caught. For them, it was a big game. Older boys on the team yelled at them and tossed kick-boards at them, but they didn’t care; they liked the attention they were getting from the team and the coach. I didn’t want to play their game, and I didn’t want to do two long hours of calisthenics with them, so I shouted, “Coach Muritt, can I stay in the pool and swim?”
He was wiping his eyes and nose with a handkerchief, and asked incredulously, “Jeez, aren’t you freezing?”
“If I keep swimming, I’m okay,” I said, and smiled, trying my very best to convince him. I was a chubby nine-year-old, and I was a slow swimmer, so I rarely got a chance to stop and take a rest. But because I just kept going, I managed to constantly create body heat, and that way I stayed warm when all the other swimmers were freezing.
“Is there anyone else who wants to stay in the water?”
“We do,” said three of his Harvard swimmers in lane one.
During the college season, Muritt coached the Harvard University Swim Team. He was considered to be one of the best coaches in all of New England; at least a dozen of his college swimmers had qualified for the U.S. Nationals. In the summer, most of his college swimmers worked out with our age groupers on the Manchester Swim Team, and they inspired us by their example. Somehow my parents knew from the start that to become your best, you needed to train with the best. And that’s why I think they put my older brother, David, me, and my two younger sisters, Laura and Ruth, into Coach Muritt’s swimming program.
Coach Muritt studied the sky, and we followed his gaze. “I still don’t like the looks of those clouds,” he said pensively.
“Coach, we’ll get out immediately if it starts to thunder. I promise,” I said, and held my breath, hoping he wouldn’t make me do calisthenics.
He considered for a moment, but he was distracted by uproarious laughter, high-pitched hoots, and shouts coming from the locker room.
“Please, Coach Muritt, please can we stay in?” I said.
“Okay, but I’ll have to take the pace clock or it’s going to blow over—you’ll have to swim at your own pace for the next couple of hours.”
“Thank you, Coach,” I said, and clapped my hands; I was doubly thrilled. I had escaped calisthenics and now I was going to be able to swim for three hours straight. I loved swimming and I loved swimming at my own pace, alone in my own lane, with no one kicking water in my face, and no one behind tapping my toes, telling me I had to swim faster. It was a feeling of buoyant freedom. But swimming into a storm was even better; waves were rushing around me, and lifting me, and tossing me from side to side. The wind was howling, slamming against the chain-link fence so strongly that it sounded like the clanging of a warning bell. I felt the vibrations rattle right through my body, and I wondered if the wind would tear the fence from its hinges. Turning on my side to breathe, I checked the sky. It looked like a tornado was approaching, only without the funnel cloud.