Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [9]
Two weeks later, near the end of the workout, Coach Gambril asked Hans if he wanted to try a “deal” again. The deal was that he would swim the mile in segments: fifteen one hundreds, with a ten-second rest in between each one hundred. This was an exercise that would give him enough rest to go fast, and also enable him to feel the speed he would need to maintain for an Olympic race. When it got closer to the time of the Olympic Games, he repeated this exercise with only a five-second rest in between each one hundred, and then months before the Olympics he would do it again with only a one-second rest.
The whole team stopped what they were doing, lined the wall, and instantly became silent. Hans looked at us and then said, “Okay. I think I can do it.”
“All right, Hans. Let’s go then! Come on, you can do it,” team members encouraged him.
My heart was pounding in my chest when Hans climbed out of the pool. I thought, I hope he’s not going to collapse on the deck again. Hans curled his toes around the edge of the pool, bent over, and flexed his knees. As Coach Gambril whistled he circled his arms and sprang into the air. In flight he heard the entire team shouting, “Go, Hans! Go!” And he entered the water like a torpedo. In seconds he was moving like a speedboat across the pool, arms and legs propelling him forward, with a wide bubbling wake behind him.
When he reached the wall after the first hundred, he rested for ten seconds. As he pushed off this time, four of the older girls and boys jumped out of the water, picked up their towels, and waved them in giant circles so Hans could see them as he swam.
He made the second one hundred on time. He pushed off again, and the team began shouting louder. Other swimmers got up on the deck to walk along with him, waving their towels, encouraging him to swim faster. In the background we heard Coach Gambril making a loud piercing whistle, urging Hans to go faster. He made the third, fourth, and fifth times, but by the eleventh he began to slow down. The team went wild, jumped up and down, pushed him with their voices. Finally, after the fifteenth one hundred, when Hans touched the wall at the finish, he looked up, gasping for air, and Coach Gambril broke into a huge smile and said, “You did it. You made the time by three seconds. And all you have to do now is go three seconds faster with an unbroken swim and you’ll break the world record.”
Hans grinned, and everyone hugged him and patted him on the back. And a few days later, Gunnar made a nearly record-breaking swim in workout in the eight-hundred individual medley.
One day after practice, I swam across the pool and asked them if they would watch me swim and help me with my stroke. They both said, “Sure.”
Hans demonstrated the freestyle for me, and Gunnar swam the butterfly, backstroke, and breaststroke. Then they had me swim for them.
“You look really good, but you need to change your breathing if you’re going to be a long-distance swimmer,” Hans said. “Try breathing every third or fifth stroke—that will help you balance out your stroke. And you could try kicking a bit harder on your freestyle.”
And Gunnar added, “When you’re pulling the water with your hands, try to accelerate through your stroke, starting out, say, at one mile an hour and speeding up to one hundred miles an hour. You