Until a few weeks ago, it had been a while since I’d done any serious swimming. I first got into it in grad school, when I took a swim class with a fantastic coach in UC Berkeley’s gorgeous marble-decked pool. Learning to swim properly has been more useful than a lot of other things I learned in grad school.

I guess a lot of people find lap swimming to be boring. But when it comes to exercise, I’ve learned that I love doing things that are solitary, quiet, and extremely challenging.

This is why I’ve gotten into running over the past year or so. I love having time to myself to just think and be alone. I love to carve out a chunk of the day to clear my head. But I also love pushing myself and learning to do things that seemed impossible before.

With both running and swimming, you have an almost endless capacity to amaze yourself and keep getting better, going farther. You just have to work, push, keep going. And you can measure progress in the things your body can do – how far you can run, how fast you can go – rather than a number on the scale. That is liberating.

I’ve taken up swimming in the last few weeks mainly to improve my cardiovascular health and help prevent all the muscle imbalances that can be exacerbated by running. Already, my hips and obliques feel less tight.

Still, I’m amazed that I used to swim a mile after work every day. And now, though I think of myself as relatively fit, just over half that distance leaves my legs a little wobbly.

But that’s the beauty of it, for me. I know I can get back there, and I know that all it takes is hard work. Not much else you can say that about in life.

{image above: an illustration by Enoch Bolles, via Fred Seibert}