Heminsley - Leap in: a woman, some waves and the will to swim

Acknowledgements

This book was written at an unexpectedly sad time, and would never have been finished if not for the endless kindness, silliness and patience of a group of friends for whom I am eternally grateful. Carol Biss, Clare Bennett, Damian Barr, Eleanor Morgan, Euan MacDonald, Eva Wiseman, Georgie Palmer, Helen Chesshire, Jess & Jack Ruston, Jo Rivett, Jojo Moyes, Katie Fraser, Laurence Creamer, Lucy Moses, Melissa Weatherill, Mia Dabrowski, Polly Samson, and Rachel Roberts: thank you, you have no idea how much you helped.

Straddling the divide between friendship and business with extraordinary elegance and warm-heartedness were my editor Jocasta Hamilton and agent Sarah Ballard, whose generosity with both deadlines and solid gold advice most certainly didnt go unnoticed.

Without Patrick, Julia and Kim at Pool to Pier there would be no book, as I would still be unable to swim. Truly, they achieved what seemed impossible, and I am forever in their debt. I have also been lucky enough to find both wisdom and solace in all sorts of fellow swimmers, and these in particular were a huge help during the writing of the book: the team at the Big Blue Swim, the Beyond Wednesdays gang, Celia Smith, Dan Bullock, Rob at the Pells Pool, Simon Murie at Swim Trek, and Vince, Helen and Tess, my Lake District guides!

I would also like to thank the staff at the Agora Clinic in Hove, particularly Mel and Victoria. I will never forget how much kindness you afforded me when I needed it most.

And D, always D.

For Lottie, the greatest
sister of them all

LEAP IN

A Woman, Some Waves,
and the Will to Swim

ALEXANDRA HEMINSLEY

LEAP IN

Pegasus Books Ltd
148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2017 by Alexandra Heminsley

First Pegasus Books hardcover edition July 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part
without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote
brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic
publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-68177-433-6

ISBN: 978-1-68177-486-2 (e-book)

Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

PART I

PART 2

CHAPTER ONE

From the Shore

I thought I could swim, I really did.

It may have been because I could run. It may have been because I wanted to swim. It may have been because I only ever did ten minutes of breaststroke at a time, or splashed and bobbed off a warm beach or in the pool at the gym.

But I really couldnt swim.

I used to watch them, The Swimmers. I used to see them to my left when I got in the pool to do my three or four lengths after a session at the gym doing weights or trying to use the running machine. Or, even better, Id see them in the sea when I was running along the beach. There was something otherworldly about them, as if by not actually being on the earth but being in it they had become somehow more than human.

The pool swimmers always had a specific brisk walk as they came from the changing rooms. It just oozed Im not here to fuck about. Their goggles would usually be on already, making eye contact with them impossible. Their gift, their glamour, lay somehow behind their rubber and plastic eyes, shielded like a superheros. Then theyd just slip in and... start. The transition from poolside human to slick, slippery silverfish took seconds. Their faces vanished beneath the surface, their arms pulled the water ahead of them away as their front crawl effortlessly propelled them forward. It was beyond me. Where was the bit where they emerged, panting and ruddy-faced, needing to break into breaststroke after three quarters of a length? Or hung around at the end of one of the lanes and stared into the middle distance, catching their breath and rolling their eyes at the unholy effort of it all?

They never did. Theyd just get in and get going. I would console myself with what I told myself was my strong breaststroke kick and glide along, the water dividing my face at my nose, leaving me looking and longing, a covetous hippo. My eyes swivelled and my heart yearned.

The sea swimmers were another species altogether. I would only know them by the steady rotation of their arms and perhaps the neon of a swimming cap. Often they swam so far out that I could not tell if they were in a wetsuit or a regular swimming costume. They would slide through the sea, ageless, genderless, a part of the water, a part of the view. It seemed rigorous, but also peaceful.

As the skyline bobbed up and down in my vision, bouncing with the gait of my run, the sea swimmers seemed to exist in a world somehow less aggressive than the one I ran in. I knew the ache of ankles, knees and hips after hitting pavement or tarmac for hours on end, and I had grown to love it I associated it with warm baths after battles won, with the meditative state that running gave me and with the huge emotional lessons it had taught me. Within five years I had gone from someone for whom any sort of exercise was theoretical a nice idea, but something for others, for the sporty types to someone who had run five marathons. Running had been my entry point into a world where I understood both my body and the elasticity of my limitations so much better. It improved my confidence, it improved my relationships, and it improved my body. But now I had grown a little impatient with the burgeoning running industry, with its endless heavily marketed events, its relentless reliance on technology that cost you a weeks salary to tell you that you werent quite as good as last week, and above all its obsession with time and distance.

I began to wonder about the freedom, the less jarring tiredness, and the sense of well-being that swimming out there in the deep might give me. It looks wonderful, Id think, but it cant be that easy to become part of the ocean.

It had always been there, the ocean. As a child, Id stayed with my grandparents in Cornwall, or my mothers family in Trinidad and Tobago. During the turbulent years of my twenties in London, when there was no ocean, I would console myself with long walks along the Thames, or the Regents Canal or around the ponds in Hampstead. Then, on moving to Brighton, the sea became a daily fixture in my world.

I ran in Brighton. I ran in Hove. There was rarely a run that wasnt at least partly spent watching the ocean melt into the sky at the earths curve. There were fast, angry 5K runs, done at a furious pace after a bad day at my desk. There were slow, anguished lOKs, run straight into relentless winds coming directly off the Atlantic. And there were long, hot marathon runs, drenched in sweat and longing for the solace of seawater. Once, three years ago, I worried I was getting sunstroke and headed off the path and straight into the sea to cool off. But only as far as my hips.

Even when I left the city and went night-running high on the South Downs, from the very tops of the hills I could still see the blackness of the sea. Without realising it, whenever I ran, I tried to run near water. I ran along the Hudson in New York, shrieking at the other side of the Atlantic during a rainstorm, exhilarated by the churning water as much as the bridges that seemed to be strutting from island to island. And I ran the bay in San Francisco, parallel to the sailing boats and the swimmers, one eye on Alcatrazs moody shadow and the Pacific beyond. Whatever else I saw, wherever else I ran, however else I felt, the sea seemed to be alongside me, reassuring in the constancy of its presence.