Thursday January 5th was my final full day of coaching at our Open Water camp at St John USVI. After swimming twice a day in the Caribbean since Jan 1, I was excited about returning home to New Paltz to resume pool training with a goal of improving my Adirondack Masters 65-69 age group record of 25:57.6 for 1650 yards set the previous month.

That afternoon, while hurrying down a rugged trail to the beach for my final session of coaching at the camp, I tripped and fell headlong—hard enough to get a faceful of dirt. When I stood up and brushed myself off I saw blood pouring from a long and deep gash on my left shin, just above the ankle. It looked like something that could be bone-deep.

I made my way up the trail to the Concordia Eco-Resort guest center, where I was fortunate to receive expert first aid—initially from a couple of fellow guests who’d had Red Cross training, and soon after from Rena Stewart, a trauma surgeon and her husband Melvin, a nurse, who were among our campers.

I was transported by ambulance to St Johns’ small medical center where my wound was stitched up (16 stitches) by Dr. Jason Snow, who turned out to be a TI enthusiast. He told me the stitches should remain in for at least two weeks, after which a bit more time might be needed for complete healing of the wound.

But I was scheduled to leave Jan 17 for Elche Spain for nine days of coaching training. Consequently, the stitches weren’t removed until I returned home, four weeks later. And the wound was so slow in healing that it was only yesterday—seven weeks to the day since my fall–that the wound closed sufficiently to allow me to swim again.

I was in Sarasota FL, visiting old coaching buddy Ira Klein, with whom I’d coached 40 years earlier. It was 7 am as I stood at poolside preparing for my first swim after my longest layoff since I’d joined Masters swimming in 1988.  I had a lane to myself, with Ira’s Masters group on one side and his teenaged swimmers on the other side. In what I thought was a lovely omen for my first swim, the sun broke through the clouds over my left shoulder, while at the same moment a rainbow formed over my right shoulder.

I stood at the edge of the pool with no goal other than to find a ‘happy place’ and learn how I would swim after 7 weeks ‘dry.’ How would my stroke feel, what would my stroke count be?

I also had in mind that, two weeks earlier–still unsure when I might be able to swim again–I had entered the 1650y free in the New England Masters Championships on March 11. Forty-five years ago I would never have dreamed of attempting such a demanding race distance on anything less than three to five months of hard training. Now I view it differently: As an opportunity learn—rather than prove—something about myself.

How efficiently could I swim 66 consecutive lengths of a 25-yard pool, and how masterfully could I pace myself—on even a very modest level of fitness? On the plus side is that I now rate neural fitness more highly as a predictor of performance than aerobic fitness. Neural fitness being the durability of efficient movement patterns in my brain and nervous system.

The advantage of neural fitness is that it survives layoffs far better than aerobic fitness. My muscle memory should be quite good, even if my cardiovascular fitness—how much oxygen and fuel I can supply my muscles—was quite compromised.

So this first swim would first of all take inventory of my muscles’ memory of how to maintain an efficient stroke with minimal fatigue. I eased into the pool and swam my first length. A little stiff and my stroke count was 17—the highest count in my Green Zone.

I swam another length, a bit less stiff and 16 strokes. After a short rest, I swam another. It was feeling more familiar and I took only 15 strokes. So I decided to explore how I might do if I stretched it out: I would continue swimming as long as I felt fresh and could maintain a 16-SPL stroke count.

I swam 15-SPL on my first length, flip-turned and went 16 on my second, flipped again and kept going. On the third length I flipped after 16 strokes, but my toes barely grazed the wall. I’d lost some speed or momentum on that last length. I stopped and returned to the wall.

I took a short breather. On my next swim, I was able to hold 16 strokes quite easily through six lengths, after taking 14 then 15 on the first two. The key was a better turn and relaxed, super-streamlined pushoff, maintaining a slippery bodyline as I surfaced with my first stroke and a perfectly integrated first breath.

What was most striking was how rapidly I was regaining my sense of swimming economy. With each repeat—and almost every length—I was making a better connection with a deeply imprinted efficiency patterns and recapturing muscle memory. Despite my lack of conventional fitness, the farther I swam, the better I seemed to do

I hadn’t timed any of my laps yet. I decided to try a timed 200—so long as I could maintain that relaxed feeling and 16-SPL stroke count for the entire 200. My time was 3:39. My slowest timed 200 ever, but it gave me a benchmark. I’d chosen 200 because I felt it would provide a decent indicator of what pace I might be able to hold for 1650 yards after two more weeks of—possibly intermittent–swimming.

I rested for just 20 seconds and, on a 4:00 interval, swam another. It felt just as good and I slowed by only a second to a time of 3:40. I had only a few minutes before the pool had to be cleared, and I felt so good, I decided to do one more 200. It felt just as relaxed, was just as efficient, but it was five seconds faster—3:35.

I left the pool feeling completely elated—over how delicious the water and my stroke felt, and how quickly I’d been able to tap into my neural fitness. I also now had specific benchmarks  or measures to build upon in the two weeks prior to my 1650 at New England Masters.

Specifically that I could—with very little physical effort, but considerable mental effort or focus—swim 200 yards at an average stroke count for 25 yards of 16, and an average pace per 25 yards of just over 25 seconds. And with a little calculation I knew my average stroke tempo as well—1.28 seconds per stroke.  I’ll work steadily and at low pressure over the next two weeks to incrementally improve the pace and tempo at which I can hold 16 SPL, over incrementally greater distances, without working any harder.

I emailed my good friend Lou Tharp about that first practice. Lou will also swim the NEMS 1650  and we’ll count for each other. Lou wrote back with a really eloquent description of that approach to practice. Lou’s description strikes me as the ideal prescription for how to return to training after a layoff. And for a many other reasons or benefits as well.

Lou wrote: “I also swam yesterday after a layoff—six days due to a stomach virus. But before that I was practicing to find an objective. I’d start with no plan and trust that one would emerge – the opposite of fly fishing because I didn’t ever snap the line back. I just let the practice go where ever it went. This creates an opening for learning and discovery. Sometimes having structure takes my focus away from learning/discovering.

The extreme counter-example is a masters practice of lots of general work with no skill emphasis. When I get finished, I have an empty feeling – like talking on the phone while driving. I’m not sure what happened on the road while I was on the phone just as I’m not sure what happened in my mind when I was in the water.

The no-objective practice learning/discovery could be mechanical or emotional, and it could be something I’d learned before that I forgot about. It’s like being a basset hound out for a walk. You never know what you’re going to sniff out, but when you get back home, it’s been a satisfying experience.”

May your laps be as happy as mine—and may they be filled with learning and discovery.