Soul of a Swimmer is the true story of Nicholas Dworet, a champion swimmer from Florida. Through interviews with his family, friends, coaches, and teammates, the book fondly describes the lifelong process of nurturing a child who has extraordinary talent and ebullient dreams as he develops into an elite athlete. As Nick matures, a young man with a remarkably humble and genuine character emerges amid his athletic successes. When he was a senior in high school, Nick found his Olympic dreams within reach. But tragically, his life was cut short in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting. Nick's story will resonate with the reader forever.
The thrill of plunging--or dipping a toe--into open water brings joy, confidence, adventure, and friendship. It can wash away stress and sadness, pain and grief. Here water is a great healer, a place to feel gloriously, elementally alive and in touch with yourself, with others, and with nature. Full of life-affirming personal stories and breath-taking images of scenery and swimmers, this bookcelebrates the remarkable wild swimming community. With practical advice on how wild swimming works and how to get started--from what you'll need (a swimsuit and a smile ) to where best to go (rivers, oceans, lochs, lakes . . .)--there's never been a better time to take the plunge.
The Five "B" Method to a Successful Triathlon Swim is a comprehensive approach to finally master your swim stroke. The information provided is broken down into the necessary "sub-skills" that will help to create and develop your swim technique. This system will quickly help to identify your strengths and weaknesses, along with any potential asymmetrical movement and mobility patterns. The Five "B" Method to a Successful Triathlon Swim was designed to maximize your return every time you get in the water.
This is not your mother’s memoir. In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch, a lifelong swimmer and Olympic hopeful escapes her raging father and alcoholic and suicidal mother when she accepts a swimming scholarship which drug and alcohol addiction eventually cause her to lose. What follows is promiscuous sex with both men and women, some of them famous, and some of it S&M, and Lidia discovers the power of her sexuality to help her forget her pain. The forgetting doesn’t last, though, and it is her hard-earned career as a writer and a teacher, and the love of her husband and son, that ultimately create the life she needs to survive.
Set in the ‘90s, this lyrical autobiographical novel follows the relationship that develops between a recent college grad and a young widow during their nightly swims in Lake Michigan “[A] mosaic of uncanny photographs and rediscovered diaries, fresh correspondence between ex-lovers, meditations on childhood and parenthood, an amphibious dance between the past and the present”—Karen Russell “Swimming at night, to compare its slipperiness to that of a dream would be to ignore the work of staying afloat, the mesmerism brought on by the rhythm, the repetition of the strokes.” Beneath the surface of Lake Michigan there are vast systems: crosscutting currents, sudden drop-offs, depths of absolute darkness, shipwrecked bodies, hidden places. Peter Rock’s stunning autobiographical novel begins in the ’90s on the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin. The narrator, a recent college graduate, and a young widow, Mrs. Abel, swim together at night, making their way across miles of open water, navigating the currents and swells and carried by the rise and fall of the lake. The nature of these night swims, and of his relationship to Mrs. Abel, becomes increasingly mysterious to the narrator as the summer passes, until the night that Mrs. Abel disappears. Twenty years later, the narrator—now married with two daughters—tries to understand those months, his forgotten obsessions and dreams. Digging into old notebooks and letters, as well as clippings he’s preserved on the “psychic photography” of Ted Serios and scribbled quotations from Rilke and Chekhov, the narrator rebuilds a world he’s lost. He also looks for clues to the fate of Mrs. Abel, and begins once again to swim distances in dark water.
An illustrated guide to competitive swimming containing detailed overviews of the four primary strokes; racing strategies; and the most effective training methods and the science behind why they work.
Kim Fairley was twenty-four when she fell in love with and married a man who was fifty-seven. Something about Vern—his quirkiness, his humor, his devilish smile—made her feel an immediate connection with him. She quickly became pregnant, but instead of the idyllic interlude she’d imagined as she settled into married life and planned for their family, their love was soon tested by the ghosts of Vern’s past—a town, a house, a family, a memory. Shooting Out the Lights is a real-life mystery that explores the challenges faced in a loving marriage, the ongoing, wrenching aftermath of gun violence and the healing that comes with confronting the past.
In Dip, Andrew Fusek Peters describes an extraordinary year of wild swimming. He leads us to rivers, lakes, waterfalls and hidden pools, into untamed landscapes that have the potential to surprise and move us in unexpected ways. Following in the wake of great writers such as Richard Jefferies and Edward Thomas, Dip combines meditations on place, history and myth with sharp observation and a poet's eye. As he takes the plunge and immerses himself in the elements, Andrew also begins to surface from a deep depression, making Dip at once a personal journey and about the many ways in which wild water and nature can restore us to ourselves.
From the author of The Savage God, a unique memoir of growing old, and a lesson in not going gently into that good night The ponds of Hampstead Heath are small oases; fragments of wild nature nestled in the heart of north-west London. For the best part of his life Al Alvarez – poet, critic, novelist, rock-climber and poker player – has swum in them almost daily. An athlete in his youth, Alvarez chronicles what it is to grow old with humour and fierce honesty – from his relentlessly nagging ankle which makes daily life a struggle, to infuriating bureaucratic battles with the council to keep his disabled person's Blue Badge, the devastating effects of a stroke, and the salvation he finds in the three Ss – Swimming, Sex and Sleep. As Alvarez swims in the ponds he considers how it feels when you begin to miss that person you used to be – to miss yourself. Swimming is his own private form of protest against the onslaught of time; proof to others, and himself, that he's not yet beaten. By turns funny, poetic and indignant, Pondlife is a meditation on love, the importance of life's small pleasures and, above all, a lesson in not going gently in to that good night. _____________________ 'A beautiful unfolding of a story, told in deceptively simple prose but with a great power to move' Sunday Times 'The adrenalin still flows in lively extracts' The Times 'A marvellous book... it has no business to be as invigorating and absorbing – its success is against the odds' Observer
In a candid and uplifting memoir, international swimming star Beard reveals the truth about coming of age in the Olympic spotlight, the demons she battled along the way, and her newfound happiness.
