Splash to a Mile: A Book for Anyone Who Never Learned to Swim
There was a real gap in the Water Sports shelf. Swim to Succeed is written for junior and competitive swimmers already working on technique. Open Water Swimming to Succeed assumes a reader can already swim and wants to take it into lakes, rivers and the sea. Neither is the right book for someone who can't swim a length, or who can only doggy-paddle through a panic. Splash to a Mile is built for exactly that reader.
A Plan, Not a Pep Talk
The structure borrows the thing that makes beginner running plans work: every session is a specific, written-out card — swim this much, rest this much, repeat — rather than vague encouragement to "just get in and try." Splash to a Mile is a 12-week, three-sessions-a-week programme built the same way, starting at the very beginning (breath control and floating) and finishing at a continuous 1500m swim — roughly a mile, and also the Olympic 1500m freestyle distance, which is where the title comes from.
Fear of Water, Addressed Directly
The book treats a genuine fear of water as the norm for its reader, not an embarrassing exception to gloss over. There's a dedicated chapter on it, graded exposure and simple breathing techniques included, alongside a self-assessment at the front so a reader can honestly place themselves on the plan rather than guessing.
What's Inside
Four foundation skills (breath control, floating, kicking, arm technique) taught from zero, the full 12-week session-by-session programme, a troubleshooting section for the real problems beginners hit — sinking legs, panic breathing, zig-zag swimming, goggle problems — and a mindset chapter on the parts nobody else writes about: feeling self-conscious at the pool, building a routine, actually tracking progress. A closing chapter, "Life After the Mile," names the pathway onward into Swim to Succeed and Open Water Swimming to Succeed for anyone who wants to keep going once the mile is done.
Consistent With the Rest of the Shelf
Technique cues, terminology and safety framing were adapted — not copied — from the catalogue's existing swimming titles and simplified to true-beginner level, so a reader who goes on to buy either of those books meets the same vocabulary rather than contradictory advice.