Autobiography breaking the surface summary

Beyond the mists of prehistory, back when the meter platform was made of giant slabs of rock and the 10m was supplied by the pate of a cooperative apatosaur, this reviewer used to fantasize about making it to the Olympics as a diver when he should have been doing his mat exercises.

One might think that most diving training is about falling but OH NO it's actually planted drearily on the sweat-pooling surface of dense coated rubbersmelly foam where you repeat ad infinitum the broken-down-into-parts motions you hope to later do in the air with none of the human enjoyment of the gravity-free grace it conjures before the uninitiated eye.

For: an instant of awareness interrupts muscle-memory such that when you stop being a robot so you can experience it as a human, you flub the grace you appreciate as a human because you turned off the robot. You have to give yourself to it and enjoy it only later on video.

Were you not in robot mode you'd be overw