SwimBuddy

My new SwimBuddy has a good, nay, great attitude. She quietly observes, practices hard and asks for help when she needs it.


This morning as we were finishing several thousand (okay hundred) yards worth of breaststroke, she commented on how difficult a stroke it was for her to swim. Jokingly, I replied that I felt her pain, because I have the worst breaststroke kick in the world (actually true). Then she told me that she had never swum anything but front crawl before swimming with me (we've been swimming together for three weeks now). Dumbstruck, I asked if she'd at least learned the basic technique in swim class the previous semester. She said no, that she had been watching what I did and trying her best. Poor kid, she'd been watching the worst kick in the pool and trying to improve herself!

She's a great SwimBuddy because 1) she lets me be bossy 2) she's always interested in learning more 3) she still swims slower than I do.

The Guy in the Pool

Tuesday morning at the pool: had to choose between sharing a lane with a muscle-bound walking guy or a slow-swimming senior.

So I choose the lane with The Guy. Sure, he’s a little more muscle-bound than I’m comfortable with, but he’s just walking and I figure I’ll bother him less. I hop in and ask if he minds sharing a lane and he replies, “The world is about sharing”. Uh, okay, thanks.

Half-way through my warm-up I realize The Guy has not been informed of pool etiquette and he wants to talk. He starts by informing me that he’s had the flu for a month and just got back to working out yesterday. Uh, okay, again, thanks.

I try to stay completely underwater as long as I possibly can, but part of my warm-up consists of using a kickboard and I am trapped, trapped in the pool with The Guy. He jog-trots alongside of me as I kick and asks if I’m ‘native’. Just like that, “Are you native?”. At this point I still think he’s just socially stunted and I answer no and kick like hell to get away from him.

The next time we’re at the same spot in the lane he begins to tell me that he recently went to Mexico and while he was there he spent some time at Venice Beach body building. Aaaaaah! Aaaaah! Now I have to decide if he’s socially stunted, a racist nut, or terminally lacking in any geographic knowledge. Aaaaaah!

Quickly abandoning the rest of my warm-up I begin to swim as fast as I can without stopping.

Muscle-bound guys look like potato bugs.