Swim Camp?!?

For any of you who know me well, a blog entry titled "swim camp" must have you intrigued.  Me going to swim camp is about as likely to happen as Kathy Griffin going to a religious based finishing school.  Let's qualify that as not so likely.

And yet, hold on to your spandex, I did indeed go to swim camp...on purpose! I wasn't even tricked into going.  Forget that, I actually paid for the stupid thing!  What the what?

Think I'm exaggerating?  Here's all the backstory you need: last year before the gun went of for IronMan Mont Tremblant, my swim training consisted of 2 workouts...total.  One was an open water swim in a lake that lasted about an hour, and the second lasted 32 minutes in the basement of a NYC pool.

God how I wish that was dramatically enhanced to make this a better story, but that truly is how much I trained for an IronMan swim.  It went super well, as I'm sure you can imagine.

So now that you know how much I love swim training, picture me on a plane headed to Ft Lauderdale for 3 days of nothing but swimming.  Was I drunk?  You'd better damn well believe it.

I'm about to say something inflammatory.  A truly offensive and disrespectful statement.  I'll likely offend many of you and have certainly offended myself...

I enjoyed swim camp...

Gross!  What a filthy thing to say, right?  I'm ashamed and only hope my Mom is not reading this, never mind my coach.  Imagine what he would do with such information.  He might actually expect me to swim before my next race.  Oooooohhhh, I just got chills!

But you know, there really is something about flying somewhere (warm climate helps) and having nothing to do but pretend you're a professional athlete.  Wake up, eat breakfast, swim, eat lunch, take a nap, go for a quick run, stretch, swim, eat dinner, go to bed, repeat.  I could get used to that schedule.

So the fact that I didn't hate my life and spew curses at my fellow swimmers was pretty surprising, but the coolest part of the whole weekend was some of the company we shared the pool with.

I'm a tattoo fan as you might have gathered and there was some pretty impressive ink on a few of the athletes.  Picture 5 interlinking rings of different colors...  Yep, there were freakin' Olympian level swimmers in the lanes right next to us.

Partly this made us all feel like short, unattractive girls at the school dance who sit in the corner with no one asking them to dance.  Ok, maybe it just make me feel like a short and unattractive girl.  Welcome to my life.  But watching these guys swim was an incredible experience.  Holy hell can they move!

And that was the highlight.  I don't fancy myself someday becoming an Olympic swimmer, as I'm probably more likely to sprout gluten-free baked goods from my nose, but it was pretty amazing to swim with the likes of these dudes.  To see what the human body is capable of.  To see how efficient someone can move when so well trained.  To see how damn good you can look in a speedo if you work out 30 hours a week...

Am I a swimmer? Nope. Will I be super excited tomorrow when I do my obligatory swim session of the day? Highly unlikely. But perhaps, and bare with me here, I just might not hate it.  I just might get in that water and do my workout without whining like a little bitch.

And that my friends is progress.