Fear the turtle, but not the swim

By Emilie David on September 4, 2011, 11:18pm

The first 100 meters of my first sprint Triathlon were awesome.  And then I inhaled water, and the part of my conscience that takes the form of a large chicken got louder than everything else and announced repeatedly that I was going to die. That sort of thing can really slow you down.  So my goal this summer was to get into the lake as much as possible and just get comfortable.   Here are some tips based on my experience:

• The best way to ensure you meet your goal is to announce to your family that you are going to swim laps in the lake.  They will keep asking you when you are going until you finally actually go just so you don’t have to answer the question anymore.

• Lake water tastes much better than pool water, but it burns just as much when traveling northwards through your nasal passage.

• Lake weeds are really not so bad.  Swimming face first into them is not that different from having your own hair get in your way.  But, like your own hair, it doesn’t swallow easy, so try to keep your mouth closed.

• White and yellow objects are easy to sight.  Just make sure the thing you pick is not a boat, as its owners could get in it and take off while your head is down, leaving you to spin in circles and wonder where the hell you are when you finally look up and it is gone.

• Also, it doesn’t matter what color anything is if you do not have your contact lenses in.  Everything will look like the thing you are sighting.

• Jet skis and steam boats can make some really big waves, but none of those 3 things are as big a threat to you and your safety as the recreational fisherman who is learning how to cast.

• The fish are not following you and they don’t want to eat you.

• The ducks are following you, but it’s ok.  One will pretend to draft off of you for a bit, then it will pull up alongside you and push the pace a little and you will be all like “Oh man, I can’t let a duck beat me!”, and so you will swim faster, and then you’ll be all like “Oh yeah!  I am totally beating this duck!”, and then, because you tired yourself out trying to outswim waterfowl, she will quietly but swiftly pull in front of you and be sitting up there on the dock mocking you when, minutes later, you finally sputter up to and around it.

• There is no need to be embarrassed about being the only idiot swimming laps in the lake with an obnoxiously colored swim cap on, flailing arms, and lots of gasping when the waves kick up.  It is not a synchronized swimming routine.

• The woman on the dock, who insists on being there if you are swimming? Even though she could not save you? Who paces up and down the dock yelling at every jet ski, motorboat, paddle boat, and canoe, “SWIMMER! THERE’S A SWIMMER OUT THERE!”?  Be embarrassed about her.  And grateful. 

            My nephew tells my duck coach to quit being so hard on me.