Swimmer's uh, secrets?

I spent more than half my life in a pool whether it was swimming competitively, teaching, coaching, or lifeguarding. A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook an article on the 29 secrets swimmers won't tell you. I'm not sure why swimmers wouldn't tell you these things. Not all of them were even that secretive. But a few of them were things that only swimmers could understand and I chuckled at them. A few days later I received a link to another story. This one was about peeing in the ocean. And since the two articles sort of go hand in hand, and since they made me laugh and got me remembering, I thought I would do some posts on them. Here then is post #1 where I'm giving some of the secrets and my take on them.

1. You have no shame in being almost naked around your friends and teammates - I would add co-workers to this as well. Because that is the first thing that popped into my mind when I read this statement. For someone with a body imagine I didn't exactly pick the right career to go into as most of the time I was almost naked. Swim suits really don't hide much. As lifeguards and instructors, we didn't have a long turnaround either when it came to changing and so we learned how to change whether it was from a wet suit to a dry suit or from a suit to clothes or from clothes to a suit without having to go into a bathroom. We wrapped towels around ourselves and changed. Wherever we were. One of my co-workers never went into the bathroom to change. He always changed in the guard room and he always hung his underwear from the knob on the door leading out to the pool. 
2. Putting on a Fastskin suit takes twice as long as you think it does - I'm from the era before Fastskins, but I did have to put on my share of wet bathing suits. A wet bathing suit does not slip easily on. Which is why swimmers learn to carry multiple suits in their bags so that a wet suit doesn't have to enter the equation. Nowadays pool bathrooms actually come with bathing suit dryers so that you can have a dry suit in minutes.
3. There is nothing you dread more than a long course swim practice - I started out competitive swimming in summers only. Those pools were all short course pools, 25 meters. It wasn't until I began swimming in the winter that I was introduced to a 50 meter pool for practices. But I have to say that during my lifeguarding career there wasn't anything I hated more than going across the street from my apartment complex to get in a workout and discover that the pool was set up for long course. It always makes you feel a lot more tired.
4. No matter how old you get Sharks & Minnows will always be a great excuse to end practice - This one made me laugh because oh, it is so true. When I was young we would beg to end practices with a good game of Sharks & Minnows, and one of the great things about it was that the coaches would be the sharks. Since I was always madly in love with our male coaches every year this was an added bonus. As a coach, this was always a fun way to end the week or to do for those swimmers that showed up for practice the day after a meet. The kids thought it the greatest thing which in turn made you the greatest coach ever!
5. Tugging on the lane line while swimming backstroke is an art you have perfected - This is the one that made me laugh the hardest because I had just done it that very day. As a lifeguard I could tell which adults were really swimmers when I saw them do this because no matter how old you are it is something you do almost unconsciously. We had one coach that would make the entire lane swim butterfly as a punishment if he caught someone in our lane doing it. It became like a game on whether we could get in a pull or a tug without getting caught. Until after swimming several butterfly punishments it wasn't funny anymore. I still remember one of my teammates flipping off our coach after he caught her and called her out. Oops.
6. Sometimes you feel more like a mermaid or a fish then a human being - Oh, yes. I haven't swam in years. When my kids were born swimming just went out the window except when I was teaching. When I decided to get back into a pool this summer to swim laps I felt that exactly feeling; like I had been landlocked for so long and now I was home.
7. You've totally swallowed an unhealthy amount of chlorinated water - I never worried about that when I was young or even when I taught. In fact I tell beginning swimmers that no matter how good they are they will still swallow water. Now, after reading articles and becoming more of a germ-aphobe, I hate when I swallow water. Yet it is a part of the swimmer's world. 
8. Getting up for a morning practice, while horrible, is actually a badge of honor - It was always cool to be able to whine about how we did this, yet really feel better than the person we were whining to. When my friend Michelle and I started riding our bikes to practice we had to get up even earlier, yet we thought we were SO cool when it came to being athletic.
9. You can wear a cap and use special shampoo, yet your hair will always be "chloriney" - Nothing to be done about it. Our hair was always stiff and straw-like and reeked of a pool. If you were blonde, chances were that your hair would be green during swim season. This is one of the things my daughter hates as a swimmer. For me, it was all part of it.
10. It feels weird not counting things by 25, 50, 100 - For a long time after swimming I had a hard time not doing this. One was really 25 and two was always 50. I have the same problem after watching tennis for two weeks straight.
11. Unless you are a butterflyer you will do absolutely ANYTHING to get out of a butterfly set - Yep. See #5. 
12. You can try as hard as you want yet you will always smell like chlorine - I refer to it as my perfume. I love it. Makes me go back to the good ole days. And boy, does my little swimmer smell like it daily despite all the scents she sprays on herself.
13. Weird tan lines are something you've gotten accustomed to - Sort of like how golfers are use to having white feet and one white hand. Girl swimmers know that whatever backing is on the suit will be a permanent fixture on their skin. We spent a lot of time changing out of our racing suits and into bikinis or pulling down straps on our suits after practice so that we could change that, but after a burn we would give up.
14. You actually have no shame in deck changing because it is all about efficiency - Yep, I already mentioned this one. One of the things my husband and I had in common when we met because he was a triathlete. I'm the best changer outside of a bathroom EVER. I still remember changing after teaching all morning in the parking lot of a hospital so that I could go inside to meet my co-worker's newborn daughter.
15. Once you learn that peeing in pools is acceptable, your life changes forever - I don't really remember peeing in pools as a swimmer because getting out of practice to use the bathroom would have been a good excuse. Yet, I know that getting out of the pool when playing volleyball or other games was something I never wanted to do so... Then when I was pregnant and teaching water aerobics hauling my body out of the pool, walking to the bathrooms, and coming all the way back again was not an option every time I needed to pee. So... I do have to say that I stopped doing that when we got our own pool in the backyard. Now I just use the hose and the backyard, but don't tell my husband. As for using the bathroom instead of the pool, we never never did that either because of issue #2. If I peed in the bathroom, it was in a shower stall drain and not in the toilet. Which leads me to tomorrow's post.....