Mister Pretty Stroke
Usually when I swim I swim in the middle of the day around various appointments. At that time of day I swim with a mix of college kids who can hold their own and old men and women who float. Sometimes the old people attempt to do backstroke. Rarely they succeed. Not really a high level group of pool competition. Today the only time I had to swim was at 7 am when the pool opened. In the locker room I run into a chick who has a black bathing suit with hot pink skull and crossbones.
“Nice suit!”I proclaim, probably way too chipper for 7 am.
“Yeah,” she responds, “it makes you want to swim hard, and if you can’t, you still look bad@ass enough to psyc out the competition.”
Hmmmm. This one is different than the timid old people I’m used to. She intimidates the heck out of me, but I think she rocks.
Splish suit
I flip flop onto the deck, interval workout in hand and join the lane of a man who abs that shouldn’t exist in real life. And shoulders and pecs and oh my god, thank you whoever invented the sport of swimming… Men who have bodies like this are proof that the world is not a fair place. He proceeds to do a very odd sculling meets breast stroke kind of thing and I realize that he is either a very good or very bad swimmer. It’s the former. Once he breaks out of his technique drill he begins to swim free. “Ooooooh,” I coo in my head. “His stroke is so pretty! I’ll call him Mister Pretty Stroke.” Yeah. My brain functions at about the level of a 3 year old at 7 am. As MPS (as he shall now be referred) crushes his workout, he leaves me painfully aware of my skinny arms and my inability to swim a 1:00 100 or whatever crazy speed he was swimming. He stops blurring for only long enough for me to realize that he’s wearing an Ironman cap and I am so relieved when lane next to me opens up.
I’m actually having a really good workout, squeaking in under my target intervals when She walks in. This girl looks like she stepped out of a swimwear ad. Awesome strong shoulders and legs that make my ultrarunner legs look puny and I secretly beg and hope and pray, “Please, please, please, don’t let her get in my lane.” After MPS my ego needs a break. She offers a sweet smile and asks if she can join me.
Usually it’s really tough to intimidate me. I’m the girl who (accidentally and unintentionally) intimidates others. On Saturday I was on a date and I somehow left the guy with the impression that if it were me and him versus bear that I would be the survivor. How do I give off THAT impression?! Cr@p! But this girl, who can apparently crush a bear like a cookie, was intimidated by the girl who I named Miss Pretty Stroke. Yeah, I know I used that name before. At 7 am while swimming intervals my brain doesn’t function well enough to get creative. I had insight into my lack of creativity and tried to come up with a new nickname. I was unsuccessful which is why I will continue to call her Miss Pretty Stroke.
Miss Pretty Stroke proceeded to rock me. There was an unfortunate moment when we both pushed off the wall together. I was going for a 50m interval. She was pulling. I could keep up. Barely. But I should remind you: she wasn’t using her legs. FML. I’m pretty sure the next lap she beat me while wearing a lead vest, pulling, and practicing single arm drills. I think back to this morning while I was reading Bree Wee’s blog while eating breakfast. Bree was worried on her last swim that there was a shark. “At least she’s not a shark,” I think, and then wonder if I’d prefer Jaws. I hate swimming in the morning.
Good news is, thinking of this blog post while I swam made my 2200m the fast and easiest swim I’ve had in ages. I’m kind of stoked for tri season and I celebrated today by buying a wetsuit!
I wonder if real people actually look that hot in wetsuits.
Awesome, right?! And, as a thank-you to my readers, I will pass along some money-saving Googling I did in case you are in the market for an Xterra wetsuit. Enter DCTri at checkout and receive these awesome discounts:
VOLT – $99
Vortex3 john – $129 (reg. $300)
Vortex3 fullsuit – $179 (reg. $400)
VectorProX2 john – $199 (reg. $400)
VectorProX2 fullsuit – $299 (reg. $600)
Vendetta fullsuit – $500 (reg. $695)
Velocity 0.02 speedsuit – $99 (reg. $250)
Velocity++ speedsuit – $119 (reg. $350)
Yep! I got my wetsuit for 50% off! Now only if I had a code to take 50% off my times…
