swimming

I think I have written in posts past that my mom was semi-freakish about involving us kids in community sports.
Joe was easy. He liked all sports. And was good at all of them too.
Alli was a theater geek. She did community plays. She was too 'distracted' to really be good at sports.
I had absolutely no competitive drive. At all. I joined just about every sport and quit them all. I didn't find joy in any of them.
Except one.
SWIMMING.
When I was teeny tiny, my mom signed all us kids up to learn how to swim.
I LOVED it. LOVEEEEDDDD it.

While all the little kids in my class were scared to jump in. I was a freak. I couldn't wait!


I most likely cannon-balled it in there.
When I was little I used to seriously think I was the Little Mermaid.
It was a good childhood.
So after my mom figured out that swimming was basically the only thing I would actually enjoy doing, she signed me up for the local competitive swim league.
It was called Riptide.


I think you can start swimming in Riptide once you hit like second grade or something.
So I swam in Riptide until I was in middle school.

I was SO not competitive about it. And I was extremely easy-going.
So naturally at the meets I would always have to do the events that no one ever wanted to do.
I did the butterfly. All sorts of butterfly. The 100, 200, and relay. I was like the butterfly queen.
I also did others...i really sucked at breast-stroke....so I don't think I did that one.


I always hated the meets. Mostly because people would be watching me swim.
But I liked the adrenaline a little bit.
But mostly I just wanted to be done with the meets.
Is it bad that my favorite part about being on a swim team was the practices? I just liked swimming with my friends.

So anyway, I haven't really swam hard for some years. My friend Kim and I go swimming a couple times a week now.

We usually don't do hard lap swimming, it's more like low impact muscle building.

So yesterday, I decided I wanted to show off my cool swim team tricks. One of them was a flip turn.

Those are really fun to do, but you have to have some speed going into a flip turn.

So I just decided to pound out a couple really fast laps too. Might as well.

I did a few flip turns and a few fast laps.

And I forgot how hard swimming was.

If you really tried.

I had a mini heart attack.

But I also had one of the funnest days all week.

I forgot how much I loved swimming.

I could swim forever.

I LOVE IT

Yours truly,

Aqua Andrea