If your friends don’t swim, they will never truly understand you. You spend hours and hours every day with your swim friends. They go through the same pain as you each day at practice, suffer the long swim meets with you on the weekends and understand all the “swimmer probs” you experience each and everyday. Your swim friends relate to you, and accept you and your constant chlorine smell.
Us swimmers know how brutal the sport can be. The whole sport is a love/hate relationship. One second you absolutely love it, the next second you are constantly questioning why you continue to swim back and forth and stare at a black line all day. But after a few seconds or maybe even minutes of questioning why, you take a look around you to see some of your best friends that you have met through the sport of swimming. Although the sport of swimming can be tough, nothing makes it better than being able to surround yourself with such great people each and everyday.
1. They don’t judge that you eat 6 full meals a day.
No one else understands the intense hunger you feel at all hours of the day like your swim friends. No matter how many meals you eat plus dessert, they will never show an ounce of judgment. Most of the time when you hang out, it involves food.
2. They fill your life with happiness.
No matter how hard the set is or how bad you swam at the meet, they will always be the ones to add some humor or give you a big hug. They know how to turn an awful set into something somewhat bearable.
3. They see you at your best, and your worst.
Your teammates have seen every side of you. They have seen you shed tears after a bad swim, the anger you have when your coach gives you the worst set ever and the joy you have shown after making that cut you’ve been working towards. No matter what, they continue to stick by your side even when you do act a little crazy.
4. They understand the swim lingo.
Someone who doesn’t swim doesn’t understand any of the actual swim lingo. Non-swimmers will never understand what the bottom and top means, what the zipper drill is and what negative splitting is. You can never truly talk about a practice or meet with non-swimmers, and if you do, you find yourself getting pretty annoyed because they don’t understand anything you are saying.
We use digital clocks at practice but still say top and bottom. I wonder how long before that ceases to mean anything.