Hey people! Today I thought I’d share some writing I did about the swim meet this last weekend. It’s a little exaggerated and I’m not including any conversations really, but it’s how I think about the meet.  I’m also skipping through parts of the meet.

You wake up at 6:43 by your mother opening your door to make sure you’re up for your meet. The hardest part about getting up early is leaving the warmth of your bed. Quickly and quietly you grab all your stuff for the meet. You slip down the stairs. You feed and medicate the guinea pig first, because if you don’t he will wake the entire house. You grab breakfast and pack your swim bag. Then you leave with your sisters, brother, and mother for the meet. As you drive by a bank you see the temperature, it’s 38 degrees. Not exactly perfect swimming weather. Driving on the freeway you almost fall asleep. Upon arriving you are greeted by the smiling faces of all your friends and you think that maybe it was worth it to come. You see your coach walking towards you with a cup of coffee. He greets you with a ‘Hello, hurry up. Time to get in.’ That is a swimmer’s dreaded phrase. It basically means leave all your warm clothes on your chair and spend 25 minutes in a cold pool. Your warm up, as swimmers call it, is annoying as usual and cold. Too many people crammed into your lane and you spend most of the warm up wondering why you’re a swimmer. After warm up the meet starts and you have three events which are numbered.

Yours are 17, 21, and 25 today. You won’t get much of a break in between your events, but that’s okay. Event 17 is your 400 IM, which means you do four laps of each stroke. You are really cold, but you stand behind the starting blocks waiting for your first event. It’s almost the first event of the whole day and it’s making you nervous. There is one event before you, one little girl wanted to swim this, but when the meet starts it’s your event not hers. You quickly realize that the meet officials joined the events and you are supposed to be swimming right now. Quickly you throw all your stuff on the ground and snap some goggles over your eyes. You make up a strategy as you swim, because it all depends on how you feel while you’re swimming. You finish in second place, not bad, you drop a few seconds. Hopefully you won’t make it back in finals, but you doubt it. Finals are supposedly special, but nobody likes them. It’s when you are one of the top 8 swimmers in your event, so you come back later and swim it again.

Next up is your 100 free, four laps of freestyle. You swim a short warm down and prepare for your sprint. You talk and cheer for your friends in between your events and their events. You swim your free and you do okay. You stay at the same time, no drop.

Last event you have is the 200 backstroke, 8 laps of back. You swim as well as you can, but you still add a little time. You check postings and you made in back in finals. In everything. Now you have to wait at the meet for the younger kids to swim. After them you’ll swim your events all over again.

Three hours later your friends start showing up again. Then your coach calls for your second warm up. This one is better then the first. 400 IM again. This time you are ready. You here the first long whistle, that means you step up to the blocks. Since this is finals, the announcer calls out everyone’s names in the event and your teammates cheer when they call your name. After that you hear the second whistle, you climb up onto your block. Right foot forward, left foot back. ‘Take your mark.’ You clutch the block with your hands and tense waiting for the start.

Beep! You explode off the block. The cold water shocks you as you dive in. The four laps of butterfly go by without too much pain. On backstroke you regain some of your air and start to focus on pulling down hard. On breaststroke you can see your opponents and where they are. You aren’t too far behind the girl in first, so you pick up your pace. Final lap of breaststroke, you are right next to her, but you are really tired. You start freestyle, the final four laps. You have enough energy, you could pass her now. You are worried though, you might get too tired. So you decide to keep up with her until the last fifty. As soon as you start the second to last lap, you pick up your pace to start passing her. She picks her pace up too. Final lap and you are sprinting as hard as you can. You touch in first. You check the board that tells you your times and you dropped 10 seconds or so. You lean over and shake hands with your main opponent, and say good race.

The rest of the meet goes by and you are happy by your victory. You go home around 6:20, ready for dinner. Tomorrow you have another whole round of events.