**UPDATED** It sounded like a good idea at the time.

Tonight I have my first swim session for triathlon training. It’s through a local club called Velocity Triathlon. It all sounded like a great idea when I decided to contact the coach and sign up, but now that it’s *tonight* I’m a bit nervous.

You see, I’ve never participated in any sort of coached swimming. I’ve never even had a formal swimming lesson. I started wondering what the heck I was thinking signing up for this. My grandpa taught me to swim at White Cliff Pool (back when it was still an actual pool and not a water park) when I was about 3 years old. My only reason for listening to him and actually learning was simply because I wanted to go off the diving board and it was a rule that you had to be able to swim, doggy paddle, flail your arms, etc., to make it to the wall safely.

I don’t really remember how my grandpa taught me to swim. I remember there being a lot of frustration -- me wanting to play, he wanting to teach. But, in the end it worked out because obviously I didn’t drown.

As it turned out, I was a water baby. I LOVED being in the water. My parents literally had to drag me out of the bathtub because I would play in there for hours until I was completely pruney like a raisin. Eventually, my Mom would have to cut me off from adding hot water to the bath so that I’d get out. It’s funny looking back that I was never involved in any sort of swim program. I probably would be in the Olympics right now**!

Fast forward to the 6th grade when swimming was part of our gym class since the middle school had a pool. That would be awesome right?? Yeah wrong. Swimming at school is just not cool! Especially if you’re a girl and you spent an hour in the bathroom that morning fixing your bangs just so.

Plus, the pool was gross. It was an indoor pool (obviously), which are only great if you’re at a hotel. I doubt that it got substantial maintenance and it smelled like the janitor would empty all of his cleaning products into it at the end of the day after mopping the entirety of the school’s hallways and bathrooms. You get it. It was gross.

Most of the swimming curriculum was centered around teaching kids to swim. Once you could show that you were water safe, you usually got to hang out in the deep end while the teacher worked with the non-swimmers. There was, however, a list of swimming tests that each student needed to complete to get a passing grade. I forget what they all were, but there was one that I absolutely could not do! It was the stupidest thing. It was something like hanging onto the wall and submerging yourself for 20 seconds. It was impossible for me! Try it sometime! Sure it’s one thing to swim underwater holding your breath, but this seemed like an eternity! Inevitably, I would rise to the surface as the teacher was counting 16…17… and so I’d have to do it again. Miserable. One day, I decided enough was enough. On one of the days I had an *excuse note* to sit out of swimming, the teacher asked me to be in charge of the clipboard. It had the master sheet of everyone’s name and a check mark next to each test they successfully completed. When she wasn’t looking, I helped myself by adding several check marks to the row with my name. Come on, you would have too. I think I added a few for my friends too.

I think I’ll be okay tonight as long as I don’t have to prove I can hold my breath for 20 seconds…

** But probably not.

---UPDATE---

So I went to the swim class and it went much better than I thought it was going to be. In fact, the coach said that I probably could have been an Olympian***. Funny because I was super close to not even going. First of all, I was starving. Absolutely famished. All I could think about was how hungry I was going to be after all those laps were swum. On the drive over, I scrounged in my car and found a Quaker Chewy Granola Bar so it and it's 90 calories would have to tide me over.

There were only about 10 or 12 of us at the session. I didn't know who the actual coach was having not met him before, so I kept walking up to people introducing myself as "Hi I'm Kristi. I'm new." until finally I found the coach and he remembered telling me to show up at this session.

A second, much younger coach, showed up and had all the regulars get into the lanes on one end of the pool. Myself and three other people were put into lanes on the other end. Our coach was this super-stud multi-Ironman, UK national triathlete. I only knew this because this woman was totally worshipping the ground he walked on! To the point of embarrassment! She like knew all of his race times and how during that one Ironman he totally bonked during mile 8 (or something like that) of the run. Really? It was awkward to be in the vicinity of this spectacle she was making, she with her running mascara and matted hair.

Anyway, once in the water, my fears of being too slow or suddenly forgetting how to stay afloat quickly dissipated. The group I was with were newbie swimmers. The first thing our coach had us do was swim two laps freestyle. When I was done, I looked up to see I was the only one at the wall. Nice! The rest of the session was largely the same. Coach telling us to do something and me doing it pretty fast and good. Myself and another girl noticed that we really weren't being corrected at all. We asked him what was up and he said we were swimming "perfectly". Perfectly! And he said that word with his British accent like Gordon Ramsay as in "this chicken is cooked pah-fekt-ly."

So all-in-all it was actually pretty fun! Silly me for almost skipping and going home.

*** Legal Disclaimer: Note that this was neither mentioned nor inferred during the session.