I had the day off today and chose to open it with a trip to the pool, since I'm still on restriction from walking and it was too hot to bike.
There was a lady at the far end of the pool when I jumped in and I paid her no attention as I got my goggles in place and did my first few warm-up laps.
Very quickly I noticed that I was faster than this woman! Me! Faster than someone else in the pool. That little smug feeling began to rise in my chest.
That is, until I got to the end of a length and I stood up to adjust my goggles and noticed ...
That she was clearly older than me. And that she didn't have full range of motion in her left arm. Yup, that's right. She was swimming with a damaged wing.
Smug collapsed into embarrassment. I know in my heart of hearts with two good limbs she'd have kicked my ass. Even at 65-ish years old.
Put back in my place, I kept wracking up laps. And that woman stuck right with me. I began to get tired and she kept going. "Well," I thought, "I'll be damned if I'll let her outlast me." So I kept going. At my length 72, she finally got out of the pool ... and I thought I was in the clear to finish my 100 lengths in peace.
That's when the old man climbed in the pool and wanted to race.
It took me until lap 103 to get him to back off.
Man! Who knew that a) the YMCA is crawling with senior citizens during the morning hours and b) they all seem to have a freaking competitive streak?
Just to prove a point, I swam to 125 lengths ... which is 25 farther than I've gone before.
Take that, blue hairs!
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