Swimming at UCLA 1-31-12

Coming off a recent fabulous Las Vegas Spa experience at the Venetian, I’m feeling good, supercharged, and motivated to exercise. I went swimming at the UCLA north campus pool today.  I’m going to get my athletic physique back, starting now. My wife, who is my main athletic supporter, accompanied me.

I slipped my Fat & Sloppiness into the unheated pool and tried to warm myself up by swimming briskly.  My swimming strokes weren’t going as well as I had hoped.  It felt like I was swimming in place and my arms felt like lead.  I started out doing a regular crawl, but that was too difficult, so I changed to the more feminine breast stroke. I set out on today’s journey with a planned workout of 15 minutes, but my first minute seemed like an eternity.  Always wanting to be of assistance, my wife asked the life guard if I was swimming in place or just treading water; she couldn’t really tell. She needed his professional opinion.  

After a minute and a half of attempting to swim, and listening to my wife’s conversation with the lifeguard, I gave up and began dog paddling to the side of the pool to get out. The lifeguard visually noted my clogging the slow lane and my lack of swimming stamina.  He had an expression on his face that told me I was the swimmer he thought would go under and he dreaded having to save me.  He pointed to the nearby kid pool and suggested to my wife that I consider using it and abandon the adult pool. They shared a hearty laugh. 

How can I be this out of shape?  One and a half minutes of attemptingh to swim felt like the hardest workout ever. I was ashamed at what I must have looked like to the others who actually can swim.  I felt everyone noticed me. My wife sure did.  She observed every labored stroke, how I weakly crawled out of the pool, and how I had so quickly failed in my swimming workout.  She memorized each detail so she could phone her friends and tell them the story later that night.  It beats watching TV all night.  

My 90 seconds of labored swimming before pooping out transported me to a new level of athletic shame.  I’m now a full fledged middle aged man because I can now only talk about my glorious athletic past…this is bad.  

As my accountant says, “the older you get, the better you were.”