Swim Practice

I resign from swimming practice completely.  The workouts are insane along with the schedule. To top it off, every Wednesday and Saturday I have to embarrass myself in front of hundreds of people as I climb the docks preparing to dive in my Speedo.  What happened to the fun in sports?  I was under the assumption that sports were supposed to be a fun way to exercise.  Swimming is literally just exercising.  I have never found the fun in swimming nor have I told myself that I would like to be swimming for the rest of my life unless I was thinking about some of the ways I would like to stay in shape.

            Back in the days of boarding school starting from my fresh man year of high school up until my junior year, I was involved with the swim team.  After a rigorous class schedule, I would find myself dragging my feet through the cold New England weather into the gym and then finally into the pool that was filled with chlorine rather than water.  For some reason, they would neglect to heat the pool so even the start of a practice would be grueling because I would be shivering until I had finally exercised enough to heat my body temperature back up.  After a ten-minute warm up, we would swim to the end and look up at our coach who almost always had an evil grin upon his face before he would tell us the exercises.  No one doubted that our coach loved to see his players in pain.  Every successive practice we would need to improve our strength and endurance so every practice was just a little more grueling.  However, the worst kinds of practices were the ones in which we practice breathe control and lung capacity.  During these practices we would try to swim entire lengths without taking a breath.  Another kind of breath control exercise was swimming for long lengths such as 1000 yards and only taking one or two breaths per lap.  I know that sports practices are supposed to be a good form of exercise but this was just torture.

            Maybe it was the fact that I did not grow up with swimming so I was not aware of the brutality it entailed once I began in high school or maybe it was the fact that after each practice I would have to leave the building into a New England winter bone dry from the chlorine.  It could also have been the fact that I love surfing, a sport that includes exercise and a lot of fun so when I started swimming I was solely doing the exercise that surfing entails without the fun.  There were many reasons for my hating swimming but I think even though the practices were tough, the part that I hated most was swimming the 500-yard race during meets.  Not only was I swimming one of the longest, hardest races (which my coach gladly picked for me), but I was also doing it in front of a bunch of people.  There are many reasons for my hating swimming, which is why I want to resign immediately!