The Endurance Swimmer - part 1

[SwimTeamSpeedo]

Swimming season was over. The best part was no more early practices, at least for a while, until Summer swimming season started and a couple swim camps where Zach and I had agreed to help coach. Zach absolutely said he was not getting up before 7 for at least a month. I thought that was a great idea, but I found myself awake by 5. My first class was at 9, so what to do with four hours was a dilemma. I did not want to wake Zach so options were limited. I could lay there and watch him sleep, which was fun, because by this point he was usually uncovered on his bed displaying his awesome body, but that would just make me horny. So, after the first few days of trying to fill the hours, I decided I would go do my own little swim practice. Maybe not as intense as what we had to do for the team, but 90 minutes in the pool followed by breakfast just seemed enticing.

The street light glow through the shade on our dorm window gave me just enough light to find one of my suits, slip it on, throw on shorts and a shirt and head off to the pool. We still had our swim team lockers, so I had all I needed to shower and stuff after in my locker. I quietly grabbed my books, jotted Zach a quick note to meet for breakfast if he was up, and slipped out the door. Zach was still sound asleep, legs spread, in really short running shorts, on top of his bed. How he could sleep like that I never figured out. It was very tantalizing to look at, though.

The sun was not up, and much like our treks to swimming at 4:30, I was the only one awake. The guard waved, as he always did.

“Going swimming Ryan?” he asked. “I thought swimming was over.”

“Yeah, it is” I replied with a smile, “just can’t sleep, gotta get my chlorine fix”

He laughed. “Have fun…”

I got to the pool at about 5:20am. It opened at 5 for lap swimming. Not the same pool that we practiced in, this one was the “old” pool. It was a yard pool, so the laps were a tad shorter than our meter pool. It was adjacent to the “new” pool, which was a really cool facility, and the one we used for swimming and diving. There were three people in the pool, which had eight lanes. They had them marked off by speed, as if it was going to get busy. I walked past the pool, down the hall to the locker room, entered my code and went in. I was the only one in there. I shed my shorts, grabbed my swim gear from my locker, and jumped in for a quick “wash down” shower. I always thought the shower before swimming was weird, but I complied.

I toweled off grabbed my stuff and headed out. Because I had to swim in the old pool, the locker was not connected, so I had to go back down the hall to the entrance. “Probably should have brought a towel” I thought as I got to the pool, so I didn’t make the floor wet going back. I guess I could have gone back to get one, but my mind was not quite that smart so early.

“Dude, what are you doing?” said Pete, the lifeguard, as I walked in the pool. He was the guard who watched over our early practices.

“Wanted to make sure you showed for work” I said back, poking him.

I walked over to the fast lane and set my stuff down. “Dude, there is no way you can swim there!” Pete said. “I’ve watched you, you are definitely a slow lane guy”

“Yeah, well let me try this and if I can’t make it, you can come save me” I said back with a smirk. Pete was always the joker.

“This place ever get busy in the morning?” I asked Pete.

“No, at about 6 we’ll get a couple more, that’s it. There’s a guy who will swim in the lane next to you, older dude, nice guy” Pete answered. “You gotta be out at 7:30 so I can get it ready for the 8 am swimming class.”

With that I pushed off on my warm up laps. I guess I was really out of my element, because at my first flip I felt my suit pull down on the push off. I swam with it off my hips until the shallow water came back and I could stand. I had forgotten to tie the strings. I had not done that since high school. “Dumb ass” I thought to myself as I made sure I was all tied up. Luckily, it just went low, but nothing came out. I continued on.

I was just finishing a fifth set of intervals of 100 fly. As I grabbed the wall, I caught a glimpse of a guy standing in the lane next to me. I had pushed hard and was sucking in all the air I could as I stood. “Must be the guy Pete mentioned” I thought, glancing over. Sure enough, a tall, grey headed, older guy was smiling back at me. He was really well built for his age, looked like he had not an ounce of fat on him. He was wearing a black and gold Tyr suit, the kind that was mostly black with the gold on the side panels.

“Damn” he said, “you really swam those well.”

“Thanks,” I said breathless, grabbing my water bottle.

“Have a great swim” he said as he pushed off and started down the pool. He was not fast, but I watched as he displayed really smooth technique. I had a one minute break according to my workout. Just enough time for him to make it through a full lap (down and back) of the pool. He did an open turn and pushed off again, his smooth stroke gliding him down the pool.

“He comes here every day” Pete said, noticing me watching him. “He’s not real fast, but he has incredible endurance. He’ll still be going when your done”

I watched for a bit longer, cheating on my break time. He was very graceful. I pushed off for a set buoy pulls. I had about an hour left in my workout, which would take me to about seven.

Zach woke up about 6:30. He looked over and saw my bed empty. “That jerk went swimming” he said to himself. As he wiped the fog from his eyes he saw my note about breakfast at 7:30, confirming his suspicion. Zach was very competitive about swimming, and as much as he liked the sleep, he hated that I might actually be getting an extra practice in. Not enough to make him decide to get up and join me, but it still tweaked him. He was cute when he was tweaked. Still in his tiny running shorts, he grabbed his towel and shower kit and headed off to the shower, down the hall.

Zach stepped in the shower, shorts on. I don’t think he ever really laundered those shorts, he’d just wear them in the shower and suds them up. It’s funny the things we did in college that we’d never do again, like wearing the same shorts, shower washed, for a year. He’d strip them off to rinse them and finish the shower. Despite the rules that said you can’t, he’d then walk back to our room naked, wrapped in a towel. I was always tempted to tug that towel one day, a feat I’d do before we graduated.

I wrapped up my workout at ten after seven, having pushed a few more hard laps in than I planned. I wanted to see if I could outlast the guy next to me. Pete was right, the older guy just kept going. As far as I could tell he had not stopped once. “Man, that guy is amazing,” I thought to myself, as I hoisted my Speedo clad body from the pool. I had on a orange and red print Speedo. I loved the bright colors. I walked over to a mat and did a quick set of 100 sit ups.

“What, you taking it easy today?” Pete said as I stood. We chatted for five minutes. Pete was a senior and was on the school’s baseball team. He also swam in high school, but baseball was his thing. I watched as the older guy finished up. He climber out of the pool and was as fit out of the water as he looked in.

“See you here tomorrow?” he asked as he headed to toward the locker room.

“I hope so” I replied, smiling.

I headed out the door and down the hall to my private locker room. Thoughts of a big breakfast on my mind and a bit of curiosity about the endurance swimmer next to me.

To be continued