By Melissa Berkay, Swimming World College Intern
Ok, let’s be honest, when most of our hours are spent prioritizing our career goals with swim practices, dating can be a struggle for most swimmers. The preparation process can range from one to four hours, depending on whether it is taper time, hell week, summer triple daily practice week, or if the swimmer is frantically trying to squeeze in a date during a period of full-time student course load in addition to practices.
Dating during these periods of time is not suggested, as it can conflict with a swimmer’s grades (if they are a student-athlete), work obligations, practice times, rest priorities, and so on. If a swimmer manages to schedule a date, these are some of the things that may actually occur prior to the date…
1. Eat a complete meal before the actual date.
Photo Courtesy: William Cho
We do not scarf down food like a raging animal in the classy 5-star restaurant that gives you forks in different sizes. We also do this so our endless pit of a stomach and rapid-speed eating habits don’t act as a turn-offs to our date. Got to keep up with those 8,000 calories we burn every day…
2. Shower multiple times before the date.
Photo Courtesy: Markus Spiske
We need get the chlorine reek off of our permanent essence. After three rounds of body wash scrubbing and rinsing, multiple layers of selected perfume/cologne are applied to attempt to mask the permanent smell of chorine that lives in our pores.
3. Spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to find a suitable outfit.
Photo Courtesy: Kevin Batangan
We want to find an outfit that hides our massive shoulders and/or suit tan and which does not consist of sweats/tank tops/flip flops. If at the mall, we attempt to look for a professional make-up artist stationed at one of those booths to help hide our goggle tans, without having to buy any of their products. The next time we will be wearing makeup will be at our team-banquet that occurs once every year.
When all else fails and we are standing there in Banana Republic, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what we are putting ourselves through, we call our swim coach who yells at us for not being in bed by 8 p.m. It doesn’t help that swimmers spend most of our time half-naked and don’t have to worry about what clothes we are wearing. We are only used to swim suit shopping, after all.
4. Frantically make time in our schedule for the date.
Photo Courtesy: Dru Bloomfield
We speed through conference calls, homework assignments, networking obligations to make up for all the work we would otherwise be doing in our precious hours of gold when we plan on preparing for our date. If the time we invest in spending with our date conflicts with our tight schedule, 4.0 GPA goals, landing that business deal, or making that next cut at our big meet, it would be best to reschedule the date for the only two weeks off we have this year…or next year.
5. Contact someone for advice.
Photo Courtesy: Pexels
We text a non-swimmer friend (if we have any) for good pick-up lines or for tips on forms of effective verbal-communication skills other than tribal grunting. Our most eventful conversations take place in 15-second intervals. We do not want to be staring at our date like we do the black line on the bottom of the pool and expect them to be attentive and interested in us. We also don’t want to risk saying those cheesy jokes thrown around in the weight room or in the gutter that made us roar in laughter. No matter how clever we think we are, our date will not agree.
6. Try to explain the logic of our sport with our date.
Photo Courtesy: Pixabay
We train two to four hours a day, five to seven days a week, for a race that lasts less than two minutes. We try to limit our conversations to topics that involve swimming, even though it is hard for us not to revert to that topic. We also try not to do shoulder stretches during our date.
7. Keep our cool.
Photo Courtesy: Pexels
We try not to get embarrassed when our date gives us a strange look when we reject the offer for tasting the wine specials of the night (if we are over 21). Don’t want jeopardize all the training we put in the past week. We need our body to perform full-power to flush out the lactic acid produced during that 20x200s odds fast, descend by round, evens moderate, hold base-pace on 1:05 set, tomorrow. We also don’t want dehydration, a headache, or hypersensitivity to external stimuli to get in the way of getting our splits, calculating our intervals, or reading the pace clock.
Or you date a swimmer haha
When the date ends at 10 because of am workout there’s mutual understanding!
Haha trueeee
Very Funny
The list for male swimmers is much shorter: think about using soap instead of just shampoo in the shower after practice.
1.Ask coaches permission to shave (if not champs week)
2. Use deodorant …eu de chlorine …not popular.
3. Girls..makeup? What’s that?