The 300 meter swim

We often have a hard time finding certified lifeguards to go on trips and spend a week of their summer at camp with us so, I had the brilliant idea that we (Sandy & I) should just get certified ourselves.  I called in August to see when the next classes would take place.  I was told they would not happen until January and that I would receive an email when a class was available.  Guess what??? I got the email.  I was a little surprised when I read there would be a test before taking the class.   "The 1st night of each session is the skills pre-test consisting of a: 1. 300 meter swim demonstrating the front crawl, and breaststroke. 2. Dive into 5ft of water swim 20 yards and recover a 10lb brick in 9 ft of water and return to the starting position under 1:40 seconds."  Holy smoke, I thought that was what the class was for.  I thought we would practice and work our way up to that goal.  With some fear of failure, I called the guy in charge and preceded to tell him that I am almost 40 years old and I just want to keep our kids safe at camp.  I'm not trying to join the Marines.  He was very sweet and told me that he was sure I could do anything that I set my mind too.   You could tell he was a coach! He had that go get em' pep talk ready.  He assured me that I could come in and practice all the needed skills several times before the actual test (on the first day of class!).  Of course, I was not doing this alone so I persuaded Ms. Sandy to take the class with me.

Tonight we had our first practice, lol.  We did not even know where the pool was at the local high school.  We had to call one of our summer interns to give us directions as to where exactly to park to enter the pool.  Of course, our intern was curious why we were trying to find the high school pool.  We simply told her we were going swimming :).  She replied "Are you joining a swim team or trying to be a lifeguard or something?"  oh! our secret was out... I sighed and told her the situation.  She laughed and then said she was proud of us.  Upon entering the pool we ran into a parent and her son, Jack.  She said her daughter, Gracie, was inside swimming.  Great!  just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, we would now be swimming with our students from church and their parents would be watching.  No Pressure!  We entered the building chatted with the guy in charge and changed into out swim suits.  When we came out the guy in charge said we could use lanes 5 & 6 and we should practice the breast stroke and crawl swim as that was what we would be using to swim in the test.  we said "ok" but as we walked away Sandy & I looked at each other and asked, "What is the crawl?"  As we rounded the side of the pool we saw Jack.  He had just finished a lap and stopped to say" hello" .  We greeted him and then asked "Hey Jack, do you know what the crawl is?"  He replied "no??"  Surely a 2nd grader on a swim team would know what a crawl was!!!  Oh well, we entered the water and began to swim a bit.  At the end of our 4th lap I looked up to see Jack's sister, Gracie, standing by the edge of the pool with her goggles in hand.  She said "Hey Ms. Melinda, Would you like to borrow my swimming goggles?"  How sweet I thought, but I replied "no thanks, but hey Gracie, do you know what the crawl is?"  You see, Gracie was in the 4th grade and had just finished swimming with the older kids so I thought she would surely know what the crawl was.  Gracie wrinkled her forehead and said "no" as she smiled and walked away.

We were doomed! I can do the breast stroke but that crawl thing??? I don't know. At the end of our sixth lap the instructor walked over to see how we were doing.  I was pretty excited that we had made it for six laps, actually I thought we were done.  Sandy informed we we were only half way done.  Oh how my arms felt like spaghetti!  We did find out from the instructor that the crawl is the same thing as freestyle.  I can do that! Yeah!  We finished our last six laps and the instructor gave us the diving brick.  I had to laugh, it was a black, rubber, ten pound brick that was embossed with something like "Official Diving Brick."  I'm not sure why I found that to be so funny, maybe it was from pure exhaustion.  We practiced retrieving the brick from five feet of water and carrying it on our chest across the pool.  I only made it half way the first time.  Sandy told me to hold the brick lower on my chest and suck in air to hold my breath so I could float better.  I made it 3/4 of the way the second time. I might have been able to make it the whole way except every time  I tried to suck in air to hold my breath I got a mouthful of water which choked me.  When I stopped Sandy said she could see me laughing the whole way down and wanted to know what I was laughing about.  I told her I was not laughing I was choking!