A Dry Life

My esteemed swimming-wife, the Arian-Mexican Offspring, posed the question during my open solicitation for blog ideas, "If you couldn't swim anymore, what would you do?" This one is pretty simple, so here it goes...

I started swimming competitively at the age of 8 during summer league. At 13, I started year-round training--summer league and fall/winter/spring aquatics club. After high school I always trained by myself during rec swim at UNCW and Ga Tech. So in essence I've never been without swimming in 21 years (wow...that's almost as long as you've been alive A-MO). I've had the occasional breaks--like when I lived in FL for a year and, surprisingly, didn't have any real access to a competitive pool. Even then, I tried to swim in the ocean as much asi could. And also to compensate, I trained at the gym a lot harder. I was up to 150lbs (I'm 140 now), and actually forced myself to do cardio--mostly elliptical and treadmills.

When I moved to DC, I saw swimming more as a way to meet people then to get into competitive shape again, especially since I moved here not knowing a soul. Like many on DCAC, for me the team is equal parts exercise and social-networking. If I lost the ability to swim--like when I sprained my ankle after moving here and swimming for two months with the team--I'd compensate in my usual Aries way. (Typically I pretend that 'lost' things in my life are dead, and thus must cope and not dwell on them) I'm sure I'd get back to a beefy 150lbs of muscle rather quickly. Being short (5'6"), muscular physiques are often what people turn to to get attention, I'd be no different if I wasn't burring 10,000 calories a week swimming. However, the loss of swim training would leave some uncertainties in my life, such as:

• Would the friends I've made on the team still include me in social activities if I wasn't on the team anymore? A lot of what we do centers around post-practice meals, social activities that are spur of the moment ideas after meets/practice, etc. We rarely have non-teammates (except swim wives) engaged in our circle of friends and activities. I'd hope this wouldn't be the case.


• Would I be as regimented in including cardio into my exercise routine? Often I've skipped that component since I detest running and quickly get bored doing cardio at the gym. As 30 approaches (and subsequent years), I need to maintain some level of cardio activity to promote heart health, and keep those abs showing. Who wants a short, fat gay man? I'd definitely increase the amount of biking I do, besides for commuting purposes.


• Would I find an equally interesting social group based on other activities? I contemplated joining the DC gay scuba club--but that's not really a cohesive group. The do like 1 trip a year, rarely anything often. Nothing like the interaction we have on the team--training 6x per week.