Monday, August 18, 2008

I Wanna Be Like Mike (and others)

After watching Michael Phelps win eight gold medals, Dara Torres win her twelfth medal at her fifth Olympics at the age of 41, and many other inspiring swimmers, I decided to take advantage of my apartment building's Olympics size swimming pool. (I was too scared to use the pool in my Santa Barbara apartment, in fear of getting diseases).

I used to love swimming; the backstroke was always my favorite. I was always sad that we never had a pool at our house nor a community pool within walking distance of our house, but at least I got to go to swimming lessons every summer. I am not sure why I never tried out for my high school's swim team. Probably because I was intimidated by all the kids who did have pools and competed on their neighborhood's local swim team. California neighborhoods do produce some hardcore swimmers, including Anthony Ervin--an Olympic gold medalist, who went to my high school.

I swam my own 400 meter medley (no butterfly though--not coordinated enough) today. Though I was only competing (secretly) with the senior citizens who swim laps in the pool and was probably 10x slower than anyone in Beijing, I was happy.

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