We are really happy to welcome the lovely Rebecca Gillis to our team of bloggers. Rebecca has been swimming competitively since she was eight years old and has a wonderful ability to document the ups and downs of a competitive swimmer. Every fortnight we will post something new from Rebecca, but be warned, unless you\u2019re a swimmer, you couldn\u2019t possibly understand. <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n
So here\u2019s the thing about competitive swimming: it\u2019s an Olympic sport, international and sometimes even national-level meets are televised, and it has some of the hardest working athletes. We\u2019re talking seven, eight, or even upwards of nine practices a week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This being said, when I introduce myself to someone as a swimmer, there is usually a lot of confusion that follows.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s cool, I do swimming lessons too!\u201d is a pretty typical answer. I cannot stress enough to these people how different competitive swimming is in comparison to the once-a-week commitment of swimming lessons.<\/p>\n
The other half of people jump to the complete opposite: \u201cSo are you the next Michael Phelps then?\u201d. For starters, I am an average-sized teenage girl, NOT a 6\u20194, 28 year old man. And no, I will most likely not win a total of 22 Olympic medals in my career.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most frustrating response, however, is when people brush it off as \u201cnot a real sport\u201d. I have literally had a guy tell me that swimming \u201ctakes a minimal amount of skill\u201d and that he could probably beat me. He, on the other hand, is a self-proclaimed professional bowler. Not to hate on bowlers, but I sure would love to race him in the pool.<\/p>\n
In fact, to train for a sport that supposedly requires \u201cminimal skill\u201d, I have seven or eight workouts a week. Two or three of these are mornings (hooray for 5am wake-up calls!), each about two hours spent in the water. Don\u2019t forget about the dryland, cardio and flexibility training, too.<\/p>\n
So to any of the people falling into the categories listed above, I invite them to walk, or rather SWIM a few miles in our suits.<\/p>\n
Until next time,<\/p>\n
Rebecca<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We are really happy to welcome the lovely Rebecca Gillis to our team of bloggers. Rebecca has been swimming competitively since she was eight years old and has a wonderful …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1294,"featured_media":16858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10060],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n