Day in the Life: Marcia Benjamin, Day 4

OAKLAND, California, May 18. HEADING down the home stretch in her "A Day in the Life" series on SwimmingWorldMagazine.com, Bay Area Masters swimmer Marcia Benjamin lists her pet peeves in swimming today. She also writes a bit about being a swim parent.

Thursday, May 17, 2007: Day 4
I go to three pools each day. One is Funkytown, near my house, with its 82-degree water, eastward current, sharp towels, perimeter swimmers and flying beachballs. There I am Marcia, God of all Swimming, which is a lot better than Mom, You're So Annoying.

My other pool is Heather Farm in Walnut Creek, where I take my 10-year-old to swim practice. Now I'm not saying that it's suburban and yuppie, but the parking lot looks like an SUV showroom blended with a MidLife Crisis Convention. Sometimes when I park my Camry in a low spot, I just have to wait until everyone has driven off before I can find it.

Usually, while my daughter is working out, I read in the car, because I've seen enough swimming for one day. I know that when you watch kids practice you only see the irritating things your own child is doing – and I've got plenty of that at home, thanks. Since I wake up at 4:48 a.m., I can only get about halfway through the newspaper before I fall asleep, drooling. Fortunately everyone there would never look into a Camry to see how cool the accessories are, so I have some privacy. That's also good because my car would win the Most Disgusting Food Stains award, with its mini museum of actual samples of dinners past. And now that the sun is setting later, I have to put two sections of newspaper jammed up in the west car windows to keep it cool enough to nap. So now I'm in the disgusting Camry (I hope that's a raisin back there!), drooling, with newspapers in the windows, parked next to a Lexus SUV, a tricked-out Escalade, and a Land Rover. Help, I'm trapped on the set of The Grapes of Wrath and I can't get out.

My third pool is Laney College, where the facilities are fantastic and the people in my lap swimming classes are even better. Thursday was the last class of the semester, so we had Open Water day. We take out all the lanelines and I teach them about Sighting Breaths, and full-contact swimming. Then we do some perimeters and then out-and-backs around a buoy that I set up at a diagonal. It's not exactly the same as my open water races, because I've never seen a buoy made up of a blue sparkly innertube with a Barbie beachball sticking up from the center hole, but they get the idea.

Then we had the most wonderful potluck breakfast, with two camp stoves, a hotplate, coffee maker and toaster in use. There was lots of fresh fruit, homemade breads, assorted pastries and two kinds of bacon in addition to our pancakes fresh from the griddle and hot omelets. Having a Foodie in the class is nice, because being a Bacon Snob turns out to be a really good thing. Nothing tastes better than breakfast eaten outside. Everyone got to socialize and say their goodbyes for our four weeks apart until Summer Session starts. I'm so lucky to know these wonderful people, some of whom I've been teaching for 10 years. I've been to weddings, funerals and held new babies. We've also had a Commitment Ceremony, two icky breakups, career changes, moves and returns and seen lots of bad haircuts. It's a wonderful community, my little Laney family.

But I was supposed to rant today. Okay, here goes. Things that bug me about coaches:
1. Sitting in a chair during practice (wheelchair is okay, with doctor's note).
2. Holding a cup of coffee when working. Are the swimmers really that boring that you need to be continuously caffeinated?
3. Correcting something and then never looking at the swimmer again to see if you fixed it.
4. Not finding even one word to say to each person every day.
5. Writing the workout down on a dry erase board and then strutting around "facilitating." There is no handwriting allowed with me. Pay attention!

Things that bug me about people in my classes:
1. Coming late and making me repeat the instructions. If they're just dense, it's okay.
2. Having no idea how many laps they've done, even when it's a 15-minute swim and they'd be hard pressed to break 20.
3. Going to the bathroom in the middle of the main set.
4. Bad streamlines, bad ready position.
5. Buying a technical suit and then wearing it to workout.
6. Just wanting to swim their "mile."
7. Putting on sunscreen and then immediately jumping into the pool. Gross! Why don't you just come over and squirt it into my mouth?

Things that bug me about people in my lane:
1. Leaving two seconds early every time.
2. Sitting one out and then beating you on the next.
3. Fiddling with their goggles/paddles and missing the send-off, which forces you to go ahead of them and get less rest.

Things that bug me about competitions:
1. People who are just "training through" your biggest meet of the year, because they're going to Worlds, or the Western Hemisphere All-Star Meet, or the Alpha Centauri Games.
2. People with terrible dropped elbows, lapping me.
3. People who come to an open water swim, win, and then pick up their award wearing bike gear and goofy bike shoes and then pedal off.
4. Moms who wear their children's medals.
5. Newspaper reporters who don't know the difference between yards and meters.

And just for the heck of it:
1. Little dogs that are dressed in clothes.
2. People who call me "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia," like it's the first time I've ever heard it, for cryin' out loud!

FYI, forgot to swim today. I was up really late getting ready for our breakfast potluck, then I had to substitute in the Fitness Center at Laney this evening. I crashed and burned in the middle of the day. Hey – did anyone else know there's news on at 11 p.m.?? I'll work really hard on Friday, promise. Saturday is my next Open Water event, at Spring Lake in Santa Rosa, Calif. I'll keep you posted.

Sprinting toward my finish, IM,

Marcia Benjamin

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