Ten Things Non-Swimmers Will Never Understand About Swimming

It is baffling how we can go from feeling six feet deep in the dumps to swimming at supersonic speed in a matter of days.

Although we spend most of our waking time either in the pool, going to or from the pool, or thinking about the pool, we also interact frequently with people who aren’t swimming up and down that black line with us, or yelling at us to swim faster up and down that black line. People that will never know the shared misery of Hell Week. Or of doing 10,000 meters for time. Or of spending long hours, soggy from a weekend of racing, in the back of a coach bus with some of your best friends.

Here are ten things that our civilian friends will never understand about swimming:

1. How we can train more times than there are days in a week.

For those of your friends who have a hard time with arithmetic, this one will particularly jar their noggin.