I saw my swimming friend at church on Sunday. I told her I’d missed her a couple weeks ago at the pool.

She’d taken a little time off to get her kids established with their school year, among other things. She promised she’d get back in this week.

And I told her that I had to take some time off because of my neverending miscarriage finally kicking into gear. (except minus the details)

Then I found this on her facebook this morning: Nursing a bruised ego. It’s disconcerting to have a sexagenerian outswim you. I can tell myself its because it’s been 3 wks since I’ve been swimming or I just got over a cold. But still, we started at opposite ends of the pool and she still passed me. Ouch. Maybe she was a 20 something disguised as a 60 year old. Yeah, that’s it.

Which raises the question: why must you stay in the pool?

When my kids were on a swim team, we took off one spring session so I could have a baby. By the time we got back, kids that my children had no problem beating beforehand were now a threat. What’s up with that?

I know the coach would start talking about anaerobic thresholds and what-not, but it wasn’t making much sense. It’s just hard to accept how hard it is to build up the endurance in swimming, and how easy it is to lose it.

Does anyone have a good explanation? I’m dying to hear it.

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Now here’s something you don’t see everyday!

Derrick Butts is a diver at George Mason University in Virginia. He’s new to the sport [about 7 years] but is quite passionate about it. He just started serious diving the last semester of high school. He broke the three meter record three months after arriving at GMU.

Did you hear about the Italian swimmer whose suit split right in the backside?

I can’t imagine the embarrassment. And I shudder to think what it would have been like if she’d had a bigger backside.

Kind of erases the whole aerodynamic swimsuit advantage, don’tcha think?

This girl was good three years ago when my kids were on team with her. She stuck with it. I’ll be following her in the future.

I found this question and answer piece in Sports Illustrated on Terrence Howard and his portrayal of Jim Ellis in the movie, Pride.

SI: Do you swim?

Howard: Now I do. At first I couldn’t do 25 yards.

SI: When you couldn’t cross the pool, what did Jim Ellis say?

Howard: Jim didn’t say it. A 15-year-old girl looked at me and said, “You swim like a wounded animal, and you’re fat.”

SI: You talked to 123 pimps to prepare for your role in Hustle & Flow. What kind of research did you do for Pride?

Howard: Any coach is basically an extension of the home. He’s a father figure, and I’ve had 14 years’ experience being a father. But I talked to a number of swim coaches.

SI: USA Swimming says less than 1% of 232,000 competitive swimmers in the U.S. are black. Can this film help change that?

Howard: We believe the things that we can see. Jim has had a number of his kids compete at the Olympic trials. This film might inspire young kids to say, “We can do this.”

When our friends moved back to town from Virginia, they asked if we could keep their boats in our back yard.

As usual, I was apprehensive at first. I didn’t want my children to tear them up. But they were a sturdy canoe and kayak. There was nothing the kids could do to them. The next thing we asked was if we could go boating with them. They moved here in June. The whole summer stretched out in front of us.

And then it passed. And we never went out on those boats.

My daughter got to play with canoes today with her swim classes. She said how heavy the boat was and how she couldn’t push it very hard very fast. She cracked up her students when she tried.

I remember how canoeing was the easiest level of boating we could try at Girl Scout Camp. I always wondered about that, considering how easy it is to tip one of those things, and how hard it is to steer them. But they told me that the sailboat was the hardest, and durned if I’ve ever been in a sailboat!

Or a kayak, for that matter. Some of the children kayaked one Labor Day weekend when we’d been invited out to a friend’s lake house. I had a new baby and wasn’t prepared to do anything like that at the time. It looked like fun, though. I wonder how often we’ll take our friends up on their offer to canoe and kayak next summer?