1. I always smell like chlorine

This has always been a problem. I’ll be sitting in class and one friend or another would always point out that I smell like the pool. I’m actually pretty sure that my friends think I shower in the pool, little do they know I probably shower more than they do but because I’m in the pool so much the smell of chlorine just follows me around.

2. My shoulders are constantly in pain

My non-swimmer friends will never truly understand why I have to get a massage at least once a week. Sometimes the practices can be so brutal that I can barely get out of the pool afterward. It is completely normal for me to sit in the athletic trainer's office for 40 minutes after practice just icing my shoulders. During the swim season, which is all the time, my shoulders are always in at least a little bit of pain.

3. My swim friends are my best friends

I say this simply because they are the only ones who truly know what I endure on a daily basis. We sympathize together when we have a hard butterfly set or when one of us has to race the 200 Butterfly. I have never met a tighter knit group of people, we all have each others' backs 100 percent of the time. I mean we spend so much time together, it would be impossible not to be!

4. I actually like to swim butterfly

Most of the time when my swim friends hear the term “butterfly set” they groan and immediately regret coming to the practice. I, however, am one of the weird ones who actually loves to swim butterfly. I just love everything about it, it came naturally to me from a young age and has been my best and favorite stroke for as long as I can remember!

5. Swim caps make me look like a Q-tip

I absolutely hate when I have to wear a swim cap in front of people who aren’t in my swim family. When friends/family or my boyfriend come to watch me race, I am absolutely mortified because when I wear a swim cap, I look like a Q-tip. To be fair, no one looks good in a swim cap so at least I’m not the only one.

6. My hair is constantly damaged

With the amount of time I spend in the chlorine, it totally kills my hair. My hair is constantly having split ends and it is almost always completely dry. No matter how much I wash it and try to make it healthier, nothing really works. It’s a sacrifice I have to make for my sport, luckily I don’t care all that much about my looks.

7. No one ever understands that there is no 'off season'

I always get asked when the swim season ends, my answer “never.” Yeah, we might get a couple weeks off here and there, but we have swimming in the fall, winter, spring and summer. Real swimmers are different than any other athlete because we never have time off.

8. The 400 IM is literal death

Whenever I have to swim the 400 IM, I always prepare myself for the worst. Getting through that first 100 Butterfly for me is easy but after that, I completely die. The 400 IM is the biggest test any swimmer could go through because it is by far the hardest event known to the swimming kind. I will swim the 400 IM and I’m pretty decent at it, but in no way do I ever enjoy racing that horrid event.

9. As much as I complain about it, I couldn’t live without it

My life has revolved around swimming for as long as I can remember. My parents had me in a Mommy and Me class when I was six months old and they haven’t been able to get me out of the water ever since. In many ways, swimming has saved my life. When things weren’t going well in other areas of my life, swimming was always there for me. Swimming was my outlet of anger, sadness and grief. I knew I could always go to practice and take everything out in the pool and when practice was over, I usually had a better outlook on whatever situation was bringing me down. When people in my life had disappointed me, I would throw myself into swimming, I would basically eat, sleep and swim, nothing else. So, as much as I love to complain about my sport, there is absolutely no way I could have survived thus far without it.