No, I don't really have hair on my belly, but I did yesterday after swimming in the James. The Tri Club has had to cancel every open water swim this year so far due to the weather or how the weather effected the James River. Technically speaking, last night should never have happened. The river was 2 feet higher then what it should be for safe swimming, and the current was really something. When we got to the swim site, all I could think is the water is the color of mud. It was silty and mucky. My skin started to crawl imagining having to get in. Then, as we are standing there a log goes floating by. Yes, a log. My husband joked and said it was an alligator, which I guess was his attempt at humor and trying to distract me. He saw the pure, abject terror in my eyes when I saw what the river looked like. Anyway, the nice man leading the swim runs down the rules etc. and tells us to start getting in, which the water was supposed to be 79, I beg to differ. As all of us start making our way down the ramp, into the mushy, soft, squishy, get between your toes silt that winds up going up to your knees before you can push off and start floating and stroking, we are all remarking that we should have had our wetsuits on. It was chilly, but I eventually got used to it. We can't start until everyone is in, and I notice we are all floating down current from the start. We start yelling at every one to hurry up and get in before we float away. They tell us to start and away we go. Grinding away into the current. Dory is singing in my head, Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....I am thinking to my big, bad self, this isn't bad. Look at me go, I am swimming just fine with this current. What were they talking about 22 minutes up into it and just 8 back? This is easy! As I am puffing up with pride like a blow fish, something suddenly sinks itself into my right thigh. I literally jumped up, still in swimming position, mid stroke screaming like a maniac, what got me?? What got me??? It was just my friend Jill, grabbing at my thigh to tell me after 10 minutes of swimming, we got nowhere. I looked at her like she was mentally deficient. I go, "what are you talking about Jill, I have been swimming for 10 minutes now", and then I look over my left shoulder. I am literally maybe 50-75 feet down from where we started. Listen, can you hear that??? That is the sound of my ego, deflating like a rubber raft with a puncture in it.....Okay, what is it they say to do, shorter, choppier strokes, less glide? I must have looked like an old school egg beater, I couldn't have looked like I was doing anything productive....Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....Which I am doing, wham! A floating branch hits me in the head. Not hard, but enough to startle the hell out of me. Okay, face back in, keep going, I get hit by an assortment of things, ginger ale bottles, coke bottles, and then I swim straight into someone. My sighting was pretty poor, I was grinding away, thankfully it was someone I knew. Finally the kayaker next to me said, time to turn around. I did, angled myself 45 degrees into the shore and it took me all of 4 minutes to get back. 4 freakin minutes to the 22 that it took me to go what, 250 meters if I was lucky?? Talk about making you feel like you have no clue what you are doing. I have been working on my swimming for 3 years now, and I felt like I had no freaking clue by the time I got out.
Anyway, when I got home, I felt like I needed a bath big time. I had the creepy crawlies. Now I know why. When I pulled my suit down, I was covered in a mat of brown "stuff". Sort of reminded me of this movie I saw when I was really little and people would get this brown fur and turn into werewolves afterwards, but there I was, looking like the next werewolf from the movie or at the very least I was from the East German's women's swim team. It was really awful. I had it on spots on my back, and truth be told, I couldn't stand the thought of looking any lower then my stomach. I did scrub myself wildly everywhere when I hit the shower, which I had on as hot as I could stand. The stuff coming off me on the shower floor was truly horrific.
I got out of the shower looking like I had crawled out of the lobster pot, but at least the hair was gone. If I had just used the mental brush in the shower to get rid of the memory of how I grew the fur in the first place....
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