Gratitude

               Last Friday was the Uni swim team's last day of practice at the Urbana Indoor Aquatic Center, and we were all incredibly happy about that because UIAC is an excruciatingly disgusting location to have practice at. The water is never a normal temperature, the items lurking at the bottom are not limited to items a pool should normally contain, and there’s a particular scent, indescribable but distinctively nauseating, that permeates the entire facility. Not only can you smell it every time you take a breath, you can almost feel it, too, seeping into your lungs and hair the entire time you’re in the water. The second you get out, it’s a race against time to get home and be able to wash off the crust -- of chlorine, that aforementioned mysterious smell, and other things it's best not to contemplate -- that has plastered itself onto you. You might be tempted to try and grab a shower in the pool locker room, but don’t: that’ll only make it worse.

             Before this we had three weeks of practice at the Indian Acres pool in Champaign. In terms of unwanted contaminants in the pool, it was a little better, because at least the pool was filled with leaves and dead bugs instead of human hair and band-aids, so you could just tell yourself it was like swimming in a lake and try to enjoy communing with nature. But the real problem wasn't what was in the pool, but what wasn't; there weren't enough lane lines, and there weren't any flags to mark where the wall was, so whenever we swam backstroke -- or really, any stroke-- we were constantly colliding with each other and the wall. Worst of all, there wasn't a functioning heater, and for some reason it was unseasonably cold almost every day we were there, so every time we jumped in, it felt like an ice bath. If you swam enough the temperature would gradually begin to shift from viscerally shocking to merely refreshing but even so, all it took was a few minutes of small talk between sets to freeze everyone’s muscles solid again.

              I was thinking back to both of those experiences this Monday, because we finally had our first practice back at the ARC, and compared to UIAC and Indian Acres it’s paradise. For the entire workout, I kept losing count of laps because I was too busy thinking about how much more pleasant it was to stare at the black lines at the bottom of this pool than the ones at the bottom of the other pools. The depths of the water are murk-free and odorless; the windows splash sunlight down onto us for all of practice since we’re no longer swimming until 9 pm; the temperature is brisk, but constant, and the locker rooms contain more space between two rows of lockers than the entire UIAC and Indian Acres locker rooms do combined. Best of all, there’s no chance of running into unwanted creatures -- six-legged or otherwise -- on the pool deck.

                The more I swam, though, the more I started to think about UIAC and Indian Acres and realize that even though swimming there was unpleasant, it wasn’t all bad. Cliche though it is, I think we all probably appreciate the ARC more now than we would have if we hadn’t suffered through practices at those other pools. For me, I know that for the rest of this season, hard sets will feel just as difficult as they would otherwise, but I’ll be grateful that at least I’m swimming them in a wonderful, luxurious, hair-,bug-, and leaf-free pool instead of the alternatives. I also think we’ve grown closer as a team because we’ve learned to make the most of these subpar circumstances; we've learned that a cold pool is a great excuse for hot chocolate, six-legged visitors to practice can be incredibly inspirational, and even the most passive-aggressive rants by certain unnamed individuals can be transformed into a hilarious team roast.