Winner.

Well, my question has been answered. Compared to the average person on the street (or splashing around in the pool), I'm a good swimmer. Compared to people who do masters swimming, I'm weak.

The best part of doing the meet was when I walked out to my car to head to the pool, bright and early Sunday morning. M had decorated it, high-school style, with signs.

We have now decided that if we ever do some sort of race together that we have team colors -- black and turquoise, based on my nail color this week.

Once I got to the pool in the suburbs, I knew almost immediately that I was WAY out of my depth (so to speak) in this. There were people wearing their state masters team shirts, the Razr suit (or some cheaper version of the serious-swimmer-suit), talking about how they sandbagged their times to be seeded in certain heats. They were doing dive starts. I was not even sure which lane was which and have never done a dive start in my life. Honestly, I should have cannonballed in -- it would have been funnier at least.

The race was not awesome. I was not used to swimming in a pool that length (50 meters, as opposed to my usual 25). The pool was clearly not usually configured at that length so the lane stripes on the bottom were kind of hard to see. I actually got disoriented on my turns, even though I was not flip turning. My time was way slower than what I expected and I just did not feel good.

All that said, I am a winner. Again, the beauty of being the only person in your age group.