Emberassing Stories

Let's take a step back and enjoy a good laugh at ourselves. Here, I'll start. This happened on my first meet ever. I had only been swimming for 4 weeks and my freestyle was really starting to come together. I was looking at a 1:03-1:05 time slip. All day long I had been seated in the "barely able to float" heats but found myself in a single digit heat for this race. I knew my weakest points were my turns and (especially) my starts. So they call for us to take the blocks. I climb up, my stomach full of butterflies. "Take your marks", I balance on tip toes like my coach had been instructing me, waiting to spring out into action. I'm thinking that if I can get a good start I may actually be able take this race. So, I start leaning a little forward in preparation for the starting horn. It seems like an eternity that we're standing there, me balancing on the edge of this block. I think he's got to sound the horn any moment and lean a bit into it to get a good start. WRONG! I fell face first into the pool. Have a nice day, maybe next time. To make matters worse I had brought my video camera to the meet so we could tape ourselves and look over it the next week. I've had to relive this nightmare over and over more times I care to admit. Upon watching the tape, it's obvious the starter saw me leaning into the start and held off. I thought I was being sneaky but after watching it on film I think everyone there could see me trying to edge out the start.