Have any of you ever been at a meet and seen someone who, say, you've seen in a professional mode, say, for example, crying into kleenex in their office over your life trials, and suddenly you see this same person at a swim meet in a Speedo? And they are in your heat or close to your heat? So there's no way of being subtly invisible, which is your deepest heart's desire? Is there any way I can ban these people (two, now!) from *my* meets and *my* happy place? My only other thought is I must definitely leave them in the dust, race-wise.
I have never met anyone at a swim event that I had gone to for embarrassing or sensitive professional services (doctor, therapist, etc.). I really would not like that! But besides relying on the other person to be coolly professional I don't know what I could do about it.
My swimming life overlaps the rest of my life quite a bit, though, even though I don't live or work in a small town. Right before my heat of the 1000 at Nationals in Austin, one of my teammates (let's call him Jim) introduced me to someone Jim knew (let's call him Peter) who had asked Jim to introduce us. Why? Because Peter was about to start working for one of my clients, and when Peter told his soon-to-be-new co-workers that he could not start work until the second week in May due to Nationals they said, "oh, is that the same meet that is going to?" Now that I know Peter I see him regularly at events and we chat about work some.
I once swam the Trans-Tahoe Relay with a team of people I knew only through our shared field. Some of them I knew before I joined their profession; others I met through work and then learned that they also swam. One of my current teammates works in my field, and when I saw him for the first time in a business suit with dry hair I spent quite a while trying to figure out why he looked so familiar.
It's a little like golfing, only with weirder clothes and less equipment.
I have never met anyone at a swim event that I had gone to for embarrassing or sensitive professional services (doctor, therapist, etc.). I really would not like that! But besides relying on the other person to be coolly professional I don't know what I could do about it.
My swimming life overlaps the rest of my life quite a bit, though, even though I don't live or work in a small town. Right before my heat of the 1000 at Nationals in Austin, one of my teammates (let's call him Jim) introduced me to someone Jim knew (let's call him Peter) who had asked Jim to introduce us. Why? Because Peter was about to start working for one of my clients, and when Peter told his soon-to-be-new co-workers that he could not start work until the second week in May due to Nationals they said, "oh, is that the same meet that is going to?" Now that I know Peter I see him regularly at events and we chat about work some.
I once swam the Trans-Tahoe Relay with a team of people I knew only through our shared field. Some of them I knew before I joined their profession; others I met through work and then learned that they also swam. One of my current teammates works in my field, and when I saw him for the first time in a business suit with dry hair I spent quite a while trying to figure out why he looked so familiar.
It's a little like golfing, only with weirder clothes and less equipment.
