Just Call Me 'Coach'

Lately, I’ve been trying to find something to get involved with out here in Colorado Springs…other than training and sleeping which has been the majority of my activities. Some of the many ideas I’ve come up with are: going back to school for my master’s degree, starting my own race organizing business, find a job, etc.
About a month ago, I spoke to the swimming coaches at the local college, Colorado College, about being a volunteer assistant coach. I got the idea because our triathlon team has been swimming at the college for a month while they drain the Training Center pool for repairs. The CC’s swim team practices officially start on October 12th. Brian, the head coach, was very excited about having me on deck for some extra help at practices…I will be starting coaching next week and helping out about 3 times a week!! I’m SOOO excited to help coach the athletes…on Friday I attended the Inter-Squad meet to meet the team and watch them swim.
It was a bit sad for me to watch the CC inter-squad meet…my Florida Gators were having their inter-squad meet on the same day, followed by the banquet, the alumni meet, and parent’s weekend…obviously, I was in Colorado and unable to attend and cheer for my brother and former teammates!
On Wednesday, the first official day of CC swim practice, I will start my job by helping out with the distance group. The college is Division 3 (so no scholarships) and all the athletes are on the team voluntarily. Since they are at school for ‘school’ the coach only asks that they attend 80% of the practices. It will be a bit more ‘relax’ of an attitude on the pool deck than I an used to…but I think it will be a good change for me…work with swimmers who are in the pool totally on free will.
They’ve got a huge board with team & pool records (so I had an idea what speed of swimmers I would be working with before hand) and on Saturday swim practice I set the 1650 pool record in a time-trial! Although I hated EVERY moment of the actual time-trial (because I though I was done swimming 1650s!!) it was like deja-vu setting pool records!:)