1. When the person behind you leaves four seconds after you instead of five.
2. Or even worse, if they leave three seconds behind you.
3. When the person in the lane next to you leaves early.
4. When there's a set on a weird interval like :25 or :35, so you have to do a lot of complicated math in your head.
5. When someone in your lane sprints the warm up.
6. When you hit your hand on someone in the lane next to you.
7. When you get stuck in a wall lane for practice.
8. Or even worse, when you get moved into a wall lane after being in a middle lane.
9. When you dive in and your goggles come off.
10. Or when you dive in and your goggles have flooded/leaked but not completely come off (this might be even worse).
11. When you hit your hand on the lane line.
12. When the person swimming behind you in practice is riding your ass, but doesn't want to lead the lane.
13. Or when you're behind someone in practice and you're basically touching their feet, but they won't get out of the way.
14. Chlorine hair.
15. Chlorine skin.
16. Goggle tans.
17. Weird swimsuit tans.
18. When your cap rips.
19. When your goggles won't stop fogging up no matter what you do.
20. Trying to put on a tech suit.
21. When you get up to the blocks for a race, and there's someone REALLY fast next to you and you know you're fucked.
22. Or worse, when you see someone and you're like "Oh, I'll lap them" but they end up being sneaky fast and beating you.
23. When you're at a meet and there's a million heats of the distance events and you feel like you're getting wrinkles you've been there that long.
24. The 400 IM.
25. The fourth 25 of a 100 fly...
26. ...and the fourth 50 of a 200 fly.
27. The 200 fly in long course meters.
28. Actually, just long course meters in general.
29. And trying to convert intervals and splits to long course meters when you're used to swimming short course yards.
30. Crowded lanes during meet warm up.
31. When you misjudge your flip turn and are too close or too far to the wall.
32. When you have a few minutes remaining during practice, and your coach decides to give you another set instead of letting you warm down.
33. When the main set doesn't make any sense and your coach won't explain it to you again.
34. When the lane leader leaves before you've figured out the main set and you realize you're going to be spending the next half an hour to 45 minutes trying to guess what's going on.
35. When you're at a meet and you get that one crooked/wobbly block (you know the one).
36. When you're stuck with that one beat up pull buoy at practice.
37. Or that one weird kick board that's the wrong size and it throws you off.
38. Two words: Test. Sets.
39. When the lane leader messes up a distance set and swims an extra 50.
40. When YOU'RE the lane leader and you lose count of your laps in a distance free set and you frantically try to calculate how far you are.
41. When the person you're racing in a distance event decides to pick up the pace in the last 50 or 100.
42. Belly flopping off a start.
43. When you get yelled at for sitting on the lane line even though you know you shouldn't be doing it.
44. When you jump in the pool and it's WAY colder than you expected.
45. And finally, MORNING PRACTICES.
But despite all these...this is STILL you:
