Within the vocabulary of real-everyday-normal-people lingo, a ‘facepalm’ refers to these moments in life the place the one believable response you’ve gotten is to convey the palm of your hand to your brow in exasperation. It’s that ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t consider I simply did that!’ second of embarrassment, or the ‘Are you able to consider he simply mentioned that’ occasion of agitation, and as swimmers we now have our fair proportion of them.
One that’s notably annoying is slipping off of the wall on a flip flip. It’s that second whenever you’re making ready for the rotation, an motion so acquainted it might be completed in your sleep (and sometimes is… 6 AM practices, anybody?), however all of a sudden your toes slip on the top of the flip. You lose all the energy and power wanted to correctly push off of the wall, and are left questioning ‘How on earth did that simply occur?!’. Flip turns are second nature to any skilled swimmer, a talent that’s practiced so typically we don’t even have to essentially take into consideration the mechanics of it. So once we do have a slip up (actually!), it may be a little bit of a bruise to our egos, and a trigger for exasperation.
One other nuisance that’s not less than a bit simpler to justify is miscounting mileage. In observe it’s particularly straightforward to let your thoughts wander off from the duty at hand, notably throughout the less-than-thrilling distance units which might be so infamously tedious. I can’t even start to quantify the quantity of instances I’ve been swimming and all of a sudden puzzled ‘Wait… was that 550 metres? Or 600?’. A black line isn’t essentially the most stimulating factor to have a look at, and counting distances upwards of a number of hundred metres is sufficient to combine even one of the best of us up generally. And whereas more often than not it really works out alright since usually not less than somebody is conscious of which lap you’re on, generally everyone seems to be simply having ‘a type of days’, and as a bunch you collectively find yourself doing both an excessive amount of or too little. And cue the face palm!
Maybe the final word second of annoyance that swimmers can universally agree on, although, is lacking a desired time, a selected normal, or a podium end by a fraction of a second. I can virtually hear the *smack!* as all the sprinters studying this convey their hand to their brow, exasperated by the mere reminiscence of a time they fell brief by 0.01 seconds. In a sport the place each millisecond counts, lacking a aim by such a detailed margin is gut-wrenching, and leaves you second guessing each transfer you made within the race. ‘Possibly if I hadn’t trimmed my nails final night time I’d have had that further half an inch!’. Or, ’If solely I had stretched my arm only a liiiiiiittle bit additional!’. It’s like that previous saying goes; ‘So shut it hurts’. And belief me, it actually, actually hurts.
So whether or not it’s a technical mix-up, a slip of the thoughts, or a time that we fall in need of, swimmers in every single place have undoubtedly all skilled not less than just a few face palm worthy moments. Fortunately, although, we additionally get to expertise the jump-for-joy, fist pumping the air, smiling so huge it hurts type of moments. And people are those that make all of it worthwhile.
