I’ve been swimming lately with my daughters. Not just the three of us, but their whole team. My girls are part of the local Y swim team. Not your usual kids team where parents drag their kids to morning and afternoon practice and every-weekend meets. More down to earth, 3-times weekly afternoon workouts with mandatory 4 meets per year, but two to three times that many of meets available to the kids throughout the year.

I spoke to the head coach and he said not only is it okay for me to swim with them, he wished more parents would. Not like I’m a trailblazer; there’s a mom occasionally swimming with the team, too. But I’m the first dad.

And it is fun. I don’t have masters team practice on Sundays or Wednesdays, so I swim with the kids. It’s a good way to get another 2000-3000 yards in, more “horizontal time” as I like to call it. Those 26.7 miles aren’t going to swim themselves in July!