David Hasselhoff is German, I am German. David Hasselhoff played a lifeguard on TV, I am a lifeguard in real life. David Hasselhoff has tons of money, I am poor. As you can see David and I have a lot of common.
While on the set of the both Emmy and Grammy winning show "Baywatch," Mr. Hasselhoff's character, Mitch Buchannon, guarded the lives of many young and healthy men and women. If you have ever been to your local Y or other indoor pool then you know that from 7-10 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings that the swimmers are not exactly young and not always healthy.
But that is the shift I have been work the last few weeks and even though the swimmers might not be right out of Baywatch, I am glad I am there. The morning starts with me getting to work at about 6:50 and clocking in for the morning. I ten go and grab the radio and tune it into the local NPR station and begin to soak up 2 hours of world, national, state and local news. After the radio is ready to go I sit back down in the chair and eat my granola bar for breakfast. I kind of feel bad because the sign reads no food or drink in the pool area, but I don't really care that much.
After breakfast it is off the the equipment closet so I can get a yoga mat out and spend about 15-20min stretching out my legs for the day. This helps so much with the running on the other days. After I am nice and loose it is time to walk laps around the pool. 19 laps around the pool is a mile and I try to get about 3-4 miles in a morning. It takes about an hour, which is perfect because by now it is 9:00 and NPR is switching over to classical music so it is time to turn the radio off and put it away anyhow.
With the radio off I spend another 10-15 stretching and then hop back up into the chair for the last half an hour of the day. Don't worry I generally keep my eyes on those who are swimming, but typically there is almost a whole hour in there when nobody is in the pool, so I don't have to worry about anything. I know it sounds like a tough job, but it is important.
Keep up the fight
4 comments:
Thanks for your work Andy. Claire and I stopped swimming laps at our local pool this summer because the high-school-age lifeguards kept falling asleep in the chair. Each time I spoke with the "head lifeguard." One time I had to wake up the head lifeguard to tell her her employees were sleeping. What the heck!
Hey sir, that is almost exactly what I did when I worked the 5-7am shift at the Stevens Point Y back in the day. 2 hours of NPR (I actually started at 4:45, so I would know my shift was almost over when the business news started repeating...not that I wasn't watching the clock like a hawk) and then laps around the pool. I also calculated it out on how many laps were a mile and I would try to get a few in every morning. :)
After reading this post, the following conversation was had between Tonia and I:
T: Did you read Andy's blog? Who the hell is this non-lazy dude?
M: It's classic Andy: finding other stuff to do that you'd rather be doing
T: True, but when did his other stuff that he would rather be doing include working out?
M: It's Miller Lite
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