Swim class No. 6

They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning,
No-one you see, is smarter than he,
And we know Flipper lives in a world full of wonder,
Lying there under, under the sea!

OK, so maybe I'm nowhere near the 1960s TV show dolphin, but I sure felt like it for a moment this morning. Or at least enough to make the theme song to the TV show Flipper run through my head. All. Day.

I went to swim class this morning, 15 minutes earlier than usual. Yes, 15 minutes isn't much. But when we're talking about jumping in the pool at 5:15 a.m., that's a lot of extra minutes I could have spent sleeping.

So I jumped in, did my 200 yard warm up. As I put on my pair of fins I looked at the workout sheet:

6x25 w/ fins - dolphin kick under water

Huh? I'm becoming a dolphin this morning? Because I was up so early I thought I was seeing things. I called the coach over.

"What's this about the dolphin kick?"

Yup. Dolphin kicks. Efficient kick to use, especially at the beginning of a triathlon swim, he says.

I watched as he demonstrated while standing on the pool deck. Well, I thought to myself, I've already got my fins on, mind as well try out this dolphin kick and really feel like a sea creature.

So I did. And it was kind of fun and not that difficult. Granted I'm no Michael Phelps when it comes to dolphin kicking, but give me some time.

Only after I finished my 150 yards worth of dolphin kicking did the coach tell me I only had to do it until I came up to the top of the waster the first time. Then I could swim the rest of the length of the pool with a normal freestyle. Me? I'd hit the top of the water, grab some air and head back under for more kicking. I was only following what the folks in front of me were doing. Oh well. It was fun.

So if I felt like a TV star dolphin during the first part of the class, I almost felt like a beached whale during the last 500 yards of the workout when I grabbed the hand paddles and pull buoy - my first experience with either piece of equipment.

Let's just say I didn't feel like I had any control over the bottom half of my body. Towards the end of the swim, maybe the last 100 yards, I felt a little bit more in control, but I think I preferred feeling like flipper.