ONE OF THE major reasons people say they swim is that it makes them look and feel more youthful. The vast majority of Masters swimmers certainly appear much younger than nonswimmers their age.
After being around swimmers for a while, you come to accept as the norm this youthful appearance, as well as the youthful attitude that seems to go with it. It is only when suddenly confronted with the larger world that you are reminded just how unusual swimmers are. I recall how shocked I was several years ago when I traveled to Washington, DC, for a meeting of the American Sociological Association right after attending the U.S. national Masters swimming championships. Having just been with almost 2,000 extraordinarily youthful and fit men and women between the ages of twenty-five and eighty-seven, I was shocked to see what the real world looked like. Many of the sociologists were smoking, quite a few were noticeably fat and out of shape, almost all took elevators to the second or third floor of their hotels and cabs between hotels only a few blocks apart; many munched on the doughnuts the meeting organizers provided as “snacks” at the back of each lecture room.
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