story by Cody Clawson
For the swim team, sweating chlorine is all in a day’s work. The swim team has practice three hours a day, five days a week, every week for over two months. A majority of these swimmers are also on club teams so they swim year- round. When all of this is added together the swimmers are in a pool for 15 plus hours a week during the swim season and at least two plus hours year around for club team. With all this swimming and being in the chlorine for so long, the chemical begins to affect their bodies.
“The chlorine just sits on top of our skin and does not go away,” senior Caleb Lewis said. When swimmers are in the pool with the chlorine for so long, the chemical starts to build up on their skin. Even when they are out of the water, it sits on top of their skin.
When these swimmers start to sweat, the chlorine comes off with the water, making it seem like they are “sweating chlorine.”
“I sweat chlorine now,” junior Colton Marnell said. “I was playing basketball one day and I actually started to sweat chlorine.”
However, the one thing that no swimmer can stand when they sweat is the smell. These swimmers begin to smell the second a drop of water hits their skin. When they take a shower or even walk in the rain the smell of chlorine comes off of their body.
“Eventually the smell just becomes part of you and you have no other choice but to accept it,” Lewis said.
Simply being used to the smell of chlorine comes with the territory of swimming on a daily basis. One might even go as far to say that sweating chlorine will be a natural occurrence, even when these boys are no longer in the water.
The sweating of chlorine is not a bad thing, it is just not something these swimmers do not want to live with.
