Shaving Down

When I was in high school we had an event at the end of the swim season prior to our league championship... it was called "Shave Down Day." Shaving down is not only grant a mental edge when racing but it is also a way to "shave off" a few tenths of a second due to the reduced amount of drag.

What shaving down entailed was a bunch of guys in the shower room shaving their bodies of hair. You could identify the underclassmen by their many dots of white speckled all over their bodies from cuts that they gave themselves. The good part of being an upper classmen was that we took a completely different approach to shaving down. Not only had we done it a few times, but also the areas that we could not reach were shaved by our "timets." Timets are high school girls that time the swim meets and act as judges. (This is before the advent of touch pads) These girls could best be described as groupies, as they hung out with the swim team and several of them dated swimmers.

Don't get me wrong, as a 17 to 18 year old hormone frenzied male, having the tender touch of a member of the opposite sex shave your legs was not only beneficial (as the girls had many year of leg shaving experience) but also very exhilarating. I had dated several of the timets, and made sure to have one of them shave me down, as I was a rather particularly hairy individual.

What does this have to do with this post?

After getting my wetsuit, I made a point to get into the pool to see how it worked. I had never swum in a wetsuit and was wondering about the effect on my stroke as well as my heart rate and time. On the good side, the wetsuit is a great advent to improve swimming time and reduce the amount of effort involved in propelling oneself through the water. On the bad side, getting into one of these things can be quite a task. They are more then skin tight, and require a great amount of time and effort to get it on right.

After doing a little research on the net, it seems that most use Pam spray on lubricant or Body Glide to make getting into and removing the wetsuit easier. One thing I noticed from using Body Glide is that it is basically a roll on petroleum jelly. Anyone who has ever used this product can understand that the cleaning up of this as it is caked into hair and body is a mess and a chore. I did some further research on this and noted that several web sites state to shave down so that the application and removal of the lubricant as well as getting into and out off a wetsuit can be accomplished easier.

So there I was the week before the race shaving parts of my body that have had hair on them for over 40 years. In mid stroke I decided to get into the bathtub to do this as shaving all the hair from my legs was going to be a chore and I didn't need to have hair all over the bathroom. I asked my wife to help. She had this cool little electric razor to get off most of the longer hair off and then followed up with a clean razor to take off the rest of the hair stubble. My legs were as smooth as the day I was born. They say that a dog owner usually picks a dog breed that somehow looks like them. By the looks of the bathtub floor, I would have to agree. Looking at the bathtub reminded me of the times we used to give our dog a bath. There was hair all over the tub floor. Luckily, I just hosed off everything and made sure not to get hair down the drain.

After shaving down, I did notice that getting into and out of the wetsuit was a lot easier. So at least it was all worth the time involved and the few razor blades that were used up. Hey it was even the conversation topic for a few weeks with my friends and family.