Fundamentally Different

Time for a little venting. Girls cannot do everything guys can do in an athletic sense. Girls who argue against that point are ignorant of basic facts. However, there are some things in athletics that guys cannot do as well as girls. This allotment of specialies is the inequality that actually iritates me greatly.

Let us take a trip to practice today. I swam with the top two girls on the team in my lane (we were only three to a lane, because people were missing). Now, I'm not even relay material anymore (the ferret officially beat me out of my last-hope relay spot unless I pull off a miracle). I'm not a top-ranker. I've scored one point in a state meet. A great accomplishment, but nothing extraordinary. Yet I was not only beating top-rank guys in a set, I was doing a faster set. There were guys doing the times I was doing too, but I was beating guys that were higher in the guys' pecking order than I am in the girls' pecking order. This is nothing new. I do it almost every day, and I'm not the only one. Of the two lanes that normally do the sets I do, one is girls and the other is guys. The majority of the girls' lane often beats the majority of the guys' lane.

But when it comes to races, to meets, do the girls even come close? No! I get beat by every stinkin' one of them! The slowest varsity guys can pull off times equal to or better than mine, despite the fact that in practice I can beat some of the guys that make up their relays (not all; I didn't say all). It drives me crazy!

Now, we could blame this on male lethargy and ego, or a hypothetical female inability to compete (though I don't know if either of those, especially the last one, could ever be proven). But scientifically, women are better suited to extended physical exertion. Women are more inclined to endurance than to explosion. This isn't just through observation: the chemical levels prove it too. I can't remember what either chemical is called, but women have more of the endurance chemical and men have more of the sprinting chemical.

I guess that what is meant to be is what is, but that doesn't mean it can't irritate me from time to time.