Swimming is freaking hard!!

So the final portion of my training for the Sprint Triathlon has now fallen into place. For the past two weeks my friend Susie and I have been at the city pool, twice a week at 5:40 AM for some lap swimming. Are we totally insane? Yes, absolutely. P.S. You wanna know who else is there that early? A bunch of men that are about 60, very tan, consisting of .000018457% body fat, wearing the most tiny european speedos you can find in America and when they get out of the pool they get in their mini coopers and go home. Oh, and they can swim like 700 laps without taking a breath. The very definition of intimidating... But I have to just ignore them. Well, most of the time. I do go underwater to spy on them and their perfect swimming form. (I also see that they are using all kinds of swim aids- fins, hand mits, floating things that attach by your hips, kickboards, etc. I did not think swimming was a sport where you needed that much crap, but I digress...)
The first morning of swimming was a very rude awakening. One where you start thinking of all the ways you can call and get your race registration fee of $55 refunded because there is now way in Hades you can swim that far. But after sticking with it, I am already improving. I do the breaststroke. (Freestyle is what I want to do in the race, but the breathing pattern is really tricky for me- so for now, I split my laps between the two.) Day 1 I did about 24 laps- taking LOTS of breaks, etc. But Day 4 I did 40 laps and that was without too much breaking in between. Since I only have to swim about 28 laps for the race, I think by October 11 I will be ready. I even got a sweet neon green race cap- which really does make you feel like an official swimmer, I must say. Now despite my seemingly optimistic mood, I was rather deflated the other night when I caught some of the Olympic Swimming trials on TV wherein I realized that Michael Phelps was born in a labrotory under the direction of a scientist and a man named Igor- who used dolphin DNA to bring him to life. Seriously, he is not human. You cannot convince me otherwise. But I am forced to put all those swimming prima donnas out of my mind and focus on the task at hand for me, which is 600 M and NOT getting eaten by a gator. Not sure how to practice that last part.....