This is the story of how IN-N-OUT burger got me to state:
I have been a swimmer for most of my teen years. I started my senior year on the high school swim team, picking up on a pretty good end to my junior year. Mid-season, I was keeping pretty consistent with my times with the previous year, swimming around 58 seconds in my hundred free and around 27 seconds in my fifty free. These times were alright, but all around me people were dropping times left and right and here's Cooper with his same old times. I got pretty excited when I cut of tenths of a second.
One day, after school, all the swimmers were in the coaches room talking about the last meet we had before region. It was in Lehi. Now you might be unfamiliar with this news, but you guys recently put an IN-N-OUT in American Fork. That is close to Lehi. I asked my coach if we could possibly go there after the meet. Being familiar with the lines that usually accompany my favorite fast food place, she said no. Trying to sound as serious as possible I asked if we could go if I swam really fast in the upcoming meet. She was not big on taking risks so she said if I swam a low 54 in my race we could go to IN-N-OUT. 54 seconds was the, then, current state qualifying time. With out a blink I accepted the challenge.
I was going to have to drop 3 seconds in a race I was already going pretty fast in. The day of the meet came and I was sitting at the pool with my cliff energy bar, some power bar goop, and a powder energy packet for my water from my dad. I was nervous. I asked my coach if the goop stuff was legal, she said if was and also gave me my new favorite energy booster, shot blocks. I had two of them and instantly felt the energy go through my body. My first event was our medley relay. I swam my freestyle split the fastest I had every swam it. I had ultimate confidence in the power of the shot blocks.
The rest of the team had heard about me and my coaches deal, so the whole meet I was bombarded by people telling me to win. My race came up and I have to admit I was feeling nervous for the first time. The whole day I hadn't even thought once that I couldn't do it. I got up on the block and the only thing going through my mind was 54, 54, 54! When the signal telling us to go went off, I dove in. I can't really explain what happened. The only thing I know was that for some reason my arms weren't hurting, I didn't feel tired when I started my second fifty, and I was kicking like I had never done before.
When I touched the wall, I looked up at the board that kept the times. Guess what? They were having technical difficulties. Luckily my team was cheering loud enough that I knew I had made it. When I went over and talked to my coach, she was overjoyed. My final time was 53.6 and it is still the fastest time I have ever swam. We went to IN-N-OUT burger, and it was the best burger I have ever eaten from the best burger joint around.
That time qualified me for state, and hopefully I can beat it when stated rolls around on February 6th.
Thank You,
Cooper Urmston,
A die hard IN-N-OUT fan
