I haven’t written in a while because I have been extremely busy becoming a reality TV star. Just kidding, kind of. Here’s the story.

My friends and family had been acting a bit weird for the past little while and then last Wednesday we had this really odd 10 AM practice after normal AM practice and my core training class. All these TV cameras showed up on deck (Lea had mentioned that there would be some sort of filming going on) and there were a ton of them. I looked over and there were Stacy and Clinton from TLC’s What Not to Wear walking down the pool deck pointing at me.

I guess that my friends, family and teammates had set me up to be on What Not to Wear with the help of one of my sponsors, Bank of America. That’s why I had been seeing random people with camcorders around - people from the show had been taking secret footage of me. Bank of America and my friends knew that I was a fan of the show and thought it would be great to get me on it.

Anyway, Stacy and Clinton gave me a Bank of America card with $5000 dollars to totally refurbish my wardrobe…that is, after they trashed most of what I already had. I don’t think that I had bad fashion, it was just boring and safe. So after we talked about everything I was doing wrong I got to go shopping in San Francisco for two days to try and find something better.

Let me tell you, buying a whole new wardrobe in two days is an exhausting experience, especially when you are still training and trying to step out of your comfort zone to accept a new style of clothing. It was hard to be confident about picking things out and deciding if they were for me because the clothing styles were a lot different than what I had been buying before.

One of the biggest problems of the whole day was getting things to fit my back. All swimmers know that getting the zipper of a dress all the way up without zipping in your skin is one of the more challenging parts of getting dressed. I found that in several of the boutiques their largest size wouldn’t zip all the way up even though I would be swimming in the rest of the dress.

After the first day of shopping I was totally exhausted - even though I love shopping, I had been shopped into the ground. It is a little different than what you see on TV because after I was done with shopping on my own I shopped extra until stores closed with a stylist from the show. If I hadn’t there would have been no way for me to get it all done in one weekend.

On the second day of shopping I got to meet up with Stacy and Clinton and they helped me find some really good stuff. We also went over everything I had bought the day before and we returned everything that they didn’t like. It was a really great experience because I thought that maybe after the cameras were off that they would just jet off and leave me. But they stuck around and were just as nice off camera as they were on – maybe even nicer.

The next day I got to do hair and make up with Nick and Carmindy. Nick did a great job with the hair even though I was scared of bangs. He was friendly and I was confident that he knew what he was doing. But I was still amazed that he managed to make me look so stylish.

Carmindy showed me some great makeup tricks - most importantly, how to manage my goggle tan with darker concealer. Carmindy was also just as sweet and nice as she seems when you watch the show even though she had been up all night with her sick mom. She gave me all of the make up that she used on me since it was from her own line with Sally Hansen Natural Beauty.

After that I still had a few things that I had to do for the show but they were more made for TV. There was the reveal for Stacy and Clinton that night. It was fun because they made a pretty good effort not to see me until I walked out to talk to them in my new clothes. But then we had to do things over an over for the camera, which was annoying.

Then the next day we had to do all the shots of me in my new outfits and then the reveal party (again with repeats for the camera). I managed to convince them to cram all the new clothing shots into one day because I had to get ready for the meet. I was really thankful that they were so flexible and able to put up with my impatience. But what I really wanted to say was, “I can’t believe you spend two whole days on something that rolls during the credits – sometimes I don’t even watch this part!”

By the end I was pretty over being on the show. I really appreciated all the work people were putting in to make it a good show and have me end up with some great pieces of clothing. But by Tuesday night I just wanted my life back.

Overall, though, it was a great experience. I had a lot of fun. I learned a lot. I feel more relaxed in the water as a result of a little distraction. I also got a lot of great stuff. Now, however, it’s time to move on to the Santa Clara meet.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 11:34 am and is filed under tarakirk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.