I went fishing at Clearwaters Big Pier 60 yesterday since it was a nearly perfect, just plain beautiful day out. The pier is roughly 1080 feet, 360 yards, or three and a half football fields long and I was fishing off the end of it. There is all sorts of marine life around that pier, just yesterday some of the things I saw included trout, mackerel, pods of tarpon, a couple of large leopard rays, a few baby sharks, and about a 5 foot long bonnet head shark that kept cruising around the end of the pier.

so I'm standing on the end of the pier fishing, I look over to my left and what do I see ?
A group of lifeguards swimming along !
Now, I saw a single lifeguard swim all the way out and around the pier last year but I figured he was just crazy and he actually had the little orange floaty thing with him. This time it was a whole group of life guards and none of them had their floaty things with them.

Round trip these guys were swimming roughly 7 football fields !
Not only did they swim out to the end of the pier, round the boat buoy that's about an extra 20 feet past the end of the pier, and back, they did it twice !

While I was on the pier I wasn't sure whether it was lifeguards or not, I assumed it was given how far it was to the end of the pier and that the lifeguards on the beach will chase you down if you swim past the buoys.

I was certain it was lifeguards when I left for the day though. When I got to the beach I saw an instructor with a clipboard, whistle, etc and the lifeguards doing other exercises. Some of them were doing pushups while they had someone else behind them holding their feet straight up in the air, I heard the instructor say something about 50 pushups as I walked by.

Out in the sand there were lifeguards carrying other lifeguards dead weight fireman style on their shoulders while jogging through the sand. I saw a couple more lifeguards jogging down the boardwalk along the beach. The nearest "Run to this" style thing around had to be at least a mile away. (thinking back, the swim they made was a little over three quarters of a mile)

If I said I was impressed with the exercise lifeguards on Clearwater beach do, that would be an understatement.

Wow it sounds like the lifeguards in Clearwater are training for the marines or something! I really don't think lifeguards here in Washington state train that hard. But I don't think we have as many people swimming in the ocean around here as you guys do in Florida! That's good to hear that they are getting in that good of shape though. Now I know if I am ever in that area swimming in the ocean that there will be some well trained lifeguards there in case anything goes wrong!