A Firefighter Mom Returns To Racing And Wins Big, EP 311

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, friends. Welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast, where we bring you interviews and topics to help you live well and swim well, conversations especially meaningful for master swimmers and anyone striving to perform better in the water or in life. We're here to champion you. And now your host, Kelly Pallas.

Meet Christina Campfort On Deck

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Hello, friends. We have a great interview for you today. It's a quick post-practice interview with Christina Campfort. Christina is a master swimmer who happens to be doing really cool things. When I learned that she drives a fire truck or a fire engine, how many of us wanted to be a firefighter? She's been a firefighter for 17 years. She's also a new mom. She's been a boxer. She swam at the University of Miami. She took a 20-year break from swimming and now she's back. She recently won four national titles at the YMCA National Championships in Sarasota. It's a great interview. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did. And here we go. All right. I am doing an on-deck interview with Christina Campfort. Christina, we're going to do about 10 questions. So first tell us what team you're on and how you ended up at this swim practice and how it was today.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

So um recently got back into swimming masters. I swim with the Tampa Y masters typically are down in Riverview. The mornings I get off shift with the fire department, I try to make it to the um one here in South Tampa. So that's how I ended up here. I rushed off shift and came down here.

Swimming Background And Long Break

SPEAKER_01 1:41

So that is so cool. I just love how master swimmers have all kinds of different professions and they still do master swimming. So what is your age and your background of swimming and how long you were off and what brought you back?

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Um, I'm 44. I swim in college. I graduated in 04, so that was the last time I swam. Really, my senior year was a wash because I got shoulder surgery. So um I did some swimming when I lifeguarded down on Miami, but that was just to maintain. But yeah, swimming competitively had been since 04. And I recently got back, I think about July of last year. So it's been not quite a year. I've been back in the water. Um and yeah, what brought me back was uh wanting to do something competitive again, and I want to go to Australia next year and compete in the World Police and Fire Games, so it's my excuse to go to Australia.

Love Hate Swimming And Work Ethic

SPEAKER_01 2:44

That is so awesome. So 22 years of being out of the water, you swam at the University of Miami, which I know, right? So um one of the on-deck questions is what what are you um most happy about with your whole swimming career up to this point?

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Um swimming was always kind of love-hate for me. I started my first race, I think I was four years old. My sister was on the swim team, they needed another kid for the relay, and they pulled me out of the stands. My parents stole the video on VHS somewhere, so that kind of got me in. I actually quit swimming my senior year of high school. I hated it. I said I'd never swim in college. Probably the best thing my parents did was let me quit. And then I decided, oh, maybe I'll do the high school season. I ended up having the best season. Um, started getting recruiting offers, and it was hard to turn that down. So, I mean, I'm glad, you know, I'm glad I pursued it. The experience in college, being on the team and have just being a college athlete was was an awesome experience. I'd say my regret in swimming was I I liked to race, I hated practice. I could have probably worked a little harder. Um, just like I said, I I didn't love practice. I loved racing. Um, I was a sprinter, 50s, I hated hundreds. I say I joke and say I peaked at age eight because they I couldn't do 25s anymore. Um But I really I didn't have the work ethic as a as a kid. I think I got by off the talent, and I never really, I don't think, got to my full potential. Um after swimming, I picked up boxing, and that kind of made force me to work harder because you don't really have a choice. Either you work hard or you literally get your butt kicked. So I think the work ethic that I picked up when I was fighting, um, I look back thinking, man, if I would have had that work ethic when I swam, I think I would have been a little more bit more successful.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

You're a breaststroker?

SPEAKER_02 4:39

I did breaststroke and sprint free. Anything but backstroke.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

So what is your training regimen now as a working master?

SPEAKER_02 4:50

So I try to do my weight training when I'm at work, if we if I can fit it in. And then the pool stuff, pretty much any of my days off shift, I try to get in the pool. Nothing crazy though. Like I said, I'm not a big yardage person. Like I know a lot's changed in 22 years, even of swimming, and I see kind of like the new stuff some of the sprinters are doing, and I wish so that was a thing when I was swimming, because I'm like, I could do that, I could do low yardage, high intensity. Um, so I try to do a lot more just speed stuff because I really don't plan on doing much more than 50s, maybe, you know, 100 breasts, but try to kind of just focus on my speed and my speed and my tempo and my timing and everything back.

Firefighter Life And Airport Station

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Yeah, as my husband says the same thing. He would have kept swimming. And really, doing 50s, that's all you need. You just need the speed work. So let's talk about you being a firefighter. So you were a boxer, you obviously you get to lift weights at work to stay strong and haul hoses and all that. How long have you been a firefighter and what what's a day in the life?

SPEAKER_02 5:54

October will be 17 years. I'm currently a driver engineer, so I drive the trucks. I'm now stationed at the airport, which is nice. It's totally different type of thing than what we were doing when the people in the street basically were we just run calls at the airport, so we're on the crash, we call them crash trucks. We're there for the obviously the airplanes, and so it's a different, it's a different slower pace, but a lot of still a lot of work and training. Um but yeah, I made that little career change two years ago. I was before in station in Ybor City running calls all night and having to go home to a newborn baby, and so that that was rough, but it's a part of the reason why I'm able to get back in the pool and do what I'm doing is because now I have it a little bit easier, I'd say, at the airport.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, did so did you ever fight like b real big fires?

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Yeah, I spent I spent about 15 years in in the inner city. So um, yeah, I mean I did set about seven of those on the on the ambulance, the rescue car, um, running a lot of medical calls, and then um other time on the on the engines or the ladder trucks. So yeah, got plenty of fires, got plenty, plenty of good experience.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

So what made you want to be a firefighter 17 years ago?

SPEAKER_02 7:07

So in college, I majored in biology. I was actually pre-vet. My goal, I wanted to be a veterinarian. The one problem I'd say beef I have with college athletics is they don't prepare you for the real world because all you do is school and your sport. So while other pre-vet students were doing internships and all this stuff to prepare for that, I graduated and realized I couldn't even apply to vet school because I didn't meet all the prerequisites. So had to reevaluate what I wanted to do. For a while, I did, like I said, I did ocean rescue just because that was a natural, easy thing to do as a swimmer, you know. And while I was doing that, um, you know, you kind of get into more of the medical stuff and knew some people that did the fire and it kind of just fit with what I liked, um, the physical aspect, the it's always changing. I hate doing the same thing. You know, I couldn't sit behind a desk and do paperwork, and I like the fact that any day is gonna be different, right? So it's always you don't know what to expect, you know, and that appealed to me. And the sk the schedule obviously is great. Um, plenty of time off. I love to travel, so um, yeah, just kind of fit naturally, you know.

Airport Safety And On Tarmac Risks

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah. So being a a driver or engineer, it's so cool that you're driving the the big trucks. Did you happen to see recently the fire truck that was run over by the plane where the two pilots died on the airport uh tarmac?

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Yeah, so obviously, since I'm stationed at the airport, um things like that, we we did like a briefing on it with our ops and um kind of go over what what we should be doing, you know, safety stuff. Um it's it's unfortunate, and you know, you armed sure quarterback, like could anything been done differently?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Um could it?

SPEAKER_02 8:57

Uh it's hard to say. I mean, I know I'm fairly new out there, so I I'm I'm very cautious. I know some people probably get a little more comfortable, um, but anytime I'm out on what what we call the movement area, um, you know, the the taxiways, the runways, um, I operate under the assumption that um the people in the tower can they can mess up. They're human. So, you know, they've given us run instructions before, they've you know messed up our truck number. So I kind of always assume they're wrong. There's times they might tell you to cross or they might tell you to go somewhere and and they're wrong. So you kind of have to always be on edge and be looking, and it is totally different at night. It's like so it's it's it's a lot harder to see. Um, so yeah, you never know. I mean, as the driver, you just have to always be cautious and operating under assumption that people make mistakes and you gotta be looking out for yourself pretty much.

Swimming Discipline On The Job

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah. Oh, so you're you're in this life and death job. It matters everything you do every minute of every day. Is there anything that you take from your swimming experience, either historic swimming experience or your current swimming experience that you use in your job?

SPEAKER_02 10:07

Um, I think it helped me a lot in the beginning. Um, both with with Fire Academy, um Medic school, stuff like that. Um, I think just the work ethic that you you obtain with doing, especially college athletics and balancing the workload of school and sport. Um a lot of that came easy to me because of that experience. Um, because I know you know people that haven't done that had that workload, they struggle. I actually did fire academy and medical school at the same time, which for some people is like unheard of. But um, yeah, and it's you know, paramilitary kind of thing with fire academy recruit class. So you get yelled a lot, you know, and most of us have had an abusive kosher too, so we're used to that. It it definitely made that whole transition easier, the just the discipline that you know, everything that I had obtained from swimming and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

So, what are your goals for the police and firefighter games in Australia?

SPEAKER_02 11:05

So this year is just the they have the US one, which is a lot smaller, less people obviously, because it's just the US police.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

So where is that and went?

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Um that'll be June in San Diego. So I'm doing that. That's a lot smaller, but it'll at least it'll kind of get me into um that scene, and then yeah, then the that following year in March will be the world, which has a lot obviously a lot more competitors because it's the world. There there is a a female that's been doing it. She's a police officer, she's from my I want to say Pembroke Pines, she's my age, and she's been doing it for shoot probably the last 15-16 years. So she's like the the lady to beat, I guess. Um, so I've kind of been eyeing her. I don't, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Um She doesn't know what's about to hit her.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

She yeah. So I jokingly call her my nemesis. Um, she doesn't know that I'm sure. Um, but that's that I guess would be my goal. Is um that that's who I'm shoot shooting to be because she's been kind of dominating the last you know how many years, and we do similar events.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

So nice, nice. I love it. You gotta have a goal. Well, thank you so much for spending this time with me today, and we'll see you at practice next Saturday.

Wrap Up And Review Request

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Um if I'm yeah, it's hard to make it to this one every every third Friday. So I'll at least be here every third Saturday after shift. Thank you, Christina. All right, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Thank you for listening to the Champions Mojo podcast. Would you consider leaving us a five star review on Apple? That's like getting a best time for us. Kelly and our team would be so grateful. See you next week for another Boost of Mojo.