Swimming: Beginnings and Endings

I found myself reflecting today on how my swimming career began and ended with largely similar feelings.

1996. I was eleven and lost in a crowd of spectators at the US Southern Zone Swimming Championships. I was at the pool that hosted the Atlanta Olympics, watching the finals of a meet that I barely qualified for. I wasn’t fast enough to make the finals and was largely an afterthought on the North Carolina zone team. I felt so neglected that I’m sure most of the coaching staff forgot I was on that team as well. There were too many point scorers for me to be noticeable.

I was lost in thought watching the finals, thinking about how I wanted to compete and admittedly how I wanted to be adored, as the champions on the pool deck seemed to be. Winning felt like something far off in the distance, about as intangible as high school. Everyone was cheering for the swimmers in the finals, as was I, but my mind was yearning to be something more than a spectator. My ego wanted me to be one of those swimmers being cheered for.

I stood next to a coach for a club team in North Carolina who introduced himself as “Coach Hunt.” I remember him telling me that I’d be in the finals one day. “Your time will come,” he said. I was surprised he even knew I was a North Carolina swimmer.

I won my share of Southern Zone Swimming titles in the five years since that conversation. Admittedly none of those victories satisfied my ego like I expected them to; I just kept chasing higher, and my ascension in sport continued for years. Every victory just led to a meet with still-faster athletes.

In that moment at that 1996 meet, however, I couldn’t think of anything beyond “not being one of the slow people.” It was an experience that left me resentful; it felt like I was at a meet that I didn’t belong in, swimming a few races that no one cared about. I hated that feeling.

2008. Omaha, Nebraska. The US Olympic Swimming Trials were sold out in a stadium that could host an NBA game. My last important race was in a pool as large-scale and magnificent as that 1996 pool.

I finished my final race at the US Olympic Swimming Trials, a semifinals 50 meter freestyle, and knew immediately that I didn’t advance to the finals. My swimming career was over.

The 50 meter freestyle was more of a bonus swim for me. My best chance at making the Olympic team was in either the 100 or 200 meter freestyle events, and those already transpired. I was knocked out in the semifinals of both races. I didn’t have a legitimate chance at a 50 meter freestyle Olympic birth, but I raced it anyways since I had an Olympic Trials qualifying time. It was sort of a “last hurrah,” a final gallop before saying my goodbyes to some longtime friends. It was a cyclist’s equivalent of a final stage at a tour, knowing that a top finish is fully out of reach.

I remember the ending being abrupt and followed by a strange silence that engulfed my mind, in spite of the raucous cheering taking place at the Trials. Most of my University of Texas teammates had already gone home. If we didn’t qualify for the Olympics, we had to return to Austin, Texas following our final swim. I was no different.

I skipped a routine warm down swim. There would be no practice the next week, so what was the point? My coach was busy with some of his other swimmers, so I embarked on a long walk back to a hot tub. I sat in that hot tub for awhile, just breathing and relaxing. It had been a very long time since I just “let myself be comfortable.” I had a difficult year leading to the Trials. I broke my right wrist just nine months prior, and my shoulders had slowly deteriorated through the course of my final NCAA season. None of that mattered anymore.

At one point I chatted with another swimmer, an older Olympian, and we exchanged a few jokes. That swimmer had already qualified for the Olympics. We’d both be packing our bags, but heading in opposite directions. The conversation was a brief moment that I only remember because it immediately followed the last race of my life.

I packed my swimming gear and dressed. There were a lot of coaches and swimmers I’d known for many years, some for over half of my life. I said my goodbyes to some of them and eventually found my own coach, Eddie Reese. I shook his hand and told him thanks for everything.

Then I walked to my hotel alone on a cool summer night in Omaha, Nebraska. The sport of swimming would continue, of course, but my time as a swimmer was over. There was no greater meaning that dawned on me upon that final race, nor was there a sense of closure. It just sort of ended.

The journey ended about like it began: alone, while the competition continued past dusk and the spectators kept cheering, regardless of my presence.

I think it’s a fitting life lesson.

Ice Cold

The Saint Louis air was frigid and dry on Sunday morning. I exited my apartment just before dawn broke and I exhaled a visible plume. I quickly wrapped my arms around my torso and shivered.

The run was through Simpson park, my first run in the area. I noted a river glinting silver to one side of me. The desiccated and barren trees made it seem like something crucial in the park was missing.

I was on a group run but somehow still lost in thought. My mind traced back to a night terror I had several nights prior.

In the dream I was swimming in a mysterious river’s dark waters, against current. Storm clouds gathered suddenly and my stroke rate accelerated, eager to escape the river. Eventually I made it to some shore, where a group of parents stood vigilant.

“Where are the kids?” One of them asked me.

And suddenly in the dream I was a coach, and I was supposed to be leading a team upstream as part of a workout.

The rain pelted everything. Thunder roared. Shadows stretched. Panicked, I jumped back in the river in search of the athletes. One by one, I started to find them. I woke up wracked with guilt.

I don’t know what the dream meant, if anything, but I find it interesting that I’ve had several memorable dreams about rivers over the past few weeks.

I finished the group run feeling fresh, which was a surprise. The day before was the longest run I’d ever completed: 16.9 miles (27 km). The fresh feeling in my legs was a good signifier that I’m adapting to longer distances.

Looking ahead, I am signed up for a running event on Saturday, a 15k run. I have it in me to run faster than I ever have before if I choose to push myself, and that’s exciting; improvement usually is. I’m not sure, however, that it’s competition that engages me with running. I think I’m running because it has been some sort of act of self-healing. I’m feeling steadily more rejuvenated. Through the act of running I see potential longevity.

There is something about the imperfection of an outdoor run that makes it perfect. It’s always too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy, or includes too many hills. I realize through outdoor endurance exercise how little control I have over the universe. My lack of control is somehow freeing. A surfer can’t catch anything good by fighting against the current, but rather has to take what is given, even if it’s almost nothing. Similarly I can’t have a good run by exerting beyond my limits, and I can only fight snow and ice so much. It’s a game of patience. There’s a brief period of time in the day for some runs, and then a whole lot of waiting between the gaps.

Life happens between those gaps.

The Pain Debate

A few days ago I watched a runner struggle to complete an 8-mile run due to what appeared to be severe knee injuries. As a result of her injuries she ran nearly straight-legged, as though her legs were stilts. Watching this run made me wince. I still don’t know how it’s even possible to run without bending your knees at all.

It is often a mistake, I think, to label “pushing through injury” a virtue. For many, though, pushing through pain is not only a virtue, it is a badge of honor. I do wonder if it is linked to the post-Industrial quest for something better in the distance, a quest that requires an eternal struggle for more.

Pushing forward in spite of injury rarely if ever improves anything. Doing so is often the equivalent of jogging on a high-speed treadmill, or jogging underwater in the midst of a powerful ocean current. Any attempt to move forward will just throw you back more violently.

I think of a story that I read in the book The Way of the Ultrarunner. A Kenyan runner was brought to England in order to run, and hopefully win, an ultramarathon event. At the event he was comfortably in the lead with over half of the race complete when he suddenly stopped. He grinned and didn’t appear to be in pain. When asked why he stopped he replied, “I hurt my toe.”

His sponsors could barely contain their fury. Hurt his toe? Of all the things elite athletes have powered through over the years… why would an established marathon runner stop for a sore toe? Yet his fellow Kenyan runners praised him. They saw the good in prioritizing and cherishing his body.

In the debate between which is better, I lean towards the Kenyan runner’s approach. I think back to two incidents from my adolescence:

In the first incident I was at a high school swimming practice. In the middle of a long swim I developed what felt like a severe stitch in my side. It was piercing to the point that I struggled to breathe. I stopped swimming and climbed out of the pool. An assistant coach was running the practice and quickly barked at me to resume the workout. I left the pool anyways. I trusted my instinct, which told me that something was wrong.

“Just get in the water, it’s nothing you can’t toughen out,” he kept saying.

Though he was furious, I felt that I did the right thing. It can be difficult when a figure of authority has a conflicting opinion to your own, especially when you’re young. Yet life is short and health is shorter still. What if the issue was catastrophic? Is finishing a boring swim practice worth permanent injury?

In the second incident I was a bit older. During a high school flag football game, I took a nasty fall on my elbow while sprinting. A golfball-sized swelling developed on the elbow and I could not bend it for several days. I do recall seeing a doctor for it. Eventually, after the swelling eased a little, I was pressured to compete at a swim meet, though the elbow had not fully healed. It still didn’t bend without pain. Yet I felt immense pressure to compete from all sides; in fact, I don’t think there was a single voice in my ear telling me not to compete.

I did reluctantly compete through the injury, and in retrospect I regret doing so. The elbow healed, but the muscle healed a bit oddly around the bone, and now there is a popping sensation, albeit a painless one, each time I bend the arm. It was not until recently that I visited an Orthopedic who assured me that although the injury healed a bit oddly, it would never cause an issue (just a harmless “pop”).

And what if the injury did not heal well? How much would I have regretted giving into social pressure and competing through my injury then?

You often walk a fine line when deciding whether to exercise through pain. You can feel immense pressure from both peers and from time itself. Maybe there is a marathon in two months and you suddenly develop an ache in your right knee. Do you run through it? Do you find a method of strength training to address what might be a physical deficiency causing the injury? Do you make a change to your technique that potentially minimizes the chance of the injury worsening?

Whatever you do, I believe there is virtue in erring on the side of caution. There is a time to maximize effort, and it’s not when you’re injured. You cannot opt to return to a routine that caused your pain in the first place. It is pointless to resume the activity that caused your injury without at least first evaluating whether you can make an adjustment that may prevent recurrence.

I admittedly find caution to be difficult. I often want to challenge myself. I often have a little voice inside my head saying, “If you can just overcome that pain in that one little part of your body, you can make it.” Admittedly, I’ve also had instances where I pushed through an injury that was fairly severe (and paid for it for months afterwards).

My own history has shown me that caution rewards more than risk when it comes to injury. Hopefully I can find the courage to stop myself on a run in the event of a hurt toe.

Swimming Dreams

I had a number of dreams this week in which I had returned to swimming competition at The University of Texas. The plot seems to be the same in each dream: though I’m 37, I somehow find a loophole in the NCAA rules that allows me to compete for a fifth year.

As exciting as that sounds, each of the dreams ends as a nightmare. Either I’ve lost something that I once had—speed, power, or technique—or I’ve returned to a sport that has become unrecognizable. The locker room is full of new faces who want nothing to do with me. The coach has a greater agenda: the young athletes. I have no reason to return.

In the most reason dream, I was trapped in a time loop that forced me to repeat a blown race over and over. It was some sort of purgatory. “I must be dreaming,” I kept telling people within this dream. “No,” they’d insist. “This is reality. There’s no waking up.”

“But I just botched this race,” I’d respond. “Why am I repeating the past?”

And they’d laugh and give me the same cold grin that the bartender ghost in The Shining gives Jack Torrance. “What are you talking about, Matt? This is your first time here.”

I wake and think that the dreams might be a mirror in which I glimpse my fear of aging: of debilitating slowly while the world mercilessly moves on without me.

I have no plans to return to the pool any time soon, but I find myself thinking that memory is an odd thing. NCAA competition was a lifetime ago and memories of the sport return in kaleidoscopic fashion, a mishmash of events and images. How did I dive into the pool for warmup all those years ago? What was I thinking immediately before the race? How did I warm down?

I feel that the everlasting fight with the metaphorical dragon that is time must go on. I can see the bone break in my collarbone when I look in the mirror and can’t help but think, “will it ever be the same?” The truth is that regardless of our bone health, we will never be the same as we were yesterday.

Rather than longingly look backwards, we might as well roll with the punches and prepare for the next adventure.