Return to the Riverfront

The aftermath of the marathon involved about three days of total rest and another two weeks without intensive exercise.

I think it’s important to fully heal both mind and body after a taxing event such as a marathon. I’d rather not return to running until every joint feels fresh and limber. I’d rather err on the side of too much rest than not enough.

This week I returned to cycling on the Riverfront trail. It was my first time on a bicycle since I broke my collarbone last November, nearly two full seasons ago. There was some anxiety in getting back on the bicycle, as expected. My pace was much slower than it was last year, as expected. I made it though, and it was nice to trigger the endorphins through the act of pedaling.

Mid-ride along the Mississippi River I saw the same family of turkeys loitering about that I often encountered last year. Upon seeing me they dashed to the nearby underbrush to hide, as they always did before. The foliage around me was a lush green and I was hit a by harsh wind that pushed from the south. My bike crawled forward where it once zoomed.

I think it’d odd that in the time it took for nature to decay and be reborn, my collarbone broke and self-repaired.

Lately I’ve had recurring dreams of a return to competitive swimming. In each dream I’m my current age and attempting to swim with programs from my youth. In each dream, my return is something of an intrusion. The swimmers and coaches don’t want me. Worse yet, they’re confused as to why I’d want to return. Didn’t I do all of this already? Why repeat the past? In the dreams, I am oblivious to the signs around me that life moves on and I am no longer physiologically the same. Age brings new priorities. I shouldn’t be ignorant to what they are.

I think that I am well aware that a downward physical slope is inevitable, and probably near. I also have no interest in returning to swimming. Maybe the dream is a reminder not to get caught up in my own obsession with performance. Life is short, after all, and time devoted to competition is time wasted not enjoying oneself.

It’s also a reminder that I’m given the option to have fun. I can take the opportunity or make exercise something burdensome. Why not take advantage of that opportunity and smile?

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.

Footprints in the Snow

It has snowed twice in Saint Louis over the past ten days.

The first time, five inches were expected, but the clouds only delivered a light powdering over the streets coupled with some ice. I ordered some Yaktrax that were delivered the day before the storm and wore them for a morning run. The Yaktrax allowed good traction and I was never close to slipping.

As I darted back and forth along the Riverfront Greenway, I noted the tracks that my footprints left behind in the snow. These markers signify that someone ran through the inclement weather, though they’ll also melt and disappear in a day’s time.

Time will eventually erase my footprints, as it does all things.

I had abandoned most, if not all, of the athletic footprints I’ve left behind. As an elite level swimmer I won hundreds of medals and trophies, some of them at the NCAA, national, and international level. I also lost most of them, if not all of them. My reasoning for tossing them is that I never felt it’s healthy to cling to something in the past. I want to constantly be forging ahead, and I aim to direct my thoughts more on what’s next than on archived text.

I’m actually keeping some of my latest running medals though. Last weekend I ran a personal best 15k, and within the race I had a personal best 5k and 10k. Improvement is fun at any age; it’s also possible at any age, though not in any activity.

Now that I’m more than 15 years removed from swimming, I see how memories and times steadily fade. I found myself Googling some of my past accomplishments that I had forgotten. How did I forget that I was voted most valuable swimmer after my freshman year of college? I think I forgot about that within a year of finishing school. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but it’s interesting that it happened. I see now that having a visible signifier of some of these things may keep them in my memory longer, and without memory we have no identity.

I recall visiting my old college coach in 2015. My final record (for an 800 yard freestyle relay) had just been broken; it had stood on a wall of my old collegiate swimming pool for more than seven years. At the time it was an American and NCAA record. He had the record in his office, a long strip of cardboard that was previously affixed to the pool record board. He gave the cardboard strip to me. I’ve since lost it and wish I hadn’t.

The cynic in me may say that a medal is nothing but a chunk of material to be ultimately tossed by someone else when I’m permanently gone. Everything that remains after I’m gone, in fact, would be a heap of donations and disposal for those who are left behind. There is some truth to this.

However, the optimist says that a medal is a footprint left in the snow, and by maintaining it the snow may melt a bit slower. It’s true that the footprint will fade, but I might as well cherish it while it remains. One doesn’t need to obsess over something to cherish it. The trash heap can wait a few more decades.

Our footprints in the snow are nice reminders of great adventures.

We Lived Much Early

I had a random conversation with an old swimming teammate at the University of Texas today. I hadn’t chatted with him in at least 15 years, though I often think about him. He was an Olympic gold medalist whom I was intimidated by upon first meeting him. Over years, though, I found myself becoming close friends with him.

“We lived much early,” he told me as we reflected on our pasts. “So much so that it sometimes feels that life is not so short after all. But time does pass.”

I thought about that era of my life and realized that yes, we did live much early. We were on swimming national teams and enjoyed all the privileges that come with this. In a four-year span I traveled to Singapore, Thailand, Montreal, Sidney, and all over the United States. In that time I was part of an American-record setting relay and another World Championship winning relay. I competed at two Olympic Trials and finally retired from competition… all by age 22.

After the curtain call of my competition days, I moved to California for three years, tried in vain to enter Hollywood, moved back to North Carolina in defeat, worked in the corporate world, randomly embarked on a two-year stint of teaching English in China, returned to the US, and now live and work in Saint Louis. In my Saint Louis years I’ve embarked on two multi-day bikepacking trips, swam with sharks in the Bahamas, hiked through Yellowstone National Park in Montana, hiked through Shawnee National Forest in Illinois, and visited Puerto Rico, Mexico, Northern California, and Indiana. And I’m still leaving a lot out for the sake of brevity.

“We lived much early.”

I have blogged previously of my stubborn refusal to succumb to time; of how the fight is ultimately a losing battle, but one I’d prefer to lose while standing on my feet (or riding downhill on a bike) over a submission to the modern-day version of retirement.

Though I lived much early, as I reflect on the past two years, I think that I’m living even more now. And yes, it does still feel as though life is long. At some point I will have to accept that it isn’t.

And though I’ve had some close calls over the years, including a head tumor (the surgery was successful), getting hit by a car and tearing my foot, and breaking my collarbone in another cycling crash… time, which is symbolized by a dragon for me, and as a crocodile for Captain Hook… has not devoured me just yet.

More adventures remain ahead. I am healing from the latest wound. I gaze out at an endless ocean on Hook’s ship but do not yet hear the ticking clock, which rests in the stomach of a crocodile that still swims far from here.

I lick my wounds and get back up. I see no other option, though the collarbone aches today. Tomorrow is another day, and with it I’ll find another mountain to climb, and another good bottle of wine to imbibe.

The aim, of course, is to live much late.

The Expense of the Present

I had a dream last night in which I was on a party boat, somewhere near a far-off Pacific island, along with several coaches and teammates from my adolescence. The boat skidded over the gentle waves of a clear blue Pacific towards an ethereal sunset. The sun washed everything in gold.

One of the coaches on the boat was an assistant swimming coach from when I was eleven years old named Will. I found myself telling him about my current training.

“I’m 37,” I told him, “And I’m wondering if I’ve had enough. I’m broken down, but I can still do it. And yet, what more is there to prove? I’m still performing at a high level at this age, but how much longer should I go?”

In the dream, it seemed, I was still competing as an elite level swimmer.

Yet the coach’s eyes were transfixed on the ocean, and he was barely paying attention. He didn’t care. Competition was a long time ago for him. He had moved on and shifted his priorities. Here, it seemed, the priority was to enjoy the beauty that the world offered.

“Should I compete another year?” I asked. I gazed around at the other coaches and teammates, but none of them paid any mind. They were relaxing and having some alcoholic beverages.

“I think I have another 42 second 100 yard freestyle in me,” I added. Yet no one responded.

“I think I can keep competing, but I’m tired. What am I chasing for? Should I go another year?”

Finally, another coached turned toward me and shrugged.

I looked down and realized that I was wearing competition apparel, whereas everyone else in the boat wore trunks and beach shirts.

Obviously my days as a competitive swimmer ended a long time ago, but currently I find myself building towards a marathon.

Maybe the dream was a reminder that a focus on the future, a focus on plotting and competing, must come at some expense of the present.

As I rehab this collarbone break, I find my mind often thinking of “getting the arm back to where it was.”

And what if it doesn’t? The ocean remains unchanged. The sun maintains its beauty. The coaches of the past do not cast judgment.

An aging athlete should not lose sight of the present.

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.

Healing with Water

It is believed that we came from the ocean. After an ancient molten earth cooled and solidified, oxygen was born. Our newly physical planet then withstood the battering of meteor showers, which pocked the earth but did not destroy it, the original acne scars. From the chaos of meteor crashes, surface solidification, and a newly emergent sun, more chemical compounds emerged, and eventually seas were born. And within the seas, single-cell organisms eventually became multicellular.

Millions of years later, some fish emerged from the seas, the original mermaids, and they dared to crawl on land.

Perhaps it can be argued that this first fish to venture to land was the original Eve, the first organism to yearn for a new world, the first pilgrim to eat the forbidden apple. Look at a fish closely the next time you see one. It is your ancestor.

We came from water. Though we departed from it, we still need it. It comprises most of our body, including our mind. It transports our blood to the necessary extremities that interact with the world around us. It transports our wastes out of us. It sustains our life, which is at its core a constant cycle of renewal and depletion. Physically, there is no element more powerful than water.

Water cleanses metaphorically too. Baptisms require water to expel our sinful nature from our souls. Hot baths relax the mind and body. They say that as water crystallizes, its formation can vary depending on external stimuli. Play heavy metal music as the water crystallizes, and the shape of the crystal will appear different than it would had one played classical music.

Despite all of our cleaning products infused with chemicals, the simple fact is that warm water kills more than 99% of harmful bacteria. What remains is the bacteria that our body can accept, or could before the Western obsession with sanitization. Yet we shower with a million products.

Water is the line in the middle of the yin/yang symbol. It is a unique chemical compound in its natural state, literally existing between two worlds, between solid and gas. Too cold or too hot and it transforms to one or the other.

It seems fitting that for now, while walking is a bit of a struggle, I should turn back to swimming. I enjoy running; we learn to run before we learn to read. However, it will be awhile before I can run again.

Swimming was our original activity, if you trace our evolution to our most ancient ancestors.

I’ve heard that it’s useful to pray to water, that water is malleable enough and amorphous enough to absorb the prayer and manifest it into something tangible. If water can transmute itself, perhaps it can similarly shape intention. If so, the next time I take a swim, I’ll pray to be absolved of not only my foot pain, but my own drive to consume more. We were not born with a thirst for more; we learned it. I hope that the next time I swim, I will realize that I already have enough.