So I was a swimmer for 17 years. When I was 7 years old I started at the local club, in my hometown of Calgary. I remember my first swim meet so vividly. I stood at the end of the deck, just inside the backstroke flags and watched every heat, every whistle and gun. I was short. My oversized yellow t-shirt was wet at the bottom from my soggy bathing suit, it didn’t keep me warm and I shivered once in awhile, but I never wore anything else. I was too excited. I wanted to be ready for my next race. That day I swam the 25 Freestyle, the 25 Backstroke and the 25 Butterfly.
I kept swimming. When I was 10 my parents, shocked at the cost of keeping a kid in swim club tried to convince me to try another sport. They took me to McDonald’s. Sneaky folks I have. I remember the way I felt when they said I might have to quit. I was terrified. I think it took about 10 minutes of tears for them to realize that they were stuck.
My mom used to scream from the top of the bleachers in her shrill Scottish accent. People still tell me about the way my mom cheered for me. It’s hilarious actually. My crazy little Ma. But it was special because swimming became a part of our lives. As I advanced into my teens I started practicing more. My mother would have to wake up, at quarter to 5 in the morning , start the car, defrost the windshield. I used to sit in the passenger seat and watch the frozen streets pass, everyone else asleep under a dark prairie sky.
One thing that I’ll never forget is the humid waft of chlorinated air that hits you as the door opens to a pool. Nothing smells nicer than chlorine.
Swimming helped me get over many things. I used to get so nervous before races. When I was 12 I always won the 200m butterfly. I was always scared as hell to lose. One day I lost. That day I realized that it’s just the spirit of the pursuit that means anything.
I failed a lot. I never made a major Canadian team, although I tried a handful of times. It’s hard to fail like that. Putting in a full training cycle, sometimes as long as 6 months. 8 practices a week. 25 hours + at the pool. Not to mention therapy, eating, sleeping. All those mornings when you can’t move. And then you get to the meet and miss taper, get sick, or just plain suck. And you don’t get a second chance. Nothing cuts as deep as that type of failure.
But you get back up. You always get back up. The harder I failed, the harder I trained next cycle.
My last season, we won CIS Championships. It’s hard to put into words what that was like. I was so damn proud of being a Thunderbird. I mean, I cared more about that team than any other team I’d been a part of. Every night of the Championships I went back to the hotel in a daze, the excitement, anxiety and joy. It was almost overwhelming. We won by 28 points. I could write 28 pages on that meet. I’ll leave it with a sentence.
Standing on the first step of lane four, at the UBC pool, watching Tommy finish the medley relay ahead of the Dinos, pumping my fists, with Rory and Scotty beside me, will remain as my single most memorable swimming moment.
The point of all this, is that major life transitions take time, and occur in phases. Change is simply the definition of X as opposed to Y. Transition is living with the Y, and being okay without the X. I have to be okay without swimming. Truth be told, I still love it, I miss the challenge. But life has to go on. That’s what this is about. Life after sport isn’t just a new schedule, different priorities, a cheaper grocery bill, it means accepting a new identity. It means that what you lived for in the past, no longer exists. All the ways that you viewed yourself, those unique perspectives, are gone.
What remains is the hunger. The fight.
The trick is to divert the pure tenacity towards something else. Something you believe in. A true athlete will never transition to the mediocre, ordinary or status quo. There will be no mundane tasks. It has to be a challenge. It will be a success. Whatever it is that follows will include the same good practice: determination, passion, hard work, positivity, it’s just the application that will change.
Not sure where I am in transition, but I’m dead sure that wherever it is I’m going will have a lot to do with where I’ve been.
