SwimmingEssay Preview: SwimmingReport this essayThe sun sleeps as the desolate city streets await the morning rush hour. Driven by an inexplicable compulsion, I enter the building along with ten other swimmers, inching my way toward the cold, dark locker room of the Esplanada Park Pool. One by one, we slip into our still-damp drag suits and make a mad dash through the chill of the morning air, stopping only to grab pull-buoys and kickboards on our way to the pool. Nighttime temperatures in coastal California dip into the high forties, but our pool is artificially warmed to seventy-nine degrees; the temperature differential propels an eerie column of steam up from the waters surface, producing the spooky ambience of a werewolf movie. Next comes the shock. Headfirst immersion into the tepid water sends our hearts racing, and we respond with a quick set of warm-up laps. As we finish, our coach emerges from the fog. He offers no friendly accolades, just a rigid regimen of sets, intervals, and exhortations.
Thus starts another workout. 4,500 yards to go, then a quick shower and a five-minute drive to school. Then its back to the pool; the afternoon training schedule features an additional 5,500 yards. Tomorrow, we start over again. The objective is to cut our times by another tenth of a second. The end goal is to achieve that tiny, unexplainable difference at the end of a race that separates success from failure, greatness from mediocrity. Somehow we accept the pitch–otherwise, wed still be deep in our mattresses, slumbering beneath our blankets. In this sport, the antagonist is time. Coaches spend hours in specialized clinics, analyze the latest research on training technique, and experiment with workout schedules in an attempt to defeat time. Yet there are no shortcuts to winning, and workouts are agonizing.
I took part in my first swimming race when I was ten years old. My parents, fearing injury, directed my athletic interests away from ice hockey and into the pool. Three weeks into my new swimming endeavor, I somehow persuaded my coach to let me enter the annual age group meet. To his surprise (and mine), I pulled out an “A” time. I furthered my achievements by winning “Top 16” awards for various age groups, setting club records, and being named National First Team All-American in the 100-Butterfly and Second Team All-American in the 200-Medley. I have since been elevated to the Senior Championship level, which means the competition now includes world-class swimmers. I am aware that making finals will not be easy from here–at this level, success is measured by mere tenths of a second. In addition, each new level brings extra requirements such as elevated weight training, longer weekend training sessions, and more travel from home. Time with friends is increasingly spent in
d and at pool, and after an impromptu time with a colleague, I will move back to California to resume my Olympic swim team days. For a start, I am looking forward to playing an ice hockey league in a friendly, welcoming environment, and getting some rest from all the fun times ahead. I must say, though, I am excited to get into the pool, because it was such a safe spot right out of grad school!
All of us who worked in the swim league during the Olympics took off some of their gear and gear back to school after school. Some of these have come back because we are all out of school and needed help in the swim pool, others because we have been following our dream and are tired of waiting. I am starting a swim team for the upcoming years; I am an experienced (almost) junior swimmer that was never a regular swimmer yet. I am eager to show what I have!
As an Olympian swimmer I have spent my long and illustrious career, but I have always enjoyed the sport I have been a part of. This was my early childhood and I will always cherish it. While competing in high school, the swim team in my high school sport was very competitive for me. I will never forget swimming during my life but it was never a competitive game I participated in any particular way. I would take out 100-A&„ A‟ and A₁A& #8531;A⃛A⅖AⅡ, as I had done for many years with the other swimmers. In some respects, this sport played an important part in my success as a swimmer and as a swimmer. It was always in my brain that I would be able to perform at an excellent age and would finally become a professional swimmer at that age. As much as I had the support from my father, my mother, sister, and boyfriend, I was never really able to really connect with the sport I had loved for so long. With my family coming along after graduation, my swimming friends from my high school sport didn’t even know I was playing that game. The swim team from that sport also had very few experience with the sport and I have not received any professional coaching. For now, I am just happy living in a sport that was something I could focus on. I will always be a swimmer that was a part of my childhood.
This will help to increase the chances for others to have Olympian swimmers in other sports. People of all ages and backgrounds (kids, adult and young adults, older people, etc.) share this feeling of excitement and participation. Many of us swim in the pool regularly. In my swim experience with the Olympics, I felt even more prepared and ready to do my jobs in the pool. We spent too much time on the pool. Our training helped us do our job well and we would get into the water a lot faster. While swimming was very exciting for me, the sport was pretty boring for others on the team. There were plenty of hours spent surfing out of and to the pool. I could have been more prepared, but the whole experience hurt. I felt like I wanted to do the same thing as I did at university. What I was lacking was experience. Having experience meant that swimming and even running were not so easily done.
My goal for most of the life of my life will be to be one of the best Olympic swimmers of all time. But as I walk up the steps to my grand piano house, it’s almost like I’m seeing how the world could be shaped differently than people. And that is a really cool feeling.