Sam is a semi-competitive Canadian swimmer on his way out of retirement. Sam specializes in Breaststroke & IM as well as doing his fair share of coaching. Sam hopes to join a varsity team in fall 2017.
If you had told me 6 months ago that I would be getting my ass handed to me in the pool by a man more than twice my age (all be it a former Olympic medalist) at 530am on a Monday, I would have told you to shut up. ” I’m done!” I would have cried. “No more pain for me, it’s over!”
No more 4:40am alarm, no more wishing-I-had-chosen-an-easier
When I finished high school, I was going to a community college, who in Canada, do not compete in swimming. This essentially meant the end of my competitive swimming days. I was actually fairly content to leave the pool behind after a decade of living in it. I had a great final season, with lots of personal bests and great memories, and I was ready to move on from that chapter in my life.
But, every so often, I would get an itch. A random article would pop up in my feed as I ate breakfast about the newest training tool, or maybe some of my friends were at their championship meet. I would pour into the article or sift through live results wondering how I could have done at the same meet. I would just itch. I would want to get back in the pool. To endure the 9 swims a week. The constant fatigue, the thrill of racing. Eventually, the itch would pass, and I would carry on narp-ing about.
This summer, the itch became insatiable. I called my old club, told them I wanted to coach. This would undoubtedly satisfy the itch. I’d been wanting to become involved with the sport for some time and this was the perfect solution.
Come September, coaching became my new favourite job. I could hand out the suffering without ever having to endure! What an ingenious discovery I had made.
Running from pool to pool coaching different groups was extremely rewarding and did the trick for a while. But the itch returned.
I was standing on deck helping coach a group of masters when I realized that there would never be a substitute for the real thing. For really getting in and suffering yourself. Pushing your body, staring at that beautiful black line on the bottom of the pool for 2 hours at a time.
A week later, I was back where I had been 2 years prior. Standing on deck at 5:20 in the morning, dreading jumping in. 5:30 struck and it was time. I hopped in. My stroke was inevitably sloppy and slow. By the end of warm-up I was ready to climb out and go back to sleep. By the end of the first set I was nauseous and ready to give. But I stayed in.
But by the end of practice, I felt amazing. My whole body was jello. I was exhausted and the sun hadn’t even started to rise. And I couldn’t get that goofy grin off of my face. I grinned the whole way home. I grinned for the entire day.
Maybe it’s sadistic, maybe it’s a “swimmer thing”, but there was something about the way that first practice made me feel. Even as a useless bumbling narp, struggling to make a pace time, struggling just to finish the full 90 minute workout. It felt euphoric.
I may never swim at the level I did again, I may never race the same way I used to. But I’m going to race again. I’m going to keep swimming no matter how awful I feel on the bad days. I’m going to keep on staring at that beautiful black line and it will keep leading me to that stupid grin. Truthfully, the only way to remove that itch, is to get in and scratch it.
Exactly!
Loved this. I wonder if athletes in other sports feel this kind of draw back after they retire or if it’s a swimmer thing. I took 8 years off after competing in college, didn’t even step foot near a pool in that time…what am I doing now, you ask? Duh…I’m a coach and masters swimmer, of course.
“who in Canada”?
community colleges, who in Canada, don’t swim competitive. He’s saying his college didn’t have a swim team.