Thursday, August 8, 2013

The Loss of Defeat

Swimming, although it may not appear to be at first glance, is an extremely difficult sport. In the upper levels, swimmers must go to practice every day, 6 days a week along with early morning practices. All of this training is to accomplish one goal. This goal is to swim fast. To demonstrate this ability swimmers go to swim meets and race against other swimmers in order to get faster times. The ultimate goal is to be fast enough to qualify for the Olympics, but that doesn't happen to very many. Everyone starts at the basic meets that don't have time requirements. In an ideal meet you cut of time on almost all of your events and get a little bit closer to your goals.
What makes swimming really hard is when you go to a meet expecting to cut off this time and it doesn't happen. When you have worked so hard for a race and it turns out to be shit. It just gets worse as race after race you fail to accomplish your goals. Then you step up to the blocks of your last race and think this is it, I am going to blow this one out of the water. You hear the announcer say "take your marks", you grip the blocks and fly off into the water. Before you know it you're slamming into the wall. But when you look at the board you realize you have yet again missed your time.
That moment is one of the hardest moments in swimming. What is even harder though, is to come back from that moment. To remain positive no matter what. The challenge is to say to yourself
"Well really sucked, but now I know what I can work on and the only way I can go is up. I WILL do better next time."
The point of this whole block of writing is that to tell you guys that no matter what remain positive. I don't care how badly you screw something up. What counts is being able to come back from that screw up try again, whether it be sports, school, art, music, or even life! Whatever it is just remember, never give up.

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