Swimming was one of the first sports I have ever engaged in when I was young. During my childhood I always struggled just to be able to swim to the other side of the pool. Today I am glad I was given the opportunity to be able to learn swimming and be a part of the swim team at school. Since I am not a big fan of sprinting events I decided that I could be an endurance athlete that always participates in long events. During the months of December and January I decided to try and improve my time in swimming endurance events such as the two-hundred meter freestyle. Long distance swimming was especially difficult and definitely one of the toughest physical challenges I had to overcome.
At the start of the swimming season my two hundred meter freestyle time was exactly two minutes and fifty two seconds, which was about nine seconds slower than the average of the entire team. I was determined to cut it to at least two and a half minutes or less for my own pride. I wanted to prove that I could improve my endurance by trying to both swim faster and stronger. I started with trying to improve my endurance by swimming a lot more laps with only short or no rest in between intervals. This was easier said than done. My arms grew tired and my head grew dizzy after constantly turning to desperately gasp for air. I could not necessarily see improvement, but I did feel improvement. After about a week though, I felt as though this was just a hopeless challenge. I lost motivation and did not care for swimming anymore. I would come home tired, hungry and lifeless which lead to procrastination of my work. "It just wasn't worth it," I would say, but something re-sparked my motivation. After attending the first couple of meets I noticed the adrenaline rush, the feeling of unity and the strong desire to win shared between my team mates. We were all bonding as a team and it made me happy inside. After failing to keep up with the other swimmers and failing the morale of the team I promised myself that I would not slack off anymore.
I swore to myself that from now on I will not give up during practices. I gave myself the opportunity to eat before practice starts so I would not be starving myself while swimming constantly. Stretching and warming up before practice became a habit. After a week of this routine I noticed that I wasn’t even winded after our usual 40 lap warm up. When practice was over, I noticed that I wasn’t as tired and I could sit down and actually concentrate on my work, instead of having to take naps to be able to recover from fatigue. I was rather surprised when I started out lapping those who were in my lane. This reassured me that I was indeed getting better at swimming and gave me confidence to re-evaluate my times in a meet again. During our meet against Jericho I swam to the utmost best of my ability. I was getting tired, but I pushed on along with the howling cheers of my teammates. When I finished I looked around and saw that I ended up third. As I was crawling out of the pool I grinned, knowing that whatever my time was I still had fun and deserved whatever I scored. I had definitely improved due to my perseverance and hard work committed towards my goal. In the end I realized that swimming may not be the most important thing in life, but what I did in the past month was really enjoyable to do and has built a lot of self confidence in me. I ended up with two minutes and about thirty-two seconds. I didn’t exactly quite reach my goal, but I was satisfied with my work.
At the start of the swimming season my two hundred meter freestyle time was exactly two minutes and fifty two seconds, which was about nine seconds slower than the average of the entire team. I was determined to cut it to at least two and a half minutes or less for my own pride. I wanted to prove that I could improve my endurance by trying to both swim faster and stronger. I started with trying to improve my endurance by swimming a lot more laps with only short or no rest in between intervals. This was easier said than done. My arms grew tired and my head grew dizzy after constantly turning to desperately gasp for air. I could not necessarily see improvement, but I did feel improvement. After about a week though, I felt as though this was just a hopeless challenge. I lost motivation and did not care for swimming anymore. I would come home tired, hungry and lifeless which lead to procrastination of my work. "It just wasn't worth it," I would say, but something re-sparked my motivation. After attending the first couple of meets I noticed the adrenaline rush, the feeling of unity and the strong desire to win shared between my team mates. We were all bonding as a team and it made me happy inside. After failing to keep up with the other swimmers and failing the morale of the team I promised myself that I would not slack off anymore.
I swore to myself that from now on I will not give up during practices. I gave myself the opportunity to eat before practice starts so I would not be starving myself while swimming constantly. Stretching and warming up before practice became a habit. After a week of this routine I noticed that I wasn’t even winded after our usual 40 lap warm up. When practice was over, I noticed that I wasn’t as tired and I could sit down and actually concentrate on my work, instead of having to take naps to be able to recover from fatigue. I was rather surprised when I started out lapping those who were in my lane. This reassured me that I was indeed getting better at swimming and gave me confidence to re-evaluate my times in a meet again. During our meet against Jericho I swam to the utmost best of my ability. I was getting tired, but I pushed on along with the howling cheers of my teammates. When I finished I looked around and saw that I ended up third. As I was crawling out of the pool I grinned, knowing that whatever my time was I still had fun and deserved whatever I scored. I had definitely improved due to my perseverance and hard work committed towards my goal. In the end I realized that swimming may not be the most important thing in life, but what I did in the past month was really enjoyable to do and has built a lot of self confidence in me. I ended up with two minutes and about thirty-two seconds. I didn’t exactly quite reach my goal, but I was satisfied with my work.