It all begins once you’re standing on a starting block.

The only things you can hear now is “Quiet for a start please,” “Mr. Starter” and “Take your mark,” and then the light comes up and you hear the noise. Here I go.

After a quick jump into the water, you begin with couple dolphin kicks, trying to do it as fast as you can. You can feel your whole body working immediately, you can feel your muscles, you also begin to feel the shortness of breath. But you also know that you’re almost there. Now it the time you have to be careful, you have to spring into the wall but only to touch it and push it. Absolutely do not try to stop at the wall. There is no time for breath. So you continue sprinting all the way down.  After that you’re waiting for the last 25, you keep telling yourself that you’re almost there. Three maybe four more strokes and you’re done. Your work is done, and you finally can catch the breath.

But for me, it wasn’t always like that. I mean swimming wasn’t anything new to me, but the feel of joy and proud came after a long absence.

When I was in the middle school most of my friends were in a cross country team, and that’s why I decided to take a break from swimming and join them. Swimming is a part of my life since I was 7. I love it, but the middle school is the time when you get to know your interest, and you discover your strengths and weaknesses.  I wanted to try something new, open myself to other options. I thought that running is such an easy sport, that everyone can do it. Oh, how wrong I was. First I thought that it’s going to be awesome, no problem with breathing. You can breathe as much as you want. Oh yeah, nice try. Have you ever try to manage to keep your breath and running as fast as you can? Almost impossible. And there is no space you can push off from. The advantages of running practice are that you can do it whenever you want, you don’t need a special place to practice, you can go outside and do your workout. I didn’t realize how different swimming is from running. Even the essential thing as muscle, the completely different sets of muscles are working when you run or swim.
Sometimes in your life, you can try very hard, and want it so much but it just simply wouldn’t work. And what would you do then? Would you stick with that?  I really tried to push myself with running. Whatever the coach told me to do, I did it. 4x25 sprints? Run a mile 3 times? No problem. Or maybe races on the end of the practice? Sounds amazing to me. I was aware that I wouldn’t get the same time my friends would. But that didn’t discourage me. I tried to work as hard as I can at every practice. I think I might even enjoy the drylands. With the perspective of time, I think I might have had enjoyed that because I like to be active, not because running mattered to me. After a while, I started to be irritated with myself. I knew that I was trying my best, but I wouldn’t get the results I want. I started losing myself, I didn’t enjoy that activity, but since my friends were doing it, I tried to keep up.

  Till that one, memorable meet.

The weather was okay, the location seemed fine, etc. I have been preparing for that event more than two weeks. I was sure that is the day I can beat my record, make myself proud. I began with the warm-up, I was feeling amazing. Inside I knew that it’s my day. I knew it. So when the time for a star came, I was ready and excited. Everyone lined up, ready to start. Standard procedure. “On your marks” “Set ” and then I heard a gun shoot. There was no light signal. Only gun signal. The sound of the gun scared me a little. I knew that everything was happening that so fast, but in my head, every move was in slow motion. I felt like start took me too long, but I was okay. I was in the middle, feeling strong and confident. I ran, and I saw all the people around, looking at me, cheering. That motivated me, so I tried to go harder. I tried, I really did. But the feeling of slow motion came back, but this time everything was happening slowly. I was slow. People from behind me started going in front of me. For the whole time, I was fighting with myself.
Then I did something that I shouldn’t have. I stopped.

I stopped. I was trying to catch my breath. All of the sudden people started going around me. It surprised me that no one stopped and asked if I’m okay. But okay, let’s say there were busy and had they own things to do. Even though I was close to death. I mean I’m pretty sure I was. Now you can see that running and I weren’t just meant for each other. Right? When you read this in your head probably appears the question “Why on the earth would you do it?” You might as well think “oh she is doing sport for couple years and she still doesn’t know that you can’t stop whenever you want?” Jesus Christ what a kid.  Well… I’m just going to say that I didn’t know that will bring such a fatal result.

Yes, I was last. As a matter of fact, I got to the finish line so late that people though I’m some random person, not a part of the meet. Except for the number on my T-shirt. That’s how late I was. Sounds pretty bad huh? The fact of being last wasn’t that bad, it was the facial expression of people around me. It wasn’t hard to see that they were disappointed. My coach even decided to have a little chat with me about it. The day couldn’t be any better. I was really ashamed of myself, and I mean really. I was ready to run away and hide for the rest of my life. I couldn’t understand why did I stop at that point. I was so close, but not close enough.

I was so ashamed that I skipped a whole week of practices. I just couldn’t show up there anymore. I was scared that someone would laugh at my face. I finally decided to quit, go back to the thing I do the best - swim. I didn’t want to feel every again in the way I felt that day. I crossed my limits.

After you got the wall, after that long sprint the breath isn’t the only thing you can catch. I also could catch the smile on my coach’s face. As soon I got out of the water I felt proud. I felt my whole body, every muscle that has had worked on my success. Because it was a success. I think that I had to fail in the running to honestly see the beauty of swimming and appreciate it more. It also gave me the opportunity to shape my character.