Strengths and weaknesses?

Ever since I started swimming half-way through high school, nothing has held my interest quite like swimming. Back in November, when I told my parents about my first master’s meet, I could hear them laughing over the phone as they remembered how, a very long time ago, I once got carried away with age-group and school swimming. Enthusiasm has helped me find the reserves to overcome my real weaknesses: I always have a so-so kick and more than once some apparently slow girl has out-kicked me in a workout (no problem: get a kickboard and get to work, and forget about the coach who says fast kickers are fast swimmers); I have never been beer-can-crusher strong (no problem: there’s an exercise program for that, and besides finesse may matter more); I lack the emotional stamina for a race in which my legs hurt for four minutes and the guy in the next lane won’t slow down and just lose (no problem: everyone knows the 500-free is just a bad idea and that reasonable people stop swimming after 200 yards); I’ve never gotten along with coaches who are authoritarians (the joke at work is that I don’t like authority, even when I’m in charge – the great thing about master’s swimming is that I get to pick the coach, not the other way around, and if there’s a coach who doesn’t like the fact that I’m stepping to the blocks with my suit untied, well I’m not forcing them to stick around and coach). Only time will tell if passion alone will be enough to overcome my newer and perhaps larger problems: I feel slow; the clock confirms that I’m slow; and I’m hard pressed to turn times today that once were easy warm-up sets. Age appears to be a problem – but it’s also an advantage: until I packed my kids off to college this year, I simply did not have the time to swim (or get carried away, again, with swimming).

Ever since I started swimming half-way through high school, nothing has held my interest quite like swimming. Back in November, when I told my parents about my first master’s meet, I could hear them laughing over the phone as they remembered how, a very long time ago, I once got carried away with age-group and school swimming. Enthusiasm has helped me find the reserves to overcome my real weaknesses: I always have a so-so kick and more than once some apparently slow girl has out-kicked me in a workout (no problem: get a kickboard and get to work, and forget about the coach who says fast kickers are fast swimmers); I have never been beer-can-crusher strong (no problem: there’s an exercise program for that, and besides finesse may matter more); I lack the emotional stamina for a race in which my legs hurt for four minutes and the guy in the next lane won’t slow down and just lose (no problem: everyone knows the 500-free is just a bad idea and that reasonable people stop swimming after 200 yards); I’ve never gotten along with coaches who are authoritarians (the joke at work is that I don’t like authority, even when I’m in charge – the great thing about master’s swimming is that I get to pick the coach, not the other way around, and if there’s a coach who doesn’t like the fact that I’m stepping to the blocks with my suit untied, well I’m not forcing them to stick around and coach). Only time will tell if passion alone will be enough to overcome my newer and perhaps larger problems: I feel slow; the clock confirms that I’m slow; and I’m hard pressed to turn times today that once were easy warm-up sets. Age appears to be a problem – but it’s also an advantage: until I packed my kids off to college this year, I simply did not have the time to swim (or get carried away, again, with swimming).