On Saturday, I will be swimming in the 4th annual New England Invitational at Boston College. For Bryant swimmers that don’t qualify for the ECAC meet at University of Pittsburgh, this is the end of the road. I am one of those guys that haven’t hit any of the cut-off times to swim in that meet, so Saturday will be my last meet of the season.
Thinking back to my first meet of the season in October at NJIT in New Jersey, I had some pretty lofty goals and expectations for myself for this year. I came in ready to put in some serious work, and ready to get some serious results. For the first half of the season, I was pretty consistent. I was putting in work, day in and day out. Morning practice after morning practice, double after double. I was in great shape as I went home for winter break for two weeks before coming back to school for a training trip in Florida.
At home, I was practicing with my little brother with my old high school team. Winter break at home in Naugy is time for some serious training. We were doing two-a-days for the entire Christmas break, excluding only Christmas and New Year’s Day. I went in hard. I swam my best time of the season in the 100 free at the Alumni meet we had the day after Christmas. Unfortunately when I came back to school, ready to start the most important part of the season, I hit a wall.
First practice back at Bryant in 2010, I couldn’t even participate. I had this sharp pain in my left shoulder, the same one I’ve had surgically repaired twice. I got out, told Coach, and then got back in and kicked the entire practice with flippers on. I did that again for the afternoon practice, and for the next 14 days. We took a training trip to Marco Island, Florida, and I did basically everything BUT train. It was awful. I was miserable the entire trip. I couldn’t swim, and my shoulder wasn’t feeling any better, and it constantly had me in a bad mood. Finally when we got back to school on January 16th, I went in to see the Athletic Trainer and he gave me some therapy exercises that I did and two days later the pain finally subsided. If only I knew of these exercises a few weeks earlier…So finally I was able to start training again, slowly building back up. Then a couple days later, we started tapering for this meet, for the New England Invitational.
Now having come into this season being in the best shape of my life from the base I built in my triathlon obsession, I had some major goals I wanted to hit. After sitting out for two weeks though, my confidence is not anywhere near where it should be going into this meet. After training for five straight months, not being able to train for two weeks feels like an eternity of being out of the water. This weekend though, I’m going to forget about all of that. I am going to do the best I can, for that is all anyone can do. I’m going to forget about the past, forget about the off-season that lies just days away, and swim in the now. Hopefully, I’ll be able to swim as fast as I had envisioned myself doing, but regardless, life moves on. I realized when I was out for two weeks, you gotta strive for greatness, but in the pursuit you gotta make sure to enjoy the ride, successful or not. (My mom got really excited when I told her my new philosophy…) Needless to say, you can bet I’m still going to be going to work at Boston College on Saturday with Zach Bowen in attendance. I’m just gonna do what I do; I’m going to do it 4 the glory.
"The history books are full of people who said, 'I don't care if everybody thinks it is impossible. I want it, and I'm going to get it,' and they did."
I knew it was going to be a good trip when I saw this in the airport.
