The Three Sports

When I swim I become immersed by a feeling of security, I move through the water and I can lose myself for a moment in time, I count, I know my stroke from one wall to the next. I know if I am swimming well based on a number, on where my body sits in the water…………… swimming allows me to reconnect with myself.

I have experienced many conversations with various individuals about why I swim. I start to tell them but I am usually cut off mid way through because they want to let me know how sad they think it is that some people only ever choose to do one sport and how they don’t agree with that lifestyle. I am never usually given the opportunity to finish what I was saying because when this happens my instinct is to be quiet, smile politely and listen to what they have to say.

Their questions are usually:

1. Why would I only want to swim?
2. Why would I want to restrict myself to only being able to do one thing?
3. How could my parents not allow me to participate in other sports?

I choose not to respond because my instinct is to defend my life as I know it, I don’t like to get into such discussions because I understand that this is their opinion, but what I don’t think they understand is that they are negating what I have done, negating my families choice for me as a child, negating the choice that I made to continue when I was older.

If they had allowed me to finish they would have heard me say that:

I swim because I can, because it makes me feel good, because it is what I do. Swimming wasn’t my parent’s choice for me; I had never been in a swimming pool until I was nine. It was my choice because I wasn’t allowed to join in school swimming lessons unless I could already swim. So I went home and I asked to be taken to swim club. I loved swimming; I couldn’t wait to move up to the highest swimming squad, to be allowed to start strength training, to finally get to do morning practice (even though it meant getting up at 4.30am). I swam because it was my release and my relaxation.

The questions don’t stop as you get older. I still train, A LOT, but now I have added cycling and running into the equation. I probably train at the peak of my season more than when I was a full time swimmer. I do it for the same reasons I did as a swimmer. When I ride I lose myself in the outside and take in things that I never noticed before. It’s not easy for me, I struggle on the uphills, but I thrive from the challenges. When I run I zone out, I think about triathlon, I think about family, friends, problems, I right the world when I am running. These three sports combined give me my sense of well being; they improve my overall quality of life. I may not play team sports, I may have chosen sports that can be considered somewhat isolating, but that’s ok with me.

So next time you get into a conversation with someone and you feel like its heading in that direction, remind yourself that they just made different choices with their life and that’s ok, but it doesn’t mean that yours were wrong.

Louisa