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| Alan Webb holds the American record for the mile. He is currently working with USA Triathlon to transition to Olympic distance triathlon. |
"Part of the problem was that Webb did enough to make the extraordinary look altogether attainable. In July 2007, at an otherwise subdued meet in Belgium, a series of pacesetters guided Webb through the opening laps of the mile before he was left on his own, his stride somehow lengthening as his closed on the finish line. His time, 3:46.91, broke Steve Scott’s 25-year-old American record by almost eight-tenths of a second.
"In an interview afterward, Webb sounded euphoric — not necessarily because of what he had accomplished, but because of what he believed was still possible. He was convinced that he could run even faster."
I remember those days. I was never as fast as Webb, of course, but I remember hitting my first AAAA time in swimming as a high school freshman, placing fifth in the San Diego CIF swimming championships, and then coming back the next day to face two guys who had just come off runs in the Olympics--and beating them! Granted, the Jorgensen brothers were not butterfliers, and they probably also weren't at the peak of their season, but it was still quite a heady (if private) accomplishment. At fourteen, I was already 5'10" and at the top of my sport. The Olympics seemed like a real possibility.
I had no way of knowing that I was already as tall as I was ever going to get, and after setting that phenomenal time in the 100 fly, it would be another full year before I bettered it. By that time my Olympic dream had already begun fading into the distance. It would be another year and more before I started to face the reality of the thing in any kind of serious way, however. In the end, I think I was lucky. I realized that I was never going to make it to truly elite status early enough that I was able to change my course and use my sport to get an education. Considering that there's not a lot of call for professional swimmers regardless, this was probably about as much as I could have hoped for. My parents were disappointed--right up to the point where I was accepted at Harvard. After that, they started to see what all that time at the pool had gotten them.
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| This is me as a high school swimmer, age 16. At that age, I was just starting to realize that I would never make the Olympics. |
I was happy to walk away from competitive swimming, happy to get away from the maddness of it and the expectations that came with being good at it. I still like to swim, don't get me wrong, but those days of single-minded devotion to the sport are gone, and I don't want them back. There's a lot more to life than just being successful at a sport. Hell, there's more to life than just being successful, period. But it takes a certain maturity and rationality to realize it, and frankly, if you have that kind of maturity, the odds are against your being wholly devoted to your craft in the way that you have to be in order to reach the ranks of the truly elite.
It's good to have something like swimming in your background, it's good to know that you can set goals and achieve them, and it's good to live a healthy and active lifestyle. It's not good, however, to let your sport take over your life. For that matter, it's not particularly good to let anything else take over your life, either.
Take control of your own life and live.
At the end of the day, this is what swimming taught me, and it is a lesson that was worth learning.
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