I found myself sitting on the windswept bench of some close-packed aluminum bleachers a month or so after school began, watching my father take command of First Reconnaissance Battalion. His men were formed up in companies in front of a forlorn Quonset hut outpost called Camp Tallega, which sat lost in the sun drenched high-desert hinterlands of Camp Pendleton’s immense beachside training ranges. Dad had written a speech on notecards for the event, but when he got up to give it in front of his new Marines, he went through a mere card or two before putting his notes away and speaking extemporaneously. He looked ill at ease to my eyes, particularly when trying to speak from notes, but he was also grimly determined to be the man, the commander, that his Marines needed him to be. He was discomfited to be around guys who saw themselves more as a special operations unit than as traditional infantrymen, a change in mindset typified in my father’s eyes by the fact that Recon Marines said “Hooyah!” rather than the more traditional “Ooorah!” that characterized the rifle companies he’d been with prior to that point in his career. I had no idea what his prepared remarks were intended to say, but off the cuff, he acknowledged that the language barrier was only the beginning of the things that he needed to learn to be the best commander that he possibly could be. He also promised that the Marines in front of him could count on learning a few things from him as well.
His men stood silently in formation, looking uniformly lean, mean, and competent as Hell.
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| First Recon Battalion: "Swift, Silent, Deadly" |
If Dad was nervous about taking command of a reconnaissance battalion, he was also more than equal to the challenge. Early in his tenure, he took the battalion on an impromptu road march that eventually became the stuff of legend. His six-foot, five-inch cross country runner’s frame had been hardened by a lifetime of forced marching with a rucksack and rifle, and on that first ruck, he marched his men straight into the ground. Afterwards, officers and noncommissioned officers alike would reminisce about the event with my father at battalion social functions, saying things like, “Jesus, God, sir, I never saw anybody march like that. You knocked my dick in the dirt!”
Though my father was more runner than weightlifter, he adapted easily to Recon Battalion’s iron-pumping weight-lifter fitness ethos. He took particular pride in his biceps—his “guns” as he used to call them. His men would say, “The guns’re comin’, sir! The guns are comin’!” He would preen like a peacock. After a couple of months on jump status with his new unit, he earned his gold, Marine Corps-issued jump wings, given for five jumps made with Marines. He also mastered the inflatable rubber boats15 that were an integral part of Recon Battalion’s existence.
After that, his transformation was complete. He’d become an “operator,”16 body and soul.
Our family settled into a rhythm. Dad and I would get up at 4:45 am, so that I could be on the pool deck at 5:15. During polo season, this meant Fallbrook. Most of the rest of the year, though, Dad drove me all the way out to Vista. He’d then drive out to Camp Tallega to pump iron with whomever showed up. With the boss wanting to be a badass weightlifter, many of his Marines followed suit, creating something like a “Hardcore PT Club” within the battalion before regular, more formalized physical training began. Mom showed up at the pool around 6:30, and we’d head back to Fallbrook, grab a quick breakfast, and then drive to school. School let out around 3:30, with my last period reserved for Physical Education. If the swim team or water polo team was in-season, my last period marked the start of afternoon practice. Otherwise, we did straightforward running for time with a coach who knew that he could push a bunch of varsity athletes until they puked every day, and no one would say anything. I put down a 5:15 mile for that bastard one spring afternoon between seasons, and no one even noticed. It was perhaps the best run of my entire life.
My mother particularly dreaded the afternoon trips back and forth to Vista for evening workouts. We carpooled with my friend Matt and his father, a former college swimming standout who’d been a contemporary of Mark Spitz. Carpooling helped, as did the perspective of Matt’s dad, who’d already been to the sport’s highest levels and understood what we had to do if we wanted to get there ourselves. However, my swimming career still required a Hell of a lot of driving. In time, my mother’s commitment to my swimming career made her a vested participant, so that she began to see swimming not just as “my” thing but as “our” thing. Eventually, she got to the point where she took even the smallest setbacks personally, causing inevitable friction between us. Nevertheless, I’d have gotten nowhere without her complete, unequivocal support.
Most nights we had pasta for dinner. I crammed food into my face as fast as possible before heading back to the old railroad desk that sat in my room to do whatever homework I hadn’t finished over the course of the day. Oftentimes I would blast out three or four sets of twenty-five pushups at night while I worked, dreaming of Olympic glory. If I’d struggled with time management or even just been the kind of kid who occasionally needed a little extra time to finish my assignments, I never would have survived. Instead, I was blessed by God with a quick mind and the self-discipline that comes with wanting something badly enough to commit to it completely, even to the point of obsession. I had no life besides swimming and wanted none. What I wanted was to be the best in the world.
But though my commitment was there, I hadn’t yet seen any results. Not the kind of results that I wanted at any rate, and certainly not the kind of results that my folks were increasingly coming to expect. I came to Fallbrook with something on the order of a 1:02 in the 100 yard Butterfly. By the time I stood on a windswept pool deck just off Coronado Beach for an age-group meet late that fall, I was down to maybe a minute flat or to something like 1:01-low. I was twitchy and nervous and very conscious of the fact that my parents had gone all-in to help me become not just a good swimmer but a great one. So far I’d done little to reward their efforts.
I stood next to Mr. Malone, and we watched heats of some event, watched kid after kid put in a quality performance in whatever race was up at the time. Mr. Malone had trained me physically, and I’d improved dramatically in practice, but something was missing. I needed some of my coach’s wisdom. I hadn’t yet found myself between the ears.
“Mr. Malone,” I said, “what do I need to do to go under a minute in the 100 Fly?”
Mr. Malone looked at me, and I think he could sense that I needed something as well. A beat passed, and at least he said, “You’re ready. Just take it out fast and loose and bring it back as hard as you can. You do that, and you’ll go under a minute. Easily.”
“That’s it?”
He smiled—a rarity. “That’s it. You do what I told you, and you’ll break a minute. You’re ready. You’ll see.”
I walked away with my head spinning.
I checked in for my event, hit the water, and warmed up. I thought about trying to stay “fast but loose”. I tried to feel what that meant in the water.
Was such a thing possible? Could I do it swimming butterfly?
I didn’t have long to wait for my event, thankfully. We hit the blocks, took our marks, and the starter sounded. We were off. I hit the water, the cheers of parents giving way to the silence that marks the first moments of every swimming race. A few hard dolphin kicks brought me to the surface, and I burst through with a long, reaching stroke that felt both languid and smooth. I really could feel it. I was out long but fast, not swimming balls-out but using the months of training I’d endured to flow through those first moments easily while adrenaline powered my speed. I hit the first wall and turned, taking the lead in my heat and starting to feel it for real, exactly as Mr. Malone had said. I hit the second turn—the halfway mark—and went to full power, dropping the kids around me with a flurry of hard kicks. By the time I hit the last turn, I was tired, but I was also long past caring about mere physical sensations like pain or fatigue. My life had been one continuous gut-check for months. I would not, in the moment of decision, allow myself to falter through mere physical weakness.
I hit the wall, having won my heat by a full bodylength or more. I want to say that I went :58, but it might have been :59-low. In any event, I’d dropped major time—at least a full second. I’d earned a “AA” time and put “AAA” in easy reach. This wasn’t a great swim, exactly, but for a fourteen-year-old high school freshman swimming in 1987, it was decidedly respectable. It put me into the company of my teammates on the Vista Swim Team, and it set me up nicely for the coming high school season as well. That alone was worth the months I’d spent in the pool.
I’d found the racing strategy that I would use throughout the rest of my career. To paraphrase Mr. Malone when we spoke about this and the 200 Butterfly a few weeks later:
“You hit the halfway point and throw your best punch, and you’ll break almost everyone. Not physically. Mentally. The 200 Butterfly is a hard race, and at the halfway point most people start thinking about how tired they are. Accept that and accelerate. Get a half-bodylength on your opponent just as he’s starting to hurt, and in the back of his mind, he’ll begin to accept that you’re the better swimmer.
“That’s how you win. It’s simple human nature.”
Of course, you still need to be able to finish the last fifty yards hard, but if you have commitment and training, this strategy absolutely works.
15. The Marine Corps changed Recon Battalion significantly after my father gave up command. The unit was issued lightly armored landing vehicles, bringing it more in line with its Army counterpart, the divisional cavalry squadron. When Dad commanded, however, Recon Battalion used rubber boats to scout beaches quietly. They lived or died by their motto: “Swift, Silent, and Deadly”.
16. “Operator” as in “Special Operations”.
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