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Balancing life as a swimmer is sometimes a difficult task.

02/04/10

“Balance |ˈbaləns|: an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.”

When I was a sophomore in high school, I could rip my hair. Call it a hidden talent. I could pinch a strand of my hair between two of my soggy, chlorine-bleached fingers and thumbs, and I could tear it -- like a piece of paper. Surprisingly, I wasn’t invited to the senior prom that year. But this hidden-past hair-ripping talent has become one of those factoids I mention whenever people compare and contrast childhoods.

Me: “I could rip my hair.”

Them: “What do you mean – rip?”

I then demonstrate. I make a ripping motion like tearing a piece of paper. My audience makes a face -- What? Why? How? Like paper? Can hair do that? Are you OK? Are you brain damaged? What is wrong with you?

I can’t rip my hair now. It’s too healthy. But as a teenage swimmer training two – sometimes three – practices a day, dead, tissue-thin hair was an allowable by-product of pursuit of passion. At the time, the health of my hair was a laughable non-issue, much like those football players who choose to have their pinky fingers amputated to continue to play football. Growing up, I spent a vast majority of my childhood traveling through and submerged in chlorinated water -- everything else in my life took the backseat to these chlorinated pursuits. The chorine aspect wasn’t by choice: the chemical ate at my hair follicles, turning them from brown, to blonde, to white, to dead. But the hours of exposure resulted in not only unfortunate hair, but unfortunate skin, too. My skin adopted an alligator-like appearance and it formed something scaly and dry and dead and paper-thin. I’d spend most my job earnings on vats of skin moisturizer so I could moisturize my skin on my way to my job as a lifeguard to earn more money to buy vats of moisturizer.

It’s a wonderful life aquatic.

In the spectrum of swim ethos growing up, I was 99% swim dork, 1% teenager. I was the kid who memorized swim times – yours, mine, and hers. I knew your times last week, last month, and last year. I still have 15 year-old heat sheets somewhere in my bedroom, programs with scribbled split times, stroke counts, reaction times, growth spurts, and worst fears.

Yours, too.

If swimming were a religion, I’d be Phelpstian. If swimming were its own currency, I’d be Bill Gates. If swimming were a drug, my photo would be in every tabloid with dead-white hair and wrinkled fingers and dark red goggle marks under my eyes. To this day, my life is about swimming. I write about it. I make videos about it. I interview athletes about it. I coach and teach swimming at a swim school called Imagine Swimming in New York City. I can’t get enough.

Which is probably why I wasn’t that fast.

In an interesting article written by Chris Desantis over at TheAthleteVillage.com, he wonders why sometimes swimmers who put 110% into the sport – the Super Trainers, kids who swam faster in practice than in meets – can’t perform as well as kids who trained hard 40% - 50% of the time, the ones who missed morning practices, the ones who slacked, the ones who can’t remember your times, anyone else’s times, or even their own.

You know, the ones with healthy hair, the ones with prom dates.

In an age when everything is this or that, black or white, Republican or Democrat, win or lose, it’s easy to ignore balance. As Americans – and humans – we want so desperately to believe in the all-or-nothing approach, and we tilt the scales of our lives toward one singular pursuit. We work 20 hour days. We skip vacations. We never sleep in. We never take a sick day. We are entitled to happiness -- the sweat stains prove it.

Then we wonder why sometimes little Johnny Jerk-Face – the kid who always sleeps in, rarely sprints warm-up, who always has that stupid smile on his face – beats us when it counts. “Talent!” we say. “Talent is the reason Johnny Jerk-Face beat me, because he’s got talent!” We then watch movies like Rudy or read stories to our children like The Little Engine That Could and we preach to our swimmers, “All or nothing!” “Win or Lose!” “100% or Go Home!” We praise the ones who commit everything toward one singular pursuit, and then curse slacker-types who miss a couple practices to, you know, be a teenager.

There’s another movie – not about Notre Dame football – out on DVD called “Groundhog Day.” It’s about a guy named Phil Connors who repeats the same day, over and over and over. The same breakfast. The same weather. The same conversations. It reminds me, sometimes, of swimming, and I think it holds the secret why some people are faster than others.