My Very Last First Race

by Connie J. Whitesell

 

Sunday, 8:30 AM. North Shore Pool, St. Pete. A heavy, overcast sky. A breeze off the bay makes me wish my sweatshirt wasn't stowed in my bag back in the locker room, but I'm thinking maybe it won't be long before the sun burns through this cloud cover and starts to warm things up. I'm here with my coach watching the deck fill up with swimmers for the USMS developmental meet. Starts in thirty minutes. It's my first meet.

Swimmers are arriving in numbers. Most drift toward the registration table which, though not yet manned, is recognizable all the same by its neat rows of registration cards, pencils, stopwatches. The gaggle of swimmers milling around it never stops moving. Boisterous hellos reverberate. Heads nod. Hands shoot out in frisky greeting. I take up a position outside the perimeter, hugging myself. It's chilly. Anxiety rises inside me like a lump of dough in a warm oven.

My coach seems to know everyone. Again and again he spies an acquaintance and introduces me -- "I'd like you to meet a new swimmer..." --and again and again faces break into smiles of instant rapport -- "Remember, it doesn't matter how fast you swim. Just relax and enjoy yourself..."

Suddenly things are happening. A man on a tri-cart starts calling names for the first heat, and the whole crowd flows as one toward the starting blocks. My own name rings out. The man on the tri-cart hands me a card. Lane 6. Panic fills me. My brain shuts itself off. My body makes its way to Lane 6.

A minute later I'm standing on the block feeling conspicuous. The swimmer to my left is a woman I just met. I don't have time to look at the swimmer on my right. "Swimmers take your mark!" It's the man on the tri-cart again.

He fires a shot from a tiny pistol, and the next thing I know I'm in the water swimming breaststroke in slow motion, like in a dream. No power. Can't find my rhythm. My body jerks and struggles through the stroke as if it were fused in several places. Ignoring the other swimmers, I pull stubbornly down the pool with all the grace and flexibility of the Tin Man after a thunderstorm. I make the turn, and start back. Now my body allows me a little speed. I risk a glance at the other swimmers, then realize there aren't any. Everyone's finished. And then I am, too.

My coach is cheering, and I'm clinging to the side feeling exhausted, heroic, and complete happy. I did it! Some other time I'll think about winning. Today I swam my very last first race. And that was plenty.