Just Keep Swimming...

I mean this as in never give up, always keep going, and also to just actually keep swimming.

I came back from my first swim meet today. You have no idea about how terrified I was, about how bad I was going to be, thinking of all these ridiculous things that has probably a .009% chance of happening. Time rushed by so fast for me. School was over, and then my whole swim team and I were on a bus to the hosting school. It was a big meet, and I knew that there was going to be people worse than me, which did make me feel better.

I did a lot better than I thought I would. When you swim in a race, you don't think. My 50 freestyle was one of the somewhat earlier events, but still far from the first. Time raced by. In what seemed like just a few minutes, my cap and goggles were on, and my coach was telling me to go stand near my lane. I didn't even bother to take notice of the serious nervousness I was going through. Suddenly, the previous heats were over, and it was my time to race. I stood up on the block, and I heard the words "Swimmers, ready", then the unmistakable beep. My start was pretty strong, I got about five or six meters in a streamline, then raced the rest. I don't remember anything after that, just straining to hit the end as fast as possible. You go, you splash and kick as hard as you can, and you don't really register the effort it takes until you get out of the water. I was so tense and my muscles strangely sore after I went out of the water. Apparently I had been about six seconds in front of my heat, and I had dropped like five seconds from my best time in practice. Which is CRAZY, right?? But I feel like it's because of during a race, it's so official, you know it's time to put everything you have out there. I never felt like that in a practice, but now I know that I can be just as good as the others.

That was the moment I realized that you never give up, no matter how hard it is, and you keep going until you get there. Don't give up, because as a graffiti on the Brooklyn Bridge says, "You have to feel weak before you feel strong".

So don't stop because something is challenging. It's supposed to be like that. Life would be so boring if everything you did, you were fantastic at it naturally. Keep going and don't stop, eventually you will get to the very top.