Leveling Up
By Simran Thakur
It was the end of the day, and I was on my way home from school with my mom. I could hear “One Last Time” by Ariana Grande playing in the background. I was close to falling asleep, but couldn’t understand why because we didn’t have cross country that day. It was around 3:45, and I had swim practice starting at 4:00. I usually loved swimming, and it was my favorite sport. That day, however, was different. I really didn’t want to go swimming. It was a really good day to go swimming because it was hot, 97 degrees, and I knew the pool would be cold and refreshing. It sounded amazing, but that would be if we didn’t have a distance day, and weren’t swimming seven hundred meters three times.
We got to the gym at around 3:59. I pushed the door of the car open and ran into the gym. I was usually late, just not this late. I quickly ran inside to the girl's locker room and changed into my swimsuit. By the time I got outside to the pool, it was 4:04, and I could see people from my team in the pool swimming. I quickly ran across to my coach on the other side of the pool, and I could feel the burning cement on my bare feet.
I jumped in the pool and started my warmup, a five hundred. My mentality was: the faster I started, the faster I’d be done.
I was in the bronze level, and after bronze, came silver, then gold, and finally, elite. All my friends, including me, started at bronze. But now they had all moved up to silver, and I was still in bronze. It was hard because I constantly compared myself to my friends, thinking I wasn’t fast enough. I was in the fourth lane, which is the lane for the fastest people, so I knew I wasn’t slow, but the levels made it feel like I was slow. It was annoying, but it also motivated me to get faster and move up to silver. I had been in bronze for three years, but compared to my friends, they had been in bronze for four or five years before moving up to silver.
Our coaches changed regularly, and we had three coaches that rotated: Coach Kat, Coach Chelsea, and Coach Henry. That day, we had Coach Kat, who makes us work so hard, rarely giving us breaks. We had just finished a seven hundred, and then she sent us off for our first of three five hundred.
We finished off practice with seven one hundreds, and as I touched the wall, I felt relieved. I got out of the pool shivering, despite it being 90 degrees. I wrapped myself in my towel and started walking toward the indoor pool.
As I started walking away, I heard my coach yell, “Hey Simran, you start silver on Monday!” I turned around so fast, getting a good look at her to make sure I wasn’t hearing things. I saw her looking at me, which told me it wasn’t just a joke.
I couldn’t understand what made her change her mind because, when I asked her yesterday, she said I wasn’t ready, and suddenly today, she decided that I was good enough for silver. Even with all of that aside I was so excited to start silver. I was really proud because going into silver was something I had always wanted.
A few days later, it was Monday, my first day of silver. My mom had just picked me up from school, and we drove home. Being in silver meant that practice now started at five, not four, so I got to go home first. When we got home, I ate a bar and started with some homework. At 4:45, we left my house and drove to the gym. For the first time, I had gotten to practice ten minutes earlier. I wasn’t going to be late.
I jumped into the water at 5:00 and looked up at my coach for the warmup.
Coach Chelsea said, “Seven hundred, go on the 30.” I’ll admit, I was a little scared because that was the max distance we swam in bronze. Nevertheless, I started swimming, and my mind kept telling me this is too hard, and that I couldn’t finish it. Maybe bronze was better for me. I kept trying to block out what my mind said because I knew I could do anything I set my mind to.
It was 5:04 PM when I finished. Everyone else had started the next thing, and even though I was aware of that, I wanted to finish my warmup. I knew that as time went on, and I got faster, the warmup would get better.
Coach Chelsea looked at me and said, “Good job, let me get you a kickboard. Everyone is doing three hundred kicks, but just do one hundred.”
I nodded and left, but it annoyed me a little bit that it took me so long to do the warmup to the point where I couldn’t do the entire distance of everything we did in practice. I just had to keep reminding myself that it was ok, and as I kept pushing myself and getting faster, I would be able to do everything in practice.
Still, as time passed, it felt like I wasn’t getting faster. The intervals were still hard to make, and even though my coach was telling me that I was getting faster, I didn’t feel it. At this point, I had been in silver for about a month, and in my eyes, I had made no progress. Even though I didn’t feel like I got faster, I did feel like I wanted to be faster than ever before. I felt like I was judging myself for not being fast enough and I was putting myself down because I wasn’t as quick as I could be. It was motivational for me in different ways, but it was also challenging because I kept feeling discouraged.
One day in October, I realized for the first time, I actually felt like I was getting faster. I was making all the intervals, I had finished my five hundred warm-ups before my friends, and I didn’t feel like I wasn’t good enough. I had finally gotten to the point where I had wanted to; I had gotten faster and was finally making the intervals.
In the end, I was proud of myself, and the willpower I had to not give up helped me get faster and stronger. Overall helping me not be so hard on myself. Moving up a swim level not only made me really proud but it also helped me realize that I don’t give up on things easily, I like to push myself as far as I can go. From this experience, I was able to understand myself on a deeper level.
