Resilience

I woke up tired and felt completely devastated. My shoulder hurt, and my lower back was in pain. I rubbed some tiger balm on my left shoulder to cool off the pain, but it didn’t work. This was an unpleasant morning surprise, but it wouldn’t have been a problem if I were to lay in bed all day. This wasn’t the case, though. That day, the boys of my team and I had a swimming competition. It was the yearly district team championship, and the boys were in the second league because we didn’t have a team last year. The girls had their competition on Saturday and unfortunately got 4th place by a small amount of points. I was there and watched them on that Saturday, already tired, hungry, and exhausted from training and work which I did before that. As I arrived at the competition around 3 pm, the girls seemed tired and exhausted, which is normal, but they lacked something. Later on, it was the team spirit that was missing and the thing that cost the girls the 3rd place. It was nearly 5:30 pm when I set foot in my door for the first time on this Saturday. I was exhausted and directly went into bed after I ate dinner. So I’m standing there in my room on this Sunday morning, thinking to myself, “Fuck, I’m in pain.” We arrived at the swimming complex at around 8 am. So, the competition works like this: each team swims all Olympic distances twice, but every member can only start 5 times. Shorter distances like the 50s and 100m get the most points, so I had the privilege to swim them. The problem was that one guy was sick but decided to come nevertheless to try if he could swim. So we did our warm-up swimming like everyone else. My shoulder and lower back were still in pain, but I decided to ignore it. After warm-up, everyone is doing sprints to see how fast we were swimming. When I jumped from the block, I heard a little noise from my neck. My time for 25m was 11 sec, which isn’t that bad for me. After I got out of the water, I noticed how shitty my situation was about to become. I jumped in with such power that my neck was “overstretched”. The little noise I heard was my neck, which got stiff. From that point on, I wasn’t able to look up, down, left, or right. I got angry and started to lose my temper a bit. I put some Chinese hot balm on it. Instead of working against the problem, the balm enhanced my pain and added extreme burning because my skin got irritated. There I was at 8:30 am, staring into the abyss of the swimming pool with a hurting back and left shoulder due to overtraining and a stiff burning neck. The competition would start in 30 minutes, and my first start was 10 min after that. I certainly was at the wrong place for my condition, but I was the guy who brought the most points for the team. There was no place for whining. I sat down in my chair and looked at the guys around me. I asked them how they felt and said to them that today would be a great day for us. How I felt inside was a different situation, but who cares? I wanted to get a trophy for the club so badly. I was tired of starting in the second league; I wanted to climb up to the first league, the place where we belonged. My first race was the 100m breaststroke. I got first place in that race with a new PR. I was happy, but inside I felt horrible. My legs cramped, and I started to feel dizzy. I sat down in my chair for 2 min, then I went to the bathroom and started vomiting. My body was exhausted and in pain, and there I was at 9 am in a bathroom, puking after my first of five races. After I finished, I returned to the hall and mentioned that I threw up with a smile. I said, "Now let's kick their asses and win us a trophy." I did that to motivate them by telling them my eager will to win despite my poor conditions.

This had an effect. After 2 hours, everyone swam at least twice, and everyone hit new PRs. I looked at the leaderboard, and my team was in first place, 200 points ahead of the 2nd place. 200 Points is nothing, and so I said that we should achieve a minimum of 500 points head start. Things went well, and I was leading the team to victory if we would stay on top. Two of our team members were middle-aged dads that were still training and in shape. Paul had to swim 200m butterfly, a nightmare of exhausting, everlasting 8 lanes. We all watched him to push him to his limits. To succeed at 200m butterfly, you have to start slow to find a rhythm which you can hold for 8 lanes. Paul started the first 50m with a fast pace, nearly his PR. After 100m, he got exhausted and survived, rather than swimming with the flow. It was so bad that the referees disqualified him because his arms weren’t coming out of the water anymore. It’s needless to say that the mood was down. Paul was exhausted, devastated, and in total disbelief. My coach said to him that he would swim the 200m butterfly again. He had 3 races left, so he could swim them again. Otherwise, we would lose 200 points. Paul was down, and it was our job as a team to bring him back into the mindset that he lost. He was completely down and started to doubt. He had all reasons to do so. Swimming this type of race again was no sugar-coating. I told him the facts, said that he could mourn all the way he liked, but this wouldn’t free him from doing his duty. After that, I gave him tips and showed him the exact strategy that he needed to swim the 200m butterfly properly. This was a process of 25 minutes of constant talking to him. I continued to look at him from time to time to observe his mindset. The rest of the team started to become slightly lazy. We were in first place with a head start of 600 points. I gave a little speech and encouraged the boys to push harder. I said that we could be lazy and cocky when we reached 1000 points of head start. Then it was Paul's turn to swim the 200m butterfly again. I spoke to him before the start and told him to swim with the flow, and he did. The tension was gone. He was happy, and everyone else was. I used that example to inspire the team before the break at around 1 pm. I told them to push harder than they did before. We would win as a team today. This feeling of companionship was very primal. I asked Neo (the boy who was sick) to swim his race. It was also the 200m butterfly. He agreed to do so. If he wouldn’t swim, we would lose 200 points. After the break, we continued to push harder. We reached the 1000 points of head start. It wasn’t enough for me; I believed that we could be better, and I wanted to see how far we could go. I said that we needed to reach 1500 points. My neck was still burning and hurting. I also lost my voice for a bit due to screaming. The mood was perfect. The team spirit was on point. The 1500 points were absurd to reach; I knew that, but it was a nice goal to reach.

We ended up winning with more than 1200 points of head start before the 2nd place. We moved up one league. It was a total success. This Sunday was our day. We all did our best, and I somehow broke 4 club records. It was a process of discipline and team spirit. After we got our trophy, I was fulfilled. Despite our problems and poor conditions, we did it with sheer will. That day, I noticed that the leader needs to be the best role model for the team. You need to serve and perform all the time. A strong leader is crucial for a functioning team. My pain seemed to fade away, and I got home at 6 pm, exhausted but content.

Our trophy

Discipline beats talent