One of the many things I love about swimming is the relationships formed through common passion for the sport. I have met people from all over the world, many of which, I am happy to now call friends…all through swimming. All because we have one very sacred thing in common. I feel incredibly lucky.
Since September, I have had the pleasure of meeting an ex-Russion national swimmer. He started back to swimming less then a year ago after taking 20 years off. You would never know it from watching him swim. We swim next to eachother most days – – he working on sprinting and getting in shape for pool meets, I focusing on distance and open water swims. We speak a good deal about technique, workout strategies, the “why” of this set or that.
Yesterday, we got to talking about our early years swimming…he growing up in the USSR, me in the USA. We talked about work ethic and training in the USSR and the mentality of the time. As we discussed the equipment we use today, and how we used them in the past, he told me something that I had never heard or would have known had I not been speaking to someone who lived in the Soviet Union.
He told me how, in every school, they had workshops and took classes on how to build…how to make things. Everyone did it…this was so if they had to build stuff or war broke out, everyone would be able to “pitch in.” Ok, this made sense to me..I could see that. However, he then went on to tell me that in his swim school – Side note – he was chosen to go to this school for exceptional swimmers (my word “exceptional” not his) – only two kids got picked a year and then you would go there to swim and, of course, learn.
Their pool was in a basement. An olympic size he told me. Next to the pool was a room. It was the swimmers’ workshop (his words not mine). This is where they made their equipment! Yes. They made their own pull buoys, they made their own paddles. if you wanted equipment you had to make it yourself. Everyone did this. He said it was not uncommon for there to be workshops like this in pretty much every discipline. This is how they lived, this is what they knew. You worked for everything.
So, as I push off the wall now and, at times, get annoyed when my pull buoy starts to shimmy down my inner thighs during a set (yes it still happens occassionally), I think about the prospect of having to make my own pull buoy and paddles and then pushing the pull buoy up does not seem like such an annoyance.
I love this sport. I love that it not only feeds my body but it also feeds my mind and reveals secret doors I am always suprised to see pop open.
Well written story, thanks for sharing!! Xoxo