The pain of sacrifice for the joy of trying

By MARY JOE MELONE

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 19, 2000

Aday after the rains of Hurricane Gordon fell, the water in the pool at the Brandon Swim and Tennis Club had to be cold, bone chilling cold.

But at the club where Brooke Bennett is the most celebrated alumna, assistant coach Bud Bowden was having his kids swim for three hours Monday afternoon.

True competitive swimmers love water like this. The colder the better. It makes them go faster.

And if you are going to compete at the Junior Olympic Level, the first step toward national competition, as Bowden's kids do, you have to be ready to dive off the blocks, no questions asked.

You have to push yourself past limits the rest of us can't imagine.

"Her pain tolerance is pretty high," Peter Banks, Brooke's coach, said after she won the gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle in the Olympics in Sydney.

Brooke learned it in Brandon.

On Monday afternoon, a day after their heroine's enormous victory, the swimmers coached by Bud Bowden were expected to swim between 5,800 and 6,800 meters. For the metrically challenged, that's about 3.6 to 4.2 miles. The kids do this five to six times a week. They are as young as 11.

They swim in 1,500-meter sets, or just under a mile, of just one stroke or a medley, or even just their kick, or their arms. They practice their flip turns as they go back and forth in the 50-meter pool.

Thinking about it is exhausting enough. To swim 6,800 meters a day means one of Bowden's kids does 136 lengths of the pool.

I pay attention to the numbers because I am a swimmer, too, the middle-aged, middle-of-the-road, weekend warrior variety, engaged in the valiant battle against age, aches and gravity. Five days a week, I swim a half mile. To put the effort of those kids in Brandon in context, while they do 136 lengths of their pool, I swim the equivalent of 18.

I know a little about pain, only a little, but enough to marvel even more at those Brandon kids. I know about bursitis in the shoulder, tightness in the chest, cramps in the legs and feet, cricks in the back, pains in the ears, water up the nose, burning eyes, sore throats and thirst. Multiply that a million times, I suppose, and you have an idea of what Brooke Bennett pushes herself through on her way to those medals.

She began competing at 5. She won her first Junior Olympics when she was 8. She was the athletic version of a child prodigy violinist, a prima ballerina barely out of baby shoes.

The chances there will be another like her out of the Brandon Swim and Tennis Club are a thousand to one. You cannot tell that to Bud Bowden's kids, though. In Brooke Bennett's victory they see their own dreams. The more she wins, the more they believe they can.

That's how it should be.

The knock on swimming is that it's boring, just going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The repetition calms me; I do my best thinking under water.

I have learned that much of life is like swimming. Brooke Bennett and the kids coming up behind her notwithstanding, it doesn't matter how fast you go. It matters that you finish.

It matters that you try.

It matters that you practice.

It matters that you give it your best, even if this is one of your worst days, and second best is all you can produce.

This is true not just of swimming but of writing, learning Greek (I only imagine, since I know no Greek), designing software, short-order cooking, arguing before a jury, teaching school.

I wish I had learned this much earlier in life. I would have understood sooner that struggle produces a sweet, sweet knowledge, about what it takes to be strong, and how good it feels when you know you are.

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