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Once an Athlete, Always an Athlete..

Friday, 20 July 2018 23:10

By Maddy Pesch (usatriathlon.org)

When I dove off the blocks for the 200 breaststroke at my 2016 conference championship meet for Grinnell College, I thought I was competing for the final time as an athlete. I was 22, and after 12 years of competitive swimming, I thought it was time to retire. After all, I had to move on with my career and into my adult life. There wasn’t any time for serious athletics anymore, and I thought I couldn’t ever be as fast as swimming as I was at 22 ever again. So what was the point?

The first few months of my “retirement” from swimming were nice, but it wasn’t long before I noticed a hole in my life. Being an athlete was a larger component of my personal identity than I realized. Athletics meant more to me than swimming laps. I was a leader in my...

community through being a captain of the team. I loved being a part of the team camaraderie. Pushing myself beyond my perceived limits in the pool helped me learn to overcome adversity both in and out of the pool. Having athletic goals outside of my academic career gave balance to my everyday life. While I could never go back to college swimming, I knew I had to find another athletic outlet to replace what swimming provided. I replaced “Maddy the swimmer” with “Maddy the triathlete.”

When I graduated college, I had the idea that athletics were only for young people. I thought you had to give it up when your “physical peak” was passed. I couldn’t see the benefits or purpose of continuing athletics beyond that. I now realize how naive my mindset was. I believed these things because I thought that the primary reason to do athletics was to improve our physical abilities. Yet now I realize that the mental lessons learned from sport are much more lasting and transformative than the physical benefits. Competing in triathlon allowed me to redefine for myself what it means to be an ...