New Beginnings
End of a Chapter, Start of something New…
I have been swimming competitively at a high level for the past eight years and been in the pool swimming basically since I could walk. After coming up just short of my Olympic dream four years ago by .03 seconds, I was unable to make the squad this year as well. After doing everything I could to be in the best position to make the team, I definitely feel disappointed and heart broken to come up short of my dream to make the Olympics. It has been a long journey with many ups and downs, but one that has shaped me to the man I am today and I move on now with no regrets.
Congratulations to my teammates Amanda Reason and Erica Morningstar in Calgary for making the Canadian Olympic team! Although I am disappointed to not be going to London, I will leave the pool as Canada’s best Short Course Breaststroker of all-time holding Canadian Records in all distances and a former World Record holder in the 400 Medley Relay. I will move on as Stanford’s record holder in the 200 Breast, 2-time NCAA Champion, 7-time Pac-10 Champion, and 4-time team conference Champions. I was a multiple Canadian National Champion and have competed at 2 World Championships and the Pan-Pacific Games for the Canadian National Team. Swimming has let me travel all around the world and build invaluable life skills and relationships. I hope I made my teammates around me better and brought out the best in people inspiring them to attain their goals and dreams.
There is a lot of gratitude I have for people that have helped me along my journey. First my coaches: Thank you to my age group coach Steve Wilson from Blue Tide Aquatics who first believed in my Olympic potential and helped laid the groundwork for my hard work and breaststroke success. Next to Stanford coaches Ted Knapp and Skip Kenney who instilled in me life-long character traits, motivated me, empowered me, preached team-first attitude, and turned me into a NCAA Champion. And to Calgary Swimming coach Jan Bidrman for all his personal attention and care and everyone at UCSC and in Calgary that helped me along the way. Thank you.
Thank you to all my teammates that pushed me to my limits and made me a better swimmer and person, especially the Stanford family. Thank you to all the people (Matthesons), corporations (SIACharts.com), Swimming Alberta and Canada, etc. for financially supporting me. Thank you to all my close friends for always believing in me and encouraging me along the way. But most of all to my family who has always been proud of me no matter what happens and always supported me in love. God has truly blessed me and I give him the glory.
This will most likely be my last swimming post as I move onto a new chapter in my life for the first time without swimming. I will take some time to contemplate my decision and next steps. I could be in the pool at some point again, but if I do swim again, I will probably just focus on SCM where I am still the top Canadian and competitive internationally. Thank you again to everyone who has followed and supported me. But as one door closes, another one opens. So now onto the Next Chapter…
Fall Training Underway
A new season is upon us as I have started my preparation for the 2012 Canadian Olympic Swimming Trials which are March 27-April 1, 2012. I have been back in the water now for two and a half weeks and am pretty excited with my training already. This is going to be a great season where I will give everything I have to be the best I can be and leave everything in the pool!
We got to do some different cross-training the last two weeks, which I really enjoy where we went hiking/biking in Kananaskis Provincial Park. The first hike we did was called Misty Ridge Trial. It was a slow uphill climb through some brush then over a ridge, however it was absolutely freezing out and snowed on us most of the way!! I did not anticipate snow at the end of August in the mountains. The second hike was Headwall Lakes Trial. It was a wet and cold hike as well bc of all the rain/snow from the day before. Hike wasn’t too bad as I bushwhacked a lot of it until the very end when we got up to the lakes. I had a little energy coming home so I decided to do some trail running at the end.
The next week, we went on a beautiful hike, Pocaterra Ridge Trail. We started this hike in the Highway Pass, so we were already at really high altitude and then it has a really steep climb to the top of the ridge that makes the best athletes slow. The weather this day was absolutely gorgeous and you could see mountain ranges all around you. The next day, I went for a bike ride through the mountains instead of hiking to get some more cardio and leg strength training in. Below is some awesome pictures from the hike.
Also some exciting news to look forward to. I will be competing in three FINA World Cup Circuits this October over in Europe! More details will follow later, but my schedule next month will be:
| 15-16 Oct. 2011 | Stockholm (SWE) |
| 18-19 Oct. 2011 | Moscow (RUS) |
| 22-23 Oct. 2011 | Berlin (GER) |
CIS Stroke Camp
I love working with kids and especially being able to give back some of my knowledge and passion about swimming back to them. Definitely one of the benefits of being a professional athlete is having young swimmers look up to you and the opportunity to inspire, encourage, teach, and motivate them to be better swimmers and better people.
During the CIS weekend in late February, I was involved in a stroke camp for young kids aged 10-14. We had a great turnout of about 100 kids from all across Alberta, but mainly from swimmers in the Calgary area. We ran the stroke camp on a Saturday afternoon right before the last night of finals of the CIS Championships of University Swimming where the Dinos brought home the team title in both the men and women’s divisions.
We split up into four groups where a local coach was paired with an elite swimmer to demonstrate. The four stations were breaststroke turns, backstroke starts, back to breast turns, and underwater push-offs. I was in the underwater push-off/ kick off the wall station with 3-time Olympian, silver medalist, and now coach Tom Ponting and worked with Lindsay Delmar who is a swimmer on the Racing Group with me at UCSC that I train with who is one of the top 200 free and 200 flyers in the country.
The pictures below show a little glimpse of the event. The feedback we got from the parents was really encouraging to hear afterwards as well. It is always an honor for little kids to look up to you and it is something I always love to be apart of. Hopefully some of the kids will have better streamlines and underwater kicks off the wall, but also that they will be encouraged to have fun in swimming and pursue their dreams too. I often look back at my swimming career and think about certain athletes along the way who helped inspire me to be the swimmer I am today.
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- Tom Ponting discusses push offs
(Photos by Rick Pelletier)
Paul Kornfeld 