Looking back my time as an athlete, it has been quite a rollercoaster. so I thought to how I would write a book about it and to me the best way of doing that is to write from...
The Start
5
As a young athlete with autism it was rather hard to grasp how to swim with the correct form. which is why I'm thankful for having such a patient coach at my first club forward Hillingdon, that was willing to spend the time explaining to me how to swim correctly.
During my time at forward Hillingdon I learnt to swim with correct form, I competed in many low level comps which I didn't do to great at. However the main thing I took away from my time in that club was how fun I found rivalry.
My first rivalry was with a friend of mine, to others it wouldn't seem like anything but for the two of us it was fun pushing our selves to our limit just to beat the other in a race and that was just the beginning of it all.
Eventually I had become the fastest in my club and my friend went on to pursue water polo instead of swimming and I was left alone at the top of the club which is why I decided to move to a more competitive high level club.
The first
Turn
I ended up moving to a club called Hillingdon, there I started in the middle ranks of the club. Which at the time was called counties and divided up as 1 2 and 3, I started in counties 2 and within a few weeks moved to counties 1 as I was too quick for counties 2.
With my time in counties 1 and 2 i had gone training twice as much than my old club and for an hour longer per session. i made some friends and went to a few competitions of higher levels such as the counties competition which was a huge step for me.
Counties was the first comp that I went to that you had to have a certain speed for a certain event to qualify to go which for my first time was 1 event being the 50m butterfly. During this race i became known in the club and not just some other person because of my performance in the race.
My performance in the race impressed everyone in the club and other clubs as I had come out of no where, it began with me qualifying for the finals which was already a difficult task and considering I had beaten my personal best it wasn't likely I would medal as I had qualified 4th in the finals.
However I didn't stop there in the finals I pushed myself as hard as I could and ended up beating the personal best I had just set moments before, pulling my way into 3rd position for the bronze medal. to me looking at this from others perspective as some guy who came out of nowhere felt satisfying.
Due to my success at county's a short time later I was moved to the elite squad specifically elite 2 it was divided up the same way as counties. It was another satisfying step forward reaching almost the top of my new club in a few months and beating all my personal best, qualifying again for counties for more events.
Turn
Two
I had spent a while in the club getting faster and training harder but a few years went by and I was now in elite one, I began to qualify for more higher comps like regionals. Although less impressive than my first counties comp as I didn't medal or final.
But eventually as time got on I hit a plateau, where I just couldn't beat my personal bests and I hadn't had a rival in a while, I started to doubt myself. Then from talking to my coach and continuing to swim I gained new rivalry with a swimmer in my club who had been in elite 1 for a while.
With this new rivalry and new found confidence in training harder, I began to progress again beating personal best after personal best. With new swimmers coming to the club from other clubs i just became more confident and kept improving. It was so much fun.
Last Length
After a while all the older swimmers began to leave until few remained even the person I had rivalry with had gone on to university. This left me questioning what i should do next but while i was deciding I kept swimming while thinking. Through hard work and team work a group of me and three other older swimmers, won silver at the regional competition and qualified for nationals.
When I heard we had qualified I put my thoughts aside and trained as hard as I could even when i was told we didn't have a chance of winning as are team had to be changed due to members of the original team not being able to make it to the nationals. I did this because it didn't matter about winning the national it was gonna be an amazing experience.
We went to the nationals competition and like I thought I wasn't disappointed there were hundreds of people and the competition was being broadcast live on YouTube. when it came to our turn to swim we all went down and did our best as expected we came dead last but we all had an amazing time there as just swimming on that level of stage was satisfying.
After that competition more and more of the older swimmers left until I was the only older member left as an 18 year old and the next oldest boy being 14 years old I questioned what to do and in the end I decided I would focus on university and getting a job, ultimately quitting the sport that I spent years competing in.
It was sad and it left me with a lot of free time after quitting the sport. I do miss swimming it was one big massive adventure for me but I learnt a lot and had lots of fun. So I have no regrets in quitting as I'm now experiencing all new things with the free time I have. Still miss it though.
Finally
Finished
I may have quit swimming and this may be the end of my time as an athlete but I'm not finished with the sport I'm currently a coach at my original club giving swimmers who started out just like me a chance to learn and grow as an athlete becoming better and if they want a path way to become a high level competitive athlete like I did.
"Things wont go perfect. Its all about how you adapt from those things and learn from mistakes." By Michael Phelps
Thank you for reading
This book is about my life as an athlete and how i progressed from the very beginning as well as my thoughts at the time.