Mary is Quite Extraordinary

This is crazy, but true. We just finished our high school season. On our club team we train swimmers who compete for 9 different high schools in the North Coast Section and the Central Coast Section of the CIF here in California. What a party!

And what an eye opener...every single year!

This year the honor for most impressive comment goes to Mary - her real name.
In her team's 400 Free Relay at the end of the NCS meet she cranked a 53.79 split. She has never been anywhere near sub 54 before. She got sucked up into a race and just "went for it". She was in a word "spectacular". She went where she had never been before, inspired by the relay situation.

We asked her, "Where did that come from?" Her response was, "I don't know, I just went for it, the team need me to go fast, so I did."

We said, "You don't train that way on a consistent basis Monday - Saturday, and yet you were able to pull that swim off. Awesome!"

We then asked her, "What if you trained that way Monday - Saturday? What do think would happen then? What might the possibilities be?"

We were inspired to be better coaches by her reply.

She said, "But what if I do train that way and it doesn't pay off?"

And there folks is the crux of the life lesson involved. As Ken - my coaching partner in crime - so eloquently put it, "The benefits of the process actually outweigh the benefits of the results."