I Lost Count

Katy Ledecky, arguably the greatest distance swimmer of all time, recently broke the world record in the women’s short course 1500 metre freestyle at the World Cup in Toronto. If you’ve ever been on deck or in the stands when something like this is transpiring in the pool, you know that the air carries a palpable charge, and even though I was only streaming the race on my little 13 inch computer screen, I could feel it. Ledecky settled in after about 400 metres to an 18 stroke per 25 metre count and an average 50 metre split of 30.4 seconds. I was on the edge of my seat the entire 15:08.24.

These are defining moments in the sport. Ledecky’s swim was so gripping, so perfectly executed that it almost made me change my mind. Last spring, after my bungled attempt at the 1500 metre freestyle at the MSABC Provincials in Surrey, I had decided that I was never going to do that again. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

When I was growing up in swimming, women didn’t swim the 1500 freestyle – it was the men’s distance event. The women’s distance event was the 800 freestyle. I guess I wasn’t very politically evolved back then, because it never bothered me that there were two distance events, one for women and one for men. The 800 metre race was long enough for me, thanks, and I was happy to let the men swim almost twice as far. But when I reflect on it now, it really makese no sense that the women’s distance event was the shorter one. If there is anything I’ve observed after two decades of coaching, it’s that when an endurance set goes up on the whiteboard, the women always outperform the men. I’ve got a theory about this, especially at the masters level: after pushing babies out, women know they are biologically programmed to suck it up. 

The 1500 freestyle became an Olympic event in 1904 – for men. A century later, women were swimming the race, though not at the Olympics. For decades, women athletes and their champions had been campaigning for the women’s 1500 freestyle to be added to the Olympic program. But it is likely that no one did more than Katy Ledecky to advance the cause. When the covid-19 pandemic struck, swimming fans feared that Ledecky might retire before the event was added to the Olympic program. We all wanted to see Ledecky crowned its first gold medalist when the event debuted. 

We got our wish. At the 2020 Olympics, which had to be pushed back a whole year because of the pandemic, critics claimed that Ledecky was past her prime. There would be no freestyle sweep for Ledecky at the Tokyo Olympics, as there had been in Rio in 2016. Ledecky did not make the medals in the 200 freestyle; she was overcome by Australia’s Ariarne Titmus in the 400 metre freestyle, and even her 800 metre freestyle win was an obvious grind. But when Katy Ledecky emerged from the ready room for the final of the first ever Olympic women’s 1500 metre freestyle, she looked anything but defeated. In fact, she looked as she always did before a race: calm, focused, aggressive. Ready to make history. 

Which she did. Ledecky won the race in her usual fashion, taking it out fast and holding everyone off. At the end of the race, she marshalled obvious emotion, congratulated her competitors, and faced the media, all with her characteristic dignity and humility. It was all so moving, so inspiring – such a milestone for women in the sport –  that I began to dream of swimming the mile. 

And so it was that six months after the Olympics had wrapped up in Tokyo, I was looking through the meet package for the 2020 (2021) MSABC Provincials, and there it was: 1500 metre freestyle. I felt a thrill. I was going to channel my inner Katy. How complicated could it be? You just go back and forth and pace yourself. The event was scheduled for Friday evening, the first day of the meet. The venue would be quiet; nobody would be paying any attention to me. I could use the race as an occasion to get a feeling for the pool. I signed up. 

Oh, the hubris. Of course, I had raced 1500 metres in open water, but never in a pool. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Yes, I dove off the blocks; yes, I swam freestyle back and forth. But something bad happened. I lost count.

The first thing that went wrong was that friends of mine, who happen to live by the Grandview Heights Aquatic Centre in Surrey, decided after dinner on Friday evening to come out to the pool and watch me swim. Suddenly, I had an audience. I would have to abandon my original (barely formulated) race plan. The problem was, I didn’t have time to put another plan in place. So what happens when you swim a race without a plan? Without a strategy? You fall back on old habits. Since I had no prior experience swimming the 1500 freestyle, the closest thing my muscle memory could come up with was my 800 freestyle. So, about 200 metres into the race, I realised I was swimming my 800 freestyle. With 1300 metres to left to swim. Oh, no.

The second contributing factor to my downfall was technical in nature. Friday night was the first day of the meet, and the organisers obviously hadn’t ironed out the kinks in the system. They had a digital clock running the whole time, clearly visible from the water, which was resetting to zero at the start of each race. 

I noticed the clock about 500 metres in. I didn’t really register the time on my first glance at it, or such a stupid idea would never have occurred to me: “Oh, the pace clock is running. I can just look up every once in a while and I’ll know where I’m at. No need to count.” I had already given up believing I could pace myself. I had gone out too fast. I decided I just had to keep swimming until it was over, which according to my estimation, would be around 22:30 minutes. 

So I just kept swimming, and tried not to get too discouraged at how yucky it all felt. One time, I glanced up at the clock and it said something like 10:29. “Oh,” I thought to myself after I turned, “that must have been my 700 metre split. It was not. I was actually at 750 metres. I did it again later. Same mistake. 

At masters swim meets, the heats are not divided by age groups. In fact, men and women are seeded together by time. This can produce some wildly imbalanced heats. I think I was seeded in the fastest heat, but the first swimmer to the wall must have lapped me three times. When I heard the bells start ringing for the bell laps, I thought “Great, it’s going to be over soon.” I heard a bell which I assumed was being rung for the swimmer in the lane next to me. After the turn I took one last glance at the digital clock. Somewhere like 21:06. “Perfect. Looks like I’ve got 100 metres to go. Thank God it’s almost over.” I swam another fifty and went in for my last flip turn. 

Actually, it was over.

But I kept swimming.

When I finally touched the wall, my lane judges congratulated me. Everybody was laughing. How embarrassing. What a pro. 
And that is the story of how I swam my first,  and last, 1550 metre freestyle. As for the 1500 metre freestyle, I may reconsider yet.