[Schneed10]

I was a swimmer in high school and college. My junior year of high school we had a big meet, we were 7-0 and our opponent was 7-0, so this meet would essentially decide our league champion. There's not a lot of strategy in swimming, it's pretty much get on the blocks and see who can go faster. But I was swimming the 200 free, which is 8 laps for you non-swimming folk; it's not quite a sprint distance, and definitely not a long distance.

The meet was close, I was our #1 in the 200 free, and I knew my opponent because we had faced off as we came up through club swimming over the years. I knew that he was the kind of guy that tended to fade at the end of the race, so I decided to take a steady pace in the beginning, and try to toast him in the end. So he got out ahead of me by a body length or so, and I just cruised for the first half of the race. Then at the end I turned it on and I started to catch up, but he held on and won by about a foot. Thing is, I was barely tired. I had left a lot of effort in the pool. If I could have it back, I woulda gone balls out from the beginning.

But chalk that up to being 16. I didn't make that mistake again. And we ended up winning the meet anyway because we had Brendan Hansen on our team (yes, the current World Record holder in the 100 and 200 breaststroke), so it was all good. But I woulda liked to be the hero there!