IGLA 2019 and My Recovery

IGLA 2019 has wrapped up, and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and Gay Pride was celebrated yesterday. I loved spending time with old friends, meeting new friends, and getting back together with my swimming community. Hanging with the teams all united in a Team New York/IGLA pride parade group was so much fun (so much glitter, but so much fun).

The week before I left for New York, I had appointments with both my therapist and psychiatrist. I'm doing much better, though they both said that if I were to go back to work now, there's a very high likelihood that I would relapse, and it's just not a path I want to go down. The dark times spent dealing with both the physical effects of my breakdown and the time trapped alone in my thoughts are not my happiest memories of any time I have spent away from work.

I don't know if the physical recovery came first, or if the beginnings of the mental side of it did, but I have most of my faculties back. I can't really multitask yet, at least not in the way that I'm used to. I find myself often telling Brian that I'm not listening to him and to give me a minute. I'm sure that the technical side of my brain will pick that back up quickly enough.

I swam faster than I have in a very long time--not across the board. The 200 fly was an exercise in pain tolerance, and I swapped to survival fly at the 100. I was within a minute of my best long course time...I have so far to go! But that's not what it's about. It's about getting up and enjoying the challenge of the day, or the week, or the current season. The meet started with the 200IM for me, and I swam faster than I have in over a decade, pulling in my highest individual place for the meet with a 2nd place age group. The 200 fly is, well, it's always a crapshoot, but I had good improvement from my previous couple of times I swam it, holding my stroke together for the the first hundred. I swam the 400IM, which is a race I'm growing to love. Based on the technicality that I never swam short course meters in high school or college, it was a lifetime best performance--we will just forget about the fact that my previous best long course time was way faster than that.

The race was amazing and fun--I was in a race for 3rd during the last hundred, and my teammate, Dean, managed to pull ahead and grab that, outswimming both myself and Chad (who was actually gunning for a 50 fly record split at the beginning of this race). I gave it all I had, but simply could not power through hard enough to get ahead of either of them, but I loved it. The final day of racing at the pool brought me to the 800 free and the 400 free relay. The 800 falls in the same level of performance as my 400IM, though I was clearly showing signs of fatigue. I cruised through the first 400 with the intention of negative splitting, and then picked up the pace. By the time I reached the 600, it hurt too much to maintain the pace, but I did manage to hang on to out-touch the next guy in my age group.

It's always so much fun swimming the relays with my teammates. My earlier days as a sprinter stick with me to let me still perform ok there--I had the privilege of anchoring our age group's winning 400 free relay, and simply maintained a solid lead that everyone built up for me. It was so large of a lead that I made the snap decision to make sure Mike hit the wall before I took off--there was no reason to risk a false start. I managed a 3rd place in my age group in the open water swim on Saturday morning, waking up at 4:30 to have sufficient time to get there for check in. Coney Island is a long subway ride from Manhattan! But I had a couple Nathan's hot dogs (thanks, Kevin!) after the swim was over to get me a classic New York experience.




I leave IGLA with some great memories of my swimming family. There were certainly the bittersweet goodbyes, especially with people that you meet that you know you just click with. As I was reminded though, it is not goodbye, but "see you later."