A Modest Comeback Begins

This is Part I of a series, courtesy of Chris McClelland, on his journey back to the pool.

How did I end up here, I asked myself, sprawled out on the hospital bed, IV in my arm, oxygen hose in my nostrils, chest sore from being cracked open like a lobster’s. When I was swimming competitively, and after, when I ran 5K races, my doctors all assured me at the yearly physicals that I was in excellent health. Then, my life spiraled down. In the mid-1990s, I got involved with a destructive woman, my emotional health was a wreck, I started smoking (I already was a heavy drinker) and I basically just punched the self-destruct button on my life. Now I was recovering from a double by-pass heart surgery, and trying to figure out how I could find optimal health again.

It had been a long journey back from that self-destructive spiral, and it involved me moving out West from Florida and marrying an extraordinarily loving woman. With her help, I quit the cigarettes, the booze I left behind years before, and started on my own path of spiritual exploration.

Lying there on the hospital bed, I dreamed of my days as a competitive swimmer, getting up on the blocks for the finals of the event that would qualify me for junior nationals, and I thought about all those years of excellent on my physicals. What I wouldn’t give to be in that shape today. But who knows? Maybe I could make a sort of modest comeback at age 56, begin training again, even get back in the pool and make friends with that black line again, and end up in Master’s competitions. It wasn’t so inconceivable. I started doing cardio-rehab before I was even discharged from the hospital.

This wouldn’t be my first foray into the Master’s arena. Almost ten years before, when I first came to Utah, I started a limited training schedule in the pool, and entered two meets. Even taking in account that at that time I was still struggling to quit smoking, when I competed my lung capacity stunk, and the faster I tried to swim, the more it felt like I was drowning, and the times I was posting were by any standards, quite embarrassing. I had never been so scared in the pool as when I had competed with compromised lungs.

But starting on this second journey, I had a number of things going for me that I didn’t have that first time. One, I was almost seven years smoke-free, and even though it was hard for me to catch my breath at times, it was nowhere near as bad as those times I almost drown in the pool. Second, I had just started a dry-land regimen with the cardiac rehab people at the hospital. I was getting stronger, and stronger, and with each visit to the gym I could feel the sense of well-being returning. Still, it was going to be a long journey.

About Chris McClelland

Chris McClelland spent his early childhood in New York and southern Georgia, before moving to central Florida in 1975. He studied engineering at the University of Florida, where he spent months training with the world-renown Florida Gator swim team. He recounts this experience in a previous article in SwimSwam called “Swimming Among the Olympians”. He holds a BA and an MA in English from the University of Central Florida. He spent seven years teaching as an adjunct professor at various colleges around central Florida. In 1999, he was a contributor to the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. At that time he worked as a technical writer for Siemens Westinghouse. In 2004 he became a regular contributor to Narrative Magazine where he worked as an assistant editor. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, Puerto Del Sol, and Mid-American Review. He recently co-edited The Provo Canyon Review with his wife, Erin. His novel, In Love and War, has been published to many positive reviews. He currently lives with his wife and sons in Utah.