My former training partner

Here I am on vacation, trying to deal with the end of a four plus year relationship, finding myself working out. Something that I had never done before vacationing with my former love in France a few years ago. She dragged me on runs around the city wall and through the little park and she wanted to go swimming, so we went swimming. We even rented bikes and had an easy cycle between the grape vines that over looked the towns below. Before this I might go for a hike on vacation but I viewed vacation as a time to relax and do nothing but eat good food and dink wine.

So here I am the first day doing an 11km afternoon run after walking on the beach for an hour and a half. And yesterday I cycled, on maybe the worlds worst bike, an hour so I could go swimming in an outdoor pool. Before I get into what was going through my head let me first say how impressed I was with the city’s recreation facility. It had a number of full sized baseball diamonds (4 by my count), batting cages, soccer fields, tennis courts, an outdoor basketball court and the swimming pool with a diving tank all of which were under lights. And they were building an indoor gym.

So as I was biking to the pool my love was all I could think about as has been the case since she left almost 4 weeks ago. I am sure anyone has been through a break-up knows the different feelings that go through you. There is the nervous energy, there is sadness and there is the crippling pain that sits twisting in the pit of your stomach and swims in your head making each moment a challenge. While, once I got to the pool that last feeling started to settle in.

For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why. Here I was at an outdoor pool on a sunny day about to do something I love. Every swimmer loves swimming outside. It really is the pinnacle of swimming because you have the sun, the warm breeze, you have clouds and trees and birds and you have fresh air. It really turns a lifeless pool into something that is alive and gives you an energy to feed off. So I jumped into the pool, because diving wasn’t allowed, and took a few strokes. I very quickly realized that I wasn’t right. My body was trembling and weak, feeling as if I was sick with the flu minus the fever.

So I took a few more strokes and looked at the bottom of the pool to see my shadow. That is when the memoirs started to flood back into my mine. First I saw her face and then pictured her on the pool deck. Then the memories became stronger. I picture the workout we did in France. I remember swimming with her the last few years and really lingered on swimming with her at the local outdoor pool. I think started thinking about conversations. I started thinking about how much I loved that she understood swimming and how I could talk to her about my frustrations with lanemates that did dumb things. About good practices and bad practices. I could talk to her about something that I loved which only made me love her more. And then I thought about how unlikely it will be for me to find someone that I can do that with again.

It wasn’t just that she was my partner, she was my training partner. As I mourn the loss of her love I am finding more and more things that I loved about her. The idea crossed my mind of loving her as a partner vs. a training partner. Training was really part of the total package but a part that I never thought about until I was sitting at the wall in pool staring at the birds in the trees, trying to fight back the tears, wishing she was in my lane with me. Wishing she was there so I could share that moment with her, wishing she was there to push me, wishing she was there to suffer with me and to talk to. Wishing she was there so I could see her smile while she rode her bike to the pool and smile at the sun in between sets.

Maybe it is my swimming background, but I have found that those people you train with and suffer with in the pool end up being the people you have the strongest connection to. Maybe it is the time spent together but, really, I think it is the bond that is created while you are doing a hard set and your stripped down to your purest self.

I guess it should come of no surprise that our relationship fell apart shortly after we stopped training together. But yesterday, I missed my training partner and I found out just another way that my former partner was special to me.