Here's something nobody tells you when your kid starts taking swimming seriously: The moment it's actually working... is the moment it feels the most like it's falling apart. Most families quit right here. Six months too early. They misread one sign... and it's the best news they'll get all season. Let me show you what it is. I don't know where you're at right now. But this one's for any swimmer.. or swim parent... in a hard stretch. You're losing sleep. Doubting the whole thing. Wondering if the early mornings are adding up to anything... with no way to know for another two seasons. That's what hard actually feels like in this sport: Known costs. Unknown payoff. Almost no milestones along the way. The times sit still for months. You can't tell if you've plateaued or you're about to break through. Stuck, or standing right on the edge of something. Here's the good news: Hard means most kids quit. Most parents tap out. Which means... good. More lane for the ones who stay. When you're young in this, hard feels like a sign to pull back. Ease off. Maybe this isn't your kid's thing. But once you see what the path is actually supposed to look like, hard stops being a warning. It becomes a filter. Every 5am you show up for. Every meet that went sideways that you came back from anyway. That's one more name selected out of the pool you're racing. You survived another round of culling. And here's the part that sounds backwards: The kid grinding to drop a single second has it HARDER than the one already winning nationals. Not easier. Harder. Because the one at the top has momentum, belief, a whole crowd behind them. Your kid has a kickboard, a black line, and a question mark. They just can't see it yet... because they've never watched what it costs at the very top. That's me in the photo. Still grinding. Still chasing something most people gave up on years ago. The work doesn't stop when you "make it".. it just changes shape. So which sign am I talking about? The one that quietly tells you you're actually on the right path?

The last Comp of the season went great. I swam great times even though I couldn’t train normally. I was injured and couldn’t train for a long time and I also couldn’t compete at the last competition. So I was really happy that I could swim. My coach also said it went great and I swam a few pb‘s. I am really happy about that. But what I am really really happy about is my Medal. I got third over the 100 Backstroke. And it was my first ever Medal at regionals. It was actually a bit unexpected because I couldn’t swim perfectly and there were a lot of faster swimmers there. So I think it was a really good competition to end the Season with. I also tried to swim the competition without pressure. I tried to not put pressure on me and not let the others pressure me. I think it really helped and I will definitely try to keep on doing that. I also always smiled before the start and I think that also helped. Overall I think I genuinely was happier and swam better than the past few competitions. It was also really really hot. Everyone was walking around with cooling towels but they didn’t really help. The water was also sooo warm and the lake was almost warmer than the pool. We had like 35-36 degrees. I was sweating so much. So that also made it way harder to swim because you got so tired from the heat and the sun. The cooldown pool was also so gross because so many people were there. So many gross things were floating around and the water was full of sand, sunscreen and grass. I still swam in it but I didn’t like it at all. The coolest thing tough was that the competition was here in Romanshorn and we organized everything And helped set up everything. It was so much fun. And there were so many people. Sorry for the long post.