I'm Getting Married

Writer's Note: I am not so insane that I actually wrote a blog about Swimming on my wedding day. I wrote this blog on the Wednesday before my wedding and sent it to The Athlete Village to  post for me on my actual wedding day.

I'm getting married. That I'm writing about it in this space begs the obvious reaction: "great, good for you, but what does it have to do with swimming?". That's precisely what I mean to write about. My life is inextricably tied up in swimming, and so it will be there in many ways this weekend.

When I stand waiting, all the groomsmen aside from my future brother-in-law will have swum a lap with me. One, my friend John, is responsible for me starting swimming in the first place. He approached me at recess on a fateful day in the fall of 1992 and suggested we go out for the local town team. Andy and Ben are both high school and club teammates. Ian was the lone diver on my college team, although he did chip in with some 50 frees and 200 free relays. My older brother Simon and I were swimming together from the start.

I met our officiant, Amelia, when we swam together on Shawmut Aquatic Club. All told, most of the lasting friendships that I am carrying to this day are from swimming. There's something about sharing a few seconds of air with someone between staring at that black line that bonds you. I might be biased, but I think you meet the best kind of people at swim practice: disciplined, hard working and more than a little quirky.

Still, with all credit to the people I've already mentioned, the woman I'm marrying has already had the biggest impact on my life and relationship with swimming. When I met Kate in the fall of 2006, I was teaching at a boarding school in western Pennsylvania. I knew I loved swimming and what I wanted to with it. My dream was to be a college swim coach. It was a dream I had carried since I was 14 years old. It was also a dream I had completely given up on.

Working at the boarding school was the only way I had found to stay in swimming after graduating college. I applied to fifteen schools in the spring of my senior year and barely heard a word back. I was discouraged, and decided that to stay on the pool deck I probably had to do something I didn't really like (in this case, teaching history to high school boys). Kate changed all that.

She got me to stop moping and start moving. Within months she had me cold-calling college coaches all over again. I believe that everyone has a voice in their head that tells them not to go after what they really want. Its the voice that says "you can't do it" at every turn. Kate completely destroyed that voice. Finally, I had called nearly every option available- there were no takers. There was one school, the University of Pennsylvania, that I hadn't called. Of course, the voice in my head said firmly "Who are you kidding, D-1 swimming?". When Kate found out she practically dialed the number for me. She didn't give me a choice. That fall I was on deck at Penn living my dream. When the time came to move on to Georgia Tech, Kate was my resume polisher, my cover letter editor and my interview preparer. In between she's been my coach in everything that I do.

When I finally decided to pop the question, I whisked her away to the most romantic city in all of Europe- Malmö Sweden. There, I took her to a renaissance castle filled with corpses and prison cells to heighten the romantic mood. When we exited the castle, as she rushed off to our next stop on the sightseeing tour, I proposed in the form of a statement: "Lets get married" I said. To which she replied "what?" (note to those who will attempt this in the future: ALWAYS PROPOSE IN THE FORM OF A QUESTION) and then "no!" (she thought I was trying to get her to elope).

Within a few seconds she recovered from shock enough to agree, and while I couldn't convince her afterwards to hold the ceremony on a pool deck we will be married just a few hundred yards from the Atlantic Ocean. 

One of my friends recently joked that he wanted to call me whenever he was depressed just to get my voicemail. He said I sounded comically happy. The truth is, he's right.

This weekend I'm marrying the best teammate I've ever had.