How A Going Few Miles Down The Road Can Help Get Out Of A Slump

This week I sat down with Oskar Bauriedel, a rising freshman at Amherst College who's been beating me at FSL Champs and Senior Champs the last two years running (yes, I'm still a little salty about it). Oskar's a distance guy through and through, and between talking about 4am practices and distance swims (4 IMs and miles), he ended up dropping some of the most honest reflections I've had on this podcast yet. Here's what stuck with me.

Sometimes the biggest decision is admitting the place you've outgrown

Oskar spent his whole swimming life at Fresh Central Aquatics, since he was seven years old. But by the end of sophomore year, the seniors above him graduated, friends started leaving over issues with the coach, and he found himself alone at practice with nobody to race. He told me straight up that this was probably the biggest decision he's made in his life so far: leaving FCA for Penn Charter. What got me was how much he second-guessed himself in the moment, worried his old teammates would see him as a traitor. But once he made the jump, his motivation came back. As he put it, swimming started feeling like a totally different sport again, in a good way.

When I asked what he'd change if he could go back to freshman year, he didn't hesitate. He said he wished he'd switched earlier instead of clinging to the idea that FCA was his home forever and that there was no changing that. That mindset, he said, was actually harmful. It's a good reminder that loyalty to a place isn't the same as loyalty to yourself.

Swimming isn't an individual sport, no matter what people say

We got into this a bit, and Oskar was adamant about it: people love saying swimming is just you against the clock, but he doesn't buy it. He said his favorite memories from his whole swimming career are all relays, hanging out with friends after finals, racing teammates in practice sets instead of just chasing an interval alone. Losing that team environment at FCA is what actually killed his motivation, not any dip in his times. Getting it back at Penn Charter is what brought the sport back to life for him.

We even went down a rabbit hole about wanting to see mixed relays become a bigger part of high school swimming, since World Aquatics already has them. Small tangent, but it fit the theme. The sport means more when it's shared.

Small pockets of time add up more than people think

This was the practical one. Oskar talked about how he had to get better at time management once the Penn Charter commute ate into his day, and the real fix wasn't some elaborate system. It was catching five or ten free minutes, in a study hall, between classes, wherever, and using them instead of doom scrolling. He was refreshingly honest that he still doom scrolls plenty, even knowing better. But he said the trick was getting scared enough of failing something, or missing out on a school he really wanted, to force himself to put the phone down and just write for thirty focused minutes instead of stretching five minutes of work into an hour of distraction.

He also admitted he can't multitask, that trying to talk to friends while doing homework wrecks both the conversation and the assignment. So now he does one or the other, fully, instead of half-doing both.

None of these three things are really separate lessons. They're the same lesson wearing different clothes. Oskar's whole year was about noticing when something wasn't working, whether it was a team, a study habit, or the way he was spending his attention, and having the honesty to actually change it instead of white-knuckling through. That's harder than it sounds. I've got my own AirPod-in-one-ear habit to work on. But hearing him talk about it made me want to try.

— Anton