The woman who learned to swim for a triathlon
Eight months earlier, Nadine had watched her youngest daughter leave for college and felt something shift. For years, her time had not been her own. One of seven siblings, she had grown up in a household where you learned early to make room for others. That habit had followed her into adulthood: through the school runs and the long commutes, through the years spent caring for elderly parents while holding down a job and raising two young daughters. She had tried gyms before; they never quite stuck. What she needed, she realised, was something she couldn't quietly back out of. So in December 2024, she signed up for a triathlon.
Her husband's reaction was disbelief. "Why??" he asked. Nadine, who had never had a swimming lesson in her life, didn't have a clear answer. What she knew was this: the embarrassment of abandoning a commitment would be worse than whatever it was going to take to honour it. She put the date, 1 June 2025 in the family calendar and signed up for swimming lessons. Her brain, she reasoned, now had no choice.
What followed was five months of frustration and snail’s pace gains, culminating in one stubborn mental block. Learning to swim as an adult is not elegant. The mechanics that children absorb instinctively, the rotation of the head, the timing of the breath, the strange discipline of exhaling underwater, have to be consciously dismantled and rebuilt. Nadine's particular nemesis was the breathing. Mouth open to inhale, face back in the water to exhale through the nose. Over and over, her body refused to trust it. “What if I breathe in too soon? What if I’m still underwater?” The fear was entirely rational and completely paralysing.
Fitting the training into her life required its own kind of rewiring. Nadine had spent decades being the person who said yes: to her parents, her children, her colleagues, her family. Now, for perhaps the first time, she had to learn to say no.
Fitting the training into her life required its own kind of rewiring. Nadine had spent decades being the person who said yes: to her parents, her children, her colleagues, her family. Now, for perhaps the first time, she had to learn to say no. Swimming lessons went into the diary first, not last. “I felt guilty at first, having to say no to others or saying, ‘I can’t do this for you right now, but I’ll take care of it later’,” she admits. “I realised I still managed to fit everything else in, I just had to stop putting myself at the bottom of the list.” It was a small revolution, long overdue. But it didn’t make the swimming any easier.
Week after week in the pool, she watched others in her class progress to more advanced movements and settle into a rhythm she couldn't find. Her coach offered steady reassurance: everyone learns at their own pace. She would get there. Nadine appreciated the kindness. She remained unconvinced, yet her determination prevailed.
On the morning of the race she walked into the swimming hall and stopped short. “I’d heard this urban myth of people running away at their first sight of an Olympic-length pool!” Standing at the edge of that vast rectangle of blue, she understood it completely. The pool seemed to stretch away for ever. For a moment, the exit felt very close. She got in anyway.
Sharing a lane with swimmers of all abilities, Nadine did the one stroke that felt the least intimidating: backstroke. Not the streamlined, competitive kind — the beginner's version, lying flat on her back, arms sweeping out and round in slow, snow-angel arcs, face safely above the waterline. Around her, triathletes churned past in freestyle, their tumble turns sending up small explosions of white water, their feet catching her in the ribs as they overtook. Nadine kept her eyes on the ceiling. She counted the beams. She kept moving. It was the longest 400 metres of her life. But she made it.
I thought about stopping! But I also thought about the finish line. About all the evenings spent training. And why I was doing this.
Then came the bike. A keen cyclist, six miles should have felt manageable after the swim. It did not. By mile two, Nadine's legs were screaming. She was exhausted in a way she hadn't anticipated, the kind of fatigue that sits deep in the muscles and refuses to negotiate. “I thought about stopping! But I also thought about the finish line. About all the evenings spent training. And why I was doing this.”
The Women's Whisper Triathlon is a women-only event, open to all levels, raising funds and awareness for ovarian cancer. On the course that morning, Nadine kept encountering the same thing: encouragement, given freely and without condescension, from women who were faster, fitter and further ahead. They called out as they passed. They slowed to check she was alright. She heard stories of illness, of recovery, of turning up year after year to this same event, this same community. She pushed through the anguish. She found a second wind.
She finished the ride, and then, somehow, the two-mile run. “When I crossed the finish line, I felt reinvigorated, accomplished, and reminded of what I’m truly capable of. It wasn’t just the end of a race, it was proof that strength grows every time you refuse to quit”.
A month later, in the middle of an ordinary swimming lesson, something happened. The breathing clicked. No sudden revelation, just the quiet arrival of a thing that had always been out of reach. Inhale. Face down. Exhale. And then: freestyle. Her body finally understood what her brain had been trying to teach it for months. The panic dissolved. The counting stopped. In its place came something she hadn't expected at all: calm. “I found peace in the steady rhythm of my breathing, comfort in its calming repetition.”
Nadine took a break over the winter but has been back in the water twice a week after work since May. This August, she will board a cruise ship with her family for twelve days along the Mediterranean: the Amalfi coast, Sicily, Cannes, Ibiza, Barcelona. The family that once watched her tiptoe around the edge of the pool will find her, this time, in the water with them. With both feet off the floor.
Nadine is an Office Manager and HR Officer at Pictet Asset Management in New York office.
