Press On

I'm very excited... today I reached a milestone I've been working towards for several months ...

I have a small poster in the office, that I've had with me since graduate school days. It got me through the MBA program at Berkeley and has helped me achieve a number of other objectives throughout my life.  I credit today's achievement as well to its philosophy.

"Press On"
'Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.'

When I started swimming I decided to go for a distance of one mile. Not being too savvy yet with all the metric equivalents, I told Ken I was going to swim 100 lengths of the pool. It's a 50 meter pool, so I figured, 5000 meters sounds about like a mile.

Wrong. He laughed, and told me it would be fantastic if I swam 100 lengths, but that it would be well over a mile, in fact about 3.1 miles!

So I revised my goal to 39 lengths of the pool, or 1.2 miles. For about a month now, I've been stalled at about 20 lengths. The issue was leg cramps. Every day I swam as long as I could. Some days I cramped up at 8 lengths, other days at 18 lengths. I got up to 24 lengths and then had to drop back to 20 again. I even swam with just my arms when my legs cramped up, so I could keep going.

I changed my diet.
I altered the time at which I swam.
I mixed up the type of strokes.
I modified the frequency.
I couldn't seem to change the results.

Yesterday was one of the worst days, with cramping starting at 8 lengths.

Then, today, a breakthrough. I swam and swam and swam and swam. My first leg cramp came at 37 lengths, but I knew I could easily do two lengths with just my arms, so I Pressed On and reached my goal.

Three cheers for persistence.
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!