Chasing Perfection: When a meet doesn't go as planned | The Ready Room

Our third theme is kind of under that understanding of like, how do you process a competition when things just aren't going your way? So one of the biggest question marks of this meet was Summer's performance. Summer McIntosh, of course, we know her as a four time world record holder or the world record holder currently in four different events. She's taken this Canadian swimming scene by storm for the last four, five even years, and she had a challenging competition, a week that didn't go her way. A week where every time we saw her through the mixed zone, it it was having to challenge herself with like, I don't quite yet know what went wrong. Didn't go the way I wanted it to. So there'll definitely be a lot of reflection and, you know, focusing on how I can be better next season. And I think that's such a frequent reminder as athletes that like things happen. Bad meets happen, not to say or make assumptions that she sees it as a bad meet per se, but just like we all go through it. And I think as an analyst, my brain immediately was trying to make sense of it because so many people ask me, it's like, what's happening with Summer? And Summer alone, her coach, Bob, her competitors, like nobody can put a exact reason to it at this exact moment. And that's why I really was hoping to have a bit of conversation with you about what it is like as an athlete when you dive in for that first race and things just aren't clicking. Day one, knowing you're now like, OK, things aren't adding up, but I have a four day competition. Like, how do you approach that as a mindset? It's tough. I think swimming is such an interesting sport that there really aren't answers sometimes to why things are happening. Like there have been times when, you know, I have felt amazing and I have, you know, then my expectations are higher to want to perform a certain way. And it's the complete opposite and vice versa. Like I could feel absolutely terrible and then have swum the fastest I've ever swam. And those sort of things like make it really hard to understand something because you put in hours and days and so much, so many different elements go into a performance, not just the training, but weights and, you know, nutrition and sleep. Like there are so many different factors that come into play, especially on a race day. So, yeah, starting off the meet and, you know, trying to change that mindset or I think it just comes that one step at a time and, you know, seeing how something goes and trying to have some time to reflect on it, but also know that, OK, it's in the past. I have to move forward. If you have another race coming up that day or the next day as well, just taking the time, I think, to recognize and like validate your emotions, but also especially if you're in competition, trying to regulate those emotions to prepare yourself to do the best that you can the next day or next race. And I also want to credit Summer a lot here because we say, you know, the meet didn't go her way. She's still left with four medals. She won the silver in the 200 freestyle in the 200 IM, and she won the 400 IM herself. But speaking to your previous point about anything can happen, she unfortunately didn't get through to the 400 free A final. She was the first. I really admired her response right away. She took ownership. She said it was a misjudgment on my part. I should have been in that final and her time would have ended up placing third. It was such a fast field, obviously, with Ledecky and Pallister challenging the sport in ways that none of us could ever fully explain. But nobody going in would have been like, you know, the rest of the final probably thought I didn't have a shot in this. And now all of a sudden they do because something you didn't expect happened. So you do have to be prepared in a way for a little bit of everything. I wanted to ask you from your experience about tapering, because a lot of questions come and people don't. If you're not in it, it's hard to describe the process of a taper. Summer's in a brand new training environment this year, which obviously is going well in certain ways. And some people would say, obviously, how do you know? Obviously, well, her fitness is there. She came to trials in July and broke a world record on night number one of a 200 fly, a record that's since 2009. We know she's fit. We know she's in shape. We know she's working hard. That part we can, I guess, compartmentalize in a way. But a lot of people, when we say the term missing your taper, can you describe what that means? I think. To put it. Because it's such a feeling. Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, it ultimately is a feeling because, like, yes, it's kind of science, I guess, calculated over your year of training. And, you know, normally what your average is. But I would say taper general generally is doing less training than what you've done the entire year. That's in the weight room. That's in the pool for most people. However, there are certainly exceptions. And as you specialize in sprint versus distance, those numbers are different as well, because in a normal training day, those numbers are very different. So it's a little bit of a science. I think it also has to do with each individual and how they feel, how they react to weights, if they really like doing some more power explosive stuff, if they prefer to completely back off weights. Like there's just so many elements. It's kind of hard to explain. But I know. Well, that was just to piggyback off what you said. I think that's also the difference of like her training partner, Regan Smith, also struggled this week. And she said openly, like, obviously, we've we've missed time something a little bit. And they all had a lot of confidence in the training block they put in all season and then for them to come here. And it wasn't just summer. Some of her other teammates weren't quite clicking. And the way I would describe when you do hit your taper like that feeling, it's almost like a zip for your stroke. And it like you ride the water differently. You're like every stroke feels a little bit more effortless than the one before it. And sometimes you find that if you missed your taper, you feel a bit more like if you hit it too early. In theory, you were maybe in training on like three days out. You were going times. You're like, hey, I feel really good. And then day one of the race came and you're already starting to feel fatigued, which means you literally just like you peaked and then you fell down. Or if you miss your taper on the other end of the spectrum, maybe it's like day four or five of a meet and you're just starting to feel your zip, which means in theory you hit it a little later than you were anticipating. But someone like you in your career that you've tapered now every summer and potentially other times a year, a couple like, are you down to an exact day where you're like, I want to hit this amount of meters and I want to do this amount of fast swimming? And like, have you kind of really fine tuned your taper personally? Yes. For the most part, not to a specific day, I would say, but a couple day range where I know, OK, I'm going to, you know, usually about two and a half weeks out. It's like, OK, I come off of weights and then I slowly start to bring down the volume in the pool day by day. And yeah, then typically like a week before or five days before, it's like a big come down, even more of volume in the pool. Yeah, because you do you want to still feel that fitness, like you want to still feel strong enough to get through a longer race. And, you know, even your last event of the Paralympics was the 200 back. So you had to still have the speed of the hundred and do prelims heats final prelims semis finals. But you also needed to be able to do a 200 backstroke in the same deliverable later and do the medley relay on the very last day. And that's eight days later. So you have to, in theory, be at peak for eight days. So this is as much as it's a science. It needs to be a little bit flexible as a science adaptable. Exactly. And as much as we've been talking about summer for so long, she's still 19 years old, about to turn 20. So by no means is this a disaster. Some really key learnings here where her and her coach can take away everything that they just learned this week. Peel back what the actual physical feeling was against the time comparisons and work towards world's next summer like it really. I hate to say it's not that deep, but it's just like there isn't a rhyme or reason necessarily, right? Like it feels like the end of the world when you don't have a time that you've worked so like you've all as athletes, you train the whole year for usually one chance to showcase what you work for. And yet sometimes it just doesn't add up, unfortunately. And you can't really do much about it. And you felt it. One more question on this theme before we move on. I wanted to ask you about being a world record holder, because rarely have I gotten to talk to world record holders. But you are literally in front of me as a world record holder. At some point in your career, you had to go into a meet as the world record holder. Did that feel different than going into the meet? You know, entered second or third? Yes, 100 percent. I think there's almost this weight of, I guess, pressure and partly pressure that I put on myself, too, because it was something I wanted to achieve. But there was just so much more focus and attention to my race than what I was used to in the past. And again, that's a privilege. And I was I was very grateful to be in that position. However, I still felt the weight of that. And I remember at the end of the race, it was certainly like a little bit of a relief to have touched the wall and seen it. And it was almost like the relief took over than the actual excitement of achieving the world record for me, because I think I was just a little bit shocked and and overwhelmed with the previous pressure and then the race itself. And it's such a skill swimming and a lot of sport, but swimming particularly, because that's all I know. It's just like such a mental and physical combination of battle. Like in order to be the best in the world, you have to have that perfect balance of being able because pressure is a privilege, like you said. But it also is often within yourself that you hold that pressure. Like at the end of the day, the people writing the articles or following the story or the coaches or the competitors like after that day, they'll move on to something else. But for yourself, like you'll always remember the day you won world championships after being a world record holder and going in with that much more pressure and and getting on the Olympic podium after trying to keep your streak alive, whatever it is, right? Like you remember that more heavily than anyone else. So it's a privilege. But it also it's you feel I always say you feel nervous because you care about something. So for you, the nerves and that excitement and like the ability to balance it all and perform is such a challenge. To get to the top once is one thing. To be able to stay at the top is a whole other thing. So I think this is also a test of like how any athlete that were disappointed with the results from this meet. You take all these learnings away. Hopefully you take a couple of weeks away from the pool. Like, let's I hope summer's in Muskoka at our cottage as we speak. Just soaking up some sunshine. Some good time with your friends. A happy swimmer is always a fast swimmer. At the end of the day, it's sport. It can't consume you. You have to take those moments to just be a human. But she's 19 and she's going to learn from this and move forward. And we're all going to learn from this move forward. And I can't wait to cover her and the rest of your team next year. But some really great. Thanks for trying that through with me. I feel like I constantly learn the more we talk about this. But it is a heavy weight to carry as a champion. And I think finding the balance of how you continue to carry it is something she's going to be navigating in the next couple of years. So L.A. in a weird way is far away, but in a weird way, it's also really close.