The Body Image Series - Part 2: swimming

I’d been swimming from a young age recreationally. Growing up, we were lucky enough to live by the river so learning to swim was even more essential as a safety skill than it is already, and one that both myself and my sisters started with even before we could walk. I continued with swimming lessons whilst I was a gymnast and progressed through the groups at the club. When I quit gymnastics at 12, I was swimming twice week, and had qualified for county and regional championships. Given that I was already at this level with such little training, for a young Lucy, wanting to be an Olympian, moving across to swimming seemed like the next logical step as I saw a more successful future in that sport.

I progressed quickly. Within two months of taking swimming more seriously, I’d qualified for the National Age Group Championships for 200m backstroke. The following year I qualified for 6 events and achieved 2 qualification times for the British Championships (the next step up). As a result of my performances there, I was selected for the GB open water development camp in France, and that was the start of my journey in open water swimming.

2nd place podium in my first 5km open water event at the GB development camp in France

Meanwhile at school, I had applied and been selected to represent the school for the South Africa student exchange programme. Only one member of Year 9 was able to go so it was a huge privilege to be chosen. It did, however, involve 3 weeks in Durban, staying with a family, and with very little control over training. We tried to find access to a pool. But the only one available was the dirty school pool which was 14°C. To contextualise that, a normal pool is 28°C and even that feels cold when you first jump in. To put it into context further, the lowest a FINA (international governing body for aquatics) approved open water event can be is 16°C without a wetsuit. I think I’ve made my point that it was cold. So naturally I did not get most of my sessions done, and those I did do, I got out of the water shivering. It was not remotely enjoyable.

The lack of training, combined with the fact that I had little control over my food intake for 3 weeks led to me gaining 3kg whilst I was out there. Obviously, this was something I was very conscious of. But I became even more conscious when my coach called me out on it my first session back. Imagine that, a 13-year-old, standing half naked on poolside, being told that she’d put on weight. There was nowhere to hide and I felt totally embarrassed (side note: my coach and I got on very well and had a successful relationship after this. It was in no way malicious but is definitely an indicator of more coach education needed in this area). As a result of that my mind went into overdrive. That was it. I wasn’t going to have any ‘bad’ foods in an attempt to lose weight. And it worked, largely because I’d gone back to my normal training routine. I lost the weight but I also gained a tonne of self-consciousness around my body. From then on, I’d walk onto poolside with my kit back covering my legs. Or whenever I’d stand on poolside before training, I’d try to drive my knees as far apart as possible so that I had a ‘thigh gap’ (lol so 2010s) and make my legs look thinner. That was where I held my weight and what I was most self-conscious of.

European Junior Open Water Championships in Kocaeli, Turkey, 2016 (3rd from right)

Honestly it became a bit ridiculous. I was training 20-hour weeks and I’d feel good about myself when I trained hungry. I thought it meant I was burning the fat on my body. I always trained really well. One of my biggest issues was putting it into performance when it mattered. When I was 16, despite by this point being a Scottish national age group record holder in a number of freestyle events, and representing GB at junior European and World championships, it got to the stage where I would stand behind the blocks before a race, and compare myself to all of the other girls, aesthetically. That was my thought process before a race. Not the race itself, but how I looked. I get angry at myself now that I think back on that. I worked so hard in training; anyone I’ve ever trained with can tell you that. I was a bit of a nightmare and admittedly a bitch at times, but I worked hard. And yet when it came to putting that hard work to good use, I was more concerned about how I looked than what I could do. Talk about task-irrelevant focus. It’s really quite sad.

Throughout 6th form, I’d have a salad for lunch, then after training, I’d have whatever Mum had cooked…but without the carbs. After a 2-hour session. No carbs. I was literally terrified of putting on weight, and yet, because I now realise I had a disordered relationship with food, I had no balance when the ‘bad’ foods were offered to me. It was like I couldn’t stop. I was very all or nothing in my approach to healthy eating. In some ways I still am. It’s very much a work in progress. But at this time, I wasn’t understanding the role of food in fuelling my performance, particularly refuelling after training. And because my body shape was never the super-lean, leggy type that a lot of the girls I was competing against were, I never felt like I was doing enough. I was repeatedly told by people within the swimming world that I respected that I would “fly [in the pool]” if I lost a few kilos. And I never questioned it. These were people whom I held in high regard, and still do. But I also acknowledge the negative effect that their words had on my self-esteem, and body confidence.

Then I moved to uni. And wow. Things got worse.

Loughborough Uni, in and of itself, has a disproportionate number of ‘in shape’ women. We are known for sport. A campus filled with successful athletes or those wanting to be. I arrived as a fresher swimmer 3 weeks prior to freshers week with the other newbies for preseason training. It was brutal, but all the parts that I liked about training. During preseason, I went from 68 to 65kg because of the amount and type of training we were doing. Not the way most freshers normally go with the ‘fresher 15’! We were weighed every week by our coach, in front of everyone, in a room full of mirrors that we called the ‘land con room’ (land conditioning). I didn’t realise it at the time but this room would soon become my worst nightmare.

As training returned to ‘normal’ and moved away from the preseason model, I slowly started to put the weight back on. I’ve already made reference to ‘the fresher 15’. But this was different. We were not normal freshers. We might go out at the weekends but that was pretty much it. Rumour was, the coaches had access to the union records so could see who had swiped their card for a night out. It was enough to keep us at bay (most of the time). Plus, training with a hangover is not to be recommended. Over the next few weeks, I’d get weighed, my coach would take a note of my weight, and I’d leave the land con room feeling heavy and big even though I was returning to my pre-uni weight. It was not a pleasant experience. In fact, two of the girls I swam with developed eating disorders during our time at Loughborough. And my experience of disordered eating definitely progressed.

800m free medallists at BUCS 2014

I started to binge. Peanut butter mostly. But it was like I’d plan it. I’d order some fancy peanut butter online and there would be this battle in my head between one side of me, knowing that this wasn’t going to end well and the other that couldn’t resist buying it. It would arrive. And next thing I knew I had a spoon in my hand and I was half way through the tub, unable to resist the urge to carry on - “I may as well just finish it now”. Anyone that is aware of the calories in peanut butter knows that this is a good 1-2000 calories in one go. Now this binging was by no means at a clinical disorder level. But I definitely knew that it wasn’t right when one time, I felt so guilty about the amount I’d eaten that I tried to make myself throw up (unsuccessfully I might add). These ‘episodes’ would lead to me spending hours at Powerbase on the Wattbike in an attempt to burn it off. On top of all my other training.

I also started to build muscle. I’d never weight trained prior to going to uni and we were now doing three weight sessions a week and a circuit session to compliment it as part of the performance programme. These were led by the English Institute of Sport S&C coaches. Now, I am a ‘high responder’ when it comes to training and quickly noticed a difference in my upper body physique. I had proper triceps but this didn’t bother me at the time. I was doing what I was told by those I respected. Then I went home to help my home club at the National Arena League. I didn’t swim that well - it was still very early in the season to put it into context – but my old coach made a comment to me that I had ‘got bigger’, gesturing to my arms. Again, right there, I felt embarrassed and any confidence completely vanished. It caused me to question everything that I’d been doing in the gym. I hadn’t trained like this before. Now I was doing it and swimming slower. Was that why? Was I doing the right thing in the gym? In the pool? The trust in my new coaches, both S&C and pool, came into question just like that. Safe to say, I did not have a hugely successful fresher year in the pool.

Second year came around and at first, it was a bit different. My last two meets of the calendar year were some of the best and most enjoyable I’d ever experienced. In my last short course (25m pool) event, I PBd in every event, smashing out some, honestly, pretty unbelievable times. Times that my training had been indicative of but I’d struggled to convert into competition for a long time. I now realise that the environment for me at that competition was also a huge contributor. But that can be a different blog post…this one is going to be long enough! So when I came back to uni in January I actually felt great and was looking forward to competing again. When I performed awfully at my first meet back, I was devastated. It was pretty much a downhill spiral from there as far as swimming was concerned. I quit in June 2016 after my last race in Rome with what I felt to be some unfinished business but I couldn’t fathom the thought of another year training so hard with such unrepresentative results in competitions.

Last event in Rome 2016 with some of the Loughborough athletes

On to part 3...