As I watch the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics, I keep thinking of the expression, “Swim your own race.”<\/p>\n
For a competitive swimmer, it’s good advice that can be taken literally. Swimmers who put too much energy into worrying about the people they’re racing against are going to be distracted from their own performance<\/a>. But it’s good advice for everyone else too, including dog paddlers like me. Whatever your goal is — whether it’s a promotion at work, a personal athletic accomplishment, or anything else — you’re best served by focusing on what you need to do to achieve your dream. Time spent brooding over people who got there before you can undercut your confidence, making you miserable without improving your chances.<\/p>\n Gold-medal-winning U.S. swimmer Katie Ledecky<\/a> epitomizes the virtue of swimming your own race. A tweet <\/a>I saw today sent me back to the July 31 New York Times Olympics special<\/a>, which said of Ledecky, “The question isn’t whether she’ll win but by how much.” Reporter Michael Sokolove asked Ledecky for her reaction to an interview given in April by Conor Dwyer, an American swimmer who won a gold medal in the 4-by-200 freestyle relay at the London games. In the interview, posted online by USA Swimming<\/a>, Dwyer spoke about being at a five-week training camp with Ledecky:<\/p>\n “She\u2019s no easy task to beat in practice, even as a male. I didn\u2019t get broken by her, so I\u2019m happy with that. If you\u2019re doing a 3K threshold set, she\u2019ll start beating you every 100, and slowly but surely, you get broken, and your morale goes down pretty quickly when you get broken by a female in practice. I saw a couple guys have to get yanked out of workout because they got beat by her. I\u2019ve trained with a lot of good females in my career. She\u2019s the best one training.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sokolove wrote in the Times, “When I asked Ledecky about this, she claimed not to have noticed.”<\/p>\n \u201cI was probably just concentrating on doing my own work,\u201d she said.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n I die! Dwyer — who spent an awful lot of time thinking about Katie “beating” and “breaking” men — made it to Rio and did very well, winning a gold medal in the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay and a bronze in the men’s 200m freestyle. <\/p>\n Ledecky won four golds and one silver, and set two world records …<\/p>\n