Finding Ultra (5 page)

At the age of ten, I set my first true athletic goal—to win the local summer-league title in the ten-and-under age bracket of the
25-meter butterfly. I even sacrificed my beloved summer vacation on Lake Michigan, staying home with my dad to attend practices in preparation as my sister and mom headed north for July. Unfortunately, I didn't win the race, ending up second by a fingernail to my nemesis Harry Cain. But my time of 16.9 seconds was a team record—a record set in 1977 that would stand for the better part of the next thirty years. And the narrow loss gave me a sense of unfinished business, of work to be done. From that moment forward, I was in with 100 percent of everything I had.
I was a swimmer
.

In an effort to address my rapidly disintegrating academic and social life, my parents made the wise decision to pull me out of public school. And so I entered the fifth grade at St. Patrick's Episcopal Day School, a parochial school on the outskirts of Georgetown—a move that literally saved me. The staff at St. Patrick's created a nurturing and supportive environment with small class sizes that catered to the individual. For the first time, I felt like I fit in. My grades quickly picked up and I made friends. My fifth-grade teacher, Eric Sivertsen, even showed up at my swim meets during the summer to cheer me on. It was a long way from staring at my feet at the bus stop.

Meanwhile, my swimming improved. I even began practicing year-round on a team made up of friendly kids at the local YMCA.

But things would soon take a turn for the worse. After completing elementary school at St. Patrick's, I once again had to try to fit in at a new school. The year was 1980, and I'd just entered my first year at the Landon School for Boys—a prep school Shangri-la that boasted perfectly manicured playing fields, stonemasonry, and country lanes lined with large rocks painted blinding white. Widely considered one of Washington's most prestigious all-boys prep schools, Landon was—and in many ways still is—a machismo paradise. It's a preppy haven known as much for its football and lacrosse prowess as its Ivy League matriculation rate.

Unfortunately, I didn't play lacrosse—or football. And despite my developing mastery of the chlorine currents, I was still the awkward nerd with the thick glasses, quietly toting a dog-eared copy of
Catcher in the Rye
while my tweed-jacketed, madras tie–donning classmates practiced lacrosse skills on open fields. I was proud, though, that I had been accepted into this unparalleled academic institution, and so were my parents. By this time my father had moved into private practice with the Steptoe & Johnson law firm. And my mother, fresh off receiving her master's degree in special education at American University after years of night school, taught children with learning disabilities at Washington's Lab School. But even with the increase in income, my parents had to dig deep into their savings to pay Landon's steep tuition. The education that students received there was a golden ticket to a bright future, and I'll never forget my parents' willingness to sacrifice to ensure a great outcome for me. The only problem? I didn't fit in. I was water in a sea of oil.

It's not that I didn't try. It was during the winter months of the seventh grade—what Landon still calls “Form I”—that I decided to try out for the middle school basketball team. If you could have seen me back then in all my inelegant and maladroit glory, you'd have considered this a bold move. By some bizarre stroke of fate I managed to survive the cuts and become the last person named to the team. The problem was, I had no place among this crew, many of whom had been playing together since their first days at Landon, all the way back to the third grade. I was proud that I'd made the squad, but confused, knowing I was in way over my head. And I was resented for bouncing a longtime peer from the lineup. On the court, I was simply awful. I couldn't run the plays. I froze up. Tense and anxiety-ridden, I'd habitually pass the ball to the opposing team. Throwing up air balls was routine. And despite practicing at home with my dad, who'd erected a hoop in
our driveway in support, I was hopeless. And I paid for it with relentless ridicule. Soon I was the butt of every joke. And beatings would quickly follow.

One day in the locker room after practice, I suddenly found myself surrounded and wearing only a towel. A group of my teammates circled close. Todd Rollap, twice my strength, stepped forward and got right in my face.

“You don't belong here. Time to quit the team and just go back where you came from.”

“Just leave me alone, Todd,” I replied, cowering.

Todd laughed. My teammates circled tighter, poking me in the chest, taunting me to try something. And I obliged, finally shoving Todd, who was standing right in my face.
Game on
. My teammates shoved back, pushing me around like this was a game of hot potato.

“Get off me! Go away! Leave me alone!” I cried. Sensing weakness, the throng cheered for blood and moved in for the kill. In a last-ditch effort to escape, I took a swing at Todd but missed his face entirely. Predictable. Like my jump shot, nothing but air.

Then
BOOM!
Todd landed one right on my jaw. The next thing I remember I was lying on my back, staring up at my teammates, who were laughing hysterically at my embarrassing crumple. They were chanting what would become a mantra of ridicule.
“Rich Roll—man under control! Rich Roll—man under control!”

Half-naked, horrified, and utterly humiliated, I grabbed my clothes and ran crying from the locker room, bringing the curtain down on one of my countless vintage Landon moments.

The next day Coach Williams pulled me aside into an empty classroom. “I heard about what happened. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I replied, doing my best to hold back the emotions that were boiling inside.

“Do you know why I wanted you on the team?” he asked, his
balding forehead glistening as he peered at me through his John Lennon–esque wire-rimmed glasses. I stared back at his mustache blankly. Given what had occurred, I couldn't think of a single reason. I didn't want anything to do with Landon anymore, let alone basketball. “It's not because of your ability to play the game,” he continued.
You think?!
“It's because you're a leader. You have a rare enthusiasm and a contagious optimism. The team needs that.”

Maybe so. But I didn't need the team. That much I knew. And I couldn't understand why he saw me as a leader. By my account, I lacked any evidence of such skills.

“But I understand if you want to quit. It's up to you.”

I badly wanted to quit. But I also knew that if I did, my fate would be sealed. I'd never hear the end of it. And so I agreed to stick it out. It was far from pleasant. The ridicule continued—escalated even. But I did my best to stand my ground. I couldn't let them win.

But what I
did
do was do what I did best. Withdraw. From that day forward through high school graduation, I opted out of everything social that Landon had to offer. I kept my head down, studied hard, and found myself entirely alone. I'd reap what I could academically from Landon, but that was it.

By fifteen, I'd outgrown what the YMCA had to offer my development as a swimmer. If I wanted to play with the big boys, it was time to step it up. And even if Landon had a swimming program—which they didn't—I needed the guidance of an expert hand to take whatever talent I had to the next level.

And so I announced to my parents that I wanted to join the Curl Swim Club, an outfit newly formed by Coach Rick Curl, who'd begun his career launching athletes to the national level with crosstown rival Solotar Swim Club and had now struck out on his own with a new team. At the Y, I'd been a big fish in a small pond.
At Curl, I'd be the smallest fish in the biggest pond available to me. Not only would every swimmer my age eclipse my talent and ability, I'd be required to attend ten swim workouts a week—four seventy-five-minute sessions before school, five two-hour weekday sessions after school, and a three-hour workout every Saturday. Daunting, for certain. And my parents were responsibly concerned, unsure about whether such a huge commitment was in my best interest. For them, education was king, and they understandably didn't want this megadose of swimming to undermine my grades, which were finally beginning to head in the right direction. But I convinced them I could make it work. And I knew that if I gave it my all, the sky was the limit. Rick could take me there. But most of all, I was desperate to be away from anything and everything Landon.

There was only one hitch in the plan. Landon was very proud of its mandatory after-school sports program. Every student was
required
to play a school sport when the classroom bell rang at 3
P.M
. No exceptions. I needed to find an end run around this rule if I wanted to swim, really swim. And so with the help of my parents, I petitioned Headmaster Malcolm Coates and Athletic Director Lowell Davis for an exemption. No big deal, I thought. With its emphasis on athletic excellence, I figured the school would want to support a student who hungered to take his sport to the highest level, something Landon simply couldn't offer me.

I couldn't have been more wrong. A.D. Davis was adamantly against the idea from the outset. In the history of Landon, a school that was founded in 1929, no student had ever been granted an exemption from the pride and joy that is Landon's athletic program, and they weren't about to start now. Could this really be an issue? It wasn't as if I were
needed
on the gridiron. Shouldn't sports be about
building
confidence? At Landon, mine couldn't have been
lower. And it wasn't like I was asking to pick daisies, either. All I wanted was the simple right to train like a
real
athlete, with a vigor, intensity, and time commitment more than triple Landon's requirement. But the door was closed. Not backing down, I put my petition in writing, pleading my case like the appellate attorney I'd later become. What ensued were several intimidating meetings with the powers that be. There was concern about the precedent it would set. And lip service given to how I might properly develop as a young man.
What if you need to play tennis or golf for business? What will you do then?
Well, that wasn't going to happen anyway.

During this time, my head hit the pillow every night with just one thought.
Why won't they let me just swim!?

To his credit, Headmaster Coates responded to my persistence, lending a kind ear to my case. Swayed by the indefatigable effort I'd put into my petition, he ultimately persuaded Davis to grant my request. To my knowledge, I remain the only student to whom Landon has granted such an exemption. And I wasn't about to put it to waste.

Life changed immediately. From the next day forward, my alarm bell rang every morning at 4:44. In a remarkable show of support, my dad would rise right along with me (until I could obtain my driver's license a year later), and together we'd make the dark twenty-minute drive in his beloved MG Midget—a car that to this day he continues to drive—to the dingy basement natatorium at Georgetown Preparatory School, where Curl rented pool time. While I swam, Dad would sit in the car, marking up legal briefs. Never once did he complain. The locker rooms were cockroach-infested and covered in mud. The pool was dark, gloomy, and cold. Green mold grew everywhere, and a black, tar-like substance dripped from the aging mildewed ceiling through the damp lingering fog into the over-chlorinated water. But from the moment I set eyes on the place, I loved it for the promise it brought into my life.

From the outset, I was thrown in with the sharks. The lanes teemed with kids responsible for dozens of national age-group records. Among my teammates were several Olympic Trials qualifiers and even a few national champions. If you lived in the D.C. area and wanted to swim with the best, there was only one place to be, and this was it. I had a lot of catching up to do, but I wasted no time in getting to work.

Determined to rise to the level of my swimming peers as rapidly as possible, I rarely missed a workout. And improvement came rapidly. But I quickly became aware that I lacked a certain level of God-given talent. If I wanted to catch up and make the leap to the national level, I couldn't rely on innate gifts. I was going to have to go the extra mile. I decided to focus almost entirely on the 200-yard butterfly; widely considered one of the most difficult and draining events, most people had no interest in swimming it. This gave me an immediate advantage. Less interest and fewer competitors meant better chances for success.

I was willing to bridge my talent-deficit gap by doubling down with yardage and intensity. Rick took notice and created special workouts specifically designed to see just how far I could be pushed. But I never backed down. I welcomed the suffering that came with unheard-of routines like twenty 200-yard butterfly repeats on a descending interval that started with thirty seconds' rest after the first repeat and slowly dropped to just five seconds by the end. Or ten consecutive 400-yard butterfly efforts, each successive repeat harder and faster than the previous.

I loved the pain, and the pain loved me back; in fact, I couldn't get enough—something that would serve me well in ultra-endurance training later in life. On a conscious level, I was doing everything in my power to excel. But in retrospect, I know that underneath it all, my daily torture sessions were an unconscious and masochistic attempt to exorcise the pain of my Landon experience. Striving for
excellence made me feel alive, in contrast to the disconnection and emotional numbness that defined my time at Landon.

Life in those days revolved entirely around swimming. Other than go to school, I did nothing but eat, live, and breathe the sport. No matter how exhausted I was, I never overslept and was typically the first person to arrive for each practice session, often springing from the car to run into the pool. Even during snowstorms when school was called off, I'd venture out onto the icy thoroughfares in the family Volvo, skidding and sliding my way across town in order to make practice. And because I was more reliable than even the coach, I was given a key to the pool, to use in the event Rick was late or, worse yet, didn't show up at all, which happened from time to time.