Cold 5am mornings, the mental challenge, the hours of physical torture: people often ask me how I deal with these amongst multiple other factors that come with training for competitive swimming. I solely answer that competitive sports are like a full time job, you know? Commitment is simply required in order to accomplish something. When digging into deeper levels, we can state that swimming specifically is a very time consuming sport. This is due to the fact that there’s a lot of people who swim, which linearly correlates to the number of competitors you have. The current 20 hours of practice a week, including 3 weightlift sessions and plenty of core exercising, are crazy indeed, but there’s so much more the sport gives to me in return. The 9-year-old goofy little Siiri who wore Hello Kitty -bikinis to her first ever competitive swimming practice would be in awe about the life I live right now.

Training hours increase a lot in an early stage, which makes swimmers naturally very resilient athletes already at a young age. The early 5am wake ups were introduced at the age of 12, and at the age of 13 the training hours were elevated up from 8 hours to 15, in addition to adding weightlifting in. Self discipline has been built into me throughout the 12 years of practice. That is a perspective that many people don’t realize: it is easier to grow into something, than to suddenly make a change. Ramping up through many years made the increase of training hours almost invisible. It doesn’t come as a shock mentally. I realized this when I got a call from my swim coach that I had to stop horse riding if I wanted to gain the victories that all these hours put into swimming would earn. It was an easy decision! The built in resilience helped in the long run. I’ve now been disciplined and committed for 12 years, since I was 9-years-old and changed those Hello Kitty -bikinis to a proper swim suit. Think about it this way: imagine how easy some routine would be for you, if you would have done it for 12 years straight?

In addition to competition, swimming is a sport where it’s quite hard to apply technology. We are performing and mainly training in water, which restricts the usage of new helping equipment. This makes swimming very much a sport where the physically and technically most skilled individuals thrive since no gear can compensate enough. I have had to accept this when picking a sport to myself; funnily enough, the measurement method, time, might be one of my favorite parts of the sport. There is no shortcut to success, or any other choice than to train a lot if you want to be better than anyone else. The undeniable honesty from the scoreboard teaches you life philosophy in all its toughness. Time is a very straightforward and brutally honest concept too. Input gives output. Training hours can be directly seen in the time on the scoreboard. The comparison is fair.

I also just in general have fallen in love with the sport throughout the journey. I’ve had and still have big goals and dreams, as many of us do, and I’m ready to work towards them. The emotions I felt in 2021 when I qualified for my first European Championships in Stockholm, Sweden after trying to break the qualification standard time 3 times during the same weekend… Pure and so straight forward feelings of proudness, unbelief and amaze. It was the last possible day and race to qualify. Those feelings make me want to swim more on the international level: the current goal is set to the under 23-year-old European Championships next summer, in Serbia. A piece of paper on my wall reminds me every morning and evening about my goals, which makes it easier to be accountable and to respect the day in day out training. Our very committed Rice Women’s Swim and Dive team is also aiming to win a Conference Championship title next spring, which makes me want to put my everything into the shared success story. 

My team at Rice and the global community in the sport of swimming gives me energy through the shared passion. It is an incredible feeling to connect with someone on a level like that, and share ideas, emotions and failures with each other. All the funny laughs in the locker room together with the mind blowing moments when I realize my Finnish and American swim friends know each other via a mutual friend, make the swim community feel so unique and tightly woven together. That is what really makes a difference in life. I’ve found my current community through swimming and the endless hours of training, which I’m super grateful for. Everyone needs a group like this in their life. It makes the journey more enjoyable and exciting. It becomes a lifestyle. It’s the same as you would breathe finance, math, photography or cooking. When you find your people, the endless practice never feels like a burden, but more like a privilege.

Lastly, we have the endless emotions gotten through the sport. I love to feel uncomfortable in the cold mornings before hopping into the pool, because I know it mentally strengthens me. I love the feeling of winning or otherwise succeeding at important competitions after a tough and tricky season. I love the frustration if a practice doesn’t work out as I wanted it to, because I see it as a new opportunity. It all is a roller coaster of emotions, but I’ve learnt to expect, inspect and respect each of them. The bad moments make the good ones feel even better, and that is the whole point of it. The endless hours of training makes the sport so meaningful and important to me, that it creates these huge feelings of many kinds, which are very fascinating to feel.