One day, a few years ago, I was rushing from the pool dripping wet when a ma n with a Russian accent stopped me and said, “You must come to svim with the team.”

I was in my early 50s — too old for swim team, I thought. But the coach — Igor was his name — persisted: “I see you are good svimmer.”

Intrigued, and being a sucker for flattery, I relented and joined his ragtag group of swimmers. Workouts started at 5:30 in the morning, when most sane people were tucked in bed. It didn’t matter because no matter how sleepy we were, we were guaranteed to be wide-awake, if not euphoric, when we finished. We enjoyed our camaraderie and although we were all at different swimming levels, we had one thing in common: We wanted to get better.

One day, a bunch of us were grousing about how little progress we were making in our swim times, how slow we were.