Adina O’Neill on Belonging, Forward Motion, and Why the Spirit Award Was Always the One That Mattered

Adina O'Neill has been swimming since she was five years old. She was never the fastest. Her brothers won the trophies while she won the spirit award.

She has thought about that a lot over the years and at some point she stopped seeing it as the consolation prize and started seeing it as the thing that made her who she is. The spirit award goes to the person who shows up anyway. The person who competes without a realistic shot at the podium. Who does it because they love it and because stopping never really occurs to them.

That is exactly who Adina built Team B*REAL for.

She is the founder and head coach of Team B*REAL, a certified triathlon and swim coach, a triathlete, a year-round open water swimmer, a volunteer coach for Special Olympics Massachusetts, and the author of Forward Is A Pace: REAL Athletes Don’t Fit In, They Stand Out. She swims year-round at Nantasket Beach in Hull, Massachusetts, which tells you something about who she is before you’ve heard a single word she’s said.

I sat down with Adina for an episode of Going Long, our interview series here at Beyond The Breakers. I knew her story in broad strokes. What I didn’t know was how far back it went, or how personal it was.

Who Is Adina O’Neill?

Adina O’Neill is the founder and head coach of Team B*REAL, an endurance sport community for athletes of any size, color, identity, age, and ability. The B*REAL acronym stands for Realistic, Empowered, Attainable Lifestyle — a name that reflects the community’s purpose as directly as any mission statement could.

She is certified through US Masters Swimming, World Open Water Swimming Association, USA Triathlon, IRONMAN, and Women Are Not Small Men. She is a volunteer coach for Special Olympics Massachusetts and has completed more than 100 endurance events including marathons, long-distance swims, and IRONMAN races.

She is the author of Forward Is A Pace: REAL Athletes Don’t Fit In, They Stand Out, a book about confidence and inclusion in sport.

She specializes in coaching women through the menopause transition, swimmers exploring new distances, and triathletes looking to improve their technique in the water. She has been a BTB attendee, a BTB speaker, and is now back for her third year with a session called Open Water 101.

Where It Came From

I asked Adina for the elevator pitch, which is what I ask every Water Logged guest. She gave me one. But then she gave me the longer version, and the longer version is the one that matters.

She has been swimming since she was five years old. She was never fast but she brought the energy and morale which had her taking home the spirit award.

"Nobody values the spirit award the same way they value those first and second and third place trophies," she said. "Well, except for me."

And then, years later, she entered her first triathlon. She was suddenly fast, not because she’d gotten faster, but because most triathletes are not swimmers. In the context of a field of non-swimmers, she was competitive.

For a while, she chased it. She tried to get faster. She tried to place higher. She pushed toward something that wasn’t really hers.

"At some point I just realized that was not who I was," she said. "I just wanted to have fun. And I looked around and I realized that other people were feeling the same way I was feeling. They didn’t feel they belonged. Not necessarily because they weren’t a swimmer or because they were a larger body, but for a million different reasons."

That realization is what became Team B*REAL.

"I created this space so that way we could help everybody — from the person who never got picked in gym all the way through the menopausal woman who’s like, what happened to my body? To have a space that you can just love wherever you’re at, chase some goals that challenge you without judgment, and just feel freaking awesome doing it."
— Adina O’Neill

Forward Is a Pace

The title of Adina’s book is not just a motivational slogan. It’s a coaching philosophy. When you hear her explain it, you will understand exactly why it works.

"I’m not very fast, but I keep going forward. If I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it. I’ll be there. I’m just going to keep moving forward. And that’s where it started for me — you just keep moving forward. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going."

She said something that I keep thinking about. Someone recently asked her how she’d managed to swim two miles in 56-degree water when they could only manage 300 yards.

Her answer: you start at 300 yards and then you move a little bit more.

That’s the whole framework. Start where you are and take one step at a time. Don’t give yourself a deadline that’s based on someone else’s timeline. Don’t let someone else’s progress set the ceiling for yours.

"You don’t get an extra prize for getting there faster. It’s like my medal is the same as yours — unless you’re on the podium, you might get a prize then. But the idea that you have to get somewhere faster — no. You’re showing up where you are and moving forward at whatever pace is comfortable, safe, and accessible for you."
— Adina O’Neill

She also mentioned something that I think is one of the more overlooked observations in endurance sport. She said she can’t do most organized open water events because she can’t make the time cutoffs. She’s not slow in any objective sense, she’s completed over 100 endurance events. However; the cutoffs are set for a pace she doesn’t swim at, and so she just goes and swims the course on her own.

Her take: normalize not doing events. Just go swim. It counts!

BTB Year One, Year Two, and Now Year Three

Adina came to Beyond The Breakers as an attendee in Year 1. She came back as a speaker in Year 2. She’s back again in Year 3 with a new topic. I asked her what the transition from attendee to speaker felt like.

"There’s two pieces," she said. "The first piece is it was kind of the same, because the speakers and the attendees were just all together. I love that because that’s a belonging thing for me. There was no hierarchy. Even when I became a speaker, I wasn’t on any different hierarchy. It was still just everybody."

The second piece took more to say.

"Usually speakers at conferences are the elite swimmers or elite people. There was a lot of — I had a lot of pride to be included in a conference that had such a big reach. To know that what I was doing was respected and invited and included. The inclusion person was included."

She mentioned that during Year 2, she found herself chatting with Lenny Krayzelburg about backstroke. Just two people at a swim conference talking about swimming. That’s what BTB is supposed to feel like. And it does.

Open Water 101: The Session Nobody Else Is Doing

This year Adina is presenting Open Water 101, which she describes as being for the person who doesn’t know what they don’t know.

She has a way of explaining why this matters that I think many don’t fully grasp. She hears from people all the time who say “when I get better, I’ll call you.” The assumption is that coaching is for people who have already earned it. That you have to reach a certain level before you deserve expert help.

She doesn’t agree.

"The ocean is there for everybody," she said. "There’s no prerequisite to how far you can swim or what capability you have for swimming to get in it."

The session is for the person who thinks open water sounds like fun but doesn’t know where to start. It’s for the triathlete who has been surviving the swim leg for years without understanding it. It’s for the person who can’t tell you what kind of swimsuit to wear for an ocean swim, because nobody has ever explained it to them.

She taught second grade for ten years before she became a full-time coach. She knows how to take a concept and make it genuinely accessible without being condescending about it. She described it as her sweet spot.

"For the person who has never been in open water and asks what even to expect — something super simple like what kind of bathing suit do I need, what do I have to bring with me — these are the really basic things that most people don’t talk about because they assume you already know."
— Adina O’Neill

Who Should Be at BTB

I asked Adina who the person is watching this who absolutely needs to be at Beyond The Breakers in November, even if they’re not sure it’s for them.

Her answer was simple: anybody who likes the water. Anybody who is drawn to it. Anybody who watches the ocean or listens to it or dips their toes in on vacation and feels something they can’t quite name.

"The water is the one place that everything calms my brain and blocks the noise," she said. "And that can happen just by being near the water. So come listen. Find out how maybe you’re going to like being in the water as much as you like being near it."

See You in November!

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Going Long With Adina O’Neill