Masters Swimming

I need to become a better swimmer. My approach is mainly (1) to swim more and (2) to swim with faster swimmers. I say "mainly" because other factors will also play a part, such as working on my technique and flexibility.

As far as swimming more goes, I've been doing good the past few weeks. I have been to the pool (and not just sat at the wall and chatted!) something like nine out of the past ten days. I'm going to continue trying to swim every day, even if I only get in 1500-2000m on some of those days. I've done a few 3000m+ sessions, though they're still tough for me after my recent month long break from swimming.

To swim with faster swimmers, Stacey and I have been going to the DU masters practices. The DU masters program has a lot of good things going for it. The DU pool is a massive 50m pool (however sometimes the pool is set up as seventeen 25m lanes). The coaches I've met so far are kind and knowledgeable. There are plenty of swimmers that are faster than me, as last time I was in lane five of six (though next time I'll move up to lane four).

The biggest downside is that weekday practices are from 5-6am, with Tuesday and Thursday having additional sessions in the evening and Friday having a session at lunch. Attending the early morning weekday sessions requires that I wake up at 4:20am, which is really, really early. I went to the morning session yesterday and was tired all day as a result. One solution would be to try to get in a habit of going to bed around 8:30pm, but that would be tough for me to do day in and day out. Instead, I think I'll attend masters Tuesday and Thursday evenings plus Friday and Saturday when possible. On the other weekdays I'll swim at Washington Park. I think attending the early morning masters would cost me more in terms of sleep than the benefit I'd get from going.

One other downside of masters swimming is that some of the faster swimmers are either snobs or completely lacking in social skills. I'm not going to let that bother me though. It's not like being a crappy swimmer defines who I am as a person. Anyhow, I'll just work hard and improve.

Finally, one other thing about swimming masters is that it's going to require me to learn decent breast and fly strokes. Yesterday's session had a lot of IM work, and I had to skip the fly portion.