Giving Up on the clock

Even if you are not planning to compete, I wouldn't give up on interval training. You will not achieve the same level of fitness with lap swimming. Perhaps you just need to reset your expectations, at least in the short term. Find a training partner, vary your workouts, mix in some strokes/IM. I 100% agree with this. When you ditch the clock you throw in the towel. Even for people I am training for long open water I never let go of intervals or the clock.

The 3-month downward spiral - I planned to take two weeks off after the last meet, had a minor injury, kept making excuses to myself to start again tomorrow, next week. Drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of pizza, gained weight, focused my time on my business - just general laziness and detructive behavior to my health. After reading Bud's inspirational story I feel guilty for even pointing to these kinds of obstacles. Although I do really like the social aspect of Masters and could definately benefit from some coaching, since age group I have always swam on my own and I kind of like it that way. I like the freedom and was always able to use some goals to keep me motivated (generally 3-4 times a week, 2000-3000 yards). But the goals might have been a source of my frustration as well. I always wanted to break 1:00 in the 100 free. This was the first year in my four years in Masters that I went the other direction (from 1:01 to 1:03). So I have to come to grips with the reality that I might never be able to do it. I don't know why I am so focused on it because I have found I am not a sprinter anyway and I did acheive best times in other longer events. But I feel my life would be complete if I could break that magic number. Anyway, I am not going to compete in meets until at least the fall so I will re-evaluate where I am at then (hopefully not in the shape I am in now). I still love the water and want to continue to use swimming as my primary mode of exercise. I just can't deal with the clock right now. Most of the swimmers at the pool probably never even look at it. I can definately pull it off in a lake and it is liberating (but it is only a hanful of times per summer). I think I could do it easily in an outdoor 50M pool as well. But in a 25 yard pool it seems too redundant. I have never been able to maintain flip turns forever and open turns seem essential to the kind of swimming I want to do now, but then I start getting passed by the lap swimmer next to me, start looking at the clock and notice how unbeliebably slow I am going. So then I want to do a set and then I want to quit. Well, it is a beautiful day and I am going to head to the outdoor pool. I think just showing up is good enough for now. This will make twice this week which equals my total for the last three months so maybe I will get back on track (even though I don't know what that track is right now). there's your answer, you only trained twice in the past 3 months, you drank a lot of beer & ate a lot of pizza. You are out of shape. It's totally unrealistic to take that much time off and immediately expect to be able to do what you could do when you were in shape. You can get back in shape, just start training consistently. Set realistic goals, make plans then DO them. No more excuses. Start off easy & work your way up. I know if I took 3 months off, I couldn't do the sets & intervals I can do now. How long will it take to get back in shape? You don't know. It takes what it takes. Start training and find out. In the future, don't take breaks after meets. Start your training routine immediately. If you don't feel like training hard, just swim easy or keep tapering, but keep your feel. I have a couple swimmer friends who do long summer vacations, they're both teachers. they go on a 6 to 8 week European bike tour. they come back in great biking shape but terrible swimming shape. then start training and get ready for SCM & SCY meets.

Whenever I want to keep (some of) the intensity of interval training while not worrying so much about times, I will do odd distances like 175s or funky breathing patterns or off-strokes or use little-used equipment. Anything to avoid comparisons with your "usual" swim speed.

Whenever I want to keep (some of) the intensity of interval training while not worrying so much about times, I will do odd distances like 175s or funky breathing patterns or off-strokes or use little-used equipment. Anything to avoid comparisons with your "usual" swim speed. As a kid I hated sets with repeats of weird things like 125 IM and 175 free. Now I enjoy them. I have to pay attention to what I'm doing or I'll lose track, no one else can figure out what I'm doing (it's awesome when other swimmers ask me something like "are you doing... wait, no... what?" before I've even said anything), and I can't compare these sets with anything I did as a kid, college student, or whatever. Side note: some of the other regular swimmers at my gym got their revenge on me by inventing something called a reverse inside-out IM. From my perspective, it's a broken swim of unknown length with strokes in seemingly random order. I have no idea what they're doing and they make sure it stays that way by coming up with different variations daily. :D

So many of these ideas are wonderful! Personally I think we all go through phases in our lives when sometimes we feel more competitive than others - or when circumstances force us to be less competitive. There's nothing wrong with that. When I decided to go back to school in my 40's - I was relegated to getting up at 5:30am and training solo - but at least I was swimming! and that made me happy. After I graduated & got a job, I realized how much speed I had lost & decided to change tacks, but at the time I was just happy to be in the water & didn't really worry about it. Listen to your body, listen to your emotions. There is a time & a season for everything.

Yes, swimming just to swim is great. Long slow distance will help you lose weight, too. And outdoor season is upon us - hit the lakes and ocean! Nobody "has" to do intervals. I know that some of the most inspiring runs I have had happened when I left my watch at home; I just ran because I feel like running. Likewise, sometimes I just swim because I feel like it - without a workout in mind, I just hit the pool for 30 or 40 minutes and swim whatever I like - laps, kicking, drills, whatever. If you are moving you are doing yourself a favor!! Remember what Dora from "Finding Nemo" :bliss::bliss:says: Just keep swimming!

I 100% agree with this. When you ditch the clock you throw in the towel. Even for people I am training for long open water I never let go of intervals or the clock. I did a workout the other day in the pool, where it wasn't exactly "by the clock", but by the length. I did, 1-2-3-4-5...all the way to 16 lengths, with :10, :20, :30 rest after each swim depending where I was in the set. While I wasn't exactly on an "interval", I was keeping track somewhat of how fast I was swimming each distance, trying to still maintain my BASE for each swim.

I was worried as I read thru that the cause of your decline may have been health related; seem like it's more lifestyle. As a clean limbed youth, my performance wouldn't degrade nearly as quickly after skipping a few workoust as it does now. I pay much more attention to rest and recovery, listen to how my body feels, and luckily, I can no longer resolve a digital clock face with what's left of my eagle eyes. Just keep swimming; you're still lapping those folks at the bar or on the couch!

I've only swum as an adult in 2008-09 up to SC Nationals, then started again last summer. I wish I could ignore the clock. I would really benefit from doing some longer swims at any pace at all, but I check my pace every 100 yards and am usually frustrated by what I see. In running, i have no problem ignoring the time, but not in the pool.

Finally it was time to show off so I did 4x50 on the 1:00. Swam :43s on the first 3 and then busted out a :38 on the last one. So much for: Giving Up on the clock :)