I've been swimming masters now for well over a decade and I've hit a bit of a lull. Last year I set my Go The Distance goal at 550 miles and missed it, so this year I revised it downward to 500 miles and as of today I'm 66 miles behind the pace I need to be at to hit that goal. I just don't have the desire to get to the pool as often, or stay in as long, as I usually do.
With that introduction my question really is: how do YOU train long term? Do you try to stay consistent or do you vary from year to year? Historically I've been very consistent, but I wonder if intentionally varying things is a better long term strategy.
Many of you have suggested training variations, but what I'm really looking for is whether varying the amount of time and/or concentration spent on swimming has worked well for you.
Yes, it's worked well. Also, it's life.
I swam in my first Masters meet 20 years ago, when I was 27. At the time, I had a nothing job, which meant that I had plenty of time for sports but not plenty of money. I ran and swam, and did some hiking, and tried pretty unsuccessfully to learn to cross-country ski (back when we had snow in the winter in California).
A few years later I went back to school to get a professional degree. I had access to a gym, and I had a lot of discretionary time, and my swim teammates were a delightful group of people totally unconnected with school. So I set and achieved some more serious swimming goals. My swimming focus then was mostly on open water, because it was new to me as an adult but turned out to be a good fit.
When I finished school in 2000 I did a post-graduate fellowship in a city that had a very strong running community. I used that opportunity to improve my running, and I set and achieved some running goals while keeping up swimming as a sideline. I was really glad I had kept up swimming when I injured a knee and had to stop running.
Then I started working in earnest in 2001 and I didn't really have time for anything else hard. Plus, in 2004 I developed a pretty serious neck problem, relating to a congenital spinal deformity. I had to stop swimming entirely for a while because I could not turn my head to either side. And even when I could start swimming again, I had no mental energy for goal-setting or competition. I thought for a while that I would never race any more.
But eventually my neck got strong enough that I could swim well, and I began to feel enough mastery of my job that I started itching for some new challenges. I re-focused on swimming and swam faster in my early 40s than I had in my late 20s. I swam my first 10K a few years ago, too. For five or six years, I had all kinds of ambition and I felt really strong.
Now I'm in a lull. My work took over my life and I had to dial everything else way back. Swim practice became more like going for a nice walk than like working out. I'm trying to re-balance, although I'm also wondering whether I might be able to address my leg problems so that I can resume running.
If you like any other sports, do those for a while. Learn a new sport. Or just dial your physical activity back to maintenance mode and focus on something else entirely for recreation. Your motivation for everything will ebb and flow.
Many of you have suggested training variations, but what I'm really looking for is whether varying the amount of time and/or concentration spent on swimming has worked well for you.
Yes, it's worked well. Also, it's life.
I swam in my first Masters meet 20 years ago, when I was 27. At the time, I had a nothing job, which meant that I had plenty of time for sports but not plenty of money. I ran and swam, and did some hiking, and tried pretty unsuccessfully to learn to cross-country ski (back when we had snow in the winter in California).
A few years later I went back to school to get a professional degree. I had access to a gym, and I had a lot of discretionary time, and my swim teammates were a delightful group of people totally unconnected with school. So I set and achieved some more serious swimming goals. My swimming focus then was mostly on open water, because it was new to me as an adult but turned out to be a good fit.
When I finished school in 2000 I did a post-graduate fellowship in a city that had a very strong running community. I used that opportunity to improve my running, and I set and achieved some running goals while keeping up swimming as a sideline. I was really glad I had kept up swimming when I injured a knee and had to stop running.
Then I started working in earnest in 2001 and I didn't really have time for anything else hard. Plus, in 2004 I developed a pretty serious neck problem, relating to a congenital spinal deformity. I had to stop swimming entirely for a while because I could not turn my head to either side. And even when I could start swimming again, I had no mental energy for goal-setting or competition. I thought for a while that I would never race any more.
But eventually my neck got strong enough that I could swim well, and I began to feel enough mastery of my job that I started itching for some new challenges. I re-focused on swimming and swam faster in my early 40s than I had in my late 20s. I swam my first 10K a few years ago, too. For five or six years, I had all kinds of ambition and I felt really strong.
Now I'm in a lull. My work took over my life and I had to dial everything else way back. Swim practice became more like going for a nice walk than like working out. I'm trying to re-balance, although I'm also wondering whether I might be able to address my leg problems so that I can resume running.
If you like any other sports, do those for a while. Learn a new sport. Or just dial your physical activity back to maintenance mode and focus on something else entirely for recreation. Your motivation for everything will ebb and flow.
