I was a mediocre age group swimmer, who quit at 15 to pursue other sports. After a 35 year break, I returned to semi-serious swim training at age 50 when I got into triathlons and then morphed into a full-time Masters swimmer at age 62, three years ago.
I'm actually swimming faster times now than I did at 15 and am continuing to improve and set new PB's at most of my meets. A lot of it is based on good coaching and technical improvement, plus putting in the yardage ( I average about 500K yards per year).
Sometimes I feel sorry for lifetime swimmers and their frustration at getting slower. But at the same time I know that I'm never going to bridge the gap to their elite level of performance, even if I keep improving.
At 65, I still feel I have a lot of room for improvement; my knees hinder my breaststroke kick, but otherwise feel pretty healthy.
I was a mediocre age group swimmer, who quit at 15 to pursue other sports. After a 35 year break, I returned to semi-serious swim training at age 50 when I got into triathlons and then morphed into a full-time Masters swimmer at age 62, three years ago.
I'm actually swimming faster times now than I did at 15 and am continuing to improve and set new PB's at most of my meets. A lot of it is based on good coaching and technical improvement, plus putting in the yardage ( I average about 500K yards per year).
Sometimes I feel sorry for lifetime swimmers and their frustration at getting slower. But at the same time I know that I'm never going to bridge the gap to their elite level of performance, even if I keep improving.
At 65, I still feel I have a lot of room for improvement; my knees hinder my breaststroke kick, but otherwise feel pretty healthy.
