Those who practice solo...

Sarah-good news is once the high school team finishes up their season we will get our Friday morning practice back. A number of us masters swimmers have complained, because in the book they state m-w-f master practices, however we loose that Friday once high school starts until it ends. We always thought we should get a break on the price but has never happend. If on your days when you do not practice in the morning try swimming in evening at 730. I do that when I can if I can not make the practice with the senior group from 330-530. When I swam at 730 I got in lane next to the team and just did the workout with the kids. Now dont think because they are younger 11-12 that their workouts are easy. Doing their practice gives ya structure and kinda others to swim with. One other thing you can do is you can always find the age group practices laying around or look on top of the soda machince, he has practices there also. Just modify as needed but it does gives ya something to practice from. Are you getting ready for the meet in Miami next week? Im planning on going depending on how the ole body feels. I will be doing the 400IM,100fly,200fly, 100breast haha, I hate this stroke but going to get a lifetime best since I have never swum it, and then finish up with the mile. See ya on Monday if not before. greg 100 *** - HA HA. Yes, I'm going to the Miami meet. Can't wait - I'm swimming the 50 back and fly, 200 back and IM... we may be able to do a mixed relay (Dan's coming and Tori may). But, you've got a huge lineup there, you may not want to do a relay. I don't think I'm doing enough yardage at practice to survive the 400 IM yet. Maybe by State I will... who knows. Anyways, I am swimming at 8pm during the week - the HS kids are there and that always helps. Yes, those 11-12ers are pretty good - Dan swims with them at times. I will definitely look for those practices around the pool... thanks for the heads up. Yeah, when I first started with you guys - I knew that a lot of you get heated up when they cancel our Friday practices. The HS kids should be done fairly soon, right? Great avatar pic! CYA Monday!

Dont be laughing at my 100 *** now lol. If I can make it thru without getting disqualified I will be amazed. Coach thinks I might surprise myself with my time. I know I am really good off the start and turns, its the stuff in between that gets me haha. I've swam with the high school team at 8 in the past. Do you do the practice they do? Usually our coach is there and he does not care if we ride off one of his practices. The only reason I am doing *** at the meet is because there was to long a gap in between the 200 fly and the mile. The other events I would prefer to do are either to close after the 200fly or to close before the mile. So, I figure why not do the ***, not like its going to take a lot out of me. I have one pace with that stroke, and its slow! Ahh yes, the avitar pic. Thats when I was at Hilton Head last year. The high school season ends after States, which I believe is the first week in March. I know there is a USS meet I do with the kids the second weekend in March and the high school season is over. So, guess we have one more month of no Friday mornings. Just so you know, its not the coaches doing, it is the aquatic director, she can be a real umm, never mind lol. I know she has complained about me practicing with the senior group at times. She wants to know if I have paid my USS team fees. If she ever confronts me on it, I will just tell her that I am making up my Friday of practice that they are false advertising in the book haha. greg

Just so you know, its not the coaches doing, it is the aquatic director, she can be a real umm, never mind lol. I know she has complained about me practicing with the senior group at times. She wants to know if I have paid my USS team fees. If she ever confronts me on it, I will just tell her that I am making up my Friday of practice that they are false advertising in the book haha. greg Whoa! I didn't know that. She should definitely not complain about you practicing with the senior group... they are absolutely false advertising in the book... plus masters have to get the complete pass - the kids currently only have to get the aquatic pass. It doesn't make sense. Maybe the whole masters team should do something about it.

I workout mostly by myself and use most of the ideas given above.The main way I motivate myself is to think of my nemesis(it's no secret it's Bob Strand.) If I'm ever going to close the gap I have to work hard because I know he is.

I have almost always worked out alone since I have been out of college. When I do workout with a group, it is such a treat. When I was really sick, it was so much easier to do it alone because I never had to explain to anyone why I could only swim maybe 400 yards on some days. I wasn't able to swim during the fall. Now I am back. I am not to where I was in August but i am amazed at how fast the i am gettign back in shae.

I usually swim alone once or twice a week. I have a hard time doing 'boring' sets on my own, like long sets of free on an interval. I find that I am motivated to work harder if I do either shorter sets or long sets that are not as repetitive - for example, 4x(4x50 free on a decreasing interval, 2x100 IM on a decreasing interval, 25 stroke sprint, 75 easy).

While I've been done with college for 4 years now, I ended up quitting in college and waiting 3 years to go back to swimming because I truly grew to loathe practicing with the team. My last good coach was when I was 12 years old. After that, it was lots of junk yardage and everything geared towards the sprint freestylers and nothing geared towards me who is a breaststroker, and general stroke lover and middle distance freestyler. Sounds a lot like what poor Morgan is going through now... I now swim not on a team 100% of the team. Part of it is because the masters teams here are expensive and largely inconvenient to get to in comparison to the pool I swim at. But mostly because when I think back to swimming on a team I remember how miserable it got not being allowed to enjoy swimming. I swim now to go fast but also to enjoy swimming. I try to get workouts put together and LOVE the freedom to be able to do that and get creative with my workouts. I can really sit back and practice things I need work on like my butterfly rather than being a slave to the clock and the person swimming 2 seconds behind me. I can do 95% breaststroke workouts with 60% drill. I can give myself mini challenges though the whole workout because I know the purpose of everything I am doing in the water. And, like others have stated here, even though I might do my own workouts, I am not alone in the pool. All of the other regulars know me and say hi. There are some other workout swimmers and occassionally we'll do a set or two together to mix things up. Basically, when I swim alone and I am starting to die during a set, or ready to give up, or slack off I remind myself I am doing this (and have gone through a lot of trouble to do this for many personal reasons) because I love to swim. And usually I find a competitive fire in that which propels me though the tough sets. But sometimes it just means I need to slow down, keep swimming because it's good for me, and love the feel and flow of the water. Anyways, I don't know if I can help because I clearly have a superhuman amount of self motivation when it comes to swimming, and have a love for putting together my own workouts. But perhaps you might find something in this long post worth re-examining yourself. Even to the point of if what makes you love swimming is swimming with a team, then go out of your way to swim with a team or have a workout buddy. Swimming workouts alone isn't for everyone, just like going to the gym alone isn't for everyone. Why else would there be so many gosh darn noodlers? Wow! Ok. I'm really done now. Well, I feel better! :)

I swam solo before joining back up with masters. Did mostly what all the others listed here - Had specific practice (intervals, sets, feel of the water, and distance) goals and meet goals; threw in some travel meets just to have something extra special to look forward to; looked at Top 10s and goals Had goals within goals @ practices - like not allow the person next to me beat me even though he/ she was swimming 1 lap and I was doing a set of 500s Jumped in with the High School or USS for a whole practice or just a set or two Would race practically anyone - from the HS Coaches to other lap swimmers to kids to the lifeguards to swim instructors to other masters swimmers (and would give "handicaps" to those who perhaps weren't at my level) - mostly I had people want to race me although I did persuade one of the HS coaches to do a set of 10x100 IM on 1:30 w/ me - that was great fun! I made up the practice before I got to the pool and I'd stick to it no matter what Made sure to have intervals rather than x seconds rest as it's harder to push yourself w/out fellow swimmers Would always help out swimmers/ people who had questions on technique, strokes (this would be fun and break up my practice for me - in a good way and between sets only) Got to know just about everyone at the pools and their goals - do an ironman; recovering from hip replacements; retired judge getting back into shape; masters mom; so on

Good topic. Swimming on your own is tough. I did it for years and had a terrible time staying motivated. I found the only thing that worked for me was to make the workout ahead of time so that the doldrums of solo swimming didn't influence my pace. Even now, I swim solo once a week and don't do nearly the effort or intervals that I do with my teammates the other days. I will tend to emphasize a stroke or distance that we didn't hit hard at team workouts. That way I'm not trying to recreate the team setting. Good luck! Download workouts, that is a good deal we have here FOR FREE at the forum.

Sarah: I do pretty much the same thing as you. I can only get to my team practies 1-2 times a week during the school year. My team seems to do about 4000-4300 except on Sat. when they ratchet it up and I avoid that practice. So I swim by myself usually 3x a week. In the summer, I swim with my team more and, last summer, was in much, much better engine-building shape. Sometimes it's hard to drag myself off to practice too. I'm actually about to. I think the meets and mini-goals keep me motivated the most. I'm already looking forward to my next meet even though it's a ways off. This forum actually helps keep me motivated. The desire to keep my vessel in reasonable shape keeps me motivated. My kids keep me motivated because they would make fun of me if I went too slow or gave in to laziness too much. I too get a lot of ideas from this forum, especially Ande's blog since I'm a sprinter. Sometimes, I switch up my event focus to keep it interesting. Or switch up the workouts a lot. I almost never do the same thing when swimming alone. I do a lot of "serial" swimming to stave off boredom or the doldrums. I do more drills. I recently got a monofin and am obsessed with SDKs, so that it holding my interest at the moment. One day, I may decide I need to learn breaststroke, but I think that'll be late spring or so. I sometimes like swimming alone because I can work on what I feel like working on that may not be compatible with what my team is doing. But I do wish I could train with them more during the school year ... I definitely go faster with tougher intervals. Set goals and hang in there!