Just got back in the water in January this year after 8 years off.
I practiced 2 days a week for a month, did a meet.
Bumped up to 3 days a week for another month and a half, did another meet.
Bumped up to 4 days a week, did our state meet.
Practiced 4-5 days a week, went to Nats.
Took it easy for a week, then started practicing 6 days a week thru the summer 'til now.
So I chose 1 month-1 year, 6-7 days per week. If work gets busy or babies are certain, I'll drop back to 3-5.
Swam all the way through college (St. Olaf Class of 1991!) and then took seven years off. Did other things (ex. hiking, mountain biking, jetskiing, wakeboarding, rollerblading, etc.) then slowly got back into swimming in 1998. Found a team in Tempe (Sun Devil Masters) and have been there since.
This summer I trained 5-6 times a week but normally I do 4-5 depending upon work. Most of the time, the pool is on the way home from work so it gives me a mental health break in the evening.
Sometimes I take off for a few months, sometimes longer, it all depends. Lately I have been swimming in one National meet a year to give my training focus. My intent now is to swim from 6-10 months out of the year until I start to fall apart. I reckon there are about another four decades in me (I will be 40 in January) good Lord willing ;-)
You might want to extend the particpation number of years. I started officially swimming masters with a team (the St. Paul Skyway YMCA masters) in 1984, swam with them for 11 years, moved to Pittsburgh, and have been swimming the Sewickley Y and Pitt Masters since 1995. Yikes! That's almost a quarter of a century!
Before that, I swam on my own in a much more hit or miss fashion.
I suspect there are many, many swimmers who post on this forum who have been swimming much longer than 5 years. By making this the end point of your poll, I think you may be missing some pretty interesting data!
I haven't "officially" joined a team or the USMS so I can't even claim that I'm unattached! No rush. I'm training on my own currently, or with my brother, and will eventually join and start doing some meets or open water swims.
Waves, I'm with you on the anniversary! Congrats!
I swam 2 years in HS, did summer league 6-18, but never any uss/usas/aau or ncaa swimming. Masters was my college swimming.
I have been swimming in Masters for 8 and 1/2 years. Usually 3 times a week. When inspired for meets, aim for 4 times a week. Practices are 1 and 1/2 hours.
I quit swimming in my junior year of Div. III college swimming (Trenton State College, now The College of New Jersey) back in 1993. I got back into the pool last summer. I swim about 3 times a week and lift about 2 (so I chose, 1-3 years, 3-4x a week). It's nice to be swimming on my own terms. I'm a little amazed that I now happily get up at the crack of dawn to go swimming where morning practices were one of the things I hated most as a kid.
Midas,
I swam for TSC too!!! However, that was in the dionosaur era 1968 - 1970. Never thought I'd come across someone in Masters from Trenton State.
Glenn Gruber
Midas,
I swam for TSC too!!! However, that was in the dionosaur era 1968 - 1970. Never thought I'd come across someone in Masters from Trenton State.
Glenn Gruber
Glen--very cool! TSC/TCNJ was and is a great school that (academically) consistently rates very highly in US News and World Reports (and others') rankings. I'm proud to have gone to school there.
The school's swim team was just coming into its own back in my day. I see that the team took 7th place at NCAAs in 2008. They have some darn fast swimmers there now. Unfortunately, I never clicked with the coach and was pretty burned out by swimming, so I hung up my goggles as a junior to pursue other interests. I had thought that I was done with swimming for good, but it's good to be back.
Are you a Jersey boy too?
