i swim in the medium to slower lanes at a very competitive masters team workouts in san diego, and am usually asked to slide down to slower lanes when the equal ability swimmers (vs triathletes) show up.
the funny thing is most of these swimmers use a pull bouy or fins for the WHOLE workout. i think it's a ego thing in la-la land.
i would like to swim with people who can push me harder, instead of down in the last slowest lane. should i just chalk it up to normal swimmers protocal? or find another team? :confused:
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Former Member
In my limited masters experience, people sort themselves and lanes out just fine. In our program, everyone does the coached workout with intervals and distances or reps adjusted by the coach to suit each lane. People populate each lane based on similar speed/conditioning.
Intervals dictate who stays in a lane or has to move elsewhere.
Regarding toys, If they slow you down enough to miss that lane's intervals, you better move. If they enable you to go faster, that's great, step up and work with some faster people.
One guy can use fins to do 100's at around my speed. The last 2 days he's jumped in and paced right next to me for much of the workout (while wearing fins). He worked harder and longer than he normally would, so more power to him. I probably went faster too because he was there. No problem there.
Another guy is one of those who can go faster with paddles (I never understood that). He's the same speed I am in practice, but tends to mentally fade towards the end of longer challenging sets. He'll throw on the paddles and keep going. It lets him finish the set at high intensity and keeps pushing me too.
Regarding the early leavers, that is annoying, especially when Coach is calling out finishing times. Use that as an incentive to always, always catch them and go past the last 25. Even if you have the same finishing time, they know you started out behind.
In my limited masters experience, people sort themselves and lanes out just fine. In our program, everyone does the coached workout with intervals and distances or reps adjusted by the coach to suit each lane. People populate each lane based on similar speed/conditioning.
Intervals dictate who stays in a lane or has to move elsewhere.
Regarding toys, If they slow you down enough to miss that lane's intervals, you better move. If they enable you to go faster, that's great, step up and work with some faster people.
One guy can use fins to do 100's at around my speed. The last 2 days he's jumped in and paced right next to me for much of the workout (while wearing fins). He worked harder and longer than he normally would, so more power to him. I probably went faster too because he was there. No problem there.
Another guy is one of those who can go faster with paddles (I never understood that). He's the same speed I am in practice, but tends to mentally fade towards the end of longer challenging sets. He'll throw on the paddles and keep going. It lets him finish the set at high intensity and keeps pushing me too.
Regarding the early leavers, that is annoying, especially when Coach is calling out finishing times. Use that as an incentive to always, always catch them and go past the last 25. Even if you have the same finishing time, they know you started out behind.
