I have noticed that some (many?) of you swimmers have the opportunity to train with age-group swimmers. How did you manage to arrange that?
I typically train early mornings (5:30, as soon as the pool opens). The local Masters club only trains in the evenings while I am still at work, so the majority of my sessions are solo, trained in the "public lanes". This works out fairly well; I am a fast enough swimmer that I usually end up with my own lane or sharing with other like-minded people. The problem is that, left to my own devices, my work-outs are all about the same. Same times, same strokes, same distance. I always go about 4000 to 4500 meters, one half swim, one quarter kick, one quarter pull. I do some sprints and tons of traditional short-rest interval training. Ho hummmmm...
It would be nice to periodically (or routinelly) swim with the age-group swimmers of my speed calibre, but I just cannot see how to arrange that without coming across as just plain kooky (and not in a good kooky way either) Maybe it is just the very traditional, old fashioned culture in this area that makes this difficult.
As an example: I once asked why the masters swimmers do not share swim meets with the age group swimmers more often to defray the costs of pool rental and increase the number of paying competitors. The major answer was that many parents do not want a bunch of "dirty old men" warming up in the same pool as their young impressionable daughters. This took me aback: at the time my daughter was a competitive swimmer and I just could not fathom that anyone could have such a dirty mind that they could imagine anything sexual happening in a crowded warm-up pool.
For the swimmers that have the opportunity to swim with age group teams: was this opportunity offered-up voluntarily by the club, or did you have to campaign the club to allow you to join as a master swimmer?
Parents
Former Member
Funny thing is that I am not terribly worried about keeping up with the kids training. I know which group I would fit into (not the National Quaifiers: they are slightly faster than I for the most part) but the Junior National Team I would keep up with and bury most of them.
Then no worries! The only additional thing I can add that I noticed for myself is that my beating certain kids in competition did not necessarily equate to my being able to do what they do in practices. . . Competing and training USA-S are two different animals IMO.
I am terrified of trying to keep up with the kids doing kick. They do tons of kick around here and that is something I just cannot do.
I'm happy to say this *was* my situation as well. For the first year I trained distance (did a 25K OW), so we did not do much kick. After that I switched to mid distance and became *road kill* for a while (we did LOTS of kicking) until I got sick of almost being lapped all the time. I fixed it and I now have a kick. Still working on making it better but I swim much faster now with a kick. I never learned how to kick as a kid but finally have added it in as an adult. It's awesome. Watch out for kick/ swim sets as well - things like 8x150 with 50 kick/ 100 swim free on fast intervals. Very tough because you must kick fast on the 50 kick and then the real test comes into play during the 100 FR swim (your heart rate is already higher from the kick part) b/c you must then do a 6 beat kick and fast pull on the swim to make that interval! You can really see who can and cannot kick during these test sets. At my USA-S practices, you MUST learn to kick.
If ya can't kick. . . you'll want to quit. . .
. . . the swim community takes a wide berth to avoid dealing with my daughter and I. The silence was deafening back when my daughter would come and train with me in the early mornings when she thought she might still take a run at competing. No one's perfect. I've seen people forgive and forget over time. Sorry that happened to you. Must have been hard on your daughter and you.
Funny thing is that I am not terribly worried about keeping up with the kids training. I know which group I would fit into (not the National Quaifiers: they are slightly faster than I for the most part) but the Junior National Team I would keep up with and bury most of them.
Then no worries! The only additional thing I can add that I noticed for myself is that my beating certain kids in competition did not necessarily equate to my being able to do what they do in practices. . . Competing and training USA-S are two different animals IMO.
I am terrified of trying to keep up with the kids doing kick. They do tons of kick around here and that is something I just cannot do.
I'm happy to say this *was* my situation as well. For the first year I trained distance (did a 25K OW), so we did not do much kick. After that I switched to mid distance and became *road kill* for a while (we did LOTS of kicking) until I got sick of almost being lapped all the time. I fixed it and I now have a kick. Still working on making it better but I swim much faster now with a kick. I never learned how to kick as a kid but finally have added it in as an adult. It's awesome. Watch out for kick/ swim sets as well - things like 8x150 with 50 kick/ 100 swim free on fast intervals. Very tough because you must kick fast on the 50 kick and then the real test comes into play during the 100 FR swim (your heart rate is already higher from the kick part) b/c you must then do a 6 beat kick and fast pull on the swim to make that interval! You can really see who can and cannot kick during these test sets. At my USA-S practices, you MUST learn to kick.
If ya can't kick. . . you'll want to quit. . .
. . . the swim community takes a wide berth to avoid dealing with my daughter and I. The silence was deafening back when my daughter would come and train with me in the early mornings when she thought she might still take a run at competing. No one's perfect. I've seen people forgive and forget over time. Sorry that happened to you. Must have been hard on your daughter and you.
