Competitive Progression

My bet is that you'd be competitive right now. For a sprinter, you don't need a ton of yardage to be fast. Training fast probably will help the most (do a fair bit of race pace swimming in your workouts). The 50 free is one of the most competitive races in Masters Swimming (for obvious reasons) but I think you will do quite well. Give it a shot! Most masters swimmers can't train like they did in their youth (especially people in their 30s holding down full-time jobs), so you will be competing against people who also get in to train 3-4 times a week (for the most part). For what it's worth (I'm 36--out of swimming since my junior year of college), it took me about 9 months of swimming, the last six of which were coached workouts with a team, to get myself to a place where I was happy with my swims (faster or almost as fast as I was in HS in 100s, slower in 200s but "competitive"). I train on average 3-4 times a week for about 3200 yards each time. Good luck, and given that 50 free time I'm glad you're (for the most part) not in my age group!

Do My curiosities are: - How long from getting started did it take to become competitive again. Competitive meaning you aren't necessarily breaking records, but are winning your age group a reasonable amount of time and when not winning, still finishing with the pack. By the way, that's an extremely aggressive definition of "competitive". I wouldn't necessarily be expecting to break records or win your age group. There are many extremely talented swimmers out there. I think the record for the 50 free in your age group is about 20.15 (soon to be 20.08) so if that's what it takes to be competitive, you've set a high bar for yourself. The goal I would set, if I were you (and the goal I set for myself), is to try to get as close as possible to my personal best times from my youth. Don't worry so much what other people are doing!

you might look through my old blog it has workouts from Mar 2005 - Sep 2008 you might want to follow Dec 2007 - June 2008 I made made great improvements that season Sep 08 - Dec 08 in this blog shows all the training I did for my 2008 SCM Season

Long Post, sorry!: David, I don’t know if I qualify, but I’m in the same place as you at this point. I'm 32 now, started swimming at the age of 6 on a team and quit when I was 19. I was never a Jr. or Sr. national qualifier, but I was close. I would usually place fairly high at the Zones meets. I was a distance swimmer and did a lot of over distance training. Unfortunately I never learned proper stoke technique until I was 17 years old. By that time I was pretty burned out already and only swam for two more years half heartedly. I still wonder to this day how fast I could have been. Anyways, I started to gain a lot of weight (down 20 lbs now!) and my cholesterol is high so I decided to get back into swimming for health reasons. I’ve been swimming since February and am having fun working out on my own. I swim 3 times a week, 1 hour a night, usually about 3,000 yards per workout. Now I probably am not as serious as some, but I decided to sign up for a meet just to see where I’m at. There wasn't any masters meets in the Pacific North West this summer that I could attend. In fact I only found two, both in Oregon, but I was camping with the family both of those weekends. One of our local PNS teams was having a meet this past weekend and the registration form said I didn’t have to be registered with PNS as long as I completed the waiver from. I e-mailed the meet director and he said he would be glad to have me swim in the meet. Just this past weekend I did a 50M free, 100M free, 100M fly, and 400M free just for fun. I was the oldest one there by a few years (I’m 32, the oldest male was 17 I think…) and I got beet in my 400M free heat by a 15 year old girl! My splits in the 100 fly were horrible, I was out way too fast, but I still got 2nd place over all! I saw a few guys I used to swim with, they are now coaching for local clubs. It was fun to swim a meet again, but I don’t know if I will have time to train like I used to as a kid, but to be able to get some times for fun was great. I’m going to continue my three times a week for a while and might add some running and weights as time permits. I’m going to try and swim one or two short courses meets this year and maybe even PNS Champs. If you are serious about working out and training hard again, I’d look for a local master’s team or US Swimming team that would let you work out with them. Most teams would be glad to have a person with your talent and would welcome you to a team. I’ve had one of the local master’s teams ask me to swim with them, but I just don’t have as much time as I would like to spend swimming with a wife and two kids. It would be easier to train with a team because you would have others around you and a coach to motivate you. You may never be as fast as you were as a kid, but it is fun to get out there and compete. You never know, look at Dara Torres, maybe at 33 you will put up some of the fastest times of your life. But you should know: workouts seems to hurt a lot more now than is used to and from one night to the next, I’m a lot more tired then I used to be. I’d guess it would take a few years for me to get back to where I was as a kid, if I trained for it, but I don’t plan on being that fast. Maybe in the sprint events, since I was always a distance swimmer in the past, but there is no way I’ll ever get back to my mile times, at least not until my kids move out and I have more time to train (which won’t be for 16 years!). I hope this helps. Don’t jump in and expect to be as fast as you once were, it will take a lot of work and dedication, but if you work at it, I’m sure you can get there! -Gabe

I appreciate the perspective. I guess my point is I don't want to pay for meet registration and take up a weekend to finish dead last every time. I want to train to the point where at least I am keeping up with the pack and placing in the top half. I think I would be de-motivated if every meet I was last by a huge margin, so I am hoping to motivate myself in training first and go into the first meet with a reasonable feeling of accomplishment. The bizarre thing is that I really dont care about "winning". The medals at this age really are not what motivates me, it's more about me feeling like I have paid my dues during training. I don't want to swim for a few years only to get the sense that I was wasting time "slacking off" or "doing just enough". Going to meets and placing is just confirmation and motivation that I am putting in a good effort. Masters coaches dont yell and scream when you aren't going as fast as you should. Ahh the good old days. :P Also, I did do a 50 meters free in a meet about 9 months ago (after training for 1 month), my time was 25:42. I don't know if I have really improved much because up till now I have been off and on and my effort level has been more maintenance mode. Only you can tell if you think you've been slacking off too much in practice, but a 25:42 (SCM), as I'm sure you know, is already more than competitive. If you're finishing "dead last" dropping that kind of time, then there are a number of extremely talented swimmers in your aread. I'm no longer really sure I understand your question... If you're asking "how long will it take for me to feel, in my own mind, that I'm well-trained for a meet" then I don't think anybody (but you) can answer that question. Just bear in mind that most people don't train more than a few days a week, and I'm sure most slack off to some extent.

Well the particular meet only had 2 other swimmers in it for Masters for all of my events and both finished ahead of me. I wasn't far behind (within a second or so), so it was okay. I was sort of assuming that bigger meets would have more swimmers and more faster swimmers. I agree I have to answer the part about "feeling" when I was well trained myself. My goal in this thread was to see examples of successful master's swimmers and how they progressed torwards their goals. If I read about many swimmers doing X, then I would try to emulate X, if I saw a wide variation of what worked, then I would just try to adapt the various styles. Mostly I just didn't want my mantra to be something as simple as "workout any spare moment you have." Got it! Good luck. You swam against some fast people, but your age group does seem to have a bunch of those. But still, you're no question about it fast too. Definitely take a look at the blogs of people like Ande. He's super-dedicated and thinks very hard about his training. He also trains primarily for sprinting, so you can see what he does. He does modify the coached workouts fairly frequently, if I recall. If you don't want to do that, maybe you can ask the coach if s/he can time you on some 50 and 25 sprints at the end.

By the way, that's an extremely aggressive definition of "competitive". I wouldn't necessarily be expecting to break records or win your age group. There are many extremely talented swimmers out there. I think the record for the 50 free in your age group is about 20.15 (soon to be 20.08) so if that's what it takes to be competitive, you've set a high bar for yourself. The goal I would set, if I were you (and the goal I set for myself), is to try to get as close as possible to my personal best times from my youth. Don't worry so much what other people are doing! I appreciate the perspective. I guess my point is I don't want to pay for meet registration and take up a weekend to finish dead last every time. I want to train to the point where at least I am keeping up with the pack and placing in the top half. I think I would be de-motivated if every meet I was last by a huge margin, so I am hoping to motivate myself in training first and go into the first meet with a reasonable feeling of accomplishment. The bizarre thing is that I really dont care about "winning". The medals at this age really are not what motivates me, it's more about me feeling like I have paid my dues during training. I don't want to swim for a few years only to get the sense that I was wasting time "slacking off" or "doing just enough". Going to meets and placing is just confirmation and motivation that I am putting in a good effort. Masters coaches dont yell and scream when you aren't going as fast as you should. Ahh the good old days. :P Also, I did do a 50 YARDS (not meters, edited, sorry for the typo!) free in a meet about 9 months ago (after training for 1 month), my time was 25:42. I don't know if I have really improved much because up till now I have been off and on and my effort level has been more maintenance mode.

I went from being really fat and "starting from scratch out of shape" in late 2007 to recently making, although preliminary, getting my first SCY Top Ten in my age group. I do more distance stuff since I have no sprinting ability. When I got back into training, I started only doing 1500 yds, 4x week. Then, got to 3X, Then, moved to 4K 5 or 6 times a week. Now, I do about 5K 6x a week with an occasional age group practice thrown in there. Some weeks, I do 7 days but I will do a recovery day. Here are some examples of my progression. 200 SCY fly 2008-2:40 2009-2:10(20 minutes after a 400 IM) 400 SCY IM 2008-5:28 2009-4:44.95 200 *** 2008-2:51 2009-2:31.99

you might look through my old blog it has workouts from Mar 2005 - Sep 2008 you might want to follow Dec 2007 - June 2008 I made made great improvements that season Sep 08 - Dec 08 in this blog shows all the training I did for my 2008 SCM Season Cool, I had seen a lot of posts by you, but didnt know about your blog. I will look through it!

Long Post, sorry!: You never know, look at Dara Torres, maybe at 33 you will put up some of the fastest times of your life. But you should know: workouts seems to hurt a lot more now than is used to and from one night to the next, I’m a lot more tired then I used to be. I hope this helps. Don’t jump in and expect to be as fast as you once were, it will take a lot of work and dedication, but if you work at it, I’m sure you can get there! -Gabe Thanks for the encouragement. I actually do swim with a coached Master's team here in the Atlanta area. I don't think I would ever do 3000m+ workouts without a coach. And I agree that workouts hurt more, I am just trying to grin and bear it right. Would be great to be a male version of Dara Torres at 41, but I bet her training schedule is INSANE!