I was a little anxious about the skill levels in the pool as well. My fears were completely absolved the first day, as there was several swimmers in my skill level, including a few other newbie triathletes like myself. For our group, the lanes were sorted from one end of the pool to the other in terms of speed, allowing you to seed yourself just like you might at a mass swim start. At the beginning, my lane was the turtle lane, with few flip turns and a perfectly reasonable pace; I've managed to upgrade a few lanes in my time with the club, hooray!

The hardest part of it ended up being the distances covered in the pool per workout. Totally unacheivable at the beginning of the season, now I'm finishing the posted workouts 9 times out of 10.

One of my limiters now in the swimming department is actually sight-breathing. An Open Water / Tri skill that wasn't ever mentioned during my master's sessions. But that is certainly something I can develop on my own.

As sort of a special treat, our coaches broke out the underwater camera, and I now have footage of myself in the pool on DVD. A very valuable resource that would be difficult to obtain outside of this environment. Its a little embarassing to watch now, since I've improve a great deal since it was taken, and I just sort of cringe at my appearance.

As far as my perfomance in Triathlons go now, I have the opposite problem that you have. Since I joined Master's Swimming, and left the Biking and Running to do on my own, and thus a little neglected, I've become a relatively stronger swimmer than biker or runner. I'm hoping to fix that this year by joining a Triathlon Club. Combines almost the same swimming group (Same time in the pool some days), with Spinning groups and weekly coached brick workouts. Eventually I'll train on my own, but since I'm kind of just starting out, I think the group will be helpful.