Herbert wrote:
In my Master group I am surely the weakest link but everyone is super supportive. And there are some great swimmers in that group. They understand why I want to swim mostly with paddles and pull buoy and support it and make my sets accordingly. I have come down from averaging 1:55 p 100y to now swimming around 1:36 p 100 yard average for the workout, but currently no more than 2,400.
The other day my workout was done at 2200 and it was time to warm down. But my lane neighbor Joe who was a superb swimmer in 1980 (2:04 200 fly) and is now a bit heavy can still swim well and he said. “Herbert we now swim 3x100 at 1:30 pace with a very short break.” I told him that in my last set that I included a ladder of 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 / 75 / 50 / 25 that I had to fight very hard to get to 1.35. I don’t do flip turns and usually fade towards the end. :-(
But he said he would pace me and jumped into my lane and I indeed swam 1:27 / 1:30 / 1:30.
That was a victory to me :-)
This is the cool think about a technical sport like swimming that many of us did not do in our youth. We can still have victories....this week I set PB's in three swim events....200 IM, 400 IM, 200 fly.....the thing is, this week was the first time in my life that I timed 400IM and 200 fly and January was the first time in my life I 'raced' a 200 IM. So we can grab personal victories no matter how slow we are (for the record, they were 3:40 for 200 IM, 7:37 for 400IM, 3:31 for 200 fly)....fast for me, sloooooooow for more 10 year old age grouper swimmers.