Running mom wrote:
C) your head should be looking down at the bottom of the pool (to me this is the easiest to fix- but when I swim in a group I usually watch the feet of the person in front of me to make sure I am not too close or too far away... should I not do that?)
I started doing Masters 3 months ago, and I go 5 times a week. This would be my advice (others may have a different opinion):
I don't do flip-turns (haven't learned), so I use my split second at the wall to see if I'm catching up, or losing ground to the person in front of me. Aside from that I never* look up.
Having said that, if you feel you keep catching up to people, so much that you need to keep looking up to watch their feet, maybe you should ask them to move ahead of them, or lead that lane, or move up a lane.
*There is this lady at our masters that refuses to move down to a slower lane, but she just can't hang-on in our lane. When we are doing hard 100s, she just can't finish them, and she'll switch to backstroke and move very slowly; if I am behind her I will be looking up a few times because I will catch up to her. The first few times, I made contact with her, and she got all pissy at me, even gave me the finger.