In an effort to keep swimming interesting throughout the fall and winter, I am thinking about swimming with the Red Tide Masters Swim Team on NYC’s west side (at John Jay College). In the past, I swam with another masters swim team in NYC, but felt that the workouts were really not geared to long distance triathletes (I compete in 70.3 and IM distances). If you have swam (or currently swim) with Red Tide in NYC, any insight would be greatly appreciated. (Note that I also am considering swimming with the Asphalt Green Tri Team; however, the pool is very far from my apartment.) Thank you in advance for your input!
Just an opinion but I have swum with both groups. Red Tide is a “swim team” and is definitely not geared toward triathletes. I found them to be highly unfriendly to newcomers and totally disinterested in the specific needs of triathletes. Workouts are well coached though and if you can find interest in lots of IM work, your swimming may greatly improve with this hard core group. You will also find pressure to compete in swim meets so depending on how you feel about that, it can be a blast or an annoyance. Asphalt Green has both a Masters swim team and a Triathlon team that holds their own swim workouts. The tri team is well coached and relatively friendly for NYC. Sunday morning Tri team swims are 50 meters with lots of lanes. More room to move than Red Tide. AG also has lots of swim clinics and bike/run workouts 7 days a week. So really depends on what you want…Red Tide for hardcore swimmers to get you faster but not a lot of friendship, or AG for a more tri-friendly environment with good comraderie and a better pool. Apples and oranges kind of thing.
If you are a very good swimmer, the other option would be to join the NYAC swim team. Being part of the NYAC swim team provides you with a free club membership. The pool is rarely crowded and 5 or 6 of the team members participate in triathlons as well. The downside is that you do in fact have to participate in some swim meets to “earn” your free membership, but these meets are during the winter. I had a free membership for 15 years, having just relinquished it to focus exclusively on triathlons.
As we used to say re: Red Tide, “not what I would do, but might work for you”. Red Tide is the roadies of the masters swim world; let’s just leave it at that. Chelsea Piers also has a masters team that is both more friendly and has many more triathletes.
I’m a member of the asphalt green masters team and triathlon club.
Love, LOVE the masters team! I truly can’t say enough good things about it. Everyone is very friendly, and the workouts can vary between hardcore and relaxed. We have a lot of triathletes who train with us, also on their own. Lots of clinics, etc.
Plus the pool is the nicest in NYC. I’d say if you can figure out the commute, do it.
Say hi if you do join!
C
Old forum, but I have the same question. I’m wondering if the above sentiment is still the case re: Red Tide geared toward hard core swimmers and less so for triathletes?
I’m moving to NYC full time next week and have been tearing apart the internet trying to figure out my best bet. I’m living in the West Village, so my options for pools (solo, non masters) in the general vicinity are McBurney Y, Equinox Greenwich Ave (3 measly lanes), and Chinatown Y. Chelsea Piers is also in play, but it’s out of the way to a degree. My office is on the West Side as well so it’s definitely the preferred side of town.
As far as I’ve seen online, Red Tide is the only masters team that would work, however, I’m a 1:25/100 freestyle only triathlete who has zero desire to work on my butterfly (actually have no idea how to do it!). I’ve been swimming in Jersey for the past two months with Drew University Masters and it’s been great. I’d love to keep it up with a masters group if I can, but might have to resort back solo workouts if Red Tide is as hard core as it sounds.
Thoughts/suggestions?
The idea is that you want to swim with “hard core swimmers”. Not sure why you’d have issue swimming with a team full of “hard core swimmers”.
I live in NYC and I train with Red Tide. I also have no idea how to swim butterfly, back or breast (and sometimes feel I’m struggling through free) but I have no doubt that swimming with this group has improved my swimming in the short three months I’ve been with them (previously around 27-30 minutes for a 70.3 swim). Yes, we do stroke work but the coaches understand that I’m (and other triathletes who suck at any other stroke) gonna revert to free when whatever stroke we’re doing goes to shit. Regardless, we get in around 4-5k SCM/SCY per session and the majority of that is most always free. I’ve never been to a practice thats been “all back” or “all butterfly”.
If nothing else, you can drop in for a swim to check things out.
Thanks for the note. The other posts from the original thread from back in the day weren’t exactly peachy so I wanted to make sure. I have no problem swimming with a competitive group, I encourage it, I just didn’t want to be the only dude cruising around doing ~100% freestyle.
Guess I’ll see you out there one of these days…
Jamie
I have no experience with Red Tide but I swim with Chelsea Piers masters. It’s been a great group. I started with them 4 months ago and it is the first masters group (or group of any kind) that I have swam with so take that into account. Consistent 1:25/100 over a 4000yd workout would make you one of the faster guys in the medium lane. I am totally hopeless at fly and not fast at back or breast but it all works out ok for the few non-free laps we do. The fast lane guys are mostly “real” swimmers and are good at the other strokes but there are a number of triathletes in the group like me.
I also swim with Red Tide and the posts from 2007 don’t apply to the team today in my experience. Don’t hesitate to stop in for a trial swim to check it out
When I was training for triathlons I spent a fall/winter/spring swimming with red tide and without a doubt it made me a much faster swimmer (went from 1:12/100 to probably 1:00 flat, and I was quite mediocre compared to most of the group). As others have said, it is very much a swim team (and a pretty competitive one). Start in a lane that is too slow for you and get the feel for the workout so you aren’t screwing other people up, then move up to a faster lane once you start to understand the workouts. I didn’t find them to be unfriendly at all, and I think they all respected my dedication regardless of how shitty my butterfly was. Most of the crew shows up to 3+ workouts/week, and you will probably be an outsider unless you are there with some degree of regularity. The weekend workouts at Baruch were particularly good and I had several 8,500-10,000 yard workouts with them. There are several people on the team who focus on open water competition and spring/summer workouts are often geared towards these longer distances which are more applicable to triathlon.
I never went to any of the meets, but there is definitely an emphasis on competition.
Somebody hit the nail on the head saying that it is like training for cycling with roadies. You need to be respectful of the workouts and coaches, but if you are respectful and dedicated, you can get pretty fast swimming with them.
At 1:25/100, you will be in the old peoples lanes (no offense!) but there is nothing wrong with that (that’s where most of the triathletes go) and you can work your way up from there. You say you have no interest in butterfly, but I found that learning new strokes was very beneficial to my freestyle. If your maintain the attitude that you don’t want to learn it, then I don’t think Red Tide is going to work with you, but if you keep an open mind and TRY, you will benefit from it.
I swam with Red Tide for part of the 2007 season, then joined Asphalt Green. I found the Red Tide group to be friendly and accepting of a 1:30/100 swimmer, and there were two lanes that were slower than me. I defenitly got faster with the Red Tide but they didn’t put pressure on me to go to meets. The problem was I had too many memberships: Central Park Track Club, Asphalt Green, Red Tide, Equinox gym, NYRR, Masters and USTA and it just got to be too much. Asphalt Green has good swim workouts and a big pool. I’d look at the schedules and see what fits in best with your training schedule. But the Red Tide guys wont show up at a triathlon and cheer you on.
You say you have no interest in butterfly, but I found that learning new strokes was very beneficial to my freestyle. If your maintain the attitude that you don’t want to learn it, then I don’t think Red Tide is going to work with you, but if you keep an open mind and TRY, you will benefit from it.
+1
It’s a bit easy for me to say since I swam competitively as a kid and learned butterfly early, but I never liked doing it and I sure as hell don’t enjoy it now, but if you force yourself to do it regularly, it gets more manageable and I really think you’ll see overall improvements in your swim fitness/form/speed.
if you are on the west side and don’t mind a longer subway journey, columbia has a good program also
lanes 1 and 2 i would say are around the 1:10 mark at their fastest per 100 down to me in (say) lane 6 of 8 in around 1-30
there are plenty of triathletes swimming, the assistant swim coach to the uni team is a triathlete and runs one of the sessions
very friendly
.