Found out the identity of one of the two guys working out in the next lane. Turns out them holding 1:10/100m LCM for a long interval last week was actually pretty easy for them. They were nice enough to let me have one of the two LCM lanes this morning.
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Whoa! That’s real cool.
The other guy, I was told by their on-deck coach (who apparently is his coach now), is a member of the Colombian National Team (they trained together in North Jersey).
I have washcloths with more fabric than the swim suits they were wearing.
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quality swimmer.
so what is the set up at your pool? a few LCM lanes all the time and the rest SCY?
Two lcm and four adjacent scy. I never have to share a lane.
As a former (and current AG) flier, I have followed his career at Cal and when he pitches up for the US internationally. He is a super solid top end butterflier, but often just gets touched out in big meets. What kind of fly work does he do at your pool, if any? And more importantly, how have you been swimming these days? You broke onto the scene as an AOS and crushed dreams in your AG’s for awhile there, you still competing, or just swimming for shits and giggles….Are you close to 70 yet? Your old sprint times age graded now would be national if not world class…
During the limited observation time I had, they seem to be doing a lot of kicking. Fins and kickboards. Some low-tempo paddle work. I don’t think I saw any fly swimming at all! Of course, what I saw was probably only their warmup. I wanted to peek at the workout they had on a kickboard, but I didn’t want to interfere.
I only swim to not become a scrawny upper-body cyclist. Two or three times per week, 1500m at most at a time. My problem (well, one of many) is that I like to swim hard (can’t say fast!), so without a goal or a planned workout I usually go “yeah, that’ll do” after a short while. I swim for exercise, not for training. There’s a chance I will get back into triathlons after ten years off, but I need to rehab a bad knee. Now I find that I may have a stress fracture in a fibula. MRI tomorrow.
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mont is giving you the shout out to start doing some masters.
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I posted about my best next lane over in 2012 or 2013. It was pretty cool, but I cannot figure out how to search through the history to find it.
I was swimming on a Sunday afternoon and a local talent female was just smoking 50M sprints from a push. She was going 28s in LCM. I didn’t say her name because she was just 15 or so years old, but I posted her initials: SM.
It was simone manuel.
The more recent one was taking my son to a workout, going into the stands after a long run to watch the last 40 minutes of practice only to see Katie was in the lane next to him.
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i shared a lane with paul palmer a few years back, a big time freestyler from the 90s. just in open swim and we happened to be sharing the lane. i said to him, you look like youve done a bit of swimming in your time, and he said, a long time ago with a bit of an understated humour
An assistant coach at U of TN back during Melvin Stewart’s heyday (1989-93) told me that every day after the P.M. practice, he would grab a kickboard and do 20 x 100 scy fly kick on 1:10. This was after two 7-8000 yd workouts already done that day. Also, there is a thread on here somewhere wherein various STers related their interactions with him. One of the responses was that the STer and his buddy were swimming one day in Charlotte, NC, and Melvin’s coach asks he could join them, said he “just wanted to kick 2000 before his workout.” Obv Stewart thought that his kick was one of the keys to his stroke. 
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Years ago when my son was swimming I was an official. One day I was asked to “train” an official in training. During breaks and small talk it came out he was a past world record holder and Olympic gold medalist. He asked me not to say anything as he didn’t want the kids to know and potentially treat his daughter differently.
Still cracks me up to think I signed his “training” compliance.
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A few months ago I was swimming early morning and there was this kid and his mom doing laps in the same lane. The kid was maybe 10 or 11, and was absolutely flying.
I started talking to his mom and she started rattling off his accomplishments: fastest kid in the province at various events and such. It was pretty humbling to be passed by a kid not even through puberty yet.
There was a guy on my masters team who was a few years removed from being an alternate on the Olympic team. The guy was effortlessly blazing fast. And to think he still wasn’t fast enough to firmly crack our national team, which isn’t even really a swimming super power.
World class athletes really are a different breed.
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