Masters Swimming

It's Monday and it's my favorite day of the week. I get a ton of work done early then I head to masters swimming at noon for whatever Hux (Swim coach) has in store. Today it was a tasty morsel of 4,100 yards in a set that got harder the longer you were in the pool. I love masters when Hux is on deck. The thing about masters is everyone comes to the pool with a different mindset. Some come to work, some come to cruise while others come for the pure social connection. My mindset is always the same, I'm there to work. I swim 3 days a week and I try to make each one count. As I was preparing to enter the water a guy slid into the lane and said something to the fact "I hope this is the easy lane, I really want to go easy today". I kind of laughed and said "it's the lane that it is". You see masters is always broken up into time. Each lane correlates to a given send off time based on 100 yards. On Monday I lead the lane and right now I can lead the 1:35 lane. So I was entering the 1:35 lane and he knew full well that it was the 1:35 lane. If swimming on 1:35 is easy for you then this is the easy lane. We started the workout and all was relatively calm. The main set started with a 500 yard swim of 100 moderate, 200 easy and 200 fast. Then it was a crazy set that had 100 moderate on base followed by ascending distances (fast) on base plus 10 seconds. This is not a hard workout. It's a quality work out. You get to go hard knowing there is lot's of rest at the end. So I start on the first 100 moderate. I'll admit that it takes me time to get into a groove and I realized at the 50 I was going slightly fast. I hit the wall and had just over 10 seconds rest before a fast 50. Then it was another 100 moderate followed by a fast 100. By the end of the second 100 moderate I was swimming alone. The guy moved to the faster lane so he could swim easier. The more swimmers in the lane the easier the swimming (bigger the draft) and since he was leaving on feet (Mine or the same in the next lane) instead of after 5 seconds it was way easier. I, realizing I swam the first 100 too fast corrected and for the rest of the day hit every 100 at 1:30 giving me 5 seconds rest. There was a point where I had finished a fast 150 and had lots of time to rest. (Base plus 10) It was close to 25 seconds of  rest (I was told to swim fast). The guy is on the pool deck complaining to a girl who was told to swim with me that I take the moderate too fast and essentially good luck swimming with me.

Dude, I was leading the lane. You were not. You pick the lane you are going to swim in, self seed your position in the lane and then it's up to you to pace your swim. I chose to lead because I wanted to work hard. You didn't have to swim my workout you only had to swim to the interval given. That's the basics of masters swimming. The girl, she jumped in, got in step with the workout and said at the end "That was great".

It's a good life...