The kids had only been out of the water for about a month when we switched over to the elite club. Yet they got put in the low-end, beginner part of the program at first. They found themselves swimming very long sets for warm up, let alone the actual swim practice. It was a good solid 2 hours of swim practice, even when we got there late, which was most of the time.

Slowly, my daughter worked her way up to the intermediate group, swimming with her good friend. My son’s friends never really stuck with the transition to the new team. His progress was slower than his sister’s.

I asked the coach what the children needed to do to improve. He told me they needed to swim a minimum of 5 days a week. I was lucky if I could get them there three times a week–four if I was really pushing. The serious kids were in the pool twice a day on week days, but I knew better than to try to get the kids in the pool before 7 AM.

They didn’t get times to qualify for the state and national meets. And this club didn’t belong to the age group league. But an influx of more inexperienced swimmers meant there were lots of kids in competitive swimming that couldn’t go to meets. A shaky alliance was made with our old club, and our kids were able to compete in the age group meets.

Here’s where their hard work began to pay off. . .
(to be continued)

I’m now on a swimming every other week schedule. This has more to do with hair than with anything else. Long story, which I will write here later, I promise. Suffice it to say that I’m getting my swimming in the best possible time slot right now.

I’m still increasing my yardage by 100 every time I swim. I’m also timing my IMs with my cool triathlete watch. So here’s my stats for today.

Last time I swam, I swam 1000 yards, so today I planned to swim 1100. I started out like usual, swimming a 50 free. That usually exhausts me, and I follow it up with a 50 back, but today, I swam another 50 free after a brief rest. Then I swam 100 back, and 100 breast. This is usually the point where I do a ‘cool down’ stroke to catch my breath. Not today! I jumped right into the meat of my workout, my 100 IM. I timed myself and came in at 2:59.01. The last time I swam the IM, I came in at 2:57.77, so I was a little disappointed about the slowdown, but I was also swimming this intense 100 straight on the heels of a real stroke, rather than my usual elementary backstroke, so I was still feeling good.

I started to swim a full 100 elementary back stroke, when I found that I didn’t need that much recovery after swimming a 50. So I went right to what I call IM splits; I will swim half an IM, 25 fly, 25 back, and then swim 50 elementary back. After I finished swimming 25 breast, 25 free, and 50 elementary, I repeated my IM splits. By this point, I was in my 900 yard set. I decided to work on flip turns, so I swam 25 free, 25 back, 25 free, 25 back. My flip turns were horrible and embarrassing, though, and took enough out of me to encourage me to do a length of cool down, so I swam 50 elementary at this point.

Revived, I swam 50 breast following the 50 elementary back, and I finished my set with 25 free, 25 back, 25 free, 25 back, minus the flip turns. I’ll have to work on them next time. When I got home and calculated up what I swam, I came up with 1150! I had no idea I was overshooting the mark in my attempt to cut down on the cool down stroke. I was very pleased with the workout overall. I hope to build up my stamina to the point where I’m no longer swimming cool down laps. Next session, 1200!

It was the summer time when the kids’ swim coach gathered together the most promising swimmers and encouraged them to sign up with the more elite swim team, the one he’d come from.

Then he dropped the bomb that he was moving to Korea. “I don’t know if you knew, but my Mom’s from Korea,” he informed us. I was like, duh. “And I’m moving there to be with her family,” he finished.

We didn’t move to the other team. Our team met close to our home, and I have attitude about change. And it just so happened that we were so busy that fall that we only had like 1 day available for swimming. So we started at our club, which hired a few young women, graduates of the swim club, to coach. We’d been to maybe two practices when the school closed the pool for repairs.

The break was kind of welcome for a minute. I mean, we were busy. But then the repairs dragged on. And I started hearing rumors that many of those promising swimmers had joined the other club. Ultimately, it was the kids’ friends that made the decision easier. We switched to the elite club so the kids could swim with their friends.

The new team, was no joke. Both kids were put in a remedial lane until they could build up their stamina. They were swimming 300 yards for warm-up. And it turned out that they didn’t swim in the age group competitions we were used to; they were a USA team, going for state and national meets.

The kids felt like they were thrown out of the frying pan into the fire. . .
(to be continued. . .)