Joining a Swim Team as an Adult

Greetings!

Welcome to my Swimming blog.

I’m a 35 year old Canadian female, who just joined a Masters swim team in my area, and had the first workout this morning.

Masters swimming, for those unfamiliar, is simply “adult” swimming.  Very often it’s labelled “Recreational” but there is a definite Competitive component in it (right up to International Masters competitions with thousands of competitors) if you enjoy that type of thing.  And I do :)

I joined Masters swimming, however, not for the Competitive part.  I joined it because I recognize that good Cardiovascular heath is of a benefit to me in life, and other sports I have recently been involved with were not strong at helping build good Cardio – they were good for flexibility and strength, but not Cardio.

So, I decided to look up the closest Masters swim club in my area, and made some calls a month ago, and today I attended my first workout.

The First Workout

The pool we’re at is a temporary location while our pool is under maintenance.  In a few weeks we’ll move over to the pool where the club normally works out for the rest of the season, which spans from September to July.

It’s a 25m pool with 5 lanes, and there were about 25 people who showed up, plus two coaches.

With Lane 1 being the fastest swimmers, and the last 2 lanes getting a lesser warmup than the first three lanes, I decided to start my time with this club in Lane 4.

I’ve done this Masters swim thing recently enough to remember what goes on, and be able to fall into line with the whole order of the workout easily enough… but I can see how it might be confusing to a complete newbie, so if you’re new, ask me some questions if you wish!

The water was warm, which was a relief to me, although probably not that great for the “in-shape” swimmers who wanted to have a good workout.  I’m not in good enough shape to handle cold water yet, and the last Masters experience I had was in a pool that was brought down to very cold temperatures for major swim events semi-regularly.  6 am and icy cold water don’t create motivation in me!

Round and Round

Ever wonder why there’s lines on the bottom of the pool?

It’s traffic lines for lane swimmers.

Always stay on the right of the line, and you’ll be fine.  You won’t knock heads or bodies with the person coming the other way, and we can stack many swimmers in the same swimming space quite efficiently with this system.

It’s a core part of keeping order in a swim team setting, and was the skill I thought about a lot this morning.

Summary Of Swim

The water being warm made it easy to get started.  I let everyone go first and I focused on trying to pace myself behind the person in front of me, no matter how slow they were.

Unfortunately, the first couple of people were too slow and I really struggled to stay back.  Eventually in time during the warm-up, they let me pass, and I settled in behind the two fastest people in the lane (we had 5).

It felt good!  My lungs weren’t taxed, my arms and legs were doing okay, although my arms were getting a small inkling that this would be a lot of work for them over time…

But then…

Nausea.

I tried to wait it out, but it didn’t work.  I left the deck for a short time at one point in order to be sick, but when I came back and swam another 50m it was clear the nausea wasn’t gone, so I rested for another 5 minutes, and started to get cold in the water.  Another lazy 50m and another 5 min rest, and I finally gave up for the day and ended my workout.

I think I swam 500m in total.

Fixing The Problem

I think my problem was simply this:

I’m not used to working out at 6 AM.

I’m not used to hydrating and feeding myself for a 6 AM workout.

Give me a 6:30 PM workout and I have my eating and drinking schedule all worked out, but working out less than an hour after I wake up is a different scenario entirely.

So, besides deciding to be sure to drink more water before bed, I looked some things up online, and landed on this Breakfast and Recovery Strategies article for swimmers that gave me some ideas for feeding myself with this type of workout schedule.

And oh joy!  It suggests Graham Crackers!  Those are the best :)

Next Workout

Friday, 6 AM.

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