Masters: the best way to get faster

Tri clubs are great. Every now and then we're lucky enough to find a good tri club locally, like Southern California's great clubs: the San Diego Tri Club; Inland Inferno; the Orange County group that has gone by various names, but when I and a half dozen other people founded it we called it the"Your Name Here" Triathlon Club; and the new L.A. Tri Club, formerly Triathlete Zombies. Then there are some of the other great clubs around the country, St. Pete Mad Dogs perhaps the chief among them.

But if I had to choose, I'd say becoming a member of a masters swim team is even more important than being part of a tri club. Let's face it, most of us come from a land-based athletic background, if we have any athletic background at all. Our problem is The Deep. The Abyss. Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water… you became a triathlete. Now it's not a question of playing around in the shallow end or making mud pies on the seashore. Now you're being asked to swim waaaaay out there, and then to make it all the way back.

But that's not the worst of it. It's not the safety so much (we all have to go sometime). It's the humiliation of having these great muscles, powerful lungs, 5-percent body fat — hey, you've got more mitochondria in your little finger than most people have in all eight quadracep muscles — but your swim stroke is reminiscent of a giraffe having a seizure.

What to do? Thankfully, swimmers have made it easier for you. Enter U.S. Masters Swimming.

Forty-six swimmers took part in the first-ever Masters Nationals swim meet in Amarillo, Texas in 1970. U.S. Masters is now celebrating its 30th anniversary, and has 37,000 registered members. This is separate from U.S. Swimming, which is the national governing body for swimming as so designated by the U.S.O.C. and F.I.N.A., swimming's world governing body.

U.S. Masters Swimming is devoted to the needs of the adult swimmer, and while it sanctions swim meets and national championships, the group does not eschew the recreational or novice swimmer. This makes your local masters swim club the natural solution for a triathlete hoping to get better. Indeed, triathlon has been a boon to U.S. Masters. There is no telling how many triathletes make up the total membership of U.S. Masters, but it is a good chunk. I've seen masters swim teams in which triathletes make up the the majority of the club membership.

There are two good websites for finding out about masters swimming, U.S. Masters own website, and another, more rustic, site called Swimgold. You may also find out about a local masters club in your area by calling your city or county parks and recreation department.

Two words of caution. First, some swim teams are more "triathlete friendly" than others. By this, I don't mean that any masters team has been unfriendly to triathletes, but that some teams cater more to triathletes than others. You may find that there is a choice of masters programs in your area, and in such case you might want to visit each option before choosing a home.

Second, many masters swimmers rely only on this program, and these workouts, for their fitness. You've got other workouts to manage. So don't spend all your quality time in the pool, and I'm using "quality" in the technical sense. Don't do five high-heartrate workouts in the pool every week (see Slowtwitch articles on overtraining, specifically high-heartrate workouts).

While there are always impediments to trying something new, especially involving new, unfamiliar social settings, do not think you can make progress in the pool any better, or even as well, swimming by yourself. Yes, masters swimmers do other, "unimportant," strokes. True, they aren't triathletes and don't understand your very special important needs. Okay, you might occasionally run into the snotty pool queen, or the macho win-every-workout god of the pectorals. But if you want to get faster in the water, U.S. Masters is your ticket, and the large majority of them will be very happy to welcome another spastic giraffe to the club.