After much cajoling by my podcast partner Josh, much whining and procrastination by me and coach Kelly deciding to put it up on Training Peaks this week, I finally went to my first masters swim class. At 5:30 a.m. In the morning.
Josh is way too smily for 5:10 a.m.
So the short answer is that everyone who told me this would be a really good idea was right. I got 2,100 yards in before 7 a.m. and it went a lot faster than my solo swim workouts go. The masters group at Swim MAC at Charlotte Latin was very nice and the coach was also nice and helpful. She didn't try to overload me with tips, offering just one helpful piece of advice: try to keep my body centered on an axis when I rotate, "like a chicken on a spit." So for the rest of class, I tried to focus on being a good rotisserie chicken and not swaying my upper or lower body from side to side on rotation.
I did some swimming this year, but not a lot so I was relieved to discover that I'm pretty much in the same place as last year. I was 1:03 for 50 yards all out and main sets were around 2:07-2:18/100 yds depending on effort. I'm still not primed to win the Roka first out of the water award at Kona but I still have my base from 2016 and, with masters swim class twice a week, I can build on that for Tremblant 70.3 in June.
I have a bit more to say in a later post about the specific motivation for getting myself out of bed at 4:25 a.m. For now, suffice it to say that when you try to help someone, and your motivation to help them is from a good and genuine place, you end up really helping yourself. More on that, probably much more, a little bit later.