Founders Park pool in Islamorada, Fla., is a 50-meter oasis of fresh water flanked by the turquoise Gulf of Mexico, a rock’s throw to the west, and the white-capped Atlantic, a quarter-mile to the east.
This self-proclaimed “sport-fishing capital of the world” is as close as I’ve come to finding aquatic paradise. I’m just trying my best not to, in the parlance of our sport, die here.
A four-time Olympic gold medalist, Jon Olsen, my instructor at the Race Club Swim Camp, has other ideas. “Go!” he says, clicking his stopwatch. Thus begins the last of 6x150-meter fast swims separated by 20 seconds of rest. Push off, streamline, glide, explosive kick, breakout, high-elbow catch, pull, recovery: with each facet of my newly refined freestyle technique, I try to stay focused on the minutiae Olsen has taught me.
Focus, alas, is becoming impossible. Lactate, the “make it burn” juice so familiar to competitive swimmers, is rushing through my bloodstream. My arms and legs are fast turning to stone, precisely my affable mentor’s intention. In the face of cognitive collapse and myofibril failure, will the new “muscle memory” hold? Or will I fall victim to muscle amnesia and beat a thrashing retreat to the familiar flaws I’ve come here to correct?
Since the Race Club was founded — in 2003 by Gary Hall Jr. and his father, Gary Hall Sr. (the only father-and-son duo to compete in three Olympics each) — ranks of us rank amateurs have flocked here in the hope of finding lasting improvement. Attendees have included middle-aged runners and cyclists whose goal of completing an Ironman had been thwarted by an inability to swim without floaties. Kids as young as 8 have come, too, bringing families in tow for a vacation in the Keys.
The most common species of camper seems to be masters swimmers, adults like myself who have become addicted to the way regular workouts make us feel. As is the case with recreational golfers, an amateur swimmer’s intrinsic abilities bear little relation to a willingness to invest in improvement. Take the fellow swimming next to me, a 29-year-old Ãbermensch from Germany whose strokes look unimprovable. This is his second pilgrimage to the Race Club. He’s hoping Olsen’s genius for stroke analysis and biomechanical tweaking will let him place higher at — maybe even win — the upcoming European Masters Championships.
I, by contrast, am a 54-year-old Untermensch from Pittsburgh, an old doggy hoping to master a new paddle to save my rotator cuffs, which have become so infirm that I’ve given up the butterfly and the backstroke. I now concentrate only on freestyle — my best hope for placing in the top 10 in the world rankings next summer when I “age up” to the 55-to-59 bracket.
To date, the best I’ve ever placed is fourth — in the 200- and 400-meter freestyle — which happened the last time I aged up, five years ago, to the 50-to-54 bracket. My only realistic hope for ever placing first is outliving the competition and winning in the 100-to-104 age bracket. This might seem like a joke, but it truly is my long-term goal. The only way I can accomplish it is to stay healthy. Hence my pilgrimage to the Race Club.
“Shoulders are our most priceless commodities,” Olsen, 38, tells me as we review my “before” underwater video on his laptop. “Swimming with the correct technique will take pressure off your shoulder joints and hopefully help you avoid the career-ending injuries we see in lots of swimmers.”
The key to doing this, he explains, is to shift the heavy lifting from my arms to my core muscles. The best swimmers are able to coordinate their kick, torso rotation and arm pulls to harness a much more powerful, and efficient, propulsion than those who rely on arm strength alone.
Truth be known, I’ve been reading articles on “core recruitment” for years now, but I’ve never been able to translate the words to the water. Moreover, a dispiriting series of salsa-dancing lessons last fall left me convinced that a guy with my spectacular lack of body awareness probably never will.
This self-proclaimed “sport-fishing capital of the world” is as close as I’ve come to finding aquatic paradise. I’m just trying my best not to, in the parlance of our sport, die here.
A four-time Olympic gold medalist, Jon Olsen, my instructor at the Race Club Swim Camp, has other ideas. “Go!” he says, clicking his stopwatch. Thus begins the last of 6x150-meter fast swims separated by 20 seconds of rest. Push off, streamline, glide, explosive kick, breakout, high-elbow catch, pull, recovery: with each facet of my newly refined freestyle technique, I try to stay focused on the minutiae Olsen has taught me.
Focus, alas, is becoming impossible. Lactate, the “make it burn” juice so familiar to competitive swimmers, is rushing through my bloodstream. My arms and legs are fast turning to stone, precisely my affable mentor’s intention. In the face of cognitive collapse and myofibril failure, will the new “muscle memory” hold? Or will I fall victim to muscle amnesia and beat a thrashing retreat to the familiar flaws I’ve come here to correct?
Since the Race Club was founded — in 2003 by Gary Hall Jr. and his father, Gary Hall Sr. (the only father-and-son duo to compete in three Olympics each) — ranks of us rank amateurs have flocked here in the hope of finding lasting improvement. Attendees have included middle-aged runners and cyclists whose goal of completing an Ironman had been thwarted by an inability to swim without floaties. Kids as young as 8 have come, too, bringing families in tow for a vacation in the Keys.
The most common species of camper seems to be masters swimmers, adults like myself who have become addicted to the way regular workouts make us feel. As is the case with recreational golfers, an amateur swimmer’s intrinsic abilities bear little relation to a willingness to invest in improvement. Take the fellow swimming next to me, a 29-year-old Ãbermensch from Germany whose strokes look unimprovable. This is his second pilgrimage to the Race Club. He’s hoping Olsen’s genius for stroke analysis and biomechanical tweaking will let him place higher at — maybe even win — the upcoming European Masters Championships.
I, by contrast, am a 54-year-old Untermensch from Pittsburgh, an old doggy hoping to master a new paddle to save my rotator cuffs, which have become so infirm that I’ve given up the butterfly and the backstroke. I now concentrate only on freestyle — my best hope for placing in the top 10 in the world rankings next summer when I “age up” to the 55-to-59 bracket.
To date, the best I’ve ever placed is fourth — in the 200- and 400-meter freestyle — which happened the last time I aged up, five years ago, to the 50-to-54 bracket. My only realistic hope for ever placing first is outliving the competition and winning in the 100-to-104 age bracket. This might seem like a joke, but it truly is my long-term goal. The only way I can accomplish it is to stay healthy. Hence my pilgrimage to the Race Club.
“Shoulders are our most priceless commodities,” Olsen, 38, tells me as we review my “before” underwater video on his laptop. “Swimming with the correct technique will take pressure off your shoulder joints and hopefully help you avoid the career-ending injuries we see in lots of swimmers.”
The key to doing this, he explains, is to shift the heavy lifting from my arms to my core muscles. The best swimmers are able to coordinate their kick, torso rotation and arm pulls to harness a much more powerful, and efficient, propulsion than those who rely on arm strength alone.
Truth be known, I’ve been reading articles on “core recruitment” for years now, but I’ve never been able to translate the words to the water. Moreover, a dispiriting series of salsa-dancing lessons last fall left me convinced that a guy with my spectacular lack of body awareness probably never will.
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