Dec. 29, 2025

Country Club Laps To Masters Swimming Champion: Peggy McDonnell’s Journey to All-American, EP 299

Country Club Laps To Masters Swimming Champion: Peggy McDonnell’s Journey to All-American, EP 299
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Season 1

She calls herself a swimming vagabond! The deck at Fort Lauderdale buzzes, and at 70-years old, Peggy McDonnell brings the kind of energy that makes you want to put on your goggles. She didn’t swim in high school or college. She found Masters after a move to Florida, chased a national title in the 200 IM, and shocked herself with an All-American time that arrived like lightning. Then life happened: knee surgery, a finicky neck, and an honest reckoning that made butterfly and breaststroke hard. Instead of stepping back, she pivoted—leaning into the 200 freestyle, rebuilding confidence, and choosing smarter, kinder training.

We walk through how she trains mostly solo with plans from a trusted friend, then found a 20-year-younger partner who “busts her tail” and helped her return to racing after a multi-year competitive break. She shares practical details that Masters swimmers crave: three swim days a week, 3,400 to 3,800 yards when the stars align, and a simple long course test set that benchmarks fitness without breaking spirit. Her facility routine is a masterclass in persistence—Indian River State College, Leisure Square, and any open water that keeps the habit alive through closures, heater issues, and shifting schedules. It’s the consistency, not the perfect pool, that moves the needle.

Peggy’s story widens beyond the stopwatch. She talks about a broken hand right as she aged up to 60 and still made nationals, her pick for a dream lunch with Mark Spitz, and two and a half decades of volunteering at a dog shelter that led to adopting a sweet, big shepherd after saying goodbye to a tiny chihuahua. And she lights up when recalling the “Golden Girls,” the relay crew who broke five yards records in a single season—only to be topped the next year, and loved the chase anyway. The throughline is grit with warmth: adapt your events, find a partner who pushes you, keep your rituals flexible, and let team joy carry you through.

If you love Masters swimming, comeback stories, and practical training wisdom for aging athletes, you’ll feel right at home here. Listen, share with a teammate, and tell us the one adjustment you’ll make to keep your swim life strong. Subscribe, leave a quick review, and drop your next race goal—we’re cheering for you.

Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.

You can learn more about the Host and Founder of Champions Mojo at www.KellyPalace.com

00:01 - On-Deck At Fort Lauderdale

00:19 - Meet Peggy McDonnell

00:47 - Late Start To Masters Swimming

01:02 - National Titles And All-American Surprise

01:35 - Shifting From IM To Freestyle

01:58 - Training Solo And Finding A Partner

02:49 - Weekly Yardage And Pool Hopping

03:23 - Test Sets And Long Course Strategy

04:08 - Comebacks, Heroes, And Mark Spitz

04:52 - Dog Rescue Life And Adoption Stories

06:00 - Golden Girls Relays And Records

06:22 - Closing And Listener Review Request

WEBVTT

00:00:01.120 --> 00:00:05.280
It's time for an on-deck interview to help you live well and swim well.

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Welcome to Champions Mojo.

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And now your host, Kelly Pallas.

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We are doing an on-deck interview at the beautiful Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center, the fall classic for short course meters.

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And I am with Peggy McDonnell, one of my heroes, one of my trailblazers ahead of me.

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Peggy's held a lot of uh zone records, and um, we're gonna let her do the 10 on-deck points.

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Peggy, name, age, and team.

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Name Peggy McDonnell, 70 years old.

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I'm Gold.

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Team Gold.

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Where is that?

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Mostly around the Lauderdale Coral Springs area.

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Right.

00:00:46.479 --> 00:00:46.799
Okay.

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Tell us a little bit about your swim history, just how you ended up here at Masters.

00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:55.359
I just did uh country club summers, where the most we did was 50s.

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No high school swimming, no college, and did started masters when we moved to Florida in 1996.

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Okay.

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What is your favorite swimming accomplishment that you've ever had?

00:01:06.799 --> 00:01:16.799
I won um my first national championship in uh um 200 IM at uh somewhere in California.

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My first um All-American was a 200 IM short horse meters at Coral Springs.

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And that time was a big shock.

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I just had no idea I had it in me.

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And I never did anything close to it again.

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With that in mind, what is your what you would consider your best and or favorite event?

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And they don't have to be the same one.

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Used to be 200 IM, but since knee surgery, my breaststroke is not quite so good.

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I've got neck problems, so there goes butterfly, so there goes the I am.

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So what is it now?

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Freestyle.

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Um 200, I guess.

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200 free.

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I that's a good event.

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Okay.

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So what are you what is your current training regimen for, you know, an elite 70-year-old master swimmer?

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How does that look for you?

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Well, a lot of my training is by myself.

00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:06.879
I just get workouts from my friend Mo years ago years ago.

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Um, and now I have a training partner down in in Sailfish Splash, which is in Martin County, and she really busts my tail.

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She's 20 years younger than I am, but she really, really got me back in shape.

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I I hadn't competed in about four or five years.

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So I started competing again in um June.

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So you took four or five years off?

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I was still swimming, but just doing my own thing, and doing my own thing entailed, okay, no, I don't want to do that much.

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No, I'm not gonna do that many.

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I'm gonna go home now.

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You know, it wasn't till in May or June.

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I decided I wanted to try because I was aging up to see what I could do competition-wise, and um got up with Margie and a few other people, and that's what really helped.

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So how many days a week and and what kind of distance?

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Well, there it's three days a week, and she goes four thousand.

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I don't do that much.

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Mine up to thirty-four, thirty-five, every now and then thirty-eight or something.

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If the college pool is open at all, I'll go there.

00:03:04.719 --> 00:03:09.759
I was driving up to Sebastian for a while, but for two years their chillers and heaters weren't working.

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They fixed them, but now we got notification that they're gonna be down for another two weeks, end of end of uh November, beginning December.

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Then I'll go sometimes to Leisure Square in Vero.

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It's just, you know, I feel like I'm a swimming vagabond.

00:03:23.199 --> 00:03:24.479
Well, what college?

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Indian River State College.

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I live I live two miles from there.

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Yeah, Indian River is a great pool.

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Great pool.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And it's just free swim.

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It's not a master's program.

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We used to have a very good master's program years ago, but during COVID it got dropped, and now we just have the free swim whenever they can get um lifeguards.

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Okay.

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Do you have a favorite set you like to do?

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There's one I use kind of as a test set in long course in the beginning of long course, because I really don't like long course until I get used to it.

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It would be a 400 distance swim and then 850s, whether it's kick or pull or whatever, and then it's a 300 distance, and then it's 650s, whatever, and on down 200, 100.

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What has been the biggest comeback in your life?

00:04:10.960 --> 00:04:15.199
It doesn't have to be in swimming, it could just be general um in life.

00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:17.680
Well, what what's a good comeback story for Peggy?

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I broke my hand the year I aged up to 60 and was afraid I wouldn't even be able to go to nationals, but I did.

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I mean, that that's about it, but it's not really a comeback.

00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:32.160
Well, I think coming back after injury is good.

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What uh Olympic swimmer, and it could be a historic one or a current one, would you like to have lunch with?

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Mark Spitz.

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Mark Spitz, that's a good one.

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That's a good one.

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All right.

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Any fun fact that your swim friends may not know about you, or most people may not know about you that's kind of a fun fact, hobby, or something?

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I've volunteered 25 years at the dog shelter.

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Oh, do you have a dog?

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Oh yeah, yeah.

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She's a shepherd mix, big girl.

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Uh, got her just a year ago.

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She'd been at the shelter for two and a half years, and we lost our little chihuahua.

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So and the funny thing is that when I went to the vet the first time with her, so here I had a five-pound chihuahua who passed away, and then I get this huge shepherd, and I walk in there, and the vet looks at that skirt and looks at me, and he puts his hand on my shoulder and says, What were you thinking?

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She's the sweetest thing.

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How hard has it been not to adopt everything?

00:05:28.399 --> 00:05:35.040
Well, I have a husband who keeps me straight, you know, and I and I know I'm smart enough to know I can't take all these dogs in, you know.

00:05:35.120 --> 00:05:37.519
So we've had at most we had three.

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Um one was 15 years old, no, 13 years old, and we got two younger ones, which was okay because we knew the older one, and then we mostly had two, and then uh down to one with the last chihuahua, which was the first little dog we've had, and then one now.

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Oh, that's that's beautiful, Peggy.

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Uh, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you'd like to share with uh your master swim friends?

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Only that it's been a lot of fun, especially with the golden girls.

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We have about five or six in my same age group, and we've done a lot of relays.

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When we were 55, we broke all five yards records in that season.

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And we didn't keep them very long.

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I think New England broke them all the next year.

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But that was fun too.

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Yeah, you guys have rocked it.

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Well, you've been an inspiration to me.

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Thank you for spending this time.

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Thank you very much.

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Thank you for listening to the Champions Mojo podcast.

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Would you consider leaving us a five star review on Apple?

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That's like getting a best time for us.

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Kelly and our team would be so grateful.

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See you next week for another Boost of Mojo.