Swim Fast Without Pain in a Race Like Masters All-American Deborah Dawson, EP 234

Welcome to the award-winning Champions Mojo hosted by two world record-holding athletes. Be inspired as you listen to conversations with champions and now your hosts, kelly Palace and Maria Parker.

Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast. I am your host, kelly Palace, and, as usual, I am with my co-host, maria Parker. Hey Maria, hey Kelly, it's great to be with you here today. Yes, and Maria, this is a special edition of Champions Mojo from the pool deck and we have a great interview for you today. It's brief, it's short, but it's powerful.

Yeah, and we. I wasn't there, but I was able to listen to the interview and some great takeaways.

Yeah, we hope you'll stick around and catch the takeaways. And here we go. So I'm on deck at the Rowdy Games 15th annual short force meters meet. I have another great interview with somebody that I so admire coming up in the age group behind me, Deborah Dawson. We call her Debbie Deb, and Deb is coming off of an incredible long force season where she won four golds at long force ashes. She swims the 200, the 400, the 800, she really swims everything great, but just swimming so fast. And now, with the meet, what I'd love to ask you is how do you prepare for a meet like this?

Kelly, you're so sweet. First of all, I admire you and all the swimming you do and the records you're breaking. It's quite an accomplishment and I'm not breaking all those records like you are, but you will. I'm just older than you. I just do little. I'm happy for all the little wins, I'm happy to be here and just to be able to compete. Every meet is like you just never know how you're going to do To prepare. I don't actually do much preparation because I swim 50 free and then I swim the mile. I swim like every distance. I take a little bit of yardage off, but I just. It's about feeling good. The biggest thing is, honestly, I try to get as much sleep as I can. I think at our age the sleep just helps with recovery and if I don't get sleep I don't swim. Well, it's all about for me, especially the week before, trying to eat healthy and to get as much sleep as I can so that I can be at my best for the competition.

I love that. So what is, just in general, your training schedule? What is a week of normal training look like for you?

Ah, interesting. We have a mix of swimmers and I don't always do the master's practices because some of it's garbage, yardage or it's grinded out and I just can't do that every day At my age, can't do that. So I swim probably six days a week, but some days I might only do 2000, because it's more of. We focus on doing some fun sprints, some off the blocks, which I think has really helped my training. So it's not just distance, grind it out, it's focusing, and I take every opportunity when I'm doing something easy to work on my technique, and always about shoulder head position am I kicking off the wall? How's my turn? So it's not just a swim. If that's like, okay, now it's 100 easy between sets, I focus on trying to maintain a good technique even when I'm tired.

Yeah, wow, and it really shows because you have this great speed and you have this great endurance. What is your mindset when you're in like a 1500 or an 800 and you're in pain? What are you saying to?

yourself. So I'm normally not in pain. This is actually the first meet where I've tried to focus and push a little into the pain, because I have a really great swimmer, irish, all in next to me and she and I have a very similar swimming style. So she's brought me out of my comfort zone and normally I just cruise and I go easy and I don't push, and then I start to build and then maybe the last whatever 25% of the race I'll actually push into the more of a pain zone. But this meet, irish, has got me pushing a little more, because I don't normally swim in pain, which is for a distance swimmer. It's all about energy allocation. How much do I have for this? And I'm making the mistake of obviously signing up for too many events. I'm gonna have to start backing off.

Yeah, so it does mean a lot of people go for high point. You gotta swim 14 events to do that. That's going to end there. You feel like when you are in really good shape, to hear that you're not in pain is just amazing. So when you're in really good shape, you just are swimming in your threshold and you're not in that much pain, exactly right.

So, as a distance where you know what your threshold is, you know what your pace is, you know in a set, where am I? I can feel it. When you get in good shape and I'd say to have a good two year base of training, you can feel am I just broaching threshold? Am I above it now? Am I 89? Am I 92%? And so I will look at the workout and see what we're gonna do. And I don't always push into those ranges and I'm like, okay, what does this set want from me and where am I gonna push? But yeah, I rarely push into those zones which I need to. I've been telling myself the last year or two I need to start putting more intensity in my workouts. I get out and I don't feel tired and I'm not, heart rate doesn't get high and I'm like I have more potential in me than I'm not tapping into. So I really want to. And having someone like Irish that I've just found in these last couple of meets to swim with, she's like I'm going for it, I'm going for it, we're gonna go for it. I'm like okay, but then of course I died, couldn't stay where they're at. It's okay, I went for it. I tried. I don't know what my potential is.

Yeah it's scary that you're telling me you're not in pain and you're not trading hard, that you're swimming this fast.

So what are a couple of sets, or a set or two that you really like, that you do consistently, oh it would be the days that I do the shorter or more race stuff with some of my friends that are sprinters and we'll do eight 75s on the what is it? The 145? And I try to hold a really good pace and then after that we might do eight 50s on the 105. And then I'll because I'm a distance from where I don't just do a 50, I do a 50 with a flip and I can see the clock and then like okay, that was a 31. I got to try to hold 31s when I'm trying to do it and I have people that wish them together and I can't always keep up with those younger people, but I tried and those are fun days because it's fast, it doesn't hurt my shoulders. I feel like I get a lot out of it. I feel the same way as if I did a long three or 4,000 yards from a meter set and I'm exhausted. I feel the same, like I got enough out of it and I barely got to 2,000 yards that day. And you clued me into that at an immediate Y Nationals, I think years ago, when you just blew me out of the water and I could not stay with you and I like, who is this the chief? Not even in my age group, and I thought I got to figure out what she's doing. That's helping and I think that it's like USRPT it's training at a fast pace, trying to hold it, not doing that many of them, but you're just tapping in and it's definitely above the threshold right.

Yeah, it's everything to know that you can't get into meetings from as hard as you can and then not have done it in practice. So, oh, I'm so happy to hear that helped you. And now you're going to come up and break all my records. But that's all right.

That's what I'm asking you to make us all about. I don't know if that's gonna happen. I have four or five more years before I get into that age group, but I you never know what can happen in five years. Honestly, I feel like I'm just trying to hold myself to. After every week. It's like Band-Aids, Ducktape and Oymans. How do I keep going?

But I just heard somebody say at this meet that it just tickled me so much they're dominating their age group and I think they're in the 65. And he said, yeah, I'm just trying to slow down at a slower rate than my competitors.

Exactly right, masters is about swimming getting slower, slowly, I love it Getting slower, slowly, all right.

Last question we always ask. This is a spiritual question, like a Zen question when you dive in the water, what's the feeling that?

you get Relief. It just feels so good. Dive in, I think, ah, it's like this is where I was meant to be, this is where I should be. I always feel so good. And then I'm always so happy after I swim because I feel so good for the rest of the day, even if I'm not feeling well that day or something's hurting. I say I just have to get to the bowl, just get in. I might only do a thousand because I'm not feeling well, but I still get in because it's relief, it just feels so good, I feel happy. Yeah, I love that.

Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I'm such a man. Thank you.

Kelly Love it.

Stay tuned for the takeaways.

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And now the takeaways.

Debbie Dawson. Her official US swimming name is Deborah Dawson, but Debbie Dawson, as you said going into this, yeah, that Debbie and I have a mutual admiration society. She is just so interesting with how fast she is and yet a really different approach to swimming than a lot of people that we interview.

Yes, I just love this interview Again, another person I cannot wait to meet. But yeah, my first takeaway was and this is so good for me because I tend to do everything hard and I embrace pain and discomfort, what makes her amazing, which I need to work on this she does all the stuff that I would call easy, not really easy, but she makes sure she gets enough sleep, she makes sure that she eats well, especially the week before her meet, and she works on technique, which, of course, is not easy, but it's not something like but doesn't make your heart necessarily go up or it's not pushing into threshold zone. I have those things that I sort of always embrace. I'm getting ready for a big six hour race in three weeks actually two and a half weeks now and I just thought this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to make sure I can just sleep, I'm sure I can eat well, and I'm going to think about technique. I'm not going to just worry so much about the hard stuff. Anyway, lovely love, I just love that woman, debbie. Yes.

Yes, and Maria, I would even say that maybe they seem easy to do those things, but they're not as easy for you, because we tend to get into that place where we like to grind and you're just saying these are easy things because you're not grinding when you're trying to eat better or sleep better or do technique. But those are all really important things and I would push back on you a little bit and say they're pretty hard to do but they're not as Maybe it's about rewarding. Yeah, they're really important. They're really important, yes, so on, debbie, I was blown away that this woman swims a very fast mile. And when I asked her how she deals with the pain, she basically said she just isn't in that much pain and for you and I, that's like what. It's scary that she is swimming as fast as she's swimming without being on that edge of that threshold where she's really pushing herself and she's learning to push herself.

To put more intensity in her workouts.

Yeah, I think that goes a little bit with that. She doesn't do garbage yardage, she likes technique. But that also when she's racing she is not. Maybe she's working on technique, maybe she's working on she's feeling good because she got a lot of sleep.

But yeah, she's taking her time getting there. She talked about two years of base training. I love that too. She's really enjoying the process, just really enjoying it.

Yeah, I guess my takeaway on her not feeling a lot of pain is that the takeaway is Debbie can be a lot faster than she is. Yeah, because she's watching pushing. Yes, that's it. It's watch out, oh no.

There is so much good stuff in that little interview you did, but I loved her word relief when she dives in the water. Oh, yes, yeah, beautiful, yeah, just reflect above the rest of the interview and how she handles or how she approaches swimming, which is how I want to approach athletics. Thank you, Debbie.

Yes, we learned a lot from you. All right, thank you, maria.

Another great one Love you Love you Bye-bye.

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