Five Rules For Swimming Your Personal Best, EP 313

A Frozen Pool And A Mission

When I walked in the pool, the air was freezing. It was so shocking. It was dark. There was so much condensation and fog over the pool because the air temperature was in the low 40s, maybe the high 30s, because remember, outside it's nine degrees and the pool deck is not heated. And the water is dripping off the ceiling. And there are very few people in the stands. And it just looks like purgatory.

Hello, friends. Welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast, where we bring you interviews and topics to help you live well and swim well, conversations especially meaningful for master swimmers and anyone striving to perform better in the water or in life. We're here to champion you. And now your host, Kelly Palace.

Hello, friends. I'm doing a solo podcast today to help inspire you and encourage you to go after your goals, personal records, and anything when you're setting up a new season. That could be at the beginning of a season, or maybe you're making a comeback from something. But I would love to share with you some of the main rules that I've learned after interviewing hundreds of champions from Olympic champions to NCAA champions to masters champions, that the exact same physical, mental, environmental laws that govern the top performing records also govern your next personal record or goal. The scale's a little bit different, but the rules are identical.

Finding Goals That Excite You

So first, I want to start with some things out there that you may want to set your sights on that you don't even know about. There are fun things that maybe your local master swimming committee does. That's the LMSC. Just for example, the Florida LMSC has something called the Leather Lung Award. And that encourages swimmers to swim every event in every course. So you don't have to be a world record holder to swim all the events. It's a great thing to set out for. You get a cool little award at the end of the year. So that's a fun award that may be out there. And there then there are cool meets like the Brute Squad meet where you swim a bunch of different hard events, the virtual events where they offer swimming 5,000 and 10,000 meter races or a 3,000 and a one-hour swim. But there are a lot of things that you don't have to measure yourself against anyone else except yourself. Certainly, we all know about the U.S. master swimming top tens and all-Americans and All-Star and national records and world records. So there are many ways to motivate ourselves. Some people are motivated by that big record name, your, of course, local record, your local master's record, your zone record, your national records. But then there are cool things that you can do, like saying, I'm going to swim all the events or I'm going to swim this open water. Whatever your goals, we're going to start there. Identify something that gets you emotionally excited. There is a lot of research around the bigger the goal, the more excited that you get. Of course, we have to keep that in perspective that it's not too big. We don't want to say we're going to fly to the moon when we don't even own a rocket ship, but certainly having a bigger goal, something that's going to stretch you a little bit, may get you out of bed more quickly in the morning and excite you

Rule One And Two Build The Plan

more. So the first rule of these five rules that I see across champions and people that are achieving their goals is have that specific goal and what is it that you want to do? So number one, identify something that is going to be emotionally exciting to you. So having that goal is rule number one. Number two is breaking it down into pieces that you can achieve. And I love the saying we can eat a whole elephant one bite at a time. So how does that break down? If it's a very specific, I want to swim this time in my 1500-meter free, which of course a lot of people who are swimming the mile in a triathlon, that's what a 1500 would be. What do I need to go per 50? If it is swimming all of the events that US Master Swimming offers, then how does that break down? How many would I have to swim per meet? How many meets would I have to swim to get all those times? If it's swimming a one-hour swim and you want to achieve 3,000 yards during that one hour swim, what does that look like breaking it down maybe per hundred or maybe every 20 minutes? How much do I need to swim? And reverse engineering your plan from there. So break it down into doable pieces. Always a great idea. Number three is knowing how you're going to execute

Rule Three Execute With The Rules

this. And are there any rules or regulations or stipulations that you're going to need to meet to achieve this goal? So executing it simply means I want to do it in these meets. And then knowing are those meets going to offer you the ability to do that. I learned something after all these years and feeling like there's nothing about master swimming that I don't know, but I learned that one cannot set a master's world record in a USA swim meet. So some master swimmers also will swim in, I call them the kids' meets, but the USA swimming meets. So USA swimming, sponsored by USA Swimming Meets, often offer more meets in nice pools. And so I've done some US Masters national records in those meets, but not world records in a USA meet. You cannot swim a master's world record in a USA swimming meet. And if you want to be recognized or ranked in a world ranking, again, you must swim your times in a master's swimming meet. And here's a little, even a smaller, intricate rule that just came out. The brand new rule is if the meat that is a master's meet is accepting one-day U.S. master swimming registrations instead of joining U.S. master swimming for the whole year, that World Aquatics will not recognize any times from that meet. Very strange rule, very tiny little rule. Not sure why that rule is in place. I know United States Master Swimming is not encouraging meat directors to take one-day registrations because of this rule, and it's in big red writing on our zones above our zone meet calendar. But there are little specific rules like that you need to know about. And if you're doing, say, a one-hour virtual swim, then you need to have your splits written down. You need to have someone witness that. So there are rules that we need to make sure that we are abiding by when we're trying to achieve these. But number rule number three is executing your goal and your plan where it's going to be the most advantageous for you. And that can be looking for what I call fast water. Is this a deep pool? Is it a cold pool? Is it a pool that has good air quality? All these things will add up to you achieving

Rule Four Consistency Beats Talent

your goal. Number four, this is the foundation for this goal. None of these are in a particular order, but it's just the five that I found that most people who are achieving the things that they want are practicing. So number four is the number one thing that I hear from everyone I've interviewed and one that I've found through my own performance. And that is consistency. If you have the consistency to practice what you are trying to achieve, keep showing up. Even when you don't feel like it, even when you may not be in ideal condition for that practice or meet or training, but just consistency is the number one thing that I hear. I know in my own swimming for my mode of operation for the last three decades in swimming has been to swim at the bottom of my age group. I started in master swimming 30 years ago. So I would swim when I was at the youngest two years of my age group. And then I would take three years off. I would not swim for three years. I did that in my 30s, 40s, and 50s. Then when I turned 60, it was the first year that I actually swam through the entire five years. So from 60 to 65, I still went to practice, where my past MO, again, was two years in and three years of doing pickleball or running or something else. I was not swimming. I was not in the water, but I consistently stayed swimming through the last five years of this age group. And so I don't find it to be that strange that I set my best records when I got to be 65 because I had stayed fit. I had stayed in shape because I consistently showed up. So that is something that I've heard from everyone. And I found it to be true myself when I practiced consistently showing up. So that's number

Rule Five Win In Bad Conditions

four. And then number five is that we have the expectation that we're going to achieve the goal and that we see things as positive, but it's also showing up knowing that there can be adversity on that day. The Marines have a saying expect the best, but prepare for the worst. So I want to tell a little story to illustrate how I almost missed a world record because I was going to scratch an event because it was such an adverse condition. You might have your best swim in the least likely circumstances. If you attended the Rowdy Gaines meet in Orlando, Florida, which was the last weekend in January through February 1st, there was a historic cold front. I've lived in Florida the last 22 years, and it was record cold. It was unbelievably cold outside and certainly incredibly cold in the meet the entire time. There were gas heating towers that people were huddled around. The air was very cold in the pool, say in the mid-40s, and it was a constant battle to just stay warm. So the last morning of the meet, which was February 1st, that early morning when we woke up, the wind chill was in the single digits. It was about nine degrees when I checked my phone for what the air temperature was with the wind. And I was slated to swim the 1500 free that morning. It was the first event of the morning where only the 1500 swimmers were to be there. And then there was a break, and then the second session of the day started, which is when most of the people came back to the meet, even though a lot of people scratched. So my husband went and got the car. We were staying at a hotel nearby. I put my tech suit on in the hotel room so I wouldn't be putting it on in the locker room. And he picked me up. And when that wind hit me as I came out of the hotel and just wind burned my face, I thought, this is crazy. When I walked in the pool, the air was freezing. I'm going to post a picture of what the pool deck looked like that morning because I snapped a photo of it because it was so shocking when I went in. It was dark. There was so much condensation and fog over the pool because the air temperature was in the low 40s, maybe the high 30s, because we're outside, it's nine degrees, and the pool deck is not heated. And the water is dripping off the ceiling, and there are very few people in the stands. And it just is, it looks like purgatory. It was such a downer when I walked in that pool to swim this event. I was in heat two. I arrived at the pool when heat one was in the water. So assuming I had about 20 minutes to get ready to swim that event, I just thought, you know what? I'm just going to swim this for team points. We were in a team race for the title of the meet. I'm just going to swim this. I had kind of planned earlier that this would be an opportunity for me to either break the world record in the 1500 or lead off the 1500 with an 800 world record. I did not warm up for this event. I did what my husband calls a dry warm-up. I swung my arms and did some deep breathing. So I thought I'm just going to swim the 800 off the front and then float the second part of the race to cool down. And I dove in and I really did not expect that I would set a world record, but I told my timers, hey, I'm going to do an 800 split and I'd like for you to get some backup watches in case I do break a record. But once I hit the water, we become swimmers. We become what we do. And I just thought, you know what? I'm just going to take this 125 at a time, 150 at a time. I kind of warmed up as I got going. And then about the 400 mark, I said, you know what? I'm going to just put everything I have into it, certainly not expecting to break the world record. But when I touched the wall at the 800, I rolled over on my back and asked the timers, where did I go? You went 1024. The former world record was, I think it was 1039. So I had broken the world record in a situation where I almost did not swim that event. And that is number five and the most important one. You might have your best swim in the least likely circumstances. If anyone had told me you're going to be swimming, your record attempt in 41 degrees on deck. You're not going to warm up. There's going to be nobody there. My husband, who is my biggest cheerleader in the world, wasn't even at the meet, wasn't even in the building. He dropped me and went back to the hotel. I did not have a counter for that event. They even had to pull somebody over. Like I begged somebody at the last minute, hey, would you just throw three numbers in now and then?

Five Rules Recap And Next Steps

I think stories are great to illustrate things, but I'm going to review the five and hope that you'll get something out of this to do some extraordinary things, whether it is a world record or whether it's just something that you're really proud of that's really cool and it's all cool. Since I swam that 1024, an Australian woman broke my record by 28 seconds. So records are going to be broken. They're going to go, but things that we do that are cool and personal to ourselves, I think those are the best records. Make something cool and stick to these five rules. And I think you'll get your goal, get your personal accomplishment. And let me know how it goes. So number one, just set that goal. Know what it is. It doesn't have to be a record, but it can be some goal that's going to wake you up in the morning and it's going to be cool once you do it. Number two, break that down. How does that look? Is that a pace time? Is it a setting up your training? Is it setting up the meats? But who do you need to help you with that? Break it down. How does that happen? Number three, execute. Where are you going to execute? Where are you going to do this? And are all the proper things lined up for it? The paperwork, the rules, etc. Number four, put your consistent training in before the goal. Keep showing up, keep doing it. And number five, just you just heard my story that yes, expect the best, but prepare for the worst. And if it happens to be that dark, cloudy day that you didn't expect, you still might get your goal. I hope this has been something that you can get a lot out of and would love to hear from you. And let me know if you have any cool goals that you've achieved. And I look forward to seeing you on a pool deck soon.

Thank you for listening to the Champions Mojo podcast. Would you consider leaving us a five star review on Apple? That's like getting a best time for us. Kelly and our team would be so grateful. See you next week for another Boost of Mojo.