Masters Swim Time Again

I finally got to my first masters practice out here in Virginia. I know, it took me 2 months to get there but hey I've had lots of visitors. Geoff wasn't up for swimming, so I took the three mile drive over to the pool on my own for the 8pm start. As I walked into the women's locker room, the women getting ready turned, sized me up, then ignored me. So I quickly changed and headed out to the pool thinking, not exactly the friendliest bunch of people but maybe others will be more friendly.

Once in the pool area, I was waiting for practice to start. Person after person were coming into the pool area. I'd say there was at least 50 people there to swim. Tons of buff women (they looked serious) and older men (they didn't look nearly as serious). I though could this be? 50 people-one pool. Is there a second pool hidden somewhere? Where were all the triathletes I'm use to? But I stuck with it and searched out the coach to get a lay of the pool. He was very helpful and pointed me to a lane to join.

The swim wasn't too eventful so I won't go into much detail except I only had a small idea what was going on. I knew it was IM night so that was good. But each coach seems to have their own cryptic abbreviations that I didn't understand. So I just swam along some where in the middle of the line of NINE people. Yep, that's right. NINE people in one lane! It actually worked out much better then I expected it too. As long as you got behind someone faster then you (or lead), then you still have a challenge. By then end, 3500 meters later my arms were putty and I was feeling great.