Welcome to the fall season, folks!

"When I go out and race, I'm not trying to beat opponents, I'm trying to beat what I have done ... to beat myself, basically. People find that hard to believe because we've had such a bias to always strive to win things. If you win something and you haven't put everything into it, you haven't actually achieved anything at all. When you've had to work hard for something and you've got the best you can out of yourself on that given day, that's where you get satisfaction from."
-Ian Thorpe

Hey everyone!  Many of you already know me as a swimmer on the team.  Starting with this season, I've also taken on the role of evening coach, coaching the Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evening practices.  For those of you who don't know me, let me give you my background.  I started taking swim lessons at the age of four, then joined a summer league swim team when I was five.  That fall, my three older sisters and myself all joined our first competitive year round swim team, Nashville Aquatic Club.  From then until I graduated high school, I swam for a variety of teams across the South (growing up, my family moved a lot, sometimes as quickly as moving again nine months after the previous move).  My swimming career ended when I went off to college, for I went to a school that didn't have a swim team.  Or so I thought.  During my junior year, I started missing the glorious aroma of eau de chlorine and decided to rectify that situation by coaching a summer league swim team in South Carolina.  I coached there for two years and had the time of my life.  Due to work and graduate school, though, I was unable to coach for more than two years and ended up staying away from the water for two more years before moving here in June of last year and joining Alexandria Masters last fall.  I fell in love with the aroma of chlorine all over again and have been having a terrific time in the pool since then.  This fall, on top of continuing to swim, I also picked up two coaching gigs, one as a coach for the Potomac Marlins' Mini Marlins group, and this one as a Masters coach for Alexandria Masters.

Well, enough about me.

That quote up at the top says a lot about swimming.  Whether you compete or swim for fitness, it's all about the journey.  Pushing yourself in practice can be an immensely rewarding experience.  Whether you're pushing yourself to make a 100 freestyle on a 2:15 interval or you're giving it your all to make a 50 butterfly on a :35 interval, that satisfaction you get from pushing yourself and making that goal can be intensely satisfying.  I spent all last fall and spring trying to break a certain time in the 50 back.  Six months after setting that goal last October, I finally broke the barrier I'd been pushing against in April.  In the grand scheme of things, that 50 back time that I struggled so hard to achieve means absolutely nothing.  But it was the whole process that was so rewarding, the pushing myself in practice after practice to improve my speed, the countless practices in which I worked on technique, the numerous times I wanted to give up during a really hard practice and pushed through the pain.  All of that was the important part.  I gave it my all, and let me tell you, that satisfaction is quite an elixir!

That's my goal for y'all this season, to instill that drive to give the best you've got at every practice, to finish the cool down and be satisfied that you pushed as hard as you could.  It doesn't matter if you swim once a month or you swim six times a week.  If you're a fitness swimmer or you're training to take down a national record or swim a 10 mile open water swim, it's all the same.  It's been said that swimming is 90% mental and 10% physical.  I heartily agree with that sentiment!  If I can get y'all to tackle that mental angle of swimming, I'll consider it a job well done.

This season, I plan on pushing every single one of you, striving as best I can to help you improve your endurance, speed, and technique.  Practices will be tough, but if you stick with them, you should start to se some marked improvements in a short amount of time!  If you stick with it, soon enough, the set that gives you aching legs and sore shoulders at the beginning of the season will start to be something you can do without breaking a sweat!

All right, I think that sums up my philosophy on swimming pretty well, on to other stuff.

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So, what's the purpose of this blog?

Each week, I'll post the practices that we did the previous week (so week one's practices will be posted that weekend or early the next week, and so on).  If you want to track your yardage or just want to check up on a practice you swam (or see what you missed, if that's the case), you'll be able to do that here.

I'll also post videos and articles I think are helpful.  These could range from articles on stretching to swimming technique videos.

I'll post information about upcoming swim meets and team events.

I tend to philosophize from time to time...so I might put up some swimming philosophical posts, too.

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I look forward to a great season with all of you and hope to have a lot of fun!