How DO you do it?

I am surely not the only morning swimmer who gets this question, usually posed by a friend/colleague/non-morning person when they hear that we get up at (insert ungodly early hour here) to jump into a cold pool. My first response is usually "coffee". The longer version is that there are multiple motivations. Training, fitness, comraderie, beating the traffic - these are common. My motivation is a combo of fitness and social, and a quick observation of the pool deck this morning might lead one to conclude that many people align with the social aspect. It's much more fun to gab on deck than jump into the pool, and all lanes seemed to be doing quite a bit of that today. I am sure that my friends from other masters teams laugh at our relatively late start time (6:15am or whenever we get in) because some of them are in the pool by 5:15am. In any case, I think we can all agree the two worst parts of the morning swim are the first 300 yards after jumping in and the 10 second walk from the locker room door to the shower. Awful.

Here is what we did:

WU:
4 x 150 (mix of drill, swim, kick)
4 x 100 (25 kick, 25 swim, 25 kick, 25 fast)
Main set 1:
10 x 75 on 1:10 hold pace
Main set 2:
9 125s broken:
1-3: 50 free on :50, 75 fly on 1:20
4-6 50 free on :50, 75 back on 1:25
7-9 50 free on :50, 75 breast on 1:25
Finish it off:
6 x 100 on 1:40

Great set today, lots of people there to enjoy it. Bob B, KBB, Ian, me, and E. But the big news is that Carmen made his triumphant return to the lane. Well, it wasn't really triumphant but it was a return, and we knew that all was well with the world when Carmen got in a few barbs from the back of the lane as he was holding on for dear life. It's good to have you back.