A Day in the Life: Karen Atkinson, Day 1

Indeed, my perspective is not only that or a mere mortal, but that of someone who hasn't even been swimming as long as a lot of my teammates. You could call me a "late bloomer"—at 8 years old, when many of my teammates started swimming competitively, I actually flunked beginner swim lessons because I was afraid to put my face in the water! I did swim varsity in college—and you can bet that I was (and still am) incredibly fortunate to have had that opportunity. The fact that I'm swimming even faster now, 10 years after graduation, still owes a lot to my college swimming experience. But it also owes a lot to my current training situation. And, of course, all of my athletic experiences have shaped my life outside the pool as well as in it. So I hope that this week will give you all a flavor of how this works for me…

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I coach the Masters' workout group at Simmons (SMSC, for short) at 6:30am. This morning was a "stretchout" sort of swim for them. The main set was three rounds of the following:
300 swim, every 3rd 25 stroke
200 alternate kick/swim by 25s or 50s
100 fast
50 EZ

The crew at Simmons is a mix of current and former competitive swimmers; triathletes; and pure fitness swimmers—all in a huge range of experience and ability. It's always an interesting challenge to write workouts that can benefit everyone. But the crew is also a wonderful group of people who have been really enthusiastic about my coaching, and that helps a lot! Today's practice wasn't very heavily attended, so I got to interact with everyone a fair bit.

After practice, I headed over to the pool at MIT for a workout of my own. I'm recovering from the New England Masters' SCY Championships—yes, the same meet Sarah Groff-Palermo attended last week. (I actually met her in the warmdown pool!) I'm also getting ready for USMS nationals in May. Thank heaven they're in May. I feel better than I did last week, but still a little sluggish. I did pretty minimal yardage, but I feel much better for it—which is good, because tomorrow and Wednesday I'll be practicing with my competitive team…and that is always intense.

My work schedule on Mondays is light—two lectures and office hours. I'm teaching two sections of Gen Chem I, plus one section of Chem for Allied Health majors. Gen Chem I is currently covering topics that I really enjoy; we just finished thermochemistry and are starting quantum mechanics. My students are really responsive and participate well in class discussions, so lectures are a lot of fun. By this point in the semester, everyone knows I'm a total nerd; so we can all get a good laugh out of my pathetic physical chemistry jokes, if only for the self-deprecation! But really, who wouldn't laugh at the image of their professor as a little undergrad, meticulously setting up an experiment…and then forgetting to plug the damn thing in?

Despite the light swim and the light teaching schedule, I'm pretty sleepy; so I'll sign off for the moment. Until tomorrow!