A Day in the Life: Karen Atkinson, Day 2

BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 4. IN the second edition of her "A Day in the Life" series on SwimmingWorldMagazine.com, Boston Masters swimmer Karen Atkinson relates her Tuesday practice as well as her experience with a spectroscopy lab gone bad.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007: Day 2
Tuesday is my long day—mostly by choice. I go from an early-morning weight workout to two lab sessions (and today we had a department meeting in between) to office hours. By the time I'm done, I'm chomping at the bit to go to practice with my team in the evening.

Today's labs were quick, which gave me some extra time to get grading done. One of the experiments was supposed to include looking at sunlight through a spectroscope; but today was grey and rainy…just like every other time we've run this lab in the four years I've taught here! If there's ever a drought, just schedule the spectroscopy lab and you're practically guaranteed a rainy day! Thankfully, everything else went off without a hitch.

Practice was, thankfully, exactly the kind of workout I needed. Our main set was five 200s at a reasonably brisk pace, with 4×25 recovery after each one. For each 200, we played with different race strategies (for example, build for the first 75, hold for the next 75, sprint the last 50) to see which ones suited us best. I was still feeling pretty sluggish, but I was consistent on my times; and was even a bit faster on my last one. I have to remind myself that I will be able to bring back the power and speed I had a couple weeks ago—I seem to return to fighting trim pretty quickly, all things considered.

But even better than the workout itself was the chance to swim with my team, and to share a lane with my teammate Dave. He's one of my favorite training buddies. You'll hear more about him tomorrow (he's on the Liquid Assets coaching staff with me, and tomorrow's his night to coach). Meanwhile, tonight I managed to send him—and a few of my teammates—into fits of laughter before warmup.

Before the Harvard meet, in solidarity with my (mostly male) teammates, I got one of our team suits—a men's mesh trainer—to use as a drag suit. Dave hadn't seen me wear it before, and, well…obviously I don't exactly (ahem) do it justice in front, as it were. As I would like to keep this entry G-rated, I will spare you the off-color jokes that ensued. Suffice it to say that I hadn't seen some of my teammates laugh like this in a long time! But the suit saga continued after practice as I attempted to change into dry clothes…and managed to knot the (wet!) drawstring instead of untying it!

My fumble-fingers were no match for the knot, and I had to wriggle out of the suit. Thankfully I had worn the suit a bit loose this evening. Let's hope that the overnight drying will give me a shot at it tomorrow… Speaking of which, tomorrow is an early morning for me. So I'll sign off for now. Fast wishes, –K

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