A Day in the Life: Sarah Groff-Palermo, Day 1

NEW YORK, New York, March 21. AFTER another small hiatus, "A Day in the Life" is back with a Masters swimmer from New York City. Sarah Groff-Palermo is gearing up for the New England Masters SCY Championships to be held in Boston, Mass., on the campus of Harvard University.

We'll let her introduce herself.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007, Day 1
One of the great things about Masters swimming is the diverse backgrounds of all the swimmers. This series has had the coach who is still swimming fast and the former elite Masters who is getting back into the pool. My background is different from both, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share another perspective.

I grew up in Southern California, not too far from the beach, and definitely come from a water-centered family: I could swim right about the same time I could walk. But growing up, swimming was a recreational activity, not a sport. However, at 25, settling into a desk job as an editor, I started to gain weight and felt like a sloth.

I figured working out would be more fun in the water and spent about a year swimming laps alone (and trying to teach myself butterfly!). Once I got to the point where my fly didn't make the guards give me extra attention, laps alone became a little boring. So two years ago, I typed "swim team NYC" into Google and found the team I swim for now:
Red Tide. It turns out competing agrees with me and my self-taught fly wasn't unsalvageable.

Our upcoming meet, New Englands, will be my 10th meet ever, and I am so excited. I don't know how I will make it to Friday. It's one of our two taper meets of the year and the best-attended team meet, and frankly I like cheering for everyone and swimming relays as much as I love swimming my own events fast. Today, we got to practice for both in a workout that was a welcome change from our normal routine:

4 x 50 from the blocks
6 x 25 with fins
and then some relay starts, with appropriate amounts of warm-up and cooldown in there too.

Throughout our taper, I've been feeling sluggish, but today I was happy with my times, splitting the sets between fly and free. One of my goals for this meet is to make the qualifying times for Masters Nationals in at least two of my events. I am close in the 50 fly and 50 free, and not too bad off for the 100 free either. You can swim three events without qualifying, but these are totally doable and give me a good reason to get up and in the pool even when I don't want to.

My relay starts are another story: I still need to practice my timing, as I keep leaving early. Fortunately, my awesome teammates and our wonderful head coach were willing to help me practice as many starts as we had time for, so I am confident I will get there–with luck I will do so before the meet starts!

After practice, which ended around 8, it was off to work, then dinner with my boyfriend, then home to go to bed for morning practice. I am starting to feel like I am getting a cold, so I hope to finish everything I need to at work tomorrow. That way, I can sleep in Thursday before our flight to Boston and be in top shape. With work, friends, and swimming, sometimes sleep can get short shrift. Luckily, my boyfriend is very understanding, so dinner was short and easy. I think I can still get eight hours in if I sign off now. Tomorrow, I hope I can tell you more about the meet and my team and less about just me.

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