A Day in the Life: Karen Atkinson, Day 5

BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 7. BOSTON Masters swimmer Karen Atkinson concludes her run in the "A Day in the Life" series on SwimmingWorldMagazine.com.

We'd like to thank her for taking the time out this week to share her life with our readers.

Also, we'd like to invite anyone else interested in participating from any level of swimming, be it club, college or Masters, to contact Jason Marsteller to volunteer.

Friday, April 6, 2007, Day 5
Since none of my classes meet on Fridays, the day ends up being both relaxed and productive at the same time. For starters, I not only get to coach the SMSC crew but also go to coffee with several of the folks on the team—a longstanding team tradition on Fridays.

I actually trained with this group for a couple years before I started coaching them, as is the case with LANES; but since I don't get to train with SMSC now, it's especially nice to be able to join them for the social side.

They earned their coffee this morning; they swam a 4200 yard workout! The main set was:
200 stroke or IM kick
4×25 4th best stroke
200 stroke or IM drill
4×50 3rd best stroke
200 stroke or IM kick
4×75 2nd best stroke
200 stroke or IM drill
4×100 best stroke

Several people commented that it really managed to sneak the yardage in—score one for the coach!

At coffee, we enjoyed a bunch of good laughs over the annoying music that our college roommates would play incessantly. It seemed everyone had at least one good horror story! It's a treat to get to know my teammates out of the water.

Speaking of "out of the water," among the things that I did this afternoon was catching up on a few emails with friends who aren't swimmers. And, yes, that's actually a pretty significant group. In my DITL entries, I've focused on the swim stuff (for obvious reasons!); but I would be remiss if I didn't point out that my friends who don't also happen to be swimmers are as much a part of my life as my teammates are—even if we're all so busy that we don't get to see each other as often as we'd like!

But I think that's part of the fun of being an adult athlete. I don't have the built-in 12-15 hours of training each week that I had in college, but I think I'm better at making the most of the time I do get.

My friends and I all have crazy schedules, but we make the chances to talk or email or get together, and we can definitely appreciate them! The consensus among my friends is that my "Mr. Right" is going to have to be a swimmer—but that's a bit different! Any way you slice it, it's really refreshing to have a bunch of good things going that don't necessarily depend on one another's existence, but that can balance and influence each other.

Anyway, I also got heaps of grading done this afternoon, which heads me into the weekend with a huge load off my back and no papers to bring home! I'm delighted. Hope that the week has been treating everyone similarly well! To all the USMS folks out there—hopefully see some of you at Nationals in May.

And to everyone, thanks for reading my blog, and fast wishes!
–K

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