{"id":13896,"date":"2007-02-19T20:20:38","date_gmt":"2007-02-20T01:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/uncategorized\/2007\/02\/a-day-in-the-life-laura-smith-day-1\/"},"modified":"2014-07-27T17:05:31","modified_gmt":"2014-07-28T00:05:31","slug":"a-day-in-the-life-laura-smith-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/a-day-in-the-life-laura-smith-day-1\/","title":{"rendered":"A Day in the Life: Laura Smith, Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DENVILLE, New Jersey, February 20.  WE have a special treat for our Masters swimmers this week as three-time USMS All-American and former 18-24 800 SCM freestyle USMC record holder Laura Smith checks in for a week on the hot seat of the &quot;A Day in the Life&quot; series on SwimmingWorldMagazine.com.<\/p>\n<p>As Laura will explain in her first entry today, her participation came about in a much different way than most of our Day in the Lifers.  Typically, we either seek out specific people we&#39;d like to hear from, or accept volunteers that would offer an interesting week for our dedicated series readers.  (Feel free to drop <a href=javascript:SendEmail(&#39;Jason&#39;);>Jason Marsteller<\/a> a line if you&#39;d like to suggest a specific person to be part of the series.)<\/p>\n<p>However, Laura came to us as one of a few people that voiced some concern about the extremely high bar Dennis Baker set during his run as the first Masters swimmer in the series, which can be found <a href=http:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/lane9\/DayInTheLife_news.asp>here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You can read the rest of what happened in Laura&#39;s words.<\/p>\n<p><b>Monday, February 19, 2007, Day 1<\/b><br \/>\n<i>To initiate my weekly entries, I feel like it&#39;s necessary to outline why I was selected to outline my life in the &quot;A Day in the Life&quot; series.  I am not a former Olympian, Trials qualifier, or Division I superstar.  Quite simply, I complained.  I sent a letter to Jason [Marsteller] and the staff of Swimming World Magazine after I had finished reading Dennis Baker&#39;s incredible outline of his week, and I &quot;innocently&quot; asked them to profile a more &quot;typical&quot; Masters swimmer in the future.  For as amazing as Dennis Baker&#39;s career has been throughout the years, I wanted the column&#39;s readers to understand that his training is generally not the norm for most Masters swimmers.  The moral of this story is that I need to be more careful of what I complain about in the future. (Editor&#39;s note: We&#39;re really excited to see Laura&#39;s week play out, and welcome any comments on our site.)<\/p>\n<p>Statistics from US Masters Swimming (USMS) vary, but about 30 to 40% of all registered USMS members compete in sanctioned meets.   There are many incredible examples of USMS swimmers achieving amazing, jaw-dropping times throughout all age groups, and I envy their biomechanical skill, dedication to training, and commitment to personal excellence through goal-setting and competition.   The remaining 60 to 70% swim for a wide variety of reasons: fitness, health, friendship, being part of a team, or it&#39;s just simply fun.  In my mind, it really doesn&#39;t matter if you&#39;re a competitive Masters swimmer or not, for all adult swimmers are united by a love of the sport of swimming and what it does for our lives. <\/p>\n<p>I consider myself a &quot;typical&quot; USMS member.  I swim four or five days a week (sometimes three&#8230;I have to be honest).  I do not have a coach.  I write my own workouts, and my entire training schedule revolves around a busy pool schedule at my YMCA and my very busy life.  I swim workouts when there are general lap lanes available, so that means 5:30 a.m. most days.  I swim alone on some days, guarding my &quot;side&quot; of the lane like a shark to prevent people from circle swimming with me.  I have several workout buddies that inspire and motivate me.  I wish I had more hours in my day for dryland, weights, and some running, but with a full-time job and two young children and a husband, something has to give.  <\/p>\n<p>I guarantee that there are many USMS members with the exact same profile.  But what makes me a little different is that I am preparing for my first meet in seven years.  The meet is a small, local USMS event in New Jersey, and I am tapering this week.  I used to be an elite USMS swimmer, with national age group records, multiple All American swims, and numerous Top 10s.  Then I climbed the corporate ladder and had two children, and my swimming life changed. My workouts this week are geared towards the meet on Sunday, Feb. 25, but it&#39;s been so long since I&#39;ve tapered that I am kind of clueless.  I have an incredibly sore left shoulder, so I am doing more fin work than I typically would have done at this stage of a taper back in the day:<\/p>\n<p>Here was today&#39;s workout at 5:30 a.m. by myself, all yards. Honestly, I felt terrible, and I can tell that I am babying my shoulder.<br \/>\nWarm Up:<br \/>\n200 swim \/ 200 kick with fins, no board \/ 200 IM, all drill \/ 200 free, all drill, swim continuously<br \/>\n4 x 50 descend 1 to 4 on :45, all free<\/p>\n<p>Main Set:<br \/>\n5 x 150: #1 &#038; #5)  50 fly drill, 50 kick no board, 50 fast swim free. #2 &#038; #4) 50 back drill, 50 kick no board, 50 fast swim free. #3): 50 breast drill, 50 kick no board, 50 fast swim free.  All with fins, all on 2:10.<br \/>\n5 x 100: All free, no fins.  Descend 1 to 3, and hold the fastest one for #4 and #5.  All on 1:30.<br \/>\n5 x 75: All kick, with fins, with effort.  All on 1:05.<br \/>\n5 x 50: 25 drill stroke, 25 free, no fins.  All on :50.<br \/>\n5 x 25: All free, no fins, on :30<br \/>\n100 cool down<\/p>\n<p>Thanks again to Swimming World Magazine for giving me the opportunity to profile another side of Masters swimming!  Stay tuned!<\/p>\n<p>Keep Swimming,<br \/>\nLaura<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DENVILLE, New Jersey, February 20. WE have a special treat for our Masters swimmers this week as three-time USMS All-American and former 18-24 800 SCM freestyle USMC record holder Laura<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-masters","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>A Day in the Life: Laura Smith, Day 1 - Swimming World<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/a-day-in-the-life-laura-smith-day-1\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Day in the Life: Laura Smith, Day 1\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"DENVILLE, New Jersey, February 20. 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