{"id":14479,"date":"2007-04-03T05:53:36","date_gmt":"2007-04-03T10:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/uncategorized\/2007\/04\/a-day-in-the-life-karen-atkinson-day-1\/"},"modified":"2014-07-27T17:29:10","modified_gmt":"2014-07-28T00:29:10","slug":"a-day-in-the-life-karen-atkinson-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/a-day-in-the-life-karen-atkinson-day-1\/","title":{"rendered":"A Day in the Life: Karen Atkinson, Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 3.  IN the latest &quot;A Day in the Life&quot; series on SwimmingWorldMagazine.com, we welcome Boston Masters swimmer Karen Atkinson to the DITL family.<\/p>\n<p>Karen is currently a chemistry professor at Bunker Hill Community College, who coaches the Masters workout group at Simmons College and is the head coach of her competitive team, Liquid Assets New England.  <\/p>\n<p>Prior to her Masters career, Karen swam in college at Wellesley as well as in high school in Ohio.<\/p>\n<p>We are always looking for volunteers in our &quot;A Day in the Life&quot; series.  If you would like to participate, please contact <a href=javascript:SendEmail(&#39;Jason&#39;);>Jason Marsteller<\/a> to volunteer.<\/p>\n<p><b>Monday, April 2, 2007: Day 1<\/b><br \/>\n<i>Hi all, and thanks to Jason and Swiminfo for giving me a chance to blog!  World Championships are going to be a tough act to follow; then again, I can at least assure you that mine is the perspective of a mere mortal!<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, my perspective is not only that or a mere mortal, but that of someone who hasn&#39;t even been swimming as long as a lot of my teammates.  You could call me a &quot;late bloomer&quot;\u2014at 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\u2014and you can bet that I was (and still am) incredibly fortunate to have had that opportunity.  The fact that I&#39;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\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I coach the Masters&#39; workout group at Simmons (SMSC, for short) at 6:30am.  This morning was a &quot;stretchout&quot; sort of swim for them.  The main set was three rounds of the following:<br \/>\n\t300 swim, every 3rd 25 stroke<br \/>\n\t200 alternate kick\/swim by 25s or 50s<br \/>\n\t100 fast<br \/>\n\t50 EZ<\/p>\n<p>The crew at Simmons is a mix of current and former competitive swimmers; triathletes; and pure fitness swimmers\u2014all in a huge range of experience and ability.  It&#39;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&#39;s practice wasn&#39;t very heavily attended, so I got to interact with everyone a fair bit.<\/p>\n<p>After practice, I headed over to the pool at MIT for a workout of my own.  I&#39;m recovering from the New England Masters&#39; SCY Championships\u2014yes, the same meet Sarah Groff-Palermo attended last week.  (I actually met her in the warmdown pool!)  I&#39;m also getting ready for USMS nationals in May.  Thank heaven they&#39;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\u2014which is good, because tomorrow and Wednesday I&#39;ll be practicing with my competitive team\u2026and that is always <b>intense<\/b>.  <\/p>\n<p>My work schedule on Mondays is light\u2014two lectures and office hours.  I&#39;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&#39;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&#39;t laugh at the image of their professor as a little undergrad, meticulously setting up an experiment\u2026and then forgetting to plug the damn thing in?<\/p>\n<p>Despite the light swim and the light teaching schedule, I&#39;m pretty sleepy; so I&#39;ll sign off for the moment.  Until tomorrow!<\/p>\n<p>Fast wishes,<br \/>\n&#8211;Karen<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 3. IN the latest &quot;A Day in the Life&quot; series on SwimmingWorldMagazine.com, we welcome Boston Masters swimmer Karen Atkinson to the DITL family. 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