In the main set, you will be swimming progressively longer distances of freestyle. Your goal is to maintain your stroke count even as you swim greater distance. To hold your count as you fatigue, you need to hold on to good TECHNIQUE. To do this, choose a focus point. A good one is to simply HIDE YOUR HEAD. Another would be to STREAMLINE and get good distance off each wall. Another would be to HOLD ONTO the water as you pull. Choose whatever works best for you. Choose just one point and really focus on it.

At the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials in Long Beach, CA, it was fascinating to watch the swimmers go through their warm-up routines. In fact, this part of Trials was almost more educational than the races themselves. I'd show up early to observe warm-ups, and to see how all these world-class swimmers dealt with the pre-race jitters.

Kids are back in school, teams are gearing up for the new season, and some have already started. It's the beginning of a new year. It's nice to see all your friends again and to get caught up with what they've been doing. It's so easy right now to kind of EASE back into school or EASE back into the water. That first report card -- or that championship meet in February or March -- seem so FAR away. There's plenty of time to set your goals, crack open the books or to work on your technique, right? Now, to the reality of the situation....

For the past four years we have been watching and anticipating the outcome of seven days of competition in Athens. For the swimmers who competed, the training and anticipation has consumed their life, perhaps for decades. This Athens Olympics left all swimming fans breathless. It seems that the sport has captivated more of a national audience than ever before. I spent the better part of every day during the games glued to the TV, or checking results online. So we had the build-up and the spectacular delivery. Now what?

I'm trying to maintain my taper from USMS LCM Nationals so that our women's 200+ medley relay can make another attempt to break the world record for our age group. We just missed it at Nationals, and we've been trying to arrange a time trial (easier said than done for LCM in New England in September). So we've all been trying to hold on to our tapers. I've been doing a lot of tether work, and today did this practice, focusing on fast 50s.

WARMUP: 400

I don't want to jump on the Phelps marketing-machine bandwagon, but I heard a couple of things this week that I want to comment on.

As open-water swimming becomes more and more popular, race directors are hosting longer and longer events. If you've entered one of these distance swims (longer than, say, 2 miles), you'll need to take in some kind of nourishment, solid or liquid, during the race. If you're like me, you have plenty of experience sitting at the dinner table and eating and drinking. I mastered that art long ago! But trying to swallow a few ounces of Gatorade in choppy seas can be a real challenge if you've never tried it before.

WARMUP: 400

I did this practice in a 20-yard pool, but you could easily do it in a 25-yard pool.

If you've ever been DQ'd in a swimming race (or any sporting event), you know how bad it can feel. First you're stunned. Then comes denial. Then (maybe) comes anger. Then comes embarrassment...recrimination...sadness -- all those awful feelings that no one wants to associate with athletic performance. A DQ hurts at any level of competition, but the higher you go up the athletic ladder, the greater the consequences. And if you DQ on a relay...well....

After the first two days of Olympic swimming, everyone is asking: What happened to American men's swimming? Despite pre-Games reports that this was the deepest US swimming team since 1976, the men's team has been less than its usual dominant. We watched the US men lose the 4 x 100 Freestyle Relay for the second time, and fall from silver to bronze. Then there was the disastrous men's 100 Free, in which no American advanced beyond prelims. These are both firsts in the history of American men's swimming. But if you take a closer look, you can see that US swimming isn't struggling as much as it seems.

The other night, while watching the Olympics, I had flashbacks to 20 years prior -- when I watched the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. It was a rough week for me as a TV viewer back then, because I had sorta planned on being on the blocks in LA, and not sitting in my living room. But at Olympic Trials I missed making the team by 5/10ths of a second. Watching the Olympics on TV was hard, but something I couldn't miss. I had many friends swimming (including Geoff Gaberino, who shares some of his experiences below), and I wanted to feel a part of it.

Here's the practice that I did on my own today after Masters.

We had five new swimmers this morning, and they had a blast using different equipment throughout the practice.