Triple Crown PCC Aquatics Center

Peninsula Community Center Pool

We already swam the middle leg.   I started my swim with a bunch of my fellow Masters swimmers at 6am last Saturday.  Before the day was done, we set a new record with 64 swimmers in the pool at once.  I got out of the pool, having finished 7,500 meters for the Christmas swim, celebrated with my buds, and home by 9:30 am.  BAM.

What's the Triple Crown?
It's a fun event we do at PCC Masters, and I think it's something that many Master's teams do.  It's a holiday event, with swims on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Day.  Actually, the Christmas swim is on an alternate day, ours was last Saturday.  Each day has a longer distance at each of the three levels.  To accommodate all our swimmers, we have 2 start times.  I usually do the early one, 6am.

Here's my guess at the meters at each level:

Level/Day             Thanksgiving             Christmas            New Years Day
Bronze                       1,500                           2,500                       3,500
Silver                         3,500                           5,000                       6,500
Gold                           5,000                           7,500                     10,000
 
The gold levels equate to 3 miles, 4.6 miles, and 6.2 miles on New Year's Day.  That's at least 3.5hrs for me.

Jib Jab with Tim
I took this picture after our workout.   You can see two people still in the hot tub.   Notice all 6 lanes of the pool.  I've been swimming lane 4 lately.  Each lane is a progressively faster pace, lane 5 being the fastest, and lane 6 is available as needed.  When you think about 64 swimmers in this pool at once, it's well, amazing.

Typical Workout on the board

Here's a typical workout.  You can see we do all strokes.  Anything from 25 meters, to 400 meter swims.  All said, including 500 meter warm-up, 2,900 meters for those in the faster lanes.  The number matrix shows times for each length.  The numbers closest to the left are for the faster lanes.  For example, top left in the 2nd set (#2) is 600 which means 6 minutes for 1x 400 meters.  That's a 1:30 pace per 100 meters.  Pretty rockin for me, and I am happy to say, I made it!

PCC Pool

A couple more shots- This shows our coach, Mike on the pool deck.  The motto sounds a lot like Mike's motto for us.  It's incredibly straight-forward, yet incredibly life-changing.  "Get in, go back and forth."

 

Double Jib Jab

Swimming has become an integral part of my life.  It seems every day I swim is a good day.  Every other day may be too, it's just those swim days seem particularly special.  Here's a couple pictures on the 7 minute drive to the pool.