2025 Wrapped: The Lessons
- 6 minutes ago
- 5 min read
22 February 2026
The sun set long ago on calendar year 2025, but a busy start to 2026 ... and time for reflection ... has delayed my "So what did I learn from all my training and racing in 2025?" post.
So what did I learn from all my training and racing in 2025?
Much of this is about re-learning old lessons, as I'm an inveterate forgetter.
Race early, race often
After much of my 2024 training being oriented towards endurance for completing the Lake Windermere end-to-end swim, I knew I wanted 2025 to be very focused on pool racing, with much of the year targeting the 400 freestyle ... which then evolved to a Q4 focus on butterfly.
Above all, I wanted to race a lot, because I know that if I want to swim fast at a "peak meet," I need to have jumped on the blocks and practiced racing many times in a real race environment. No matter how hard I try in a workout, even when we go from the blocks, I can never muster the same kind of energy, focus and maximal effort like I can when I'm actually in a competition.
My typical goal is to race in one competition a month, but I outdid myself in 2025 with 16 different events across the UK (13), Canada (2) and Poland.
I got on the blocks to race almost fifty times in the year with - 48 different races across these meets - 39 in SCM, 9 in LCM (not including some additional racing in relays). Every time I got on the blocks, I had an intention for the race: I had a plan and specific actions I wanted to focus on in each and every race. All that racing practice helped me to produce some of the best times I've seen this decade.
Variety is the spice of (racing) life
I swam in 17 different events in SCM, including 25s of fly, back and breast at the fun Staffordshire meet, and every "regulation" event in SCM except the three backstrokes and the 1500 ... but I did manage to nab both the 50 & 100 back in LCM.
The events I swam the most?
400 free with three SCM races and 4 LCM attempts. This makes perfect sense given my focus. And, I managed to achieve a great result in SCM (if only tenths shy of what I wanted to go), and under my start of the year goal in LCM.
50 free was a close second with six races over my SCM meets. This remains my go-to, no-stress fun "warm-up" event before doing a real race. What was really exciting is that I had breakthrough performances in this event at both the Sheffield English Nationals and Lublin European Champs (the last time I was faster was in 2013!).
200 fly with 5 attempts total and four between October and December. I came up shy of my goal here, but take away some great training ideas (see lesson 4).
Ever since I got back into Masters Swimming in 2001, I have enjoyed the freedom to swim the gamut of events. I wish more masters swimmers would discover the joy of doing so; I see so many teammates and competitors doing the same 3-4 events over and over again. That must work for them, but I can't help feel they're missing out by not swimming a wider range of events.
Race'em when you got'em
Back in 80s when I grew from an age grouper through university competitor, the philosophy was that we peaked for two to four meets at most a year. If you were doing things "right," you'd achieve your "big meet" qualifying times without a full taper so that you could just taper for one big SCY (I was in the USA) and one big (LCM) meet. Even during my university days, we really only peaked for our Conference Championships and then, if you made it, the NCAA champs.
What's so brilliant about swimming these days is that the pro swimmers are showing us - through World Cups, other series like the Mare Nostrum Swim Tour, World Championships and other random events throughout the year - that you can swim fast many times each year. Many Masters swimmers are showing the same ability to race fast frequently.
I went into the year with a focus on the 400 free, with an original intention to peak at the British LCM Nationals in June and then the Swim England SCM Nationals in October. What ended up happening, though, was a bit of that and then something else:
A business trip back to work with the Canadian part of my company popped up in April and coincided with the Ontario Provincial championships. Having put together three solid months of training, I decided to do a drop-taper for the week I was there, and raced the 400 free, 800 free and 400 IM, notching times I hadn't seen since my late 40s.
Similarly, while I was somewhat pleased with my 400 LCM at British Nationals, I still felt I had the sub 4:40 time in me. I saw a one day event about six weeks later in Manchester on the calendar. Even though I had a lazy (but oh so enjoyable) SwimTrek swimming holiday in that intervening period, I felt like I could do some focused training and take off the extra two seconds I needed to ... which I ultimately did.
Mix it up to max it out (training)
After all that racing through August, my body told me I had gone a bit too hard for too long, and I need some rehab and recovery. It was during this period that my social media feeds (whose algorithms I have trained to feed me swimming, funny dog videos and Canadiana) starting filling up with videos and stories about Cam McEvoy's Freestyle Revolution. My two-line summary of his approach is this:
Get strong
Swim FAST in workout so that you are putting your body in the same plane of water and imprinting the stroke mechanics of speed.
Given the state of my body, I didn't want to overtax it again with endurance training. But, as I'm not a sprinter, I also knew I couldn't train ~500M workouts comprised of max effort 12.5M to 25M sprints that Mr. McEvoy does.
But, I could try something radically different.
I was diligent about my shoulder and elbow pre-/re-hab work and morphed that into a routine dryland workout. I'll never be confused for actually being strong, but I got somewhat stronger.
I decided to target butterfly only and built a standard workout that I essentially repeated 3-4 times per week.
I dropped my average total weekly swim volume by more than half to 8,000 meters a week between September 15th and the European Championships in mid-December.
I never swam butterfly unless I was going fast ... and the only stroke I swam fast was butterfly.
When my form or my times suffered, I stopped, so as not to imprint poor form or sub-race-speed body dynamics.
The results I achieved with this approach blew my mind in the 100 fly, and were indicative of being on the right path for the 200 in mid-October.
While I probably won't do that exact program this year, this opened my eyes to new ways to think about training that might produce great results with less wear and tear on my aging body.
