World Records On The Unconventional Path: Doug Springer, EP 306

I broke the world record by 17 seconds

that broke the national record by 35 seconds.

And I do a double arm backstroke with a breaststroke kick.

Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast,

where we bring you interviews and topics

to help you live well and swim well.

Conversations especially meaningful for masters,

swimmers, and anyone striving to perform better

in the water or in life.

We're here to champion you.

And now your host, Kelly Palace.

I'm here with Doug Springer.

Doug, give us your team, your age.

And where are we and what are we doing?

OK, we're at a long distance beat in Oral Valley, Arizona.

And we are, the club that's putting it on is

Saddlebrook Swim Club from Saddlebrook, Arizona.

And are you from, are you on the Saddlebrook team?

I started the Saddlebrook team in 2003.

And it was head coach for 20 years and then gave it up

after just an assistant coach now.

So what is your age?

I'm 80, for meters, for meters, yeah.

And you, I told, was told that you got five world records

at Routing Games.

No, I got four.

Four.

And to me, it panned out very well because the first day

was the 400 I am.

And I broke the world record by 17 seconds that

broke the national record by 35 seconds.

Wow.

OK, so also tell us a little bit about your unconventional butterfly

and backstroke during these world records.

Yeah, basically, I'm a breaststroke here.

I am here, but it's so nice to be able to do breaststroke

kick during the butterfly, which I do.

And then I do a double arm backstroke with a breaststroke

kick.

And then, of course, I do breaststroke.

And I wish I could do it for freestyle,

but I have to swim flutter kick.

That would be an interesting stroke, right?

Freestyle arms with a breaststroke kick.

Tell us a little bit about your training regimen.

I just trained being this age.

We trained sprints on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

We trained more distance on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.

But I worked Saturday, Sunday.

So I only practice four days a week, take Wednesday off.

How much yardage are you doing on those days?

We're doing 2500 to 3,000 a day.

So it's not too bad.

What are you working at at 80?

We're not working.

You said you work on Saturday and Sunday.

All right, it worked for the HOA.

We used to open swimming pools and get those straight.

But I do maintenance as well, too.

Oh, that is so cool.

What would be one of your very favorite sets?

Very, very, you know, basically at this age,

and I think other swimmers at my age

like to do a bunch of 50s.

So different sets of 50s are fine by me.

We try to stay with 50s on freestyle

and everyone's in a well-nod straight.

And 25s, the odds stroke on short rest interval.

OK.

What if you could have lunch with an Olympic swimmer,

who would it be?

Well, I know quite a few Olympic swimmers.

Yeah, I mean, they can be a historic.

It'd be nice to sit down with Don Schoell and her for once,

because he's my age.

So we'll see how he ends out at that age, yeah.

And is there anything that you've

learned over 20 years of being a master's coach

and that you might want to share with the master's community?

Actually, I've been a master's coach.

I started swimming in coaching in 65.

Oh, wow.

OK.

So it's been over 60 years of coaching.

And it started with age group.

And then I coached the PNM Games in 71 for Puerto Rico.

And I coached with Bill Campbell at the University of Maryland.

And I coached Caluidad College, which

is a school for the deaf in Washington, B.C.

And that was interesting, too.

But basically, starting a team,

this is a retirement community.

And everybody pretty much is the older sets.

And it's kind of fun watching them start.

And we have a left-screen program that gets you started.

We have all the old set adult learning

to stream program through USMS.

And then we just bring them into our practices.

And we have about 120 on the team.

And our average age is probably 72, 73.

Wow, you have 120.

And your average age is 72.

Do these, do they do meets?

Yeah, well, about 40 of them do.

About 40 of them do.

We also have, like with Jeff Cummings' team, Dolphins

of the Desert, we're going to have a dual meet with them

to get our beginner people into a dual meet scenario.

Then we have two other dual meets, one named after Jack

Fritz, who's here swimming now.

He's 93.

And the other one is on Ben Peterson, who

passed away a couple of years ago.

So how far is Jeff Cummings from here?

Jeff practices in this pool.

Oh, my gosh.

I love Jeff.

He's been on a Champions Bojo a couple of times.

He's got one of the most popular shows

that we've ever had on tapering.

And I didn't realize that this is where he was,

because we're from Florida.

We're here visiting at your beautiful facility.

Give us a pitch on why everybody should come back

and do your meet next year.

I think it's just a great opportunity

for distance rumors, especially.

We started this, I think, I'm for a second.

Bill Brenner met with Jack and I.

And we started putting this week together.

The first one was 2018.

And then COVID hit.

We kind of fell apart a little bit,

but we're building it back up again.

But we decided this would be a great thing

for distance rumors, because this

extremers don't get a lot of pool time.

Usually you go to a meet, he said,

well, you can swim the 800, or you can swim the 1500.

If you're a meter, there's 1,000 and 1,500.

That's 1,600.

It's just an opportunity for you to get away

this time of year.

And it's a good opportunity for people that are aging up

to also have a good shot at long force meters.

Yes, yeah, distance rumors.

We go to a Nashville, you have to swim the mile

and the 1,000 on the same day.

And then you're kind of trash for the rest of the day.

So this is great.

Well, thank you so much for spending this time.

And good luck with all your records

and look forward to seeing you at another meet.

OK, thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Champions Mojo podcast.

Would you consider leaving us a five star review on Apple?

That's like getting a best time for us.

Kelly and our team would be so grateful.

See you next week for another boost of Mojo.