Champion's Mojo for Masters Swimmers
The award-winning podcast for Masters swimmers, adult athletes, and health and wellness seekers striving for personal excellence. Join your host, world-record-setting Masters swimmer, former NCAA Division I swim coach, best-selling author and health coach Kelly Palace, as she dives into inspiring stories, expert insights, and proven strategies to help you unlock your champion mindset. A podcast that champions you!
Champion's Mojo for Masters Swimmers
A 34 Year Winning Streak: Pro Triathlete Turned Masters Swimmer, Laurie Hug, EP 278
Do you have a streak going? Laurie Hug, retired professional triathlete and masters swimmer, shares her 34 year streak, training wisdom and remarkable journey from the deck of YMCA Masters Nationals Championships in Orlando. Her approach to swimming, coaching, and competition showcases how consistency, smart training, and positive mindset contribute to athletic longevity and continued success at the highest levels. Laurie is a member the 1776 Masters and swims in the 60-64 age-group.
Laurie List:
• Coaches swimmers of all levels in the Philadelphia area with 1776 team
• Recommends swimming at least three times weekly for beginners to make real progress
• Adapts training for triathletes based on race distance, sometimes incorporating recovery swims
• Swims daily with a rotating group of 13 friends, many former college swimmers
• Incorporates strength training twice weekly alongside focused stroke/IM work
• Overcame undiagnosed anemia that severely impacted performance in her 30s
• Shares key differences between pool and open water swimming techniques
• Has a 31 year streak going, can you guess what it is?
• Transformed mindset during difficult races to maintain performance
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
Welcome to Champions Mojo. Join us for conversations that inspire and empower you as an adult athlete, fitness enthusiast or master swimmer. Our goal is to make each episode insightful and inspirational and to discover what it takes to build or keep a life of personal excellence. I'm your host, kelly Pallas, and we're here to champion you. I am at YMCA Masters Nationals Championships in Orlando, florida, and doing an on-deck interview with Lori Hug. Lori's been one of my heroes. She's a retired professional triathlete but now an extraordinary coach, coaches a ton of people in Masters and I'm going to let her tell us about that. But she's also a great swimmer. She just swam the 1650 here at Y Nationals. The age group win there Broke 20 for the first time in a while. So anyway, lori, welcome to Champions Mojo, thank you, Kelly.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure doing this with you. I haven't seen you in a couple of years and I like racing you as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm always at the top of the age group and you're at the bottom, so we don't get to race a whole lot, which is good for both of us. Tell us about what you're doing with your coaching. So who are you coaching? Where are you coaching? And tell us about your coaching to high school.
Speaker 2:I also coach for 1776 in Philadelphia area and we have several pools and so we're like nomads we move around and I coach all levels. What is?
Speaker 1:your go-to advice. If somebody is newer to swimming, newer to master swimming, how many times a week should they swim and what type of stuff would you have them do?
Speaker 2:I recommend they swim at least three days a week. A lot will just do one and I don't think you can really progress much if you're swimming one day a week and I would ease them into it Like if we have a newer swimmer. I don't want them to do the same thing the people in the next lane are doing. I encourage them, do what you can, stop when you need to and maybe do 50s instead of 100s.
Speaker 1:So if you were now talking to the triathletes because you've been a triathlete, I've been a triathlete certainly not at your level, but I just remember all the times that you've done a ton of biking, you've done a ton of running and you're just exhausted. What do you recommend for that triathlete, how many days a week and what distance, to make it a good investment?
Speaker 2:It depends on the distance that they're training for. If they're doing an Ironman they've got to put some training in for the swim, but some of it might be a recovery swim. If they're putting all that mileage in, then maybe do an easy 2000 and you'll still get the yardage up there a little bit, but it's a recovery swim. So for you now.
Speaker 1:You've got this busy schedule as a coach, coaching all these different programs, and you're swimming at a high level. Where do you fit in your training and what does that training look like?
Speaker 2:I actually swim every single day. I never take a day off, but I take Christmas off and I don't recommend that for everybody and I don't go hard every day. But I have a great group of friends that I swim with. It's fantastic because after I coach, my friends come and we get in and we swim. So there's a group of 13 of us and on any given day someone will be there. Some of them won't. So Tuesday, thursday and Sundays I'll swim with them, and then Monday and Wednesday I'll do strength training and then I'll go and swim on my own or I'll convince somebody to join me. Every Wednesday I was doing butterfly focus, which I've switched that to an IM focus, and then let's see Friday, whenever I can. There's people that swim different times during the day. So I have all these people that are retired now. Before it was like me swimming by myself. My friends have all retired. They're all former college swimmers. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a great training group. It's like such a gift.
Speaker 2:And that's why it's every day, because I get to see different people each day.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's wonderful. Has there been a good comeback story? Because we all need a good comeback story.
Speaker 2:I've been doing triathlon since I was 24. And when I was, I started getting faster. I was like, oh, I think maybe I want to go pro. And then at 30, I just started getting really slow and I was like, oh, I guess I'm just getting old. And it turns out I was anemic and I didn't know it. I just kept getting like weaker and had trouble walking upstairs and it was just so frustrating because I was like I'd be on the track running as hard as I could and I couldn't even do an eight minute mile, whereas I used to race a lot faster than that. So I finally just I'm just going to do this socially and I'll have fun with it.
Speaker 2:I went on the pill and it evened out my menstrual cycle and all of a sudden I started getting faster and a friend of mine realized, like I was never diagnosed but I had been chewing ice and that's something called pica or pica, and it's a symptom of anemia, and so I had no idea. My dentist has stopped chewing ice because I kept breaking my teeth and I'm like I can't. I went on the pill and all of a sudden, like within a year, I started getting faster and more energy and my friend who's immersed was a figure. She's like you're not chewing ice anymore. I said, no, you are anemic. I'm like, oh my God.
Speaker 2:And I just started getting faster and when I was having that problem. I still love the sport, so I just changed my focus. I'm like I'm just going to have fun and be social with it. So when it gets to that point, it doesn't mean you have to give it up. So I really appreciate my health now, because you don't know when it's going to happen again. You don't know when something's going to happen, but I know that the sport's going to be there, even if I can't be at a high level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, Health is the real wealth. Tell us about the difference that you saw as a person who might swim a mile in open water, and then you just did a try an open water swim. What would you say? Some of the similarities, pitfalls, things that you would recommend?
Speaker 2:They're very similar but they're also different because in open water it's more physical, Like you're bumping into people, you need to sight, there's waves, you have all the conditions to deal with and I enjoy that. And some people don't enjoy it because it's not the same. The pool is just black line back and forth. So for an open water swimmer to become more of a pool swimmer, I think it might be a little more boring. They're going to have to focus more on their turns and streamlining off the walls.
Speaker 2:I do breathing patterns to keep myself occupied when I'm doing my lengths. I do these breathing patterns in open water. I'm just racing and I'm trying to stay with someone or I'm trying to bridge a gap. And so for open water you're going to need to have some skills that you don't have in the pool. But you can practice them in the pool, like pickups in the middle of the swim, because, like you're chasing somebody, if you're open water going into pool, sometimes what I recommend is swimming with your eyes closed and then breathing. So if you're actually let me flip this if you're a pool swimmer training for open water, I sometimes recommend having your eyes closed and then, when you turn your head, open your eyes so like you're used to having the dark, because that was one of the things. When I first do an open water, I'm like, oh, it's scary, like it's murky and you can't see anything and do some drills like swim a 25 with your eyes closed, just things like that.
Speaker 1:Do you find one to be more painful than the other?
Speaker 2:they're different. I don't know. That was very painful. Right now, I feel like if I'm open water, you don't know what your time is, so you can ease off a little bit maybe, whereas in the pool, if you had a bad swim, like you can see, you're not hitting your splits where. That's why I know some people won't do like pool races, because they don't really want to compare themselves to what they were when they were younger. Open water gives you a little more freedom. Okay, I got the got. The sun was in my eyes. I can blame it on that. Something you have, like more excuses in water, I think.
Speaker 1:The course was different. It was longer. It's never measured exact, but the pools are definitely measured exactly. Nobody's going to yank your foot, at least in the pool, and pull you back, that's true, yes, no-transcript, you got to be in little packs, but I did have an excuse.
Speaker 2:I'm like I felt like I was being hit the whole time and I know Eni Jones who she's a fantastic swimmer. She got kicked in the mouth. She didn't finish the race, so it's much more physical.
Speaker 1:Want to make a real difference. The Health Coach Institute offers the Pathways program to become a certified health coach. You'll help others achieve lasting wellness, grow your own resilience and self-mastery and create meaningful lifelong change. I'm a proud graduate of the Health Coach Institute and I highly recommend the program. Learn more at championsmojocom. Forward slash pathways. There's nothing worse than being in a heat that's mis-seeded. What is like one of the wilder, open water stories that you can share with us? Okay, so there?
Speaker 2:was a championship USMAS championship at Fire Island in New York, and the water the day before was 72. It had dropped below 64. Like one woman measured it at the upper 50s, they said it was 64. And you can't wear wetsuits for the championship race and it was choppy and it was crazy. So we went in and it was so cold and I got in the lead pack and it was great and swimming, and I know it's three laps, but when you're that cold you lose track of where you are. And after two laps like we must be done, we have to be done I feel like I've been swimming forever. And then I just lost feeling. I was still with this.
Speaker 2:These three guys, the three of us were swimming together and I had the lead and then the last leg. I was like, oh wait, but there was a one mile swim, so I know we have another lap. And so we just kept going and the water got choppier and I just went. I was at a bad place. I was like, oh no, I just wanted to quit.
Speaker 2:And then I just, you know what. You're doing, something you love feel the warm sun on your back and just enjoy it. Don't care about the wind if girls catch you, that's fine, just enjoy it. Don't care about the wind. If girls catch you, that's fine, just enjoy the swim and the rest of it. I was numb, my fingers were cold, like I couldn't feel my fingers or toes. The guys dropped me big time and I just enjoyed the rest of the swim, came out and ended up winning by 20 or 30 seconds. The younger girls were catching me, but just that I was able to change my attitude made all the difference. It change my attitude made all the difference. It made the swim go from something horrible to something like I was really proud of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a mindset shift is so huge in the middle of a of an endurance race. For sure, because you can either tank yourself or push yourself forward just in the spirit of like having a coffee conversation here. I don't know if you remember this USA Triathlon World Qualifier. I don't know how old I was. I want to say I was in my 30s and you were probably there at that point. I don't know if you were doing pro, but they, it was a World Qualifier in Claremont, florida, and that little lake that they have. I had come, I was coaching at the University of Arkansas and I'd flown all the way out to Florida from Arkansas, so it wasn't like I was around the corner. Was this 1999? I'll tell you the story and you can tell me what you think it was.
Speaker 1:Being swimmers, we need the advantage of that swim. We need a minute ahead of people before we get on the bike and usually I had that and you too. I heard some rumor that you were like undefeated in the swim for all of your pro races, or many, or you came out at nine out of 10, you were the first swimmer out, but I went up the night before they had the buoys out. I was in the triangular course. I swam that really easy. I'm like, okay, I'm just going to swim the whole swim course.
Speaker 1:And I think I swam it in 22 minutes or something, because at that point I was probably a 17 minute miler. So 22 minutes was a nice cruising and I thought, okay, tomorrow I'll come out in 19 or something. And so the next morning we all have our watches. There had been a windstorm the night before and when I went out to swim I was busy getting my bike ready and getting the whole thing going and I didn't pay that much attention to how the buoys looked. But I thought, god, that swim course looks so small. Today I came on my watch Of course we all start to watch this I came out of the water in 12 minutes, yep.
Speaker 2:Yep, that was the race. That was my breakthrough race. Oh, okay, yeah, tell us about it. So that's crazy. When you said that, I'm like, yeah, I remember being so mad because I saw mad. I'm like this is my advantage, just like you said, yeah. So I first out of the water and I got on the bike and I went so hard. I was like, and in the past, because I was right after I got over my anemia, I had just so this is, I was just starting to get fast again and I'm like I was never the first off the bike at local races, I was the first off the bike in my age group. I'm like what the heck? The heck is going on. I'm never maybe one girl caught. No, one girl caught me and she was always way ahead of me. And then I caught her on the run. So I was like I'm leading this race and was a champion, was a qualifier. I'm like what the heck? I've never, I don't even lead the local races. And then somebody finally caught me on the last 5k.
Speaker 1:I think two, one or two girls caught me, but I was like I took that and I got, I used that as fuel. I was so mad that, yeah, and they and Lori Hug was born, the triathlete was born on that race. Yeah, I'm so glad to hear that. I remember it correctly because I was like, oh my gosh, and back then they only took, I want to say, top three or something. It was 10. I think it was 10. Yeah, now they take a ton, but whatever it was, I missed by one place and five seconds.
Speaker 3:It was something and it was a swim. It was a swim.
Speaker 1:It was a swim, but imagine what you would have done on that, I know, with a real swim. Or maybe you wouldn't have been as motivated and fired up.
Speaker 2:I don't what the yeah you became. You became my championship. I think I had gone to Mrs T's in Chicago and I was like 67th in my age group.
Speaker 1:Lori, everyone has that race where they become somebody, but that's cool, that's a memorable one. Yeah, that was a memorable one. Yeah, I think we could tell a lot of open water stories, just where goggles are kicked off and people are the last time I went to World Championships in Chicago, and that's why I don't go anymore.
Speaker 2:Right before our wave went we were the second to last wave, the women, whatever age group we were and the pontoon broke or something and they held us up. We're in our wetsuits, ready to go standing there for 20 minutes. And they're like, oh, we're cutting the short down, we're cutting this one down to 700 meters. And so I was like are you kidding me? And so I was still. I came off the bike in second. I would have been off the bike so far ahead. And then the run. Not only that, the run was long by half and the two girls passed me on that last bonus one. I was like never again. This is world championships. They can't even have the right swim, bike and run distances. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's tough, swim is always shorter. I always wanted do you remember the balance bar? I don't even know if they still have the balance protein bar, but it's called the balance bar. I always wanted them to sponsor a triathlon where they did even even amount.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even even amount. Yet there used to be one in vermont, the vermont, it was even up or something. Not met. I went, doug and walker went like I never him. He was triathlete of the year a couple years ago. It was. You had a choice of a long course or short course. The long course was three and a half mile swim, 30 to 32 mile bike and then a half marathon.
Speaker 1:I was like it was great, it was equal yeah, it should be equal on time, but then it wouldn't be the hardest race ever, because it was the one course was brutal, it was dirt roads and nothing but hills.
Speaker 2:But I went back three times, I did three times, I loved it and then they discontinued it because they didn't have that many people going up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Lori, it's been great to spend time with you today. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you think you want to share with people? One thing that.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it will keep going on this year or whatever, but I've won a race in triathlon every year since 1991. Oh my gosh. So I'm trying to keep the streak going. I love a streak, I love a streak.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that's my little fun fact. Have you picked your triathlon for the summer? I have a few picked out.
Speaker 2:So I'm getting into these super sprints so I don't like running. So you do maybe a 300 meter swim, maybe a five or six mile bike and a mile run. I love it. It's so much fun. It's 30 minutes and you just go all out. It's really fun.
Speaker 1:Now do you have to win your age group or win overall, overall, oh, overall, oh. That's a tougher streak to keep going. Oh my gosh, good luck. I'm going to have to check in with you on that. Thanks, that's beautiful. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. Thank you, thank you, Kelly.
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