Champions Mojo for Masters Swimmers
Welcome Masters swimmers, triathletes, and anyone striving to live well and swim well! Hear powerful interviews with world-class champions, leading experts, and everyday heroes—sharing tips, tools, and stories to boost your motivation, training, and life performance. Hosted by Kelly Palace, Masters Swimming Champion, author, and former NCAA Division I head coach. A podcast that champions you!
Champions Mojo for Masters Swimmers
New York City Shines for Masters Star Eve Maidenberg, EP 296
Want to know what it takes to get faster with less time and more life on your plate? We sit with AGUA Masters swimmer Eve Maidenberg at the Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center to unpack how a New York Youth Centered team culture, smart training, and relentless curiosity turned a once-retired age-grouper into a 49-year-old dropping times she never touched at 18.
Eve opens up about AGUA’s unique mix of recent grads and seasoned pros, where mentorship flows both ways and great coaching keeps athletes engaged. We talk venues—Asphalt Green’s long-course pool NE uptown and a 25-yard setup downtown—and why variety matters for pacing, turns, and confidence. Then it’s 200 free nerdery: how to craft a painful-but-winnable race, why some elite swimmers breathe in and out of every wall, and when oxygen management beats rigid rules. If middle distance is your sweet spot, you’ll hear practical tactics you can apply in the next set.
Training isn’t just more yards. Eve shares a weekly rhythm of six pool sessions, focused strength training three times a week, yoga for mobility, and spin when needed to build capacity without breaking down. We dig into favorite sets like descending-interval 200s and shotgun progressions, which force efficiency as the clock tightens and teach a fearless close. The conversation turns deeply personal as she recounts coming back from a hip stress fracture and a heart issue, the mindset shifts those injuries demanded, and how smarter planning turned setbacks into speed.
You’ll walk away with concrete ideas for masters training, insight into pacing the 200 free, and a reminder that community is a performance tool. If you love swim strategy, resilient comebacks, and the spark of a team that shows up for each other, this one belongs in your queue. Enjoy the story, try the sets, and tell us how you’d pace your next 200. If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a teammate, and leave a quick review so more swimmers can find it.
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
Check out Kelly's Books at www.KellyPalace.com
We are doing an on-deck interview at the beautiful Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center at the Fall Classics Short Course Meters Meet, and I'm on deck with Eve Maidenberg. And Eve, we have a quick 10 questions for you. If you can start out with your name, your age, and your team.
SPEAKER_01:I am Eve Maidenberg. I'm 49 and I swim with Agua Masters out of New York.
SPEAKER_00:Very good. Now, this isn't on my little tints, this isn't a bonus question. We talked about this a little bit in the locker room when we were getting ready for our event our 200 free. I noticed that Agua Masters has a really young contingent, and I see you guys at Meets. Tell us a little bit about that going on up there.
SPEAKER_01:I think being in New York, it's we have a lot of young college graduates, people who land in New York in their first jobs, and swimming is a great place for them to find community and sort of build start to build their network in New York. And I think what we do a really great job of at Agua is building those connections between these young up-and-coming swimmers and people who are a bit more established in their careers. And so there's a really nice synergy that starts to happen, and we have really great coaching, so it keeps them excited and engaged and motivated to keep coming. Now, do you guys train at Asphalt Green? We do. We have two locations. Um, we have the 50-meter long course pool on the Upper East Side, and then we have a secondary location in Battery Park City that's a 25-yard pool. Okay, very nice. Now, what are you doing in New York? I run agency operations, which is like project management and production for a large retailer.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, very nice. All right, so what is your swimming history and how did you get to master swimming?
SPEAKER_01:So I grew up swimming in Cleveland, Ohio. I started swimming when I was about 11, 12 years old, and swam through high school in a very competitive age group program in Shaker Heights with a really phenomenal coach. And um then I stopped swimming. I did not swim in college. Um, and then when my youngest child was about 15 months old, I was so used to getting up at 5 30 in the morning and I needed to start working out that I joined a gym, and the gym happened to have a pool on the roof deck, and I went in and just like swam one day, and there was a master's team, and then I went again another day, and I kind of saw them, and I went up to the coach and said, Can I can I join you guys? And he, of course, was very welcoming. Um, and that was sort of the beginning of my master's career. Um, and it took me a long time to get to compete again. Um, but really for the last like 15 years or so I've been pretty pretty excited and happy to come and compete.
SPEAKER_00:Very nice. So, um what is your best or favorite, and they could be the same or they could be different event?
SPEAKER_01:Uh ooh, that's tough. Um, I really think this sounds so disgusting, but 200 free is my favorite, favorite event. It's so painful. Um, but I really love the strategy of how to swim it and really playing with that. Um so I think the 200 free is probably my favorite. Um, and I I can't say what my best is. It's anywhere from the 200 to the thousand.
SPEAKER_00:I totally get that. I I I unfortunately am best at a 1500. Yeah, but I my favorite event is the 200-free as well, because it's so in fact, let's take a minute to geek out a little bit on Molly O'Callahan's 200-free world record short course meters. I have some observations. Did you see it? And what are your thoughts?
SPEAKER_01:I actually didn't watch that swim.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so I don't have I don't really have a curious of your So the talking about strategy for 200-free, and we won't we won't go too long in this, but I what I found really interesting about her setting this record, first of all, she blew the field away, she blew the record away, and because it was the 200-free and we're talking about it, it was short course meters, she breathed in and out of every single wall. Can I get can I send that to my coach? Yeah, and I will tell you this too, that um so did Lanny Pollister when she broke Katie Ladecki's world record in the 800. And it's and I've interviewed Paige Matt Paige Madden on the show, and I talk about this. Paige Madden breathes in and out of every wall. So we need air, especially I I think sprinters, I think coaches. So the guy that was commentating Molly's Molly's win and world record said, she could improve that even more if she didn't breathe in and out of every wall. No, no, right, yeah. So um anyway, so that was a strategy thing that I think was deliberate, and I think I see um more and more distance people doing it, probably probably 200s and up. But anyway, I think there's a lot of strategy to the 200. Let's get back to you. Um so keeping in mind that you you are a kind of a middle distance, distance freestyler, what is your training regimen like?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I swim every day anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes. I do a mix of like traditional kind of aerobic base training, sprint training, um, depending on the day. Um, I try and incorporate some days that are like less yardage with more sort of sprint-focused, power-focused work, um, and then other days that are just more aerobic base building and you know, pace holding. Um, and then I lift weights at least three days a week. Um, I try and get in at least one yoga class, and sometimes they add in some spin into that depending on where I am in the season. So you enjoy your training. I like that.
SPEAKER_00:So I love it. So you train every day? Uh six days a week. Six days a week. To me, that's every day. Okay, so um favorite set. Come on, please give me a good set. I need a good set.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my god, it they're so complicated. Um, okay, so I love doing um anything that is a descending interval type set. Um, so give me like five two hundreds on three minutes two fifty-five, two fifty, two forty-five, two forty, something like that. I kind of love that kind of set. I know it's like grueling. Um, I like doing things like that. I like doing shotgun sets where you start with something really long and break it down to be smaller and smaller as you go and really try and push the pace as I go through it. Um and I could probably send you a couple of other really good ones that are a little bit more complicated, but too difficult to give on a short interview.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I I think the I think those sets were the descending interval. Yeah, and you know, it it's truly a different mindset when you're training for a longer event. It just it just is. Okay, um what is your biggest comeback in life? It does it doesn't it could be in the pool, it could be swimming, and it doesn't have to be. Um biggest comeback.
SPEAKER_01:I I do think so. I swim faster now than I did as an 18-year-old. Um and that is has been very, very empowering for me. Um and I've had several moments like in my master's career where I've had major injuries. So I had I stress fractured my left hip when I tried to be a runner for a short stint. Um that was not great, that set me back quite a bit. Um, I had a heart issue that kind of put me back again quite a bit. Um, and so I think coming back from those types of experiences and really needing to kind of pull back a lot um in terms of my training and how I thought about swimming helped me reset it a little bit. Um, and then I actually found that I got stronger and faster after those moments. Um, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love that. I think that's a great, great story. Okay, this these are like kind of a fun next three. Um if you could have lunch with any Olympic swimmer and they can be dead or alive.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I honestly I would love to have lunch with Janet Evans. She was like totally my like I was I was swim in high school when she was going to the Olympics um and just followed her career at that time so closely because I was a distance swimmer and like that was a thing, so I would I would love to have lunch with her.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great one. I actually try to swim like her, which is my my windmilling arms and a high tempo, but I mean she had it down. I mean she she did. All right, what's a fun fact about you that we uh that your friends or other swimmers may not know?
SPEAKER_01:Um a lot of people don't know that I was born in South Africa um and moved to the US when I was four.
SPEAKER_00:This is a very fun fact. Okay. Is there anything else that I have not asked you that you would like to share with the master swimming community?
SPEAKER_01:I oh, that's a good one. Um what would I like to share? I think this is an amazing sport. I think that the community that we build in master swimming is really special. And what I love about it and what keeps me coming back over and over again are the relationships that I've built through master swimming globally.
SPEAKER_00:Well said, well said. Thank you so much. You and I are getting ready for the 400 free. Let's go.
SPEAKER_01:Let's go.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:That was fun. Yeah, I think. I do have some really good sets I can actually.
