The first question Bob Bruce hears from apprehensive newcomers to the swimming pool is: Where is the slow lane?

Bruce, the head coach for Central Oregon Masters Aquatics – or COMA – replies, ”There are only fast, faster and fastest lanes.”

That’s not to say everyone who joins the club for swimmers ages 18 and older is particularly fast. Why, even Bruce observes that within a span of three lanes the swimming ability ranges from ”racehorses” to ”plodders.”

But the threshold for attending a practice and joining the club is the capacity to swim 500 yards, a distance that Bruce contends places one who can swim it in the 90th percentile of all swimmers in the United States.

”Automatically,” the coach says, ”you’re in the fast lane. People need to understand where they really are.”

On this lunch-hour COMA practice session at Bend’s Juniper Swim and Fitness Center, Bruce scans the group of about 15 swimmers engaged in a workout he designed.

”The backgrounds here are distinctive,” notes Bruce, 57, as he points out a range of swimmers from age 29 to 69. The most accomplished of them is a former collegiate swimmer, while the least accomplished is participating in a COMA practice for only the second time.

COMA formed 10 years ago with about a dozen swimmers who informally gathered together to train.

Today, the club’s mission is to maintain a program that is attractive to all types of swimmers, who collectively bring to the group a wide range of personal goals.

”This is a fitness swimming club,” emphasizes Bruce, a longtime professional swimming coach and the swim and fitness coordinator at Juniper, where most of the COMA action takes place.

As a volunteer coach with the masters club, Bruce asks himself, ”What do I need to do to keep you coming back (to the pool)?”

His answer: instruction and motivation.

For a $20 annual club membership and fitness center pass, COMA members take advantage of coaching to help improve their swimming technique, in addition to daily structured workouts.

Bruce explains that the club promotes several key goals.

”Swimmers require water at convenient times, and they like a program,” says Bruce.

To that end, COMA has 16 structured weekly practices at Juniper. Other area fitness facilities – including the Athletic Club of Bend, Sisters Athletic Club, and Cascade Swim Center in Redmond – host similar programs in which COMA swimmers can opt to employ Bruce’s fitness regime.

According to Bruce, participating in a club helps swimmers stay focused.

”It’s really hard to do it all by yourself over a long time,” says Bruce. ”You need to have other people to swim with, have friends to swim with.”

Bruce says the challenge for him as coach is to accommodate the wide range of needs in the pool.

Of the more than 250 masters swimmers in Central Oregon who participate in COMA each year (although only about 110 are formally registered with the club), Bruce says that members are evenly divided into three groups.

They include fitness swimmers who are not interested in competition but swim for health benefits; triathletes or ”sometimes competitors” who use swimming as cross-training for other types of racing such as Nordic skiing or running; and competitive swimmers, whose focus is preparing for swim meets.

”These goals are all valid,” says Bruce.

”The team is structured around the needs of the competitive swimmer,” the coach adds. ”But everyone finds the challenge they need within that structure. The challenge is to adapt to everyone in the pool. They’re all in there for good reasons.”

A challenge indeed, as a typical COMA practice at Juniper attracts about 20 swimmers.

Steve Wursta of Bend joined COMA last fall after he began a triathlon training class at the fitness center.

”I thought I knew how to swim until someone saw me in the water,” recalls Wursta, 40, who hadn’t swam since taking lessons as a kid. ”I had to relearn how to swim. (COMA) helped immensely.”

Wursta joined COMA with hopes of becoming a competent swimmer for triathlon. But, he caught on so well that he added competitive swimming to his race repertoire.

”It was scary, seeing how fast people swim and the amount that they swim,” Wursta says, remembering when he first stepped into the pool with the club. ”It’s very intimidating.

”I started in masters (swimming) at the end of September last year,” he adds. ”By January, I was swimming the 3,000 (yard) … swim at Juniper.”

Wursta credits COMA’s coaching as key to improving his swim stroke.

”What you notice is, Bob (Bruce) and (Bruce’s wife and fellow coach) Barb Harris really observe you, and then they’ll adjust a hand position or arm position, these subtle moves,” notes Wursta.

By summer, Wursta had competed in the Cascade Lakes Swim Series at Elk Lake, earning the distinction of ”survivor” after participating in all five of the open-water races ranging in distance from a quarter of a mile to three miles.

At Bend’s Banzai! Triathlon held in September, Wursta was the 10th swimmer overall to emerge from Elk Lake from a field of 85 competitors.

”The best part about masters (swimming) is, it is a social group,” says Wursta. ”Your lane is your social group. (If you don’t show up to practice) people are always asking, ‘Well, where were you?’ ”

For Bruce, a guy who has been hollering instructions from the deck since 1967 – with stints as a collegiate coach at Indiana University and the University of North Carolina – the opportunity to help Central Oregon’s masters swimmers develop their skills and improve their fitness is ”hugely rewarding.”

”I’m the guy who said that masters are like 8-and-unders with credit cards,” he laughs. ”It’s an absolute blast. But, it’s also the most complex coaching because everyone has a different goal.”

For more information on the club, visit www. comaswim.org.