Swimmers warm up at the FINA World Masters Championships.

The FINA Masters World Swimming Championships produce a record in record setting

Palo Alto, Calif., the home of Stanford University, is not known as a haven of the highly athletic. In fact, on a normal summer afternoon, the city's upscale cafes are full of geeky-looking men with laptops designing code for their startups, but that all changed during the first week of August, when the 2006 Federation Internationale de Natation Masters World Championships came to town.

Suddenly the sleepy streets came alive with wet-headed men and women who smelled of sun block and chlorine. An international contingent of 7,000 Masters swimmers, divers, water polo players and synchronettes representing 77 different countries fanned out around town.

And when they got into the pools at Stanford's Avery Aquatic Center, they were all business, shattering records at, well, a record rate. In the first five days of swimming, 113 new world age-group records were set, according to FINA.

Because of the sheer volume of swimmers at the championships, individuals were left to calculate their own national victories, but the swift competition was the key to their success. Karen Elly, for example, a former British swimming champion who now swims in the 45-49 age group, only placed 19th and 9^th in the 800-meter freestyle and the 100-meter free respectively, but both her swims gave her British titles, leaving her, in her words, "ecstatic."

Stanford's pools were clearly conducive to super fast swims. Three Americans, as FINA pointed out, broke world records in each event in which they competed: Graham Johnston, 75; Laura Val, 55; and Susan Von Der Lippe, 41.

Another highlight was a victory by Olympic triathlete Sheila Taormina, who turned in a world record swim for the women's 30-34 age group in the 800-meter freestyle (9:13.49) and, remarkably, also posted a meet record in a sprint event, the 100-meter freestyle (although she was subsequently surpassed in the latter by Sheri Hart, with a 59.16.)

The 100-meter freestyle was particularly rife with records: out of 14 age groups, 10 new world records were logged in the women's field and nine in the men's, including a phenomenally fast final for the 60-64 year olds, which yielded two sub-minute results by Richard Abrahams and James De Lacy in a 59.5 and 59.6 respectively.

The overall winner of all 1,000-plus competitors, Vlad Pyshnenko, 36, won with a time of 52.72, well within the NCAA Division I time standard. But perhaps even more impressive was the 1:40.8 time posted by Goro Kobayashi, of Japan. Kobayashi is 91.

In the end, however, most athletes have come in search of personal bests, camaraderie, and that elusive sense of identity and self-worth that all best sports experiences give us. "I haven't done a time this fast in 14 years," said a vastly pleased Richard Symons, 32, of Manchester, England, after his 200-meter freestyle event. "But even if I hadn't, it would have been worth coming just to take part in the event."