10Kmarathonswim

Tampa Bay Marathon Swim

Friend of the blog and all-around swim god, Evan, just won the Tampa Bay Marathon Swim in a time of 8 hours 59 minutes.  He beat every relay team except one!  That is absolutely incredible.  If he isn't ranked yet, he'll be ranked soon in the World Swimming Majors, a list of select marathon swims and finishing times through history.  (For some silly reason, you have to be a paying-member just to see the list, so I'm unsure if Evan is on the list yet.)

My wife is from the St. Petersburg area and looked with respect at Evan's routing.  Very straight and true, and like a real gentleman, Evan thanked his kayaker for that.  My wife asked me why I don't "do that?"  I had to explain that I'd have to swim more than one hour, four to five times a week if I want to swim for 12+ hours straight!

So, Evan, hats off!  Congratulations on a fantastic swim.  And good luck on your next adventure, Manhattan!

Sucky week...but plenty of time to think

Been sick the last two days, and it's interferred with work and, of course, swimming.  I wholeheartedly refuse to swim while sick, unless running away from a volcanic eruption or sinking cruise ship. 

But swim with a head-cold when not in mortal danger?  No way.  My nose already feels like it does when I haven't surfaced in time on backstroke.  Nothing worse than the burning feeling of water up the nose (well, Hitler is worse, as are Brussel Sprouts).  Well, you get my meaning.  I just couldn't get in the pool these past couple of days.

I did get to thinking, though.  I believe I will hit that Dart 10K in England in September.  I have to talk to the boss (both work- and home-bosses), but it'll be after all the huge work this summer, so it should work out.  Unfortunately, I may have to go ahead and pay for it now, just so I'm sure I'm in.  If I wait until I'm sure I can go, it'll be too late.  For this (and a few other) reason, I cannot wait until I get back to the states.

Long sets

Been reading lately the swimmings-on (get it? That's a play on "goings-on"!) of Gords.  He's preparing for an English Channel swim in 2012, and thus is a yardage monster.  His daily swim total appears to be in the 12K range.  Yes, you read that right.  12,000 yards!  Almost 7 miles A DAY.

What's more, he doesn't just swim the distance straight.  He actually does sets.  And he'll do sets of 2000 backstroke.  Yikes!  That's incredible, both because of the stroke, but also the distance.  Hell, the entire daily swim is amazing from a logistical stand-point.  Talk about a supportive wife!  And he's got seven kids. 

So, on Friday this week, during my "long" swim (nothing seems long anymore, Gords, thanks a lot) of 90 minutes, I did 3 x 30 minutes, including the middle set being all backstroke.  I seriously thought at the beginning that at one point I'd switch over to free.  Backstroke is probably my second best stroke, but still, a half-hour of it?  But you know what?  It was easy.  Sure I got a lot of water up my nose, which is never pleasant.  But I got to breath a lot.  Plus it is a bit of a challenge in my stupid pool.  Not only is it only 33.3 yards per lap, but there are no flags.  There are two architectural features on the walls on either end that I use to determine how close to the wall I am, and most of the time I flip over with ample room to flip-turn.  Sometime I flip over and BOOM!, there's the wall.  So, there's a little excitement added.

So thank you Gords, for the idea to spruce and liven up my long swims.  And good luck on your new GSL swim next month!

Equality in sport

I've been thinking lately about swimming vocabulary, thanks to a post by Evan.  It all started out with his discussion of the term to get chicked.  I have a long history with this term, starting at a very young age when my Italian mom would throw shoes at me.  It doesn't matter how fast you can run if your mom can knock you out with her pumps.

Most memorably, at least for me, was in 1985, when I attempted (and finished!) my first and last Olympic distance triathlon.  Of course, it 1985 they weren't called that yet.  They were simply standard distance triathlons; 1.5K swim, 40K bike and 10K run. 

I didn't know much about training for these things.  I would never train right.  In fact, my first 10K at the ripe age of 15 was the result of running a mile a day for a couple of months prior.  Granted, I had a great first mile, 5:25, followed by an 11:00 second mile.  (My father warned me against standing at the front of the pack at the start line.  What the hell did he know?, I thought.  Well, another instance of Father Knows Best.)  My final time was just over one hour.  But still I didn't learn.  I started training for my triathlon as if the run part were just a 10K (I held then, and still believe, that one should train for that triathlon 10K as if it were a stand-alone 20K).

My 1985 triathlon started out alright.  I came out of the water fast and transitioned to the bike quickly.  I had the numbers of the other five guys from my age group (19 and under) on my arm, and at the half-way mark on the bike, I passed a guy and realized his number was on my arm.  In the end, I made up 12 minutes on him on the second half of the bike.

But the run killed me.  And this was where I met Ruth.  The first 5K of the run hurt like nothing I could imagine.  My thighs were on fire, and I had to stop every few 100m to squat down.  That felt great, but then I had to get on my hands and knees and get to vertical like a drunk.  I could then run another couple hundred meters before the cycle restarted.  Ruth caught up with me at the half-way mark.  She was very sweet, and made me look around and reflect on what a beautiful morning it was.  And it was.  She was absolutely right.  I ran with her for about a mile, but then she asked if I was going to do this tri next year, and my thighs started to remind me of the pain.  I begged her pardon, told her I'd see her at the end of the race, and did the squat-thing again.

And there she was, at the finish, somehow in the company of my father and sister (how do grandmas do that?), cheering me in.  She clapped me on the back, told me congrats, and then ran off.  RAN OFF!  A week later I learned that she had won her age group, 60-64.  (I ended up 3/6, and the guy I passed on the bike made up 9 minutes on me to come in 4th.)

Again, this never affected me like it does some guys.  After all, with a mom like mine and two sisters, I knew early that women could do anything they wanted.  And in some instances, better than men.  So today I thought: In what sports can men and women compete head-to-head? 

Iditarod came to mind, as does NASCAR.  Yachting also, I think.  But I couldn't come up with any more.  Until I read Evan's post today.  Once marathon swimming gets beyond a certain distance, the advantage men have over (most) women is lost.  Shelley Taylor-Smith still holds the world record for swimming around Manhattan.  She did all 28.5 miles in 5:45.25.  That record has not altered since she swam in 1995.  Two of the world's fastest and strongest marathon swimmers, who both happen to be men, attempted to beat her record last year, but alas, they were not fast enough. 

So perhaps marathon swimming can be added to the list of sports in which men and women can compete equally!

Penance and other swimming vocabulary

Over at Evan's blog (with the best banner picture ever), he's posted about swimming vocabulary, in his case, getting chicked and grandpa pace.  That got me thinking.

In my stupid pool, I have to swim 3 laps to make 100 yards.  That gets trying when you want to swim some distance sets.  I've tried the lap counting watches, but my Swimovate I've decided is a POS, and I've put it in a closet to rot.  And I can't afford nor trust their updated version or Finis's SwimSense.  I've even used the little finger lap counter thingies.  But nothing works for me except for good old fashioned counting.

But that is where I slip up.  I start day-dreaming and lose count.  Or, and I don't know why this always happens when I'm in the pool, I start thinking about numbers, or time.  And once I throw a number into my brain that isn't the actual number of lap I'm on, I'm screwed.

So, what does this have to do with the word in italics in the title?  Well, whenever I think I've dropped a lap, say, I can't tell if I'm on lap 8 or 9, I'll always pick the lower one.  If I was actually on lap 9, that's okay.  What I've done is a penance lap.  I do penance for the pool gods.

This, I tell my good Catholic brain, is pay back for any laps I skipped without realizing it.  This will appease the gods, and in the end, what I put in my USMS fitness log will reflect reality.  Or at least my version of it.

Active rest

I've been ponderin' lately, and I wonder how many of my swimming friends have had the same thought.

OW vs. pool swimming, well, where do you start.  For one thing, in a pool you get to rest your arms for a split second (full second?) at the end of each length.  That adds up.  And how about the kick off the wall?  If you streamline well, you can really rest your arms more and gain distance with little effort and, oh yeah, rest!  In OW swimming, your arms never stop.  Or shouldn't.  Your feet never stop.  Or shouldn't. 

So how do we replicate this in the pool, for those of us without the benefit of wonderful year-round weather.  I've thought recently of active rest, and how to incorporate that.  On Thursday I did a main set that consisted of  4 x (2 x 150 on 2:50 followed by 1 x 200 on 4:20).  The 150s were meant to be pushed; swimming at an effort level of 8 on a scale of 10.  I came in around 2:07 for each.  The 200s were restful, effort level 3 or 4, and I did those on about 3:30-3:40. 

At the end of each odd 150, as I was hanging off the wall in the deep end (recall that my stupid pool requires 3 laps for 100 yards...do the math), I thought that I could probably get better rest doing elementary backstroke back to the shallow end.  For that matter, why not elementary back for all rests?

There are problems in this, of course.  If your rest is such a short time that you can't even swim a length, then you might as well wait at the wall.  But if you're doing sprint sets with long rest periods, why not keep swimming.

I've found that my breathing is all over the place at the end of a sprint; I stand in the shallow end huffing away like an asthmatic.  But once the rest is over and I have a slower set to do, my breathing gets more organized.  I get into a rhythm and come down in HR must faster. In short, I rest better while swimming that slow set than when I rest at the wall.

So, I think I might integrate elementary back in some rests.  In the workout I mentioned above, I think I can fit in a slow elementary back lap between each 250, and then one again after the 200.  I'll try it next week and report back.  Meanwhile, any of my readers out there have experience in this sort of thing?

The Lovely Leave...

...and no, I don't mean the Dorothy Parker story.  (Although it is wonderful.)

I'm on leave this week.  And for my two non-military readers, that means vacation.  The wife has taken half our brood to wonderful Rome (I'm basing that adjective on what I've read about the ancient city; I've not yet been).  I'm here in Moscow wishing winter would end with the other half.

But, I'm getting plenty of swimming in.  That's the lovely part.  Oh, and no shaving.  I love being in the military, but I really am tired of shaving.  Anyway, back to the swimming.  As I write this, I've just finished my fourth session of the week.  That's good for me, as I can be sure of at least one, more likely two, things coming up in any given week that'll keep me out of the pool.  I like to tell people that my weekly days of swimming goal is 5 days, my hope is 4 days, and my expectation is 3 days.  Still, I think on average I'm getting at least 4 days in, and plenty of yards. 

With today's swim I'm at just over 95 miles swum for the year.  For me and my funky work schedule, that's not bad.  My goal this year is 240 miles, and I've surpassed that so far.  But I am banking a bunch of yards in preparation for a busy summer. 

Facebook and my blog

I tend to link all my posts to my/our Facebook account.  I have friends on FB who read my posts on FB and, I think, have never been to my actual blog.  I appreciate them reading and commenting on FB, but I must ask them to take it one more step.

Please use my blog link on FB to go to my actual blog.  This helps with my stats, which in turn helps attract more readers and someday, like my two serious OW swimmer friends, Evan and Rob, I hope that translates into swim companies sending me free swag.

So, dear FB friends, I ask that you come see my blog.  I've got a few pictures and, more important, links to other great swimming blogs.  Also, and this will help me with my obsession, if you click on that link you see in the upper left, it'll take you to SwimOutlet, where I get the vast majority of my swimming stuff.  And if you buy something from them (after clicking on my link), you will have my heartiest thanks.  And someday I'll get a gift card from them.

OW buoy turns

As you know, I just got the Mar/Apr 2011 copy of the USMS Swimmer magazine.  In the issue, there was an article entitled "Open Water Buoy Turns: The Four Ss of the 90 Degree Turn."  The four Ss are Sight, Stretch, Spin, and Strike.  All four of these Ss make sense, except maybe Spin.  

Of course you must sight the buoy; without knowing exactly where you are in the race and where the buoy is, you could be losing valuable seconds.  (Or in my case, with my horrible navigation skills, minutes.)  The authors suggest you stretch the arm closest to the buoy right after passing the buoy.  Once you're stretched, you start a barrel-roll around the buoy.  That's the spin.  Once you've spun and completed your 90 degree turn (or 180, which might require two spins), you strike out with powerful pulls and kicks to regain momentum.

I really wish I had access to open water and the requisite buoy so I can practice this.  At my Cyprus 5K, I used the technique I learned in Fran Crippen's DVD, Go Swim Open Water with Fran Crippen.  (Sadly, the Cyprus 5K was the same weekend Fran died, so I haven't been able to rewatch the DVD.)  Fran's technique involves getting as close to the buoy as possible.  Once you get just past the buoy, you stroke with only your outside arm, which helps spin you around the buoy.  It seemed to work for me in Cyprus.  Granted, I've only gotten to try it out that one time...

The USMS Swimmer magazine article gives buoy drills for the pool.  However, the drills help with everything but actually turning around a buoy.  They include two sighting drills, a "spin" drill, and a couple of strike drills.  But all the drills are swum in a swim lane.  None deal with turning around a buoy.  The only way I see drilling buoy turns is to remove some lane lines and swim in a group around an actual buoy.  I think that's called POW.  

Rob D is (in)famous!

[Note: I've delayed publishing this entry for a few days to give Rob a chance to be the first...snooze you lose, Rob]

Friend of the blog, Rob D., is featured on page 13 of issue 2 of H2Open Magazine, under the rubric Open Water Surfing.  Under this column, the publishers review three websites that the readership might be interested in.  Rob's blog is #2!  Congratulations, Rob.

 
 
And if you missed it the other 2.3 x 10^3 times I mentioned it, subscribe to H2Open Magazine!  If you don't want to wait for the Royal Post to get it all the way across the pond, pay the 16-something pounds for the digital version.  It comes out much earlier than the print and is 10 pounds cheaper.  Subscribe!