10Kmarathonswim

The secret to getting pageviews

In Typepad, you can track how many people (unique ISPs, I think) check out your blog on any given day. Normally, I'm below 10 visits. That's okay. I'm not prolific. Although I'm trying to be.

Anyway, on 23 March, I had 119 page views. The most I've ever had. By a factor of 12. It was incredible. I couldn't figure it out. Then I did the obvious: I checked out my blog.

Sure enough, I figured it out. The secret to getting pageviews in Typepad is to post a picture of your wife striking a pose. I did that late on the 22nd. And then all the pageviews came in. Voilà!

So, let's do a little experiment, and see what really draws the freaks readers in to my blog. Here's a pic of our (good-looking) kitty enjoying today's snowfall. Bring on the pageviews!

His name is Balthazar, and yes, he lives up to the name

Masters swimming and meets

A great and useful (seriously) debate came up recently in my masters team. Should coaches attend meets that team members go to? Sounds like an easy question, but it led to a good amount of time being spent in debate.

Masters swimmers attend meets throughout the year, whether it's short-course indoor meets or long-course outdoor meets during the summer. But not too many of my team's members take part in meets. And according to the USMS, only about 25 percent of the national membership ever compete in a pool meet or open water competition. I'd say in my club of over 200 members, that percentage is even lower.

So, should a club coach attend a meet that one of our members is participating in? Shouldn't the coach want to attend, to support his/her swimmer? Sound like easy questions, but there are other components to the debate.

The club certainly can't expect the coach to go pro bono. One of our members was a USS coach (and an incredible marathon swimmer) and would get a flat $50 to coach a meet. Sounds reasonable, especially since some of the meets are more than an hour away from our "hometown."

But do we send a coach to every meet that one of our swimmers will swim in? There are many meets throughout the season. Just in the past few months there seemed to be one every weekend. Do we send a coach even if only one of our swimmers is there? The coach fees begin to build up. Is it fair that the other ~180+ members pay a larger membership charge to cover coaching for the 20 or so swimmers who swim meets during the year?

Several points were raised both for and against:

-Membership fees pay for the annual picnic which a minority of club members attend;

-The amount of increase in membership fees would be minimal, maybe a dollar or two each;

-How about designating 4 meets during the year that coaches will attend and support club members?

-Swimmers going to an event pool their money together to pay for the coach, either fully or partially.

I don't know where I stand on this issue. I think maybe we can set a limit, like 5 swimmers. If we have more than 5 swimmers attend a meet, a coach will go. But that brings up so many other issues. Some swimmers don't even tell anyone that they're attending a meet! What if we hit the number of swimmers, but then the morning of the meet one or more don't show up. Does the coach still get paid. Is that fair to the rest of the membership?

Maybe a combination. Designate 4 meets that our coaches will support. Any meets above and beyond that, the swimmers can get together and request a coach. If there is only 1 swimmer going, he has to pay the coach's fee. 2-5 going, they pay 50% of the coach's fee, the club pays the remainder. More than 5 club members, the club pays in full.

Questions that yet remain: What if we have a contingent of Alexandria Masters swimmers at an open water event? I think in years past, we've had a large number (15+) of swimmers attend both the Jim McDonnell Lake Swim and the Chris Greene Lake Cable Swims. Do we demand a coach? (What would a coach do, without a boat or binoculars? Or a helicopter.)  What if a member is willing to pay the $50 coach fee for an open water swim of some distance, say 10 miles? Is the coach then required to attend as escort?

Lucky dog

This is why I'm lucky. Besides the whole she-supports-my-expensive-marathon-swimming-hobby thing. Besides her great writing. Besides that great smile. Besides the four gorgeous kids she gave me. I get all this:

Need I say more?

POW in a SCY pool?

There is a form of Open Water training called POW: Pool Open Water. I first read and heard of it from Mr. Open Water Swimming, Steve Munatones, in his excellent, almost-perfect book Open Water Swimming. Basically, it is practicing open water tactics in a pool.

POW workouts consist of sets where swimmers will swim to a buoy at the other end of the "lane" and circle around and return.  That's a simple example of a POW workout. Munatones has an incredible variety of example workouts in his book.

But I am pretty sure all of his examples in his book are for POW workouts conducted in a LCY/LCM pool, where swimmers have more distance to "fight" through to get to the buoy. Can you do a POW workout in a short-course pool?

I'm trying to insert myself as the "open water" guy for my masters team. I want to offer up my services for a POW workout some future Saturday. But the only pools we have arrangements with are SCY pools. We can get 4-6 lanes, but can I put 30 swimmers through POW in a pool like this? I just don't know.

Dear reader(s), have any of you done POW workouts? Short- or long-course pools? Ideas?

Am I even in ketosis?

All joke comments aside (talking to you, loving spouse), I'm eating fewer carbs than before. I just finished one serving of Hershey's dark chocolate, a total of 23 carb grams. That's it for the entire day. Not bad. Oh, wait. I'm drinking a beer. A wonderful beer, completely worth the carbs. As I write, I have no idea how many carbs are in that beer. I'm about to look it up. But all you have to do is take one sip of Samuel Smith's Organic Chocolate Stout, and you'll know what I mean.

OK, can't find nutrition facts for this exact beer, but the brewery's other beers range from 10-20 grams. So that's 43 grams for the day, at the worst. Or 172 calories in carbs. Or less than 10% of my supposed (because I don't count everything I eat) 2000-calorie day. 

Even better, my arms for the last two night's masters workouts haven't hurt or felt heavy. And my coach put us through some hell sets. Things like 100, 2 x 150, 200, 2 x 250, 300, 2 x 350, 400, 2 x 450 (although we only finished the first 450). I don't think we got more than 5 seconds rest between any of these sets. Well, except for, I think, twice when we had a masters minute. 

So far so good. I'm going to test my endurance with a healthy 3-hour session here in a couple weeks. We'll see how it goes.

Ketosis sucks!

I've been experimenting lately on a very low carb, high protein & fat diet. Well, that's not exactly true. My wife's been experimenting on me. She started this low carb thing about 2-3 months ago. I just started whole hog last weekend. 

Basically what it means is that I keep my total daily carb grams low, on the order of less than 30. Less than 120 calories from carbs. That's really low. Especially considering I'm probably ingesting about 2000 calories a day. I'm not religious about it, so I may go slightly over 30 grams a day. But I really doubt it. For the most part, my only carbs on a weekday come from a bottle or two of beer. 

I say weekday because I allow myself to cheat on Friday afternoon through Saturday morning. At least that's the plan. This past weekend (weekend #2 on the diet) I cheated with carbs through Sunday afternoon. Still not too many carbs, less than 100 grams. 

But the thing I've noticed is that this diet has had an impact on my swimming. I am immediately tired after the warm-up. My arms feels heavy like deadwood. I haven't led my lane for many workouts. I just can't keep up. My last solo day I knocked out 5000, but those laps were slow, on my CSS+:10, which is my 20K+ race pace. I beat the beep every lap, but it wasn't easy. My arms and lower back were killing me.

The wife tells me that when she first started her joints hurt for a few weeks. My knees killed me the first week and that lower back pain (reminiscent to my last 10K attempt) scared me. Joint pain has gone away (we'll see after tonight's practice). 

We'll see. I don't see how any ultra-endurance athlete can perform on this diet. What do you drink or eat in the middle of the hours and hours of running/biking/swimming? Carbs! Maybe I need to try beef broth, a la Webb, in my marathon swims this year. Do you think my volunteer kayaker in North Dakota will balk when I give him 3 one-gallon thermoses of hot beef broth?

Local open water calendar

My masters swim head coach asked me to compile a list of OW swims in the local area. Local defined as within a 1.5 hour drive from Alexandria, VA.  To that end, I'll reinstate my calendar that I used to have. The previous one was European swims. As I'm no longer living there, I'll do this local one and hopefully people will link to it, and then I'll get more readers.

So, here it is:

[Ed. note: this list updated as of 10 March 2013]

Neighborhood marathon swim!

I can't believe my luck. A marathon swim has cropped up in my neck of the woods. Well, close enough.

The C3 Cape Circumnavigation Challenge is a 15-mile marathon swim in three types of water (river, ocean and bay), to be held in September in Cape May, NJ. The swim is the brain child of race director and fellow marathon swimmer, Jason Malick. Jason and I know each other from the wonderful that is the Marathon Swimmers Forum.

The best part? My parents live nearby the swim!

I've filled out the form and am getting the money figured out. (Not too bad for a marathon of this length, 500 clams and that includes a kayaker and shirt and dinner and tour of the route the day before.)  For the location and distance, that's a great price.

(That last statement makes me think of an idea for a blog post. Figuring out the value of a swim based on $$ per mile, with credit for kayak or boats, dinners, etc. There's got to be a math formula for this. Oh, and have to throw travel costs into the mix. Dear reader(s), look forward to a future post!)

10,000 meters in a pool...

...takes a long time! Like 3 hours and 17 minutes.

Dear reader(s) know that I've done 10,000 in a pool before. But that was my tiny Moscow pool, and that was yards. 10,000 yards is about 9-10% shy of a 10K. The only actual 10K I've done is the Dart 10K.

Friday I got off work early, so I went to my SCM pool and knocked out my 10K workout I've mentioned here before. I kept my CSS+:10 pace for the first 8400 meters. The last 600 of that 8400 I was chasing the Tempo Trainer beep, and kept missing it. That was a sign from my body that I needed to slow down. So for the last 1600 I dumped the TT and just swam based on how my body felt. That last 1600 took quite a bit of time, not sure exactly how much (33 minutes?), but it felt a lot better than my "speedy" 1:53/100.

I was sore though. Not the same kind of sore that my epic fail 10K felt. This was a good shoulder soreness from taking about 6000 strokes. And by the next morning I was healthily sore, but not incapable of swimming again. Not that I did. Nor am I swimming today. But I will swim tomorrow.

I will go back down to 8000 or so on my long days, but a month from now I'd like to try another long swim, perhaps add another set of "600, 2 x 300" to bring the total to 11,200. We'll see.

Updated Critical Swim Speed

Updated my critical swim speed (CSS) today. Went to the pool to do a long day, and had been planning on doing my CSS for weeks now, but just never had the chance. So today was the day.

It has been a long time since I've done a CSS test. Like, since Moscow, and my itty-bitty 33.3 yard per lap pool. So I really needed to update it. In Moscow I had the benefit of 1/3 more flip-turns. Now that I have access to standard size pools, I need to update the times.

I have the Swimulator ap for my iPod. It's a nice little ap that let's you put in your 400 and 200 times (the basis of the CSS test) and it kicks out not only your CSS but also what you should punch in your Tempo Trainer should you want to use one for pace training...which I do.

Swimulator application

So, after a warm up of 800 meters, I did the 400. My time for 400 meters was 6:41.6. Good enough, I guess. I did some slow laps after to get the HR down to about 105, then I did the 200 in 3:15.4. My awesome little ap told me that meant a CSS pace of 1:43.09. What does that mean, you ask, dear reader(s)?

CSS is designed to give you a pace that you could theoretically hold for 1500 meters (or yards if you did the test in a SCY pool). The CSS won't necessarily be what you did the 400 or 200 in. For instance, at 1:43.09 per 100, my 400 would have been 6:52-6:53 and my 200 would have been 3:26. But, more importantly, if I hold that pace for a 1500, I should swim it in 25:46, which would be a great time for me.

Even better, the folks at Swim Smooth who came up with CSS have extrapolated the pace for longer (or shorter) events. So, after figuring out my CSS today I did 2 x 1500 at my 20K pace, which is CSS + :10/100. Like I said, the Swimulator showed me what my TT should be set for with my new CSS: 25.77 seconds per length. That would work if I were doing reps for an upcoming 1500M or 1650Y race. But I'm preparing for that crazy 26+ mile swim in North Dakota.

So instead, I set my TT to 28.27 (which would be my CSS of 1:43.09 plus :10), then when I was ready I turned it on, put it under my cap, and when it beeped I started my first 1500. Goal was to hit the wall coming out of my flip-turn just as it beeps. I managed to always be a few meters ahead of the beep. In fact for both sets I was somewhere between starting my first stroke cycle (after a nice streamlined push off the wall) and second stroke cycle when the beep sounded.

It's funny. It feels incredibly slow. But if I had to maintain that pace for, say, 20 kilometers, it would probably be perfect, maybe even a bit fast. Actually, the SS guys recommend adding :10 to :20 to the CSS for race pace training for 20K. So I could actually use more time. And for distances like 38K (English channel, or even longer, like my ND swim), they suggest adding :20-:30. As I get closer to that swim I'll do longer repeats, like 5 x 2000 on CSS + :25. We'll see how that goes.