Moving Outdoors

With the 2006 – 2007 season over Hyack Masters bid farewell to Bonsor and this Monday show up at our summer digs at Central Park, an outdoor fifty meter pool. I’m not a big fan of outdoor pools in this part of the world since the weather isn’t good enough for most of the year. I include outdoors in June as less than perfect since the weather can still see the occasional cold front bringing rain come off the North Pacific. Admittedly I’m a rather delicate creature. As a boy we had only one outdoor meet each season, our end of year B.C. Open Championships, which was always held in the middle of June at the University of British Columbia because apparently some wag at our provincial swimming association thought it would be clever to take ‘Open’ literally. Every year the weekend of the Championships seemed to be marked by cloudy, cold weather and, on at least one occasion, heavy rains. The one which has stuck in my memory and I remember whenever I swim outdoors occurred when I was ten. That year it was particularly cold and occasional sprinkles outside had chased me into the showers inside. Not that I needed much chasing. As a skinny stick of a lad without an ounce of padding to keep warm I naturally had a tendency to warm up in the showers at meets – often for hours at a time. My coach, deciding he didn’t want me to race ‘well boiled’, sent in a senior National to fetch me out well ahead of my race. Clearly ticked off at being sent to baby sit and unwilling to have me hang around him to ensure I kept away from the showers Bill dropped me off directly at the heat assembly benches with dire threats not to leave before heading off to attend to his own affairs. This left me shivering in my sweats on the corner of the last bench waiting for my own event to be called. The worst part was fending off first officials then seniors asking why I was sitting there, and then suffering the questioning glances (and worse yet the giggles of the girls) of the 8&Us and 10&Us whose heats preceded mine. All somewhat interesting I suppose, but the real subject of this post is the first boy from my event to join me. After four years I knew virtually all my fellow competitors by sight, including most of those from Washington State and even a few from our neighbouring province Alberta. This swim meet was a reunion of sorts – an end of year championships all the top swimmers typically attended. But this kid I’d never seen before and he came straight to me, a big smile on his face, and the introduction, “My name is _____, what’s yours?” That actually threw me because in the small world of competitive swimming everybody knew my name, but I didn’t need to respond because he followed up his greeting with an immediate “Just kidding, I know who you are” and then plunked himself down beside me and proceeded to talk. And he kept talking. These Championships were, in fact, his first ‘A’ meet ever, having qualified because of a great swim meet the previous month where he improved in virtually all his strokes by leaps and bounds. He was as pleased as punch to just be in the Championships with no further expectations other than perhaps improving a little bit more on his times. This was one upbeat guy! Without more than a grunt or two of acknowledgment coming from me he happily babbled away until the progression of the heats meant he was a couple of benches away, and only then did he finally turn around and start conversing with his fellow swimmers in the first heat. I was seeded second and thus Lane 4 of the penultimate heat and so it took a few more minutes before I too started moving forward with my now familiar rivals. Our event finally called he trooped off but as he left he turned and actually waved at me, his big smile still plastered all over his face. The wave understandably brought some ribbing and teasing about my ‘boyfriend’ which I easily ignored. Frankly I was deep in thought trying to figure out what world he had come from. You would have thought he’d just set a national record the way he was acting.

Though not aware of it at the time this swim meet represented an important turning point in my swimming career. With most of my major rivals already gone to the next age group this was the meet I was supposed to shine in, and though I medaled in all the events I expected to I didn’t win even once. Thus this meet began what would be two years of sub par performances which, combined with other factors, would eventually chase me off the stage. A partial case of if I couldn’t win I didn’t want to swim anymore syndrome. I have no reason to recant this attitude now because it remains with me to this day, but if change were possible I’d be tempted to acquire the ‘sunshine’ nature of that boy who was so happy to be simply participating in the Championships those so many years ago. And if you share his outlook, if you are one of those who takes pleasure in working hard and doing your best regardless of where you actually rank in the end, then please allow me to say to you what I would like to have said to him if I could do it all over again, “Well done, you must be very pleased.” I just know he would have responded, “I am!!”

Likely with a lot more words though.

Hyack Festival Musings

Over the three days of the meet I saw heard or experienced many things which were either note worthy from the viewpoint of a Masters swimmer or different from the typical experiences I would have seen and heard when I swam as a child:

• If I thought my age would create some fuss among the children I was wrong. The only ‘difficulty’ my age caused was when I went to register and the Clerk of the Course told me I needed to give the meet fees to my son’s coach rather than to her. I understand her confusion.
• Amongst the race officials and Hyack coaches it was common knowledge I was there to acquire qualifying times for this year's USMS Long Course National Championships. There was some curiosity about what times were considered good and what times I needed to qualify. Generally there was good humor about my participation and a couple of parents even talked to me about joining Hyack Masters after watching me swim (probably a case of “surely I can do better than that!”).
• Seattle’s King Aquatics had neat swimsuits, navy blue with widely spaced white lateral pinstripes. When I swam we only had monotone/single pattern swimsuits with the occasional side stripe. I thought the best suits at the meet, however, were the Killarney Gator’s who sport dark green suits with stylized scales outlined in light green. Cool!
• We should require all masters swimmers to do one warm up at a regular meet before complaining how crowded the lanes are in practice. Not only do the kids swim every stroke in warm up but they actually pass! Swimming three abreast in a single lane is something I hadn’t even considered possible. Of course they are thinner. No wonder everyone looks up when they race – it’s a habit ingrained from long hours in practice where it’s a matter of self preservation. I quickly learned to swim right on the lane lines, though not without some painful lessons to my fingers when I forgot to place my hands in front and instead caught the lines.
• As the Hyack Festival was a development meet numbers were small enough to justify the open seeding done routinely in masters swimming except the girls still swam separately from boys. Normally the participants became older and larger as the heats progressed and sped up but not always. In the 200 backstroke heat before mine a thirteen year old boy was in lane three and finished second with a time of 2:30.31. He wouldn’t have been pleased with that though – he was seeded nearly four seconds faster (as an aside he made the 13 & 14 finals but didn’t win; the eventual winner of his age group, who must have swum in my heat, swam 2:22.22). This is a development meet? I really have to work harder.
• Living only blocks away meant I could come and go as circumstances dictated rather than stuck sitting in the stands for hours at a time until the day was over. The only adjustment I had to make was to drive between my home and the pool (four minutes driveway to parking lot) instead of walking as I usually do and I was able to put in a full day’s work while attending the swim meet. If only they could all be this convenient!
• Swim meets nowadays are computerized and the Hyack Festival had a couple of platforms where individuals stared at LED screens to collect, compile and produce the pages we’ve all seen pasted onto walls from time immemorial, as well as inputting those official results on the web. Back when I swam computers were million dollar affairs (at a time where if your home cost $60,000 you had servants) and kept in large air conditioned rooms supported by dedicated staffs. Consequently meet results were printed off using Edison's mimeograph machines, something which had been done since the beginning of organized sport at the end of the nineteenth century. A mimeograph machine used a ribbon-less typewriter to cut a stencil of the results from special waxed paper which was then wrapped around the mimeograph’s drum. The drum was filled with special ink and operated by hand crank the machine would press ink through the stencil’s openings and so print a copy of the typed form. What made the mimeograph so memorable was the ink had a very distinctive and pleasant smell. It was also highly intoxicating. Children weren’t allowed in the mimeograph room and it wasn’t unusual to hear people laughing about someone who stayed too long and had to be helped from the room to recover. Sometimes progress isn’t always better.
• My times were enough to qualify me in all my events – even the 200 IM. I had based my initial understanding about their relative difficulty on the Short Course National Championships qualifying times which really impressed me with their tough standards. I failed to realize, however, those standards were based on yards not meters. So when the long course times came out there was quite a difference between what I expected and the actual qualifying times. Competition at the meet itself, of course, will be world-class regardless of what the qualifying times are. I’m just participating this year.
• Girls' swimsuits must be very tight. They were adjusting their shoulder straps all the time, and when not actually racing many simply dropped the straps off their shoulders. A case of going too small or just reluctance to replace a relatively unused and expensive racing suit too quickly? I’m thinking the former.
• The water at Canada Games Pool was noticeably colder than normal but perfect for racing. Obviously they had allowed it to cool overnight to bring it into the best temperature range for racing. Only Nanaimo Ebbtides and UBC did the same out of all the Masters scheduled swim meets; the rest just stayed with normal temperatures which were invariably too warm for racing anything more than fifty meters.
• The spot I selected to watch the meet from also happened to be the location of the team’s video game players where a row of Sony PSPs and Nintendos were passed along from boy to boy as they came and went pool side for their scheduled races. I never saw a girl up there once over the weekend. As I used to occupy myself as a child by sitting in the showers for hours at a time keeping warm this development is probably welcomed by the coaches.
• Now older and wiser I kept warm by wearing my Hyack hoodie over a team t-shirt and discovered the hoodie pocket was perfect for storing goggles and cap when not swimming (not exactly patting myself on the back here as it took me three meets to realize this).
• Hyack Festival was an age group meet where I was one of only two open swimmers in attendance. I was surprised to discover the current definition of age groups doesn’t include 10&U’s, for whom Hyack’s held a mini-meet in between the morning heats and the evening finals (which incidentally made for very efficient use of pool time). I understand there are now time limits as to how long 10&U’s can compete each day (much like child actors) which would encourage splitting them off into a completely separate swim meet. Interestingly swimming no longer has the 8&U age group which existed in my generation. Smaller overall numbers, probably due to the ever increasing number of choices today’s generation have to occupy their free time, has apparently meant insufficient participants to justify continuing them as a separate competitive category.
• Coach Brad kept busy during the three days as he was both the official responsible for the compilation of the meet’s results and the coach of some of Hyack’s Olympic Way 10&U swimmers involved in the mini meet. In every successful amateur sport organization there are a handful of volunteers who carry out the bulk of the work needed for the club to succeed. Add in the fact he’s the coach of Hyack Masters (Bonsor) in addition to his other listed duties and Brad is definitely one of them. A tip of the hat to Brad for his efforts.
  

Hyack Festival: Lessons Learned

In the military they have a process called “lessons learned” whereby they study the mistakes and errors which occur in every engagement, often at great cost, so the same mistakes are not repeated in the future. I too made several errors in my races at the Hyack Festival which caused me grief. Here are my lessons learned:

1. I need better conditioning. It's difficult to race seriously on less than 20k training a week. Especially in order to race anything over 100 meters. The greater the distance raced the more kilometrage you need under your belt, but practically speaking 20,000 meters a week is a reasonable target. Forty is better and sixty best, but most world-class masters have pegged the minimum at somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 meters a week depending on the race distance if you want to compete seriously. There’s a reason why the kids are so good – they have the time to put in all those meters;
2. The smaller your conditioning base the less time you can stay away from the pool. I had reached a level of 15,000 meters a week by the end of January and had started towards a target of 25,000 meters when work commitments intervened. By the middle of March my average had dipped to a little more than 10,000 and from there continued downward towards the roughly 5,000 a week I’ve managed over recent weeks. Despite the decline I had good results at April’s Provincial Championships which led to a mistaken belief I would see continued improvement a month later at Hyack Festival. I didn’t because I had only just enough conditioning to make it into April and no further. Two months minimal training is simply too little to race on, especially when you’re racing tired and have trained only a few months;
3. Finding the right pace in a race is critical to achieving your best time, especially in the longer, endurance orientated events, and in order to set the right pace you need to know how fast you’re swimming. Excitement, desire, and competition will cloud your judgment in the crucial opening lap. You go out too fast, or overcompensate and go out too slowly, either of which will guarantee a less than efficient race. The only way to prevent this is to know your speed and this comes from understanding what times varying stroke rates give. I’ve been rather blasé about noting splits or stroke rates during workouts which has meant I’m still nowhere near making a connection between the two. This ignorance resulted in a lot of pain on the weekend. In future I’ll pay close attention to this relationship during practices and so hopefully learn to better read my actual speed and effort;
4. An inefficient swimming technique will result in a disproportionate expenditure of energy. I blew up in my 200 IM mostly because I didn’t realize how hard I had to work just to swim fly, and I was working hard because my stroke is inefficient. My breaststroke isn’t very good either and together the two of them were more than sufficient to drain my slender reserve of endurance to nothing. My free and back techniques are better and it shows not only in my times for those events but in the fact I can better manage my races when swimming those strokes. A problem I was aware of well before this swim meet but one I clearly underestimated. I must put special emphasis in improving my fly and breast technique before my next individual medley if I want to improve significantly; and finally my last lesson learned was
5. Swimming long course is harder than swimming short course. Most readers who’ve raced in a long course pool will think I was an idiot, but going into this meet I was anticipating no real impact on my expected times from the change. My misplaced confidence was based in part on the fact there would be fewer turns in a fifty meter pool (turns being a particular vulnerability of mine) and I’d be able to handle the switch from racing short course with relative ease because much of the training I’ve done on my own has been in a fifty meter pool. It turned out neither assumption was correct. I might have poor turns but I underestimated the value of the two or three seconds of physical rest a turn gives even while holding your breath. It’s not a lot but a couple of extra turns are enough to noticeably reduce the minimum effort required to swim the distance. Without the break at twenty five meters muscles start feeling the ‘burn’ sooner and worse yet, if you are really fatigued, the longer distance gives fewer chances to pause that extra second at the wall when absolutely required. The simple answer in dealing effectively with these small differences is better physical conditioning and this observation completes the chain. I know what I need to do; all that remains is to put it into practice.
   

Hyack Festival Report

Let us get right to it. On Friday I swam the 200 IM and the 100 back (my worst and best events of the meet respectively). If things went poorly with the individual medley hopefully my back could redeem the day. The 200 medley came first and I had my race tactics all laid out. I’d take the opening fifty fly relatively easily, gradually work my backstroke from an easy recovery pace in the first quarter up to my normal 200 rate by the end, and then still reasonably fresh, go hard on my breast bringing it in as best I could on my free. Didn’t quite go that way though. Stroking smoothly the fly went well and more than a little pleased I was right with the leaders to touch the wall only somewhat fatigued. Came off on my back, took a few strokes to settle into a rhythm and recover my breath before picking up the tempo, thinking things were going apace. Famous last thoughts! Strangely rather than steadying my breathing started becoming more ragged and by the time I finished the back leg I was exhausted. Stick a fork in me, I was done. I’ve been close to death a couple of times but in both instances the moment passed in a flash of realization, reaction, and adrenalin. Running on empty with still another hundred meters to race was like knowing you were about to drown – sheer terror. I watched the rest of the field move away from me in breast all the while concentrating on not going into hyperventilation and then barely managed to swim the last lap without swimming heads up (I considered it but decided I preferred to die, quite literally in fact, and give those lazy ass lifeguards something to do). So exhausted were my muscles after already over a full minute of anaerobic work I had a hard time lifting them out of the water, and that damn pool seemed to go on forever. Don’t ever run out of steam in a fifty meter pool! Well I didn’t come close to my target time of course, being over eleven seconds off, and so hard was the race I was still sore the next day even with warm downs and stretching. Coach Brad met me at the warm down pool after the race to go over my splits with the interesting ones the fly and free. I took out the fly over four seconds faster than my fastest planned split; I didn’t know I could swim a 50 butterfly that fast! Why I thought I was going out easy is beyond me but perhaps because of my exceedingly poor fly I mistook a smooth stroke for easy despite knowing I have to swim fly basically all out or swim it like an old man. And this day and in front of this crowd I was not going to confirm everyone’s opinion of me my very first lap! My hubris cost me big time. How big? My final split was over fifty seconds for the free. I truly suffered. Well as I was jumping into the pool for my 100 back still a little weak from my 200 IM ordeal I knew I couldn’t risk another burnout. My first lap was cautious and accordingly slow but after my turn (actually such a decent turn I spent a couple of seconds congratulating myself before remembering I still had another forty odd meters racing left) I turned up the throttle. Ran out of gas some ten meters from the end but that was close enough, and with a good finish at least ended the race under the meet qualifying standard. I’ll take the fact my second fifty was almost two seconds faster than the first as a positive sign for future times.

Saturday was a rest day of sorts because I had only my 50 back and 100 free to race. Almost back to back but with the fifty first up both Brad and I agreed I’d have plenty of time to recover from such a short race. About a third way through the fifty I realized my butt was too low and in trying to correct my position took in a good gulp of water and then followed it up a couple of strokes later with another dose of self-induced water boarding. G*d I love competitive swimming! To end it off properly I took my final lunge at the finish and discovered I was about ten centimeters short, apparently having not yet learned to continue kicking right to the end despite my practicing to do just that. But since I didn’t die and was within a few tenths of my seeded time I wasn’t going to complain too much. There’s always the next time. Slightly buoyed by this I reverted to my premeet race plan for the 100 free whereby I would swim almost all out the first length and then bring it back as best as I could, figuring if I couldn’t handle a 200 I could deal with a 100. Double dang! I was wrong again! And need I remind you those fifty meter pools are really long? In open water at the turn (supposedly intelligent I should have realized my being with the leaders meant I had gone out too fast) by midpoint on the return lap the now familiar feeling of anaerobic weakened muscles became more and more apparent while all the while the wall seemed to actually recede – likely some form of tunnel vision one gets when oxygen deprivation starts taking hold. My time was over three seconds slower than meet qualifying time, a bitter pill to swallow given I had every expectation of bettering it or at least coming close.

On Sunday I only had my 200 back to deal with but by now I was pretty leery of anything in a fifty meter pool much less something 200 meters in distance. Throwing out what little pride remained I decided to revert to my Provincial Masters strategy of going easy the first 100 and then simply trying to hold the pace for the rest of the race until picking it up at the end. It worked once so it would work a second time and far better to miss the meet qualifying time by several seconds than blow up and suffer horribly while taking even longer to finish. To my great surprise the race was my best of the meet, almost beating my April 200 short course time. Yes, the last fifty was rough but everyone can take pretty well anything for a fifty. It’s only a fifty right? So that was my first long course swim meet in thirty three years. The next time will be at The Woodlands, Texas for the National Championships in three months time where I will, hopefully, be better prepared.

Hyack Festival Looming

Tomorrow is my first long course meet since my return to swimming. It’s also my first non-Masters swim meet since my return to swimming and that fact is a little unsettling – not because there will be a bunch a kids running around who could clean my clock in the pool (there will be lots of those) but because right now only my 50 and 100 back times qualify. I’ve entered in three further races where I have to set ‘personal bests’ in order to meet qualifying times, and in long course to boot! Luckily this competition is one of the first in the long course season, a combined AA/AAA swim meet intended to provide an opportunity to move up to the much more plentiful AAA swim meets from the development ranks, and consequently has rather lax time standards (for real competitive swimmers that is). I should achieve the meet standard in my 100 free, but my concerns are with the 200 back and 200 IM. The fact they’re both 200 meter events isn’t coincidental; my endurance needs much more work before it starts coming back (or at least some of it). I can now race a hundred meters and be fairly confident I will finish, but 200 meters is still well beyond my comfort level. How well I do, and what pace I should go out in, are all big question marks for me right now. Now normally I wouldn’t be really concerned about my times because I’m still in ‘pre-race condition mode’ where I discount anything I do in the belief with further training I’m certain to be swimming faster later on. This phase ends with my first full season in March, 2008 (when I either quit or continue on with swimming for swimming’s sake and not for rehabilitation purposes which ostensibly I’m doing now). My problem here is Coach Brad has vouched for me to get me in and I don’t want to embarrass him by blowing up in the pool in front of all the senior coaches. That, unfortunately, is a possibility in my 200 races as I have to swim hard in order to meet the qualifying standards and could flame out before the end. Complicating matters work is still hectic and I've missed many workouts because of it, plus I’m on pretty heavy duty meds now because it's hay fever season. Not the best run up to a swim meet where I need to show significant improvement. My first 200 is the IM this Friday so cross your fingers for me (and Brad).

Cool Workout!

I thought Monday’s workout was really interesting, though likely because I’m easily amused and I tend to enjoy anything that even looks like a contest. Again, consistent with what we’ve been seeing for a couple of weeks, the practice was centered on intervals. What was novel to me was how the interval set was designed. First things first, the warm up and a short supplementary set were given out:

Warm up: 400 choice + 400 split 100 bk, 200 IM, 50 fly, 50 fr

Sup. set: 12 x 25 IM order in sets of three (1st counting strokes; 2nd aiming for 8 strokes/lap for fly, 12 for bk, 8 for br, and 12 for fr;3rd same # strokes but 4-5 sec faster than 2nd rep).

The main set was a varying amount of 50s @ 1:01. The set’s twist is the swimmer has to finish the fifty before his or her original start time (i.e. if the swimmer leaves on the top to start the set, and twenty 50s into the set is now leaving on the 20 the swimmer is still aiming to finish before the top). Once the swimmer fails to finish within the limit he or she is out. It’s a contest for the swimmers, with the winners and losers all too apparent. The first fifties are just putting in mileage, but it starts getting tougher the longer you go. Brad set aside half an hour for this set meaning he was expecting some of us to at least get close to swimming sub-30 fifties after 1,500 meters (I have told you sometimes he coaches us as if we were real swimmers haven’t I?) but because we started late and were running out of time he shortened it by having us start on the eighth fifty (+ 0:08). You’re trying to swim the first fifties only a few seconds faster than elimination time and so conserve energy for the later runs. Pacing is critical because if you make the round you’re looking at doing the next a second faster and continuing so ad infinitum. You certainly don’t want to go too fast but you must make the cut off. In the set itself I figured I had two more fifties in me but cut it too close and touched just outside my start time and so had to drop out. I felt a curious mixture of dismay I failed to continue on and relief I didn’t need to go again. In retrospect I should have gone one more time just to show myself I could have made the next one. This set is well known (notorious?) in the Hyack Swim Club and is traditionally seen at the close of the short course season. Next year I’ll be better prepared. I give this workout my first 10 of the year.

Marathon Post Script

I’m not enthralled by the Marathon, because the event is too extreme (even too long to comfortably watch). Still I’m in awe of the world’s elite marathoners for what they can do, how fast they can run for such a long distance. They’re machines. The best of them have run the marathon at a sub-30 10k pace which is absolutely mind boggling. Even the women, in an event that must be the most unsuitable for females barring blood sports, are amazing. But my reverence for the elite fades quickly to mockery for the masses who attempt the marathon and for two good reasons – aesthetic and practical. First things first – the Marathon must be run, not walked or a combination thereof. The legend of Pheidippides and his race against time which led to his dying is what the marathon is all about. Traveling twenty six miles by foot is not an accomplishment for a human being, entire nomadic tribes do that and more every day when they’re on the move, but running it (meaning at one point in your stride both feet are off the ground) certainly is. How many people can really do a Marathon? Damn few, which is why at first only Olympians ran it before the general public adopted the race as something they wanted to do too. An easy three to four mile jog is done at around seven minutes a mile, a pace which if held would result in a three hour marathon. Things which are easy become hard over the marathon distance. The first Olympic gold medal winner, a Greek goat herder, finished the distance in just a little over that pace and that’s about as slow as you can run the marathon. Yet despite this hard held opinion I wouldn’t ever deny to someone’s face their claim to have done a marathon even if the time was over five hours. What do I care? My real antagonism to the marathon for Joe Average lies in believing people should be trying to establish a long term exercise regime for their health rather than attempting the distance. Even people wanting to just finish are typically recommended to build their runs up over a few months from 25 to 60 kilometers per week, with ½ to ¾ of each week’s distance to be done in one run on the weekend. All training like that does is build up tolerance to pain. The fact the programs are only weeks in length says volumes about the average participant’s intentions. What happens after? Surely it would be better to begin running three times a week for thirty minutes and gradually build up your runs over the following years? Going out on a warm summer morning or a crisp fall day for a short run can be a lot of fun. Running over 20k rarely so. After the first hour any pleasures initially felt start to bleed away (those who’ve experienced blistering will know what I mean). Novices training for the marathon in one suggested program are supposed to put in a 30k run (20 miles) three months into training! So I can’t help but believe attempting the marathon is only going to associate running with pain - and that can’t be good motivation to run for the rest of your life. So don’t do it. Racing 5k is plenty to begin with, and in two or three years if you like the racing part then graduate to the 10k. But for heaven’s sake stop there. There is a life outside of running.

American Sis and the Marathon

My fellow Hyack Masters teammate Joe ran his first half marathon a week ago and has written up a series of posts about his adventure on his blog See Joe Run. See Joe Swim. His experience strongly paralleled those of my youngest sister when she ran the LA Marathon back in ’94 or ’95, and since I’ve always intended to do a post about American Sis’s own particular talent I think this would be as good a time as any to write it.

If I can presume to say Canadian Sis and I could swim in our youth then I can also presume to say American Sis could run. Certainly her physical appearance screams runner even today. Both Canadian Sis and I ran as well, both of us competed in cross country, and we both enjoyed some moderate success. American Sis, on the other hand, was not a swimmer (though not so long ago when we were laughing at her swimming ability she told us defensively, “You know, when I go swimming people think I’m a good swimmer”), but whatever her deficiencies in swimming she more than made up for it running. She does have one other quirk which separates her from her older sister and me – she hasn’t a shred of competitiveness in her. As a child in elementary school she won everything, any and all distances and often against children years older, a true phenom. Yet after moving up to Junior High School she abruptly stopped running. I asked American Sis why she stopped preparatory to writing this post and she told me the story. It turns out in her first PE class at junior high the track coach dropped by to take a look at my sister and he and the PE teacher started discussing what events and distances the school would have her run right there in class. Now I’m sure this happens all the time when a new prospect comes in but to my sister this talk about what races she would enter smacked of ownership and impulsively she decided right then and there she wouldn’t run for them at all. And she didn’t. She waited until high school before edging back into competitive running by rejoining the track team. With her running reputation apparently still very much intact she was entered into a cross country the next week but did badly. Afterwards the coach rounded into her in front of the team for failing to put in an effort and not trying. To this day my sister is indignant about that. “I’ve never run any other race in my life harder than I did that one” she told me, and personally I think the fact she actually said ‘harder’ points to her having one of those rare off days all athletes experience once in a while, because with Sis the words hard and running just aren’t used in conjunction with each other. The pressure to win meant she quit running again. The following year, however, the school principal convinced her to help a rugby player train by running with him, and then encouraged Sis to run a little on her own. At the end of her senior year the principal approached her again, this time to run the 1,500 for the school at the high school regionals and Sis accepted. At first not taking the race very seriously she found herself with the trailing pack well behind the leaders until she decided on a whim to try to catch up. Whenever I meet up with her former high school classmates they still bring up how exciting it was to watch her move from a third of a lap behind on the final bell to second place and Provincials qualification after catching and passing one runner after another. At the Provincial High School Championships she decided to pace herself by staying with the girl who had beaten her before going into her final kick. A reasonable strategy but ultimately a failure as her chosen ‘rabbit’ wasn’t particularly competitive. Once again she found herself too far back, this time behind a quality field, and even with her now trademark closing kick she failed to medal. She did however go under five minutes, an excellent time considering her lack of training and poor tactics. And that was the end of her limited competitive career.

One day in 1994 or 1995 she called and told me she was going to run the Los Angeles Marathon, more than a little tentatively because she knows of my negative attitude about the masses’ fixation with the marathon. After asking a rather perfunctory “Why?” and then listening to the typical gibberish people spout off when they want to run the distance I inquired about her training and when she was planning to race. “Well this year’s marathon is in (whatever month it runs)”, she said, which was about six weeks off. “That’s not too bad”, I replied, my interest perking momentarily, “it’ll give you a full year of training to prepare”. “Actually”, American Sis conceded, “I’m planning to run this year’s marathon”. Well I don’t swear, especially at family, but let us just say our conversation after that was short. My mother went down to provide race support and afterwards Sis called me to fill me in on her experience. It went OK, nothing eventful happened, and though she was happy she did it she likely wouldn’t do it again. I, of course, was more interested in her time, which turned out was a couple minutes over four hours. Surprisingly slow for my sister, even taking into account she didn’t train. Some further discussion and it turned out the time was actually the official time she crossed the finish line because she didn’t bring a watch with her (so typical!). We had to adjust her time for the several minutes after the start a non-seeded runner actually takes to cross the start line to begin the race. So her ‘real’ time was closer to 3:50, marginally better but still slow given Sis’ typical running pace. Never having run a marathon I figured she must have done a lot of shuffling and left it at that. It was only when mother came home did I learn American Sis had to stop and walk for four or five miles at the 20 mile mark of the race because of severe leg cramps. That explained her time, and of course she was never going to admit her problems to me knowing my attitude about inadequate training and the marathon itself. But a sub 3:30 would have been more what I would have expected from American Sis for her first marathon ... assuming she ran the distance without breaking down, something which wasn’t possible because she sought the accomplishment of running a marathon without putting in the necessary work. That’s what happens to people who don’t prepare for a distance like the marathon properly, even those with prodigious talent like my sister. And for those readers out there who are actually still considering running a marathon some advice. Take a look at a map of your planned marathon and think if there isn’t a more reasonable distance on which to test yourself. A member of my old running club always liked saying, “If God had intended us to run more than 400 meters he wouldn’t have given us cars.” A sprinter of course. But as I grow older and wiser the common sense of that statement becomes clearer every year.

Speed + Endurance is the Trick!

Coach Brad continued with his theme of speed with endurance employing another workout utilizing the combination. Last night’s practice was the most like a track workout I’ve had yet at Hyack Masters.

Warm up: 200 easy
16 x 25 sw/k/p/sw @ 0:45 in sets of four (I did it IM)

Main set(repeated twice):
4 x 25 sprint @ 0:50
100 easy @ 2:30
4 x 25 sprint @ 0:45
100 easy @ 2:30
8 x 25 sprint @ 0:40
100 easy @ 2:30
The 25s to be maintained at the same fast pace throughout the set (i.e. 17 sec/25)

Warm down

This is classic interval training. You set a fast pace on an easy interval and pound away until you gradually transition from pure speed, move through technique (keeping up the pace by concentrating on efficiency), and finally go to endurance where to maintain speed you need to force stroke turnover and kick. Now in a track workout you wouldn’t have any easy breaks, rather you’d just do a block all together such as 20 x 400 @ 3:00 with a 1:15 target. Personally I don’t think swimming is any different so I suspect Brad threw the easy hundreds in to provide breathers and so reduce the stress for us oldsters. An adjustment I’m most grateful for because towards the end I was just swimming to avoid the stigma of quitting before finishing the set. Not only does interval training help establish overall speed but it also trains the athlete to recognize the tempo of certain paces, something which I sadly lack at the present, and a deficiency which makes establishing the correct turnover rate during a race difficult if not impossible. Of course an elite athlete knows what his or her time will be if the present tempo is maintained and consequently can make adjustments during a race for time or to conform to a pre-race strategy. If you’re a masters swimmer you’ve no doubt come across coaches like Coach Reid more used to dealing with real swimmers (Brad was a national caliber swimmer not so long ago) who will occasionally slip into giving instructions such as “start at one twenty and decline each of the next five by one second, then hold at one fifteen for the remaining reps until the last when I want you go best time plus five” Quite impossible for us masters to follow of course. A workout which brought back the memories from my running days – I’m giving this one a 9 too.

Back in the Pool

Friday night I was back in the pool preparing for the upcoming Hyack Festival swim meet. This is quite the change in plans from only three weeks ago when I paid my fees to attend the Canadian Masters Championships taking place in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Several factors influenced the switch. First and foremost taking a long weekend off in May isn’t really practicable for me and with the Hyack Festival being a two day meet within walking distance not only do I save a full day but I can also work a few hours around the meet itself. Secondly the Hyack Festival is long course whereas the Championships are short course. Every meet I’ve swum to this point has been short course and I’m anxious to obtain some times in the ‘true’ distance, the Olympic distance, of fifty meters. I’m completely biased when it comes to course length having trained exclusively long course as a child. Way back then any records achieved in short course races were unofficial – the world’s fastest 25 meter times were only accorded ‘world’s best’ status, and I continue to cherish this prejudice against short course. Don’t ever get me started on the American practice of racing 25 yards! Plus I can use the times achieved here to meet the National Qualifying Times (NQT) for the upcoming USMS Long Course National Championships. My last reason is because the Hyack Festival is classed as a combined AAA/AA competition the meet has its own qualifying times. I’m getting weary of competing in swim meets where anyone can swim, meets which include the Canadian Masters Championships. Watching people take several minutes to swim two hundred of anything makes me feel like I’m participating in a SWAD (swimmers with athletic disabilities) event. At Hyack Festival I’m going to be racing just to show I deserve to be there. Hopefully with some good times my participation will go unnoticed. But that's all in the future. Getting back to last night’s practice Brad continues to pound away at speed work despite the fact Hyack Masters have finished with competitions for the season. Consequently the workout wasn’t much in terms of kilometrage but was punishing if you did it properly:

• Warm up: 8 x 50 on 1:00 (odd fifties back/breast & even fifties free breathing every four strokes)
  
• Sup. Set: 6 x 100 free on 1:25; 1:40; 1:55 repeated twice
• Main Set: 16 x 75 broken into pairs, the first swum hard on 2:00 and the second easy on 1:30 and done as kick, swim (non-free), pull, and swim (free), all repeated twice;
  
• Warm down: Anything as we ran out of time to do the final set Brad had planned for us.
  

Our target times for the hard 75 swims were based upon our 100 times, with the hard 75 non-free swim to be done at or better than our best time whereas the hard 75 freestyle was to be done at least four seconds faster than best 100 time but aiming to equal it for the 75 meter distance (i.e. 45 seconds or better was the announced target for Lane Six). Ian switched it around and pounded out a couple of mid 50 fly's for the hard non-frees but I really wasn’t up to it and by the second repeat was merely trying to maintain a respectable pace. Despite my off form I really liked the way the practice was designed as it allowed for considerable latitude (lassitude?) in approach. Pedal to the metal it really combined speed work with endurance, something we at the Masters level are in desperate need of, and easing off some, the second easy 75 forces a level of minimum effort on the swim. This is one workout I’m going to do again on my own when I’m better prepared for a hard work out. Workout rating: 9

It's Easy to Spot a Freak

This morning, the first of May, I decided to drag myself out to yoga after a near three week absence. I won’t bore you with a position by position description of the hour and a half class. It’s challenging, tiring, relaxing, at times frustrating, and most of all, therapeutic. Though I still have difficulty touching my toes I’m seeing slow and steady improvement in my flexibility and by extension, in my overall body strength, especially that of my core. Yoga’s enjoying ever increasing popularity among elite athletes for its ability to prevent and even rehabilitate repetitive use injuries so it feels good to be doing something both Phelps and Thorpe have used in their training. But the real reason I’ve brought up today’s yoga session was because we had a new face in class. Clearly not a gimp and since he was in his early twenties and without the body of an athlete I dismissed him as a possible guru. In my very narrowly defined world of yoga that left him having to be gay. The possibility I had erred in my assessment was raised when our instructor used one of Kevin’s postures as an example of perfection and then was confirmed when she used later postures he reached as examples for the class a second and then a third time. The second time she did so it was preceded by an exhortation for all of us to strive to do our very best and use Kevin as an inspiration. Now normally I ignore any off topic mutterings of my instructors and continue with my own yoga but after hearing an accolade like that I ceased my efforts and took a look. We were working on a back strengthening floor exercise called the Locust where, lying on your stomach with arms underneath the body palms down and the face ‘kissing’ the floor, you raise your legs together as high as you can while bending only at the hips and lower back. I get my legs up around forty centimeters off the ground and then have a strong tendency to experience cramping in my calves. Kevin was doing a virtual head stand, really world class yoga! It would be like having some unknown drop in for practice and pull off a 1:54 200 meter free! We’ve had guests who were medalists in competitive yoga at the Western Canadian regional level but they had nothing on this guy! After class I asked him if he competed, to which he replied it had been suggested but he was going to attend Bikram’s Instructors Class this summer instead. Not even an instructor? “Then how long have you been practicing yoga?” I asked. “Fifteen months” was his reply, “I guess I have it in the genes”. Only fifteen months - no freaking doubt about that! Bikram is going to just love this guy. Yet another reminder I really have to get working on finishing my freak post.

End Note: Today was also weigh-in day. Based on my measurements being unchanged from last month my nearly one kilogram of additional heft is almost all muscle gain. I’ll just say I’m suspicious about the likelihood of my putting on muscle while sitting at a desk for two weeks straight doing nothing else and leave it at that.

Provincial Championships Day Three

Another early start to the day. Since I ended yesterday’s post with some off-subject commentary I figure I’ll start today with some more for editorial balance. When I showed up at the pool yesterday I lined up at what I thought were the registration tables with the others already there but then saw they were merely handing out the preordered official t-shirts and other memorabilia all these events hawk. Having a dozen or so commemorative t-shirts still left over from my running days I turned around and headed into the locker room. No long afterwards I was looking for the place where I could pick up my copy of the meet’s schedule of events and discovered they were with the grab bags being handed out with the shirts, memorabilia, etc when registering. Back I went to pick up my bag and register. It turns out the bag had lots of stuff other than just the schedule of events. Some bottled water, hard candy, an energy bar, a commemorative latex swim cap, and ... a trophy. It was clearly a trophy. I recall it was rather a nice one with a roundel showing this year’s Championship’s logo with a medallion of our provincial association at the bottom of the circle, the combination backed by a coppery stylized maple leaf (we’re Canadians, eh?) all on a short squat stand. The only thing missing was the inscribed plaque on the stand telling what marvelous accomplishment this keepsake was awarded for. But every participant got one. Now I understand in today’s society we feel it’s important to give our children a sense of self-worth and therefore ensure everyone gets a prize, but I figure by the time they reach twelve or thereabouts they should start realizing hard work and talent are going to have an impact on their life and unfortunately God didn’t hand out the latter on anything like an equal basis (hint: work harder!). Are we now doing this for adults? Is anybody deluded by all this? Don’t we have enough junk cluttering up our homes as it is? If anyone reading this enjoys collecting these things please tell me why. I’m not criticising anyone (well, not much), I just don’t understand the attraction.

Anyways back to the swim meet. For Day Three I had three events lined up: the 50 and 100 back and, trying to fit in another event since 100 free wasn’t possible due to scheduling conflicts, I was swimming 100 breast for the second time this season. I led off with 50 back which was nice because even I can swim a fifty without worrying about running out of steam. No pacing decisions and with these Championships being short course meters only one turn to deal with. The race itself went well. After an OK start I quickly settled into the sprint concentrating on my stroke’s turnover rate and underwater technique. A good turn at the midway point left me with just having to bring it home. Other than a horrible finish where I touched with my elbow I was happy with the result as my time came in the lower end of my target range. Coach was pleased with the swim too (aside from my finish) so we were both looking forward to what I could accomplish in the 100 back. In between these two, however, was my 100 breaststroke. Breaststroke is far and away my worst stroke, even beating out butterfly which I’ve only just started to learn how to swim properly. It’s so bad I’m embarrassed about it. I swam this event last December (again due to scheduling problems) and I surprised myself with a time that, while not atrocious was ... well, it wasn’t atrocious. I figured if I could chop a few more seconds off I’d end up with a PB that I could actually verbalize. Course I didn’t want to go all out and possibly jeopardize my back race following only two events later. So my plan was to swim at a strong pace for the first three laps concentrating on technique and only in the last length go all out. The idea was with my now better technique and overall conditioning I’d be able to take off three or four seconds off my December time without exerting myself overmuch. The race itself didn’t quite go as planned though. First thing I almost broke into some dolphins off my dive, only realizing barely in time what I was about to do, and actually ended up coasting to the surface before I started swimming. I’ve been training really hard on my free and back starts/turns to incorporate a couple of dolphin kicks before breaking into my flutter kick and by rote just instinctively went there. I’ll blame this on my failure to ever actually work on my breaststroke start in practice. I’ll have to add that to my “when all those other higher priorities are dealt with and I’m not too concerned about all those other lower priorities either” list I use before deciding to practice breaststroke. A little discombobulated from the narrowness of my escape from disqualification (and starting from almost a full stop in the middle of the pool) I collected myself and by the third length had my technique in hand enough to finish off the last lap as planned. Of course I finished well over my target range, but still saw my time better December’s by a third of a second (which says volumes about the quality of my first swim).

After my narrow escape came the 100 back where I intended to follow Semiahmoo coach Dennis Caldwell’s recommendation of going out a little slower the first fifty to ensure my third turn’s quality and bringing it home as fast as possible in the last fifty. Unfortunately my pacing isn’t yet on the mark and I ended up going out too slowly and consequently negative split the race. No real problem here, difficulties in setting the right pace were and are expected because of my lack of race experience so I’ll simply take note and make changes the next time around. All in all the race went very well. My turns were decent and because of my slower opening I went into the last lap having some reserves in hand which was very nice. Coach noted my technique fell off from the form shown in my 50 back sprint which caused some wandering from side to side in my lane but nothing which can’t be addressed. Even better my time was on target, albeit on the high side. Better still the several seconds I took off indicates I have lot more speed left in me to find. And that’s why I’m in masters swimming after all.

Provincial Championships Day Two

I took a break from work and went swimming today. Day one of the meet was yesterday when they swam the 1500 heats along with the 200 breast in the evening. As I have difficulty swimming 200 meters at one go I wasn't there. Day Two started early Saturday with warm up commencing at 7:00 AM sharp – evidently to avoid conflict with the Stanley Cup Playoffs games being played later on in the afternoon (a good example of the fanaticism with which ice hockey is followed in Canada). I had entered two events this day: the 100 fly and the 200 back. The fly came first. Several Hyacks were swimming this event but I was one of a group of four, none of us having ever swum the event in competition before, who decided we’d swim this together. And I do mean together: we all entered three minutes as our time to make sure and it ended up we had the first heat just to ourselves! Tired and not expecting much from this meet I started out at an easy pace and then just tried to keep it together the last couple of pool lengths. The first fifty meters went just fine except perhaps for the fact my easy pace had instinctively morphed into something more like race pace. By sixty five meters I started to tire and my technique started to slip, and by the time I hit the wall for the final turn I could also say the same for my endurance. And then things got progressively worse. No technique whatsoever in my final length when just getting my arms out of the water became my first priority. My time, however, was actually better than I thought practicable (I received a sarcastic comment about my three minute entry time from a seventy year old waiting for the next heat) even with a last fifty split seven seconds slower than my first. Beyond the satisfaction of completing our first 100 fly race the other Hyacks in my heat were pleased with their efforts too. Mike even ended up winning his age group as the only competitor in his 20 – 24 age category. Now there’s talk about some of us swimming the 200 fly in next year’s Provincials! I’m certainly game for it. But if you think we’re just out for fun and games you’d be wrong. There were Hyacks who were serious about racing the event. One was Jimmy who, racing six events this morning including 400 IM (4:54) and 100 free (0:54), came in at 0:58.89 to easily win the 100 fly for his 30 – 35 age bracket. Even better was learning later on from Coach Brad Jimmy trained four or five sessions a week with one of the Hyack senior groups. So it’s possible for a Master swimmer to practice part time with a proper Hyack team, something I’ve hoped would be possible so I could eventually to do the same myself. The fly in the ointment will be Jimmy’s long time association with Hyacks and his successful career probably has much to with his privileges. But if Brad begs and I throw money at them, especially lots of money, practicing with a proper competitive team is definitely in the cards given the right times in hand.

With the experience gained from swimming the 100 fly I told Coach I wasn’t going for time in my 200 back to ensure I didn’t blow up in the pool. My plans were to swim an even paced, strong, but not all out race and concentrate on turns to ensure posting a time I could use as a basis for measuring future progress. I think I achieved at least that. My turns of course weren’t good, but this is the first race I’ve gone into where I wasn’t actually worried I’d blow a turn so badly it would ruin my entire race. A couple were half-way decent and with the rest being merely poor, there was not one turn where I took in water and consequently my breathing was never difficult or under a lot of stress. Even allowing for the level of effort the 50 splits were fairly consistent and I was able to finish strongly, all of which bodes well for future near-term improvement. While my time wasn’t particularly good I do know I can shave several seconds off it the next time I swim, something which would bring me close to or under the U.S. national qualifying time for the event. I figure just working on my turns over the next month will save me a half second a turn. It’s a start at least. Finally, to finish off this post, allow me to air a particular gripe of mine. Just prior to my heat a group of us watched a gentleman swim the 200 back in the very old, now illegal style using a double arm backstroke with a frog kick. He was seeded with a 4:20:00 time but ended up a tad over 5:19. I complained this meet was not the place to just participate – arguing you should be at least capable of racing. A teammate pointed out the man was 83 but I remained firm there were better times and places to discover if you can swim a particular event and the Provincial Championships was definitely not one of them. To my shock he actually wasn’t even last in the heat; a woman in her 70’s finished a full minute behind him. I suppose its all relative. If he was doing the same thing in the 100 – 104 age category where just finishing would result in a world masters record I’d be cheering him on (assuming he could swim legally). But he wasn’t. Sheesh! What do you think?

Update: Isis has correctly pointed out a breast kick is legal in backstroke as is the double arm stroke. In fact FINA makes it clear virtually anything is legal in backstroke so long as you do it on your back and most of it on the surface.

Season’s End

This weekend sees the Provincial Championships, which for most master swimmers mark the end of the competitive swim season. It happens to be held right in the middle of my busiest period of work when normally I wouldn’t do anything other than work. Given my back and its history, however, not exercising at all isn’t an option so I’ve continued with my training, albeit in a minimal way. Certainly it hasn’t been enough to race on, and there’s been an unfortunate side effect – I’m exhausted. Though my feel for the water and technical abilities have continued to show improvement during this recent span I’ve discovered my endurance, as well as my top end speed, has suffered. Apparently if you want to swim your best you shouldn’t try to do it in a state of sleep deprivation.

This situation where my life doesn’t match up well with the swimming season is a familiar one though. In competitive swimming you change age groups on your birthday, and with a birthday coinciding with Groundhog’s Day (February 2nd) half the time I was changing right before the major meets of the season. Now actually missing the major swim meets, however, will become an annual event for me. In the future I’m going to skip Victoria and the Provincials, held in March and April respectively, and make my racing season the months from May through to February. That means my first swimming meet would be our Masters National Championships – and there’s a big question mark even there as work doesn’t slow until July. Why travel all that distance to swim tired and unprepared? Yet if I don’t swim at the Canadian Nationals then when do I obtain my qualifying times for the U.S. Long Course Nationals? Thinking this through perhaps I could use my times from the English Bay Swim Meet in February. But to rely on a single afternoon to obtain the necessary three qualifying times I’d have to be really good, good enough to make beating U.S. national qualifying standards a routine matter, and I’m not that good yet. Not to mention my overall problem in trying to race with severely limited training four months of the year. Maybe I should change careers.

An Update on My Back Rollover Turns

After Semiahmoo coach Dennis Caldwell pointed out how much time I could take off by merely bringing my back turn up to an average level I’ve been concentrating on doing just that. It seems only logical – what with the limited hours I have available for training devoting as much time as possible to my turns clearly provides the best payback. I think my distance to turn has seen significant improvement and my turn initiation also is looking up. At last night’s practice Brad gave me some more coaching on my turns and we saw my time from flag-to-flag (the five meters before and after the turn) drop from 6.1 seconds to a more palatable 5.6 seconds merely by better form in commencing the turn. Of course there are still lots of problems to work on. My foot placement is considerably better but because I’m now visually checking where my feet go my head position during the turn has become a problem. Furthermore I’ve not seen any improvement in the most important part of the back rollover, that of the dolphin kick, as presently my dolphin is only a quick two kick before surfacing. This is necessitated by my poor aerobic conditioning which leaves me just a couple seconds of air because I'm not taking a breath going into the turn (at least when I’m not too tired!). I’m working on extending this mostly by keeping my head down for a few strokes on every start and after every turn I swim, plus doing extensive breathing drills in my non-Hyack practices. Hopefully this will pay off and over time I’ll see my dolphins rise from two, to four, to six, and eventually eight. I’d be happy with eight underwater kicks. But for the present just making sure I get back to the surface is my first priority. I still mess up about one in six turns, and about every third botched turn is a lulu resulting in me lurching to the surface sputtering and coughing out the water I’ve taken in. I’m just going to be screwed swimming the 200 back and its seven turns next week. Damn.

Simply Kicking Myself

I was in a yoga session doing a floor exercise and having some difficulty with a tight calf muscle as I tried to point a foot back up towards the ceiling. Since this foot position is the same one sought by every swimmer, a foot pointed back to create a straight continuation of the leg, I snuck a look back to see how well I was doing and discovered I wasn’t doing very well at all. In fact, instead of what I had thought was a decent ‘half-way’ back angle, my foot was barely past vertical. With flexibility like that it’s not surprising I still have real difficulties doing any kicking set over fifty meters without fins. I’m going to blame years of running for this problem. When I was a child I most definitely had an excellent swimming kick and running was where my problem lay. Not the running part directly, I was always a good runner – it was with the extraordinary number of ankle sprains I suffered. Only a few years back did I discover the flexibility so highly desired in swimming creates a highly unstable platform for running. With much of my life spent on rugby fields, roads, trails, and ovals the thousands of kilometers I’ve run has understandably given me ‘runner’s ankles’, stiff strong ankles almost impervious to sprain, but unfortunately ankles which don’t take being bent backwards well. If I want to swim my fastest it’s something I need to change, yet knowing this doesn’t displease me a bit. If I already had a perfect swimming technique then there would be no room for improvement, and as it stands now it seems I have a lot of improvement to look forward to.

Team Practice at Canada Games Pool

For most the season Hyack Masters (Burnaby) trains at Bonsor Pool. It’s a rather old six lane 25m pool but for us Master swimmers it’s plenty adequate unless too many of us show up for practice. But this long Easter weekend showing up became a problem because we weren’t booked for our normal Friday and Monday evenings – some sort of scheduling glitch apparently. Coach Brad was very apologetic about it, though obviously there was little he could do. He did, however, promise to see if he could arrange for us to swim instead at the Hyack’s main training facility at the Canada Games Pool. Friday evening I checked my email and discovered Brad had indeed succeeded in arranging a Saturday morning practice, and so the next morning about a half dozen of us showed up to put in some laps. Both Joe and Damien were there so we bloggers were well represented. Practice started out with a warm up and supplementary set:

Warm up: 12 x 25 reverse IM in sets of four split 2 sw/2 dr @ 0:45
200 K
First set (x 2): 4 x 100 fr @ 1:40
200 fr pull @ 3:10
50 choice sw @ 1:30

Joe was in good form swimming beside me in the next lane. On the 200 pulls we swam side-by-side, except that on each turn he’d pull a third to a half body length ahead. For the first 200 I closed the gap each time and finished just behind, but for the second 200 I decided to conserve my energies for the next set and ended seeing Joe finish a full two body lengths ahead. Reflecting on this I think my biggest problem is a tendency to flop over side-wise, rather than bringing my legs straight over a proper turn calls for, and consequently I lose a lot of momentum going into the wall (not to mention the problems with setting up for the push off). It’s a combination of laziness and a certain lack of flexibility. Damien noted the problem he’s had with turns was keeping hold of his pull buoy during the pull sets, which sounds as if he’s doing exactly the same thing as me and was experiencing the effects of his less-than-vertical flip forcing the buoy loose. After an easy 100 to rest for the main set we had a choice between a sprint or middle distance set. Damien and I went for doing the middle distance set in backstroke, while Joe went for the sprint set. No big surprise there. For me and Damien our choice meant our practice finished with:

Main set: 7 x 50 on 200m PB pace +2,+1, 0,-1,+2,+1, 0 @ 1:20
100 @ 2:30
3 x 50 on 200m PB pace +4,+2, 0 @ 1:00

Warm down: 200 fr (br 3/5 by 50) @ 4:00
200 non fr @ 4:00
200 choice

I started out well but found myself tiring towards the end of the main set. The shorter recovery at the end also had an impact, so by the time it came to swimming the 200 free breathing drill I was completely knackered and had to let Damien go ahead midway through. I finished up with a 200 back and left out the last 200 for a total distance of 3,000 meters. Damien finished the full practice – I'm going to be churlish and credit his efforts to the benefits of youth. All-in-all a pretty good work out, one I’d grade a 7.

Coaching Courtesy of Semiahmoo Swim Club

Because of my dismal Friday practice I decided to go for a make up workout Sunday morning. After completing my warm up I opened practice with a backstroke set, only to be interrupted midway through by a gentleman offering advice on my rollover turns. He said he didn’t see any glaring deficiencies in my backstroke but thought my turns really, really needed improvement. Well join the rest of the swimming community! Turns out he was Dennis Caldwell, coach of the Semiahmoo Swim Club, and he proceeded to spend the next forty minutes going over my various stroke techniques. No sooner did I thank him for all his help critiquing a stroke and switch over to my next set than he would be back with pointers on how to correct the most egregious of the new stroke’s defects. Whether it was my back turn or breaststroke or fly, my flawed technique proved to be an irresistible lure to him. By now I’m sure every coach who watches me swim thinks, “there someone who could really swim well if only he got some coaching!” This isn’t a negative reflection on the coaching I receive from Hyack Masters, far from it – just with so many bad habits carried over from my youth and with less than seven months training in hand an experienced eye can pick out the flaws in my technique without even concentrating. It will take time for me to deal with them all, if indeed I ever do.

Coach Caldwell pointed out if I could just get out to the flags on my rollover turns I’d save ¾ a second every lap or, if my races typically include a turn like the one he saw me blow just before hastening to my aid (for when I truly butcher a turn it is absolutely cringe worthy), he’d up his estimate to a full three seconds for my 100. He demonstrated the turn (Dennis is also a nationally ranked Masters swimmer himself) and over the course of about twenty minutes identified my distance to turn, tumble initiation, foot placement, dolphin kick, body posture, exhale, and breakout as problem areas for me. That, I believe, is the entire turn. The gist of his coaching was for the time being not to concern myself with trying to swim faster but instead to focus my efforts entirely on improving my turns. He does seem to have a point. We also discussed my pacing and he even recommended I consider easing up a second or so my first outward leg in the 100 and so be sufficiently rested enough to ensure at least a decent last turn. When I think of missing Victoria’s long course swim meet with those one turn 100s and three turn 200s! For the rest of my impromptu clinic the breast and butterfly errors he picked up on had for the most part already been identified, but his critiques were still very much appreciated as they confirmed others’ stroke assessments and pinpointed where I continue to be technically weak. One important observation I wasn’t aware of and therefore found to be a real added bonus was the need to narrow my breast kick, which should not only improve my kick’s power but make me easier to swim with during practice. So it turned out to be a much more productive practice than I ever had the right to expect when I left home.

First Quarter’s Results

Aaah, the cherry trees are in blossom, the daffodils are out, hay season is here, and 2007’s first quarter of training is complete. Armed with tape measure and scale I can reveal to a completely indifferent world nothing has changed (let the trumpets sound!). March has seen me add half a kilo of which 300 grams is muscle. The quarter to quarter results, however, are a little more negative. The more accurate measure of the past three months have seen a net gain of 100 grams (virtually no change given the inherent measurement error involved) and only a 200 gram increase in muscle mass (less than half a pound). Not only am I treading water literally but figuratively too! I can’t say I’m surprised at these results seeing what’s happening to me in the pool and am taking the pause in stride as something to be expected. It will take my body a while to get used to the idea I’m actually serious about wanting to swim fast. I can only hope my slump is short and I come out of it in time for the Provincials. In another decision I’ve decided not to publish my monthly pictures (yes I know, sighs of relief all around) but rather will keep them around for future comparisons. Instead I’ll go to quarterly pictures which will hopefully show more improvement from one set to the other and thus give me something to write about.

Leaving Practice Early

Last night I did something I’ve never done before – I quit my first practice. I’m becoming a little frustrated with how long my recovery is taking. It has been three weeks now since I’ve dropped my training efforts to a bare minimum after seeing my performance collapse and I’m not seeing any improvement in my endurance and overall speed. There are bright spots however. My swimming technique this past month continues its slow but steady progress as does my overall feel for the water. I’ve also been working on my flip turns which seems to be laying in a good foundation for further continued improvement later on. Unfortunately my endurance has disappeared and doesn't appear to be returning for the foreseeable future. Wednesday's practice went reasonably well, good enough for me to actually sprint the workout’s last 50 as called for, but the result was over a second slower than what I feel it should have been, even after making allowances for my conditioning. Overall though my technique, especially for backstroke, has been feeling good lately so I had some expectations for this Friday’s workout. I used our warm up last night to continue working on my back, the warm up comprising 3x25 @ 0:40 plus a single 25 @ 0:20, all repeated five times (free in the sprint portion). Right now I’ve been using these short distances to improve my backstroke’s turnover rate and so avoid running into the endurance problem the more typical distances presently pose. Even so warm up turned out to be quite the effort for me towards the end. By the time I had finished the next short set of 100 IMs I knew it wasn’t going to be a good night, and midway through the first rep in the main set I hit the ‘wall’ endurance-wise. I swam for another 700 meters, having Ian lap me twice and sitting out a 50, but when it came to completing a 400 free breathing every five strokes I called it a day. No sense in beating a dead horse. On Sunday I do my body fat measurements and calculate my muscle gain for the quarter, something I’ve been very curious about every since my collapse in the beginning of March. Just what is the impact of all this on my overall conditioning? Stay tuned for the upcoming results.

Just How Fast is Fast Enough? Part 2

Since Part 1 touched upon Olympic ‘C’ qualifying it would seem only right to discuss the more traditional way of gaining entry into the Olympics – that of earning it. The second level of qualification is achieved by meeting the ‘B’ standard as set out by the IOC. For example the upcoming 2008 Beijing Games has set the ‘B’ qualification time for the men’s 100 free at 0:50.95. I don’t know exactly how this standard is calculated but normally in major competitions it’s arrived at by adding some percentage to prior finals averages. More importantly these ‘B’ standards appear to limit the field to roughly the top 100 in the world (admittedly based upon the very small sample I've checked). The catch to ‘B’ qualification is the qualification only allows countries one athlete per event. Much better is to meet ‘A’ standards which enable a country to enter two competitors. This third and highest level of qualification requires both potential Olympians to achieve a time which lies roughly in the world’s top 25. For the men’s 100 free in Beijing this translates to a rather quick 0:49.23. Some may remember in the past a country could qualify three for an event (medal sweeps did occur on a few occasions) but no longer. The rule change has unfortunately meant some unfairness for any sport superpowers who can qualify three or more ‘A’ athletes (read USA for swimming). Because of this every Olympics now sees some not in attendance who are significantly better than most of those actually participating in the Games. It just makes all those frivolous ‘C’ category swimmers even harder to take.

Apparently I’m not alone in condemning the lack of at least some sort of qualification standards for these 12th FINA World Championships. The numerous complaints have caused FINA’s executive director Cornel Marculescu to announce FINA will analyze this question when they return to Switzerland, though he defends the current open door policy as he feels the participation from typically non-swimming nations shows the international “strength” of the sport. Personally I think his stance is profoundly racist, coming as it surely must from a belief the citizens of countries with only ‘C’ qualifying swimmers will be encouraged by the mere presence of one of their own at these championships and will overlook their actual performance. But maybe I’m saying this because my country has gone the exact opposite route with its Olympic athletes. Not for Canada to use national rankings or even IOC’s qualification standards to select its athletes. No, my country instead requires its athletes to be ranked top 12 in the world before being allowed to compete internationally. While in main this policy has come about because of long standing budget constraints I think there’s little doubt it continues in part to avoid having to report Canadian athletes placing in the thirties or forties. It’s grossly unfair to our athletes and a topic to which I’ll return at some later date to deal with in depth.

If you're interested I’ve located a video clip on Youtube showing 'C' qualifier Eric Moussambani’s 2000 Sydney Games race which Damien referred to in his comments on Part 1. Interestingly the Youtube viewers are more indignant over the audience's hilarity than Mr. Moussambani’s performance. If they can’t see the humour this swim occurred in the Olympics (and the fact he was swimming alone as the two other ‘C’ qualifiers were DQ’d for false starts) they really shouldn’t go into Youtube’s comedy section.

Just How Fast is Fast Enough? Part 1

Today in Melbourne is the start of swimming in the 12th FINA World Championships. I was curious about the qualifying times needed to swim in such an august event and how they compared to the Olympics and looked for them on FINA’s website. Found it difficult to find them, mostly because they don’t have any. That’s right, anybody can swim at swimming’s world championships – no different from your local masters swimming meet. OK that’s not exactly true, because you do have to be sponsored by your country and if your country is any sort of power in swimming being selected becomes problematical¹. But apparently there are plenty of countries where actual competition for the available spots isn’t a concern. Take the men’s 100 meter free – the premier event in swimming. The Olympics next year will see a little over sixty swimming the event. In this year’s world championships an amazing one hundred seventy six are entered. The first heat is populated entirely by swimmers with no times. Yes no joke, take a look for yourselves. Apparently they’ve never raced a 100 meter free before now. And not just this event, this is happening across the board for both men and women's events. To me the concept of starting out one's competitive swimming career by competing in a FINA world championship borders on the absurd but it’s true. The first appearance by a swimmer who can at least swim a hundred meters under a minute is the third heat. The Canadian men’s senior national qualifying time is 0:53.05 which would see you seeded no worse than the twelfth heat. Why is this happening? If anything shows just how important the Olympic Games are to our sport it’s the reason behind all this. For the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have made attending these world championships a requirement to be eligible for ‘C’ qualifying time consideration. You see every country wants to have Olympians but there just aren't enough Olympic calibre athletes to go around. So, because the Olympic Games is all about participation, the IOC has created a special category for athletes whose performance would never, ever allow them to see the insides of the Olympic Village but are the best their countries can send. The ‘C’ qualifier. I remember watching what I recall was either the 1988 Seoul Games or the 1992 Barcelona Games, whichever one was the first Games to have them, when CBC showed a ‘C’ qualifying swimmer almost not finishing the race. One of those, “hey guess what happened at the Games today?” spots. The TV announcers were laughing during the race, what with spectators crowding the pool side watching the man’s struggles and a dozen or so swimmers taking off their sweats just in case they needed to go in, that we might be witnessing the first Olympic swimmer requiring a lifeguard to save him. It was not, however, amusing to me when I thought of all those swimmers who worked so hard for so many years only to fall short of achieving their dream to swim in the Olympics. Clearly the IOC thought so too because they’ve made it much more difficult to qualify even under the ‘C’ category. I think, though, they have a ways to go.

¹Unless you’re Eric Shanteau, who finding Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte blocking his way in his favorites the 200 and 400 IM decided to concentrate instead on the 200 breast. Three weeks ago he qualified for these world championships in that event, even beating out world record holder Brendan Hansen in the process. You can read more about his remarkable accomplishment here.

Inspiration

Recently Joe and I have been discussing whether Ian is aware of our blogs and what we write about him. For those who may have only recently, obviously very recently, started reading either of our two blogs Ian is our club’s best active swimmer. Even with a gimpy shoulder. The Hyack Masters do have a couple of still better swimmers in the persons of Vladimir and Doug but they don’t practice with the club (our hour-long practices being too short and slow for them) so for the purposes of this post Ian stands alone. Joe is curious about Ian’s thoughts on what we blog about him. From what little I know of him I don’t think he’s particularly interested in what we say assuming he even bothers to read our blogs. My opinion. But every swim club, whether masters, competitive, or triathlon, should have someone, someone like Ian, who has real swimming talent because they provide the inspiration for the rest of us to try harder and to swim better. Watching an individual in the pool next to you who has not only swims faster but works harder in practice leaves little excuse for personal indulgences. So often in life we see where one extraordinary talent leads others soon follow and swimming is no different. Having that person in the pool allows us to measure ourselves and discover we’re not all that different, which in turn provides the motivation to work harder to make ourselves into the person we’re capable of becoming. Now Joe, just how do we get Vlad to swim with us?

A New Swimming Blog

The 17thman discovered another swimming blog titled Southern California Aquatics and linked to it. After a week reading it I can definitely say I find it excellent. The posting is maintained by Tony and he’s given me a lot more topics to write about (unfortunately no time to do anything about it right now). Tony also has linked to still another swimming blog by the name of Timed Finals. Both spend extensive time on current goings on in the swimming world with particular emphasis on the international elites and the American NCAA (there’s obviously some overlap there). What I really like about Southern California Aquatics is Tony puts in a lot of information about what he’s being coached on and his swim club (from which the name of his blog was taken) has excellent coaching headed by Clay Evans and Bonnie Adair. I’ve already taken some of the coaching he’s received about his turns and started trying to apply them to my own swimming. Next time I’m in LA I must see if I can arrange a private turn lesson from Bonnie Adair because wow, her girls can really turn! Take a look at this backstroke race on Youtube.

The day before yesterday Timed Finals published an article about the retirement of 33 year old Inge De Bruijn, the Dutch four time Olympic gold medalist and multiple world record holder which you can find here. The issue was raised about some believing her times were drug assisted and not wanting to be left out I added my own two cents to the discussion. Commentary is now closed but I’d be interested in finding out what opinions any readers might have about De Bruijn. Please note there are two Scotts commenting but I’m the one without an Olympic medal (I don’t want people to be confused).

Clearly I Need to Go on a Diet

Getting rid of these handles of mine is becoming something of a bother. Beyond ensuring I eat a proper balanced diet and studiously avoiding junk food and soft drinks I haven’t actually set out to lose weight, preferring to rely on my exercise regime to do it for me. This has worked up to recently but with the decrease in my activity my fat loss seems to have stalled. Now having been chronically underweight for my entire childhood the idea of going on a proper restricted calorie diet is very hard to accept,
though it’s becoming more and more likely I’m going to have to at least restrict the size of my serving portions if I’m to reach my target 30” waist. I’ll first try to start by eliminating my late evening snacks and see what that does. If it doesn’t have any appreciable impact I’ll move on to harsher methods. On a positive note getting away from my middle aged spread I think this month has seen improvement in my upper back deportment as exhibited in the leveling of my shoulders from prior months.

Perhaps the soreness in my neck and shoulders is not entirely due to poor fly technique? Of course my lower back is as twisted as ever but one must stay hopeful.

It’s Time to Ease Up

Last night’s practice was tailor-made for me, a workout devoted to prepping for a 200 race and I don’t think it was a coincidence either. I’m very flattered Coach has been giving me my own specialized sets in the middle of regular training, but designing a full practice around me is going way beyond what I deserve. Unfortunately I could provide little payback as a reward for Brad’s efforts. The workout was planned to be:

3 x [200 (100 fr & 100 ch) @ 3:30 + 4 x 25 K @ 0:30]
100 ch easy
5 x 200 ch @ PB 200 + 0:26 declining 0:04 (negative 100 splits)
2 x 400 free;

but we never got to the 400s as we started out a little late and then dawdled around for several minutes before beginning the main set. To substitute for the 400s Coach had us do 8 x 25 instead, with the choice of doing them either as sprints or as tiger sprints (number of breaths declining 3/2/1/0 per lap). We in Lane Six went with the tiger sprints and so finished what seemed like a dismal night’s performance for pretty well everyone.

Personally in the main set I only achieved the required splits and declines for just the first two reps, failing to continue the decline in the third and subsequent repeats. I was simply dead in the water, my arms and legs heavy and weak by the end of the first lap with the feeling only getting worse each progressive 25. Nothing better exemplifies the degree of my lethargy than my heart rate, which peaked at a pathetic 120 beats per minute. Clearly I’m over trained. This doesn’t really come as a surprise with a training schedule virtually guaranteeing I hit the wall at some point, having decided when I first started out it would be better in the long run to over train as opposed to under in the beginning. Consequently I went with a full weight program running parallel with my training (an absolute no-no during racing season) while seeing my weekly kilometrage increase threefold (more than fivefold for a short while) at the same time. Logically there was no way I could avoid reaching the point where my body would say enough. Still I did entertain hopes I might be able to slip past and continue training in a way which would allow at least some progression. Endeavoring to continue both strength and endurance training I gradually cut back as overall fatigue mounted but, alas, this has proven to be insufficient. As a result I’m pulling out of the Victoria swim meet. I won’t be able to swim the 200 back anyways and any times I can achieve in my other races wouldn’t be anywhere close to reflecting my ‘true’ state. It’s not worth the time and effort to spend a day in Victoria for a couple of poor races. Most regrettable. So what do I do now? Well I’m going to skip my final weight cycle, the preseason phase, which was scheduled for the rest of March and the beginning of April and after taking a week off go straight into the much easier maintenance program. I also intend to increase my swimming back up to four sessions, or about 10,000 meters a week, for the next month but will restrict myself to working on technique and aerobic endurance. This means dropping down a couple of lanes in Hyack practices which will leave a bitter taste; it also means I’ll be going into our Provincial Championships with little or no speed work. With only a month of proper practice before the Canadian Masters National Championships the following month my entire 2006 – 2007 season is going to have to rest on my results at the U.S. Masters LC Championships in August. Since this provides the starting point for next season, where my real racing will occur, there’s little slack to take up. It’s coming down to just one meet.

More Miscellaneous Ramblings

I’m supposed to be working on my next post regarding free weights and home gyms but find myself at the stage where the various pros and cons concerning the subject matter need to be discussed and its construction too taxing in my present mental state. Neither is there much desire to write about the extraordinary talent of Michael Phelps’ and his ilk given my present swimming struggles. This normally means I simply go on to start writing about the next planned topic, my sister American Sis and her particular athletic talent, but here again the subject’s a touch too similar to Phelps’ situation so she’s not going to be written about either right now. I’ll just ramble on a bit instead. The past couple of practices Coach Brad has given me some individually timed distances at race pace and followed up with some pointers on my technique which has helped a lot. I’ve developed a psychological block about my swimming because of the real uncertainty regarding my speed and endurance and these timed runs are helping establish a reference point for better pacing and thereby faster times while still (most importantly) leaving enough to finish. For certain my present endurance is clearly not ready for racing beyond 100 meters. Unfortunately equally certain is my swimming the 200 back this weekend in Victoria as this meet is the first of only two opportunities to swim long course this entire season. After observing my sprints Brad has instructed me to put more shoulder roll into my backstroke while reminding me at the same time to take a shallower stroke and concentrate on my pull technique, all things I haven’t been working on because of the precipitous drop in my swimming kilometrage. Wanting to put his coaching into practice I showed up at the Canada Games Pool this Saturday and put in a short workout, my first weekend practice in a month. In addition to doing a backstroke ladder for my main set I threw in a quick set of 6 x 50 fly to try out Ian’s advice to stop breathing every stroke. The shoulders are still sore. I think there must be something about swimming fly flatter which impedes a body’s undulation and consequently creates additional stress on the shoulder, but perhaps it’s just my body mechanics which are off. Regardless a lot more practice is going to be required to better integrate the single breath/double pull into my fly. Despite the gloom there are some good things happening. I’m finding my wind is coming back however slowly, as is my ‘feel’ for the water. Together the two are like a warm, well-worn blanket I can hold on to. Like the “Little Engine that Could” I have to keep on saying to myself, “I think I can, I think I can” and maybe one of these days it’ll come true.

Nothing! Nada! Zip!

I’ve always known during tax season my life goes on hold, but it seems fitness also goes on hold too. Weighed and measured myself this morning and pretty well drew blanks across the board. No change in weight and no net change in my measurements make for a pretty dull month’s results. Actually I added half an inch around my waist but this was offset by an equal increase around my neck, which by the body fat measurement system I use, gets deducted from my waist measurement before consulting the tables for my height to determine my body fat percentage. This is a very poor return on the considerable effort I expended over the last month to continue at least some training despite the increase in my working hours. The past couple of months’ evidence points to being over trained, something which calls for a break and reduction in training to get out of the slump. But I can’t really see how I can do that given I’ve already reduced my exercising to a bare minimum - virtually a maintenance level of training. I hypothesize my problem isn’t too much exercise but rather too little sleep, averaging as I am about five hours a night for the past couple of months. The hours actually aren’t bad for this time of year but apparently not enough to support a strenuous swimming program. I’ll wait and see what my March results are before deciding on whether I need to further reduce my training levels.