While the recent spate of world records and the impact of Speedo’s new LZR Racer swimsuit have seen a certain amount of controversy swirl about them the true nexus of the storm appears to be Eamon Sullivan’s stunning 21.28 50 free; a time nearly four tenths of a second faster than Alexander Popov’s long standing world record of 21.64. During the former record's seven year reign only two other swimmers even delved below 21.80. It was seemingly an epic, near unassailable time until Sullivan and then Bernard burst through within weeks of each other. Before Sullivan hadn’t even broken 22 flat.
Several on the internet have compared Sullivan’s achievement to Bannister’s first sub four minute mile, but frankly I believe it's a bad comparison. I don’t think breaking the four minute barrier was anything like comparable to what we witnessed in Sydney. Sullivan’s swim is equivalent to Bannister running a 3:57.3¹. Forget the hyperbole about the four minute mile being considered “not humanly possible” – the only question about the four minute mile which existed at the time was when it would be broken and by whom. World War II only partially delayed the pursuit as a pair of Swedes brought the record down from a pre-war 4:06.4 to a tantalizingly close 4:01.3 by war’s end; and after a momentary pause by the rest of the world to recover from its recent trials the hunt was taken up in earnest. Bannister was the first only because he moved up his race to preempt Australia’s Landy from taking the prize before him. There was never a real barrier.
Other bloggers have proposed the psychological boost coming from breaking Popov’s record (the “leading the way” theory of motivation) lent support to both Alain Bernard’s own wondrous improvement to wrest the record away from Sullivan, and to Sullivan's retaking and subsequent obliteration of it. That may be true but then they mistakenly refer to Bannister’s iconic race as likewise opening the competitive floodgates and enabling several to run sub four minute miles soon after. In fact only Bannister and Landy ran under four minutes in 1954, three more joined the club a little over a year later (all, coincidentally, running in the same race) and by the end of 1956’s racing season a total of nine men had broken through.² Not exactly a deluge. And it does nothing to support Sullivan's massive improvement.
Let’s not forget to address the LZR swimsuit controversy which has been very much in the spotlight the last month or so, seeing that seventeen out of the eighteen world records set during this brief period were by swimmers wearing the new suits. I wouldn’t be the first, however, to applaud the marketing savvy of Speedo in their choice to introduce the suits just before Olympic Trials when several world records are invariably broken anyways. And like many contrarians, I can and do question the level of the suit’s actual contribution. They may indeed improve times somewhat but I don’t see many willing to attribute all, or even most, of the recent gains in swimming to technological progress alone. It’s difficult to believe swimsuit design can make the qualitative jump which many are claiming, even if one accepts the premise that a swimsuit nowadays can create a significant reduction in drag or an improvement in metabolic functioning. Personally speaking I’m not one of them.
Yet despite all this I believe almost all these results will prove in the end not to be drug enabled – even Eamon Sullivan’s. Why? Well for several reasons. First I think the U.S. team’s performance at last years World Championships was a watershed moment for many around the world, which led the way for higher expectations from the elite swimmers in every country while providing the necessary clues as to how to go about achieving them. Another is 2008 being the quadrennial year, the year of the one competition which makes or breaks every swimmer’s career and consequently the ultimate test to train for – the Olympics. The 2007 FINA World Championships can almost be considered a preliminary event leading to the Games themselves. It’s equally obvious some of the new record holders had to have been anticipating rather significant improvements in their times: Libby Trickett (nee Linton) came into her country’s trials already knowing she could swim a 100 free under 0:53, she just had to do it in a sanctioned event; so her new world records of 0:52.88 and 0:23.97 for the 100 and 50 free respectively shouldn’t come as any surprise. Eamon Sullivan has been plagued by hip injuries for most of the latter part of his career and still remained one of the best sprinters on the planet – he’s been healthy for over a year now. Very few argue he doesn’t possess the talent to be holding a world record a la Michelle Smith. It’s only his overall qualitative improvement which has the knives out in certain quarters.
But where I take my greatest solace from is the great success Australia continues to enjoy in swimming. With only a little over twenty million Australia competes way out of its weight class in most international sports. Her story is an inspiring one to me though almost certainly not in the way most would envision. Because measured against the cold, hard reality of numbers Australia simply doesn’t have the population base to compete head-to-head with the rest of the world and come out anywhere close to the top. For example in the two most popular sports on earth, football and athletics, Australia is not a significant factor at all. The fact no one country dominates them either is not the point, it's that Australia does dominate swimming – slugging it out with superpower United States possessing a population fifteen times larger. And if twenty million people can achieve that it must mean the world combined can swim a lot faster. A whole lot faster. In an idealized world where everybody has access to a pool, proper nutrition and training there inevitably will come a day when Michael Phelps’ current and future records will be regarded in the same light we now consider Mark Spitz’s former ones – with a smile. A future where to be an Olympic finalist in the men’s 50 free will require bettering twenty seconds, and where women will be challenging Grant Hackett’s current world record in the 1500. It will happen. Put in that light Eamon Sullivan swimming a 21.28 becomes a little more palatable.
¹ Sullivan’s time was a 1.6636% improvement on the world record
² Google Answers: Number of Runners to Break the Four Minute Mile Soon After Roger Bannister (isn’t the internet amazing!)
Monday, March 31, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
It’s Getting Surreal Out There
There are eighty six events in swimming recognized by FINA for world record status, split equally between the two sexes. Historically many have had records which lasted for years. They represent the ultimate achievement in the sport by our species, and they are very, very, very difficult to break. Or they should be. For some time swimming has come under considerable scrutiny with its history of drug abuse; the perception rightly or wrongly that swimming is more susceptible to the influences of performance enhancing drugs than most other sports. The fact all but a couple of the existing world records have been established after the turn of the millennium has raised many eyebrows around the world. Little wonder swimming is currently labeled a ‘high risk’ sport.
Recently an amazing and rather bewildering flurry of world records has been seen. In just five weeks fifteen world records have been set, and without any real participation from the United States, the dominant power. Let me hasten to say along with the multitude of others who’ve commented on this phenomenon that I’m not saying drugs are involved in these recent records – just that this recent flurry of world records is ... well, surreal. And these new world records are not just the incremental improvements we’ve normally come to expect. The old times are being obliterated. Former world record holders are waking up in the morning to learn not only they’re no longer the standard bearer but now they lag well behind the newly minted champion. That must come as an awful shock. And in keeping pace with these world records a flood of similar improvements is coming from a host of other, albeit 'lesser' competitors. A time which just a month ago would have led a swimmer to believe he or she was a legitimate medal contender is now looking more and more like something which perhaps won’t even qualify for the finals at Beijing.
Why? Most are pointing at Speedo’s new LZR Racer swimsuit as the reason. Fourteen of the fifteen records have been set by swimmers using this new suit. The new Aqua V-cap used by Natalie Coughlin and others may also be contributing to the dramatic drop in times. But there are doubts which will require time and better understanding to completely dismiss. For instance the new LZR Racer’s effects are being attributed to the increased compression and core stabilization offered by the suit rather than the materials, which essentially are the same used in Speedo’s older Fastskin models. Given the exaggerated claims made for years about one swimsuit or another’s effectiveness it is only natural to question whether the recent dramatic drops in times can be attributed entirely to just wearing a different swimsuit. After taking a look at the typical Olympian’s body is it logical to believe wrapping it in cloth differently can make such a profound difference?
Consider, for instance, the well publicized controversy coming from Eamon Sullivan’s and Alain Bernard’s world records in the free sprint events. In Sullivan’s case rather thinly veiled innuendo about the possibility his improvement could have been enabled by drugs has been hotly denied, even though there is little Sullivan can do to defend himself against speculation. Craig Lord at SwimNews.com has written an excellent piece upholding Gary Hall Jr.’s right to question the drop in Sullivan’s times you should read here. Lord argues that Eamon’s improvements are indeed unusual at the elite level and, when viewed in an historical context, such drops often have indicated doping. Then what about Alain Bernard bettering Eamon? What does one say about that? Bernard has cited his increased emphasis on power as making the difference and personally I think his stated approach is perfectly reasonable for a sprinter. So I can rationalize the why of his improvement even if the amount he’s improved is difficult to fathom. But right now on the various chat sites it’s being bandied about that Bernard has gained anywhere from six to twenty kilos of muscle in the past eighteen months in order to make those improvements. As Mr. Lord says we need to learn more.
I can also draw upon an uncomfortable analogy from my work with taxes, where loopholes are created when a provision is interpreted in a way not envisioned by the original drafters. On rare occasion this novel approach is perfectly legal, but more often than not the users simply hope to fly under the radar of the tax authorities. It’ll work for two or three years before whispers leak out into the professional tax community and by next tax season I’m looking at the new shelter’s basic structure to gauge how defensible it is in court and its applicability for my own clients. Very few past muster. Yet invariably, like clockwork, years later I’m fielding calls from my clients telling me about this same tax shelter being offered to them for a fee. Equally certain is that by this time the tax authorities are well aware of the scheme – the number submitted has exploded from a few dozens to tens of thousands, none of which are nearly as sophisticated or subtly presented as the ones the original innovators had designed. No surprise when they are uniformly rejected, often after being hit with penalties and interest, or already shut down by statutory change. So am I be surprised when I start to see world records fall like rain just before the Olympics? After observing over the past couple of years a forty year old woman become a world class sprinter on virtually no training? Unfortunately not. If she can obtain her results just imagine what the elite swimming community consisting of teens and twenties could do? But I’m practically sure this isn't the case. I really do believe these recent results aren’t drug related, that they are due to a new bathing suit and swim cap and, of course, to superior talent. Well, I certainly hope so. And hopefully when the suits become more common and more and more wear them we’ll see everybody’s times drop and my lurking suspicions will fade away. Really. But until then the Eamon Sullivans of the world will just have to grin and bear the innuendo until time validates their marvelous achievements. Or in this case times which apparently merely mark technology's inevitable progress.
Recently an amazing and rather bewildering flurry of world records has been seen. In just five weeks fifteen world records have been set, and without any real participation from the United States, the dominant power. Let me hasten to say along with the multitude of others who’ve commented on this phenomenon that I’m not saying drugs are involved in these recent records – just that this recent flurry of world records is ... well, surreal. And these new world records are not just the incremental improvements we’ve normally come to expect. The old times are being obliterated. Former world record holders are waking up in the morning to learn not only they’re no longer the standard bearer but now they lag well behind the newly minted champion. That must come as an awful shock. And in keeping pace with these world records a flood of similar improvements is coming from a host of other, albeit 'lesser' competitors. A time which just a month ago would have led a swimmer to believe he or she was a legitimate medal contender is now looking more and more like something which perhaps won’t even qualify for the finals at Beijing.
Why? Most are pointing at Speedo’s new LZR Racer swimsuit as the reason. Fourteen of the fifteen records have been set by swimmers using this new suit. The new Aqua V-cap used by Natalie Coughlin and others may also be contributing to the dramatic drop in times. But there are doubts which will require time and better understanding to completely dismiss. For instance the new LZR Racer’s effects are being attributed to the increased compression and core stabilization offered by the suit rather than the materials, which essentially are the same used in Speedo’s older Fastskin models. Given the exaggerated claims made for years about one swimsuit or another’s effectiveness it is only natural to question whether the recent dramatic drops in times can be attributed entirely to just wearing a different swimsuit. After taking a look at the typical Olympian’s body is it logical to believe wrapping it in cloth differently can make such a profound difference?
Consider, for instance, the well publicized controversy coming from Eamon Sullivan’s and Alain Bernard’s world records in the free sprint events. In Sullivan’s case rather thinly veiled innuendo about the possibility his improvement could have been enabled by drugs has been hotly denied, even though there is little Sullivan can do to defend himself against speculation. Craig Lord at SwimNews.com has written an excellent piece upholding Gary Hall Jr.’s right to question the drop in Sullivan’s times you should read here. Lord argues that Eamon’s improvements are indeed unusual at the elite level and, when viewed in an historical context, such drops often have indicated doping. Then what about Alain Bernard bettering Eamon? What does one say about that? Bernard has cited his increased emphasis on power as making the difference and personally I think his stated approach is perfectly reasonable for a sprinter. So I can rationalize the why of his improvement even if the amount he’s improved is difficult to fathom. But right now on the various chat sites it’s being bandied about that Bernard has gained anywhere from six to twenty kilos of muscle in the past eighteen months in order to make those improvements. As Mr. Lord says we need to learn more.
I can also draw upon an uncomfortable analogy from my work with taxes, where loopholes are created when a provision is interpreted in a way not envisioned by the original drafters. On rare occasion this novel approach is perfectly legal, but more often than not the users simply hope to fly under the radar of the tax authorities. It’ll work for two or three years before whispers leak out into the professional tax community and by next tax season I’m looking at the new shelter’s basic structure to gauge how defensible it is in court and its applicability for my own clients. Very few past muster. Yet invariably, like clockwork, years later I’m fielding calls from my clients telling me about this same tax shelter being offered to them for a fee. Equally certain is that by this time the tax authorities are well aware of the scheme – the number submitted has exploded from a few dozens to tens of thousands, none of which are nearly as sophisticated or subtly presented as the ones the original innovators had designed. No surprise when they are uniformly rejected, often after being hit with penalties and interest, or already shut down by statutory change. So am I be surprised when I start to see world records fall like rain just before the Olympics? After observing over the past couple of years a forty year old woman become a world class sprinter on virtually no training? Unfortunately not. If she can obtain her results just imagine what the elite swimming community consisting of teens and twenties could do? But I’m practically sure this isn't the case. I really do believe these recent results aren’t drug related, that they are due to a new bathing suit and swim cap and, of course, to superior talent. Well, I certainly hope so. And hopefully when the suits become more common and more and more wear them we’ll see everybody’s times drop and my lurking suspicions will fade away. Really. But until then the Eamon Sullivans of the world will just have to grin and bear the innuendo until time validates their marvelous achievements. Or in this case times which apparently merely mark technology's inevitable progress.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Swimming On My Own
Because Hyack Burnaby Masters only swim three times a week any Hyack who wants to compete needs to swim some practices on their own to properly reach race condition. In fact a couple in my lane swim extra practices even though they don’t compete. This Sunday morning I went to Canada Summer Games Pool, my local pool, for what is now a fairly typical workout.6 x 200 warm up: (200 free/200 kick/200 back drills/200 kick/200 free breath 4/6 and another 200 kick). This is the warm up I do every time I’m on my own. The kicking covers back, breast, and fly which I randomly allocate between the three 200s, never more than a hundred at a time, and for the past month has been done without fins so they take some time (I used to use fins for 400 of the 600 meters but had to stop when I got my turf toe). The 200 breath drill is really a 2x100 as I always take a few seconds to rest at the midway point because my legs feel rubbery (by the end of the second 100 my arms don’t feel all that good either). The rest of my practices can vary but since I leave most of my anaerobic sets to Coach Reid and Hyack practices my emphasis tends towards aerobic conditioning and stroke technique. This morning my sets were:
4 x 300 back @ 5:15 concentrating on a long fluid pull with a good finish
4 x 50 fly @ 1:15 (w/fins) Another set intended to work on the length and power of my pull: I fished out my fins after a month of disuse to help, but about two meters into the first rep I discovered my turf toe was still around plus my foot immediately cramped as well. Consequently I changed it into a 8 x 25 @ 0:45
4 x 100 breast @ 2:15 only concerned with technique, with an emphasis on maintaining a proper kick (bringing the legs up, pointing feet outward, and a strong whip from the knees) but also trying at the same time to work on bettering my pull. Trying to work on two different aspects isn’t really advisable – my breathing, coordination between kick and pull, and body position were atrocious (even though there were a couple of times when everything came together by accident and I felt myself swooshing along like a water bug for a second or two)
8 x 25 fly @ 0:45 likewise adjusted for no fins. Was pleased with my pull this time around
400 free @ 6:30/7:00 Warm down. My workout allowed for me to include another 400 on 6:30 if I was up to it for my first 4,000 meter workout but I was sore after the fly and breast so I took the 7:00 interval and ended the workout at 3,600 meters. Time taken was just under an hour and a half.
My weekly meters over the past year and a half have gone up and down like a yo-yo. Starting from the 1,000 I was swimming every Sunday before I joined Hyacks I steadily forced my way up to 15,000 a week before overtraining left me beached for three weeks; thereafter I steadied my weekly meters at 10,000 until last year’s tax season, when they dropped on average to well below 5,000. After that I worked my way back up to 15,000 this past September and then in January this year made the big jump to over 20,000 meters a week, which I’ve maintained right up to this year’s busy season. For the next two or so months I plan to try swimming four times a week and keep my weekly meters as close to 15,000 meters as possible. If I can then I’ll be able to boost my meters right back up to 20,000 in June, and then hopefully proceed to 25,000 in September. Ultimately I want to reach or better 30,000 meters a week – but that might take a while.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Road Trip
Yesterday I attended the Victoria Masters Annual Swim Meet, the only long course meet of our season (unlike in the U.S. Canadian Masters do not have a separate long course season). As I live on the mainland and Victoria’s located on Vancouver Island it means taking the ferry over early in the morning and then getting back late at night which is a hassle – but as I said, it’s the only long course meet we have. I arrived nearly an hour ahead of warm ups because of the ferry schedule but was rewarded by catching the tail end of Island Swimming’s morning workout, where several of the club’s swimmers were preparing for our Olympic Trials in April. While most headed straight into the showers Rick Say hung around and did some stretching for about twenty minutes. Of course at almost twenty nine Rick is the oldest member of our national team and swimming competitively at such an advanced age requires extra work which I well understand. Incidentally the workout was split into several different programs depending on the individual swimmer but most exceeded 7,000 meters, had a lot of speed work, and all relied exclusively on short rests between the reps. In my club our sets are almost always on intervals such as “on 45 seconds” rather than the “10 seconds rest” employed by Island Swimming; probably because our wildly disparate swimming skills require some consolidation at the end of every rep or else chaos would reign.
I was delighted to discover that Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen herself was entered to swim some races at the meet as she was in Victoria to give some clinics. I managed to track her down and asked her if she would be willing to give my blog an email interview about her masters career, her training methods, her swim clinics and, out of pure curiosity, how long she plans to compete seriously as a master. To this request she very graciously agreed so that's something to look forward to. She even spent the time to find me afterwards and hand me a copy of an article she’d written about shoulder rotation for Swimming World Magazine where she’s one of their featured writers. I’ll have to try to attend one of her clinics and see if this technique she's adopted for her own use could work for me. Karlyn also provided the meet’s high point when she broke her own 45-49 100 fly world record.
Emboldened with my first successful approach for an interview I next approached a notably fast swimmer in his twenties by the name of Benji Hutton and inquired whether he was any relation to local legend Ralph Hutton, hoping to garner some way to contact Mr. Hutton and ask if he too would be willing to do an interview. Alas my luck ran out at this point as Benji was not related. In my defense he politely told me I was definitely not the first person to ask him that question. Too bad, Ralph Hutton would have been another great interview.
But the most interesting story belongs to a local woman, Cindy Mabee, whom I previously mentioned back in November when she set some personal masters bests and a new national masters record for the 35-39 100 back. Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen was equally fascinated judging by the time she spent talking to Mabee. Cindy returned for a second shot at masters swimming early last year at thirty eight, after a youth which saw her reach the backstroke finals in several national championships but never the honor of representing Canada internationally. As a mother of five children as young as seven (three being her own) and a professional swimming coach with Island Swimming she has priorities which preclude heavy training. But with a frenetic schedule limiting her to not much more than an hour a week swimming she’s done very well. Extraordinarily well. This past January in Duncan, BC she swam a new world masters record for the 50 back short course in 29.91, a career best time by 0.15 seconds. Later at a non-masters sanctioned meet she swam a 100 back short course in 1:04.7, a time only a tenth of a second slower than her career best and one which would have placed her second only to Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen in the FINA world Masters Top 10 All Time rankings in that age group.
Yet even more amazing Cindy swims a very respectable 200 back as well. Much more than respectable – her recent 2:22.08 short course time from Duncan catapulted her into third place on the FINA All Time list for that event; and all on less than a couple of hours training a week. To my mind that’s absolutely mind-blowing. I asked to what she attributed her phenomenal success and she felt it was being tougher mentally than when she competed as a girl. Certainly many swimmers believe mental toughness is a major reason for their success, yet the rationale rested uncomfortably on me. Perhaps it was only a fragile ego which made it difficult for me to accept this as the entire answer. Perhaps because I felt her 200 backstroke success could not be explained by ‘mental toughness’ alone. As a result of my doubts I went back and asked her a second time why she thinks she’s able to swim so well on such little training. This time she guessed she might also be stronger due to her running and all the lifting and toting a mother does every day. Well cross training definitely does help (and here I am cursing my competitive running past for my anchor-like ankles) and certainly additional strength is a big asset to a swimmer: even if I have not personally observed efforts expended in managing a household to be an effective way to achieve a lean, athletic body. On the other hand other things she mentioned while talking to me, such as how effortless she was finding racing, offered up an alternative explanation. Perhaps her age has brought an increased familiarity with her body and gives her more efficient movement. That would at least present an appearance of increased strength and would go a long way to explaining how she can include a 200 in her repertoire on such little training. Whatever the explanation Cindy Mabee is certainly swimming some marvelous times. While they aren’t at a level which would allow her to seriously compete in open competition who knows what the future may bring? With a proper training schedule we might be seeing some great things from her in the next couple of years.
I was delighted to discover that Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen herself was entered to swim some races at the meet as she was in Victoria to give some clinics. I managed to track her down and asked her if she would be willing to give my blog an email interview about her masters career, her training methods, her swim clinics and, out of pure curiosity, how long she plans to compete seriously as a master. To this request she very graciously agreed so that's something to look forward to. She even spent the time to find me afterwards and hand me a copy of an article she’d written about shoulder rotation for Swimming World Magazine where she’s one of their featured writers. I’ll have to try to attend one of her clinics and see if this technique she's adopted for her own use could work for me. Karlyn also provided the meet’s high point when she broke her own 45-49 100 fly world record. Emboldened with my first successful approach for an interview I next approached a notably fast swimmer in his twenties by the name of Benji Hutton and inquired whether he was any relation to local legend Ralph Hutton, hoping to garner some way to contact Mr. Hutton and ask if he too would be willing to do an interview. Alas my luck ran out at this point as Benji was not related. In my defense he politely told me I was definitely not the first person to ask him that question. Too bad, Ralph Hutton would have been another great interview.
But the most interesting story belongs to a local woman, Cindy Mabee, whom I previously mentioned back in November when she set some personal masters bests and a new national masters record for the 35-39 100 back. Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen was equally fascinated judging by the time she spent talking to Mabee. Cindy returned for a second shot at masters swimming early last year at thirty eight, after a youth which saw her reach the backstroke finals in several national championships but never the honor of representing Canada internationally. As a mother of five children as young as seven (three being her own) and a professional swimming coach with Island Swimming she has priorities which preclude heavy training. But with a frenetic schedule limiting her to not much more than an hour a week swimming she’s done very well. Extraordinarily well. This past January in Duncan, BC she swam a new world masters record for the 50 back short course in 29.91, a career best time by 0.15 seconds. Later at a non-masters sanctioned meet she swam a 100 back short course in 1:04.7, a time only a tenth of a second slower than her career best and one which would have placed her second only to Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen in the FINA world Masters Top 10 All Time rankings in that age group.
Yet even more amazing Cindy swims a very respectable 200 back as well. Much more than respectable – her recent 2:22.08 short course time from Duncan catapulted her into third place on the FINA All Time list for that event; and all on less than a couple of hours training a week. To my mind that’s absolutely mind-blowing. I asked to what she attributed her phenomenal success and she felt it was being tougher mentally than when she competed as a girl. Certainly many swimmers believe mental toughness is a major reason for their success, yet the rationale rested uncomfortably on me. Perhaps it was only a fragile ego which made it difficult for me to accept this as the entire answer. Perhaps because I felt her 200 backstroke success could not be explained by ‘mental toughness’ alone. As a result of my doubts I went back and asked her a second time why she thinks she’s able to swim so well on such little training. This time she guessed she might also be stronger due to her running and all the lifting and toting a mother does every day. Well cross training definitely does help (and here I am cursing my competitive running past for my anchor-like ankles) and certainly additional strength is a big asset to a swimmer: even if I have not personally observed efforts expended in managing a household to be an effective way to achieve a lean, athletic body. On the other hand other things she mentioned while talking to me, such as how effortless she was finding racing, offered up an alternative explanation. Perhaps her age has brought an increased familiarity with her body and gives her more efficient movement. That would at least present an appearance of increased strength and would go a long way to explaining how she can include a 200 in her repertoire on such little training. Whatever the explanation Cindy Mabee is certainly swimming some marvelous times. While they aren’t at a level which would allow her to seriously compete in open competition who knows what the future may bring? With a proper training schedule we might be seeing some great things from her in the next couple of years.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Starting Back
Being able to swim butterfly well would be cool. Being able to do a good backstroke roll-over turn and follow up with a few underwater dolphins would also be pretty nifty. Performing either one well would impress any swimmers and lifeguards hanging around at the local pool. Unfortunately I’d also seriously impress myself too if I could do them. Leaving off the increasingly apparent pipe-dream of becoming an accomplished butterflyer I’m left trying to master the turn. Originally I allotted five weeks to accomplish this task, a length of time I felt would be more than adequate for achieving this goal. A year and a half later I’m at the point where I can get three, sometimes four, underwater dolphins coming off the wall – if I’m rested and don’t need to do them in a race. My problem is the turn compresses together into a few seconds several swimming fundamentals such as flexibility, kicking, aerobic conditioning, and streamlining, all of which I’m sadly deficient in and all of which require years of practice for proficiency. My struggles for mastery inevitably led to more swimming which in turn contributed to my uncovering the many and varied problems which permeate my backstroke as well. Don’t get me wrong, this is all great stuff: it’s just it's taking a lot longer than envisioned when I first returned to ‘competitive’ swimming. I was so preoccupied with the various nuances of swimming fast I didn’t really think about trying to master the one remaining facet of backstroke – the start.One reason why I deliberately left the start to last was because I've always been aware of its heavy emphasis on technique. A backstroke roll-over turn is essentially rolling over into a freestyle flip turn with some kicking away from the wall on the back. It really doesn’t sound all that hard. But a backstroke start is a backwards dive into the water from the water’s surface. Any way you phrase it the start sounds more like a gymnastic diving routine rather than something from swimming. The swimmer launches from the wall propelled by the legs while swinging the arms wide, arching the back and dropping the head backwards in line with the arms. The hands enter the water first followed by the arms, head and then shoulders; all entering at the same point. At the same time the swimmer needs to kick up the legs to bring hips and legs in line with the body so that they too follow the rest of the body through the same hole in the water and complete the dive with the least possible amount of resistance. Once the dive’s momentum starts to slow the swimmer begins to dolphin kick to both maintain speed and return to the surface once, twice, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times or more and then, almost surfaced, commences the flutter kick and a final single arm pull to breach the surface already swimming backstroke in full flight. The video shows this better than I can write.
Now for me my troubles start with the initial thrust from my nearly fifty year old legs. Because I don’t yet possess the explosive leg propulsion and upper body curve needed to consistently clear me completely out of the water I have a tendency to ‘plow’ on the start. Image me in the traditional start position at the blocks and how I’d look if my backwards momentum was not planned but the result of taking a shotgun blast in the chest from short range. That’s what my starts look like much of the time right now. Even on those rare occasions when I do have an acceptable ‘launch’ the clean entry takes me more than a meter under water. For those who know what they’re doing and are planning to spend several seconds under water anyways this isn't a problem. But for me the difficulty lies with that several seconds thingy – because whatever I do upside down underwater it had better be done in no more than a three count. If I’m not at the surface after two I start to run out of enough air to clear my nostrils of inrushing water; and choking oneself at the start of a race is not a recommended race strategy. But like my turns my starts will improve. Slowly ... very slowly, but they’ll improve. It’ll just take some time and effort.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Scheduling Races
One of the many things where swimming masters differs from competitive swimming is in the brevity of its competitions. Instead of a weekend sitting around in the morning waiting for your events and then having to deal with finals in the evening it’s just one quick afternoon and you’re home for supper. For the busy adult who wants to do a little racing the time commitment requires only some minor juggling of affairs to attend a meet. The draw back for this convenience is the reduced the number of races I can compete in. After a rocky start where I bit off more than I could chew in my first swim meet I’m up to racing a combined maximum of 450 meters a meet. If scheduling works out for me I try to enter two 100 races, a single 200 event, and a throw-away 50 sprint for the afternoon. I even have a list I select from: either free or back for the sprint; all four strokes in the 100; and back, free, and IM for the 200. Unfortunately even with a palette of nine events to choose from I rarely squeeze in the maximum four races. Because of the difficulty getting race experience I looked at competing in this year’s Provincials despite it being smack in the middle of my busy season. Like most other state or provincial championships the competition is spread out over an entire weekend rather than an afternoon which allows enough rest for several races to be entered. However the event scheduling at this year’s Provincials is horrible for me. Great if you happen to be a breaststroker but not so good if you fancy yourself a backstroker and want to swim some free or fly too as I do. So I’m not going to our Provincials this year. In its place I’m considering entering the SPMA Short Course Meters Regional Championship this fall to get my last short course times before I move up in age group. Hopefully its event scheduling will be better.
Thinking about all of this brings me to understand the full import of what Michael Phelps will have to do if he is to win eight gold medals in Beijing this fall: eighteen or more races in eight days. It seems the betting has Phelps entering the 100 and 200 fly, the 200 and 400 IM, and the 200 free plus the three relays. At the Missouri Grand Prix three weeks ago he beat Ian Crocker in the 100 fly final with a 51.52, narrowly lost to Aaron Peirsol in the 100 back final ten minutes later touching in 53.70, and then only twenty minutes after that took sixth in the 100 breast final, won by Brendan Hansen, with a 1:02.57. That’s a lot of swimming in a short space of time. It’s curious as to why he’d swim three events so close together. Could it portend something at Beijing? Could Phelps be planning to enter the backstroke races and compete in ten events? It wouldn’t come as a complete shock – Michael Phelps’ noted knack for quickly recovering from hard races makes anything seem possible.
Monday, February 25, 2008
The Exception Proves the Rule
It was Tony over at the Southern California Aquatics Swim Club blog who first brought my attention to Stefan Nystrand’s unorthodox straight-arm recovery. At the time I just watched the video Tony provided a couple more times to convince myself he really did have a straight-arm recovery and then left with the thought such an idiosyncratic stroke couldn’t be good for the shoulders. I however sat up and took better notice when Tony’s next blog on the subject pointed out Eamon Sullivan also used a straight-arm recovery in setting a new world record in the 50 free at last week’s NSW state championships – that’s two swimmers setting world sprint records recently using the straight-arm technique. A column written by Olympic gold medalist and physician Gary Hall Sr. goes a step further and speculates this technique may be a major contributing factor in their success by virtue of its ability to utilize centrifugal force to speed up the recovery stroke.
After some consideration, and using Dr. Hall's hypothesis as a starting point, I’d like propose an alternative explanation. While the recovery stroke certainly has an effect on pace I don’t think it has the same importance of, say, the recovery kick in running where it determines a runner’s maximum speed. I'd argue on a purely intuitive basis it is the speed of the pull rather than recovery which is the limiting factor in water. I concede a straight-arm recovery may be faster than the traditional bent-elbow but surely this couldn’t be more than three or four milliseconds per stroke. After all the straight-arm has to travel a circumferential route while the bent-arm cuts right across the surface. If I'm correct then using a straight-arm recovery could save at most a tenth of a second or so in a fifty race; a saving to be sure, but insufficient to warrant deliberate adoption. On the other hand I think the technique may provide significant advantage from the extended reach it guarantees a swimmer. In short sprints where turnover is paramount the tendency is to shorten the stroke. Alexander Popov, whose world 50 free record Eamon Sullivan broke, mitigated this as much as possible by putting in prodigious amounts of kilometers to ingrain the desired technique into his natural stroke. Sprinters nowadays don’t put in anywhere near the same meters. Logically their strokes are more susceptible to a shortened reach as a consequence and the straight-arm technique prevents this. A few extra centimeters on the all important pull, the ability to ignore technique while concentrating wholly on turnover, and a potential faster recovery all add up to a significant advantage. Perhaps up to half a second in a fifty. And that’s worth changing one’s stroke for.
The technique comes with a very large caution though. The bent-arm recovery is orthodox for very good reasons. It is the most efficient way to raise the arm out of the water and employs the shoulders as they are intended to be used. The straight-arm on the other hand mimics baseball's pitchers or cricket's fast bowlers who rely on the extended arm’s extra inertia for more speed but in return accepts terrific strain on the shoulder from the unnatural movement. Rotator cuff injuries are legion among these athletes – and they’re throwing through air. What would be the result of having the shoulder half submerged in water and repeating the motion not a few hundred times a week but tens of thousands? There may be a few athletes who have the flexibility to arrive at a straight-arm style naturally as Dr. Gary Hall Sr. points out, but for most of us this will be a direct route to blown shoulders. Even so the straight-arm technique certainly appears to confer an advantage in speed. It will be interesting to see how many will gamble their careers for a few tenths of a second this coming August in Beijing.
After some consideration, and using Dr. Hall's hypothesis as a starting point, I’d like propose an alternative explanation. While the recovery stroke certainly has an effect on pace I don’t think it has the same importance of, say, the recovery kick in running where it determines a runner’s maximum speed. I'd argue on a purely intuitive basis it is the speed of the pull rather than recovery which is the limiting factor in water. I concede a straight-arm recovery may be faster than the traditional bent-elbow but surely this couldn’t be more than three or four milliseconds per stroke. After all the straight-arm has to travel a circumferential route while the bent-arm cuts right across the surface. If I'm correct then using a straight-arm recovery could save at most a tenth of a second or so in a fifty race; a saving to be sure, but insufficient to warrant deliberate adoption. On the other hand I think the technique may provide significant advantage from the extended reach it guarantees a swimmer. In short sprints where turnover is paramount the tendency is to shorten the stroke. Alexander Popov, whose world 50 free record Eamon Sullivan broke, mitigated this as much as possible by putting in prodigious amounts of kilometers to ingrain the desired technique into his natural stroke. Sprinters nowadays don’t put in anywhere near the same meters. Logically their strokes are more susceptible to a shortened reach as a consequence and the straight-arm technique prevents this. A few extra centimeters on the all important pull, the ability to ignore technique while concentrating wholly on turnover, and a potential faster recovery all add up to a significant advantage. Perhaps up to half a second in a fifty. And that’s worth changing one’s stroke for.
The technique comes with a very large caution though. The bent-arm recovery is orthodox for very good reasons. It is the most efficient way to raise the arm out of the water and employs the shoulders as they are intended to be used. The straight-arm on the other hand mimics baseball's pitchers or cricket's fast bowlers who rely on the extended arm’s extra inertia for more speed but in return accepts terrific strain on the shoulder from the unnatural movement. Rotator cuff injuries are legion among these athletes – and they’re throwing through air. What would be the result of having the shoulder half submerged in water and repeating the motion not a few hundred times a week but tens of thousands? There may be a few athletes who have the flexibility to arrive at a straight-arm style naturally as Dr. Gary Hall Sr. points out, but for most of us this will be a direct route to blown shoulders. Even so the straight-arm technique certainly appears to confer an advantage in speed. It will be interesting to see how many will gamble their careers for a few tenths of a second this coming August in Beijing.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
All In Good Time
I mentioned in an earlier post how my Alexander Technique lessons seem to be at the root of recent advances in rehabilitating my decades old back injury. There's been real progress in hip flexibility and the way I hold myself. All the same the distances I'm now swimming has created a lot of shoulder strain because, despite Coach telling me to relax on recovery, the only way I can bring my arms forward is to ‘muscle’ them through the shoulders: a very tiring process. Plus I can still observe the severe compression evident in my left side even if my shoulders have pretty well leveled out. Impatient I want to see more improvement there as well. So when my Alexander teacher Gaby left my back for a few minutes and looked at my shoulders I was delighted.
We first tried to see how high I could lift my arms from the prone position without engaging my shoulders, but didn’t get much farther than a few centimeters before they started seizing up. Next we tried having me completely relax and rely on her to move my arms. No luck there either.
Reminding me about the perils of ‘end-gaining’ she then took hold of an arm with one hand while resting her other on my shoulder blade and while moving the arm applied a certain directed pressure to my shoulder. I was almost immediately rewarded with a dull ache from deep within the shoulder. Wonderful stuff! After about thirty seconds of this she then went to the other shoulder and did the same to that side. Once finished Gaby said she'd not do that again; my shoulders were far too resistant to tackle in a direct manner and we’d have to ‘trick’ them into releasing by using more indirect approaches over time. I only partially accepted her verdict. Figuring I could duplicate the shoulder position I decided I’d work my shoulders on my own. So for the rest of that day and the following I would revisit my shoulders on a regular basis and work them for a couple minutes. By the second evening, however, my lower back started to hurt. The next morning I woke up to back pain which necessitated a prescription anti-inflammatory before leaving for my next Alexander lesson. Gaby shook her head at my story. “Never work at recreating the feeling”, she explained, “because what feels right or comfortable to you right now is almost certainly something which comes from habit, and for you habit is not good.” Serves me right for trying to hurry things up.
Speaking of putting in the required time and effort rather than take short cuts I decided early last month to abandon my aspirations towards setting any notable times this year and instead concentrate on building an appropriate aerobic base for two or three years in the future. A significant departure from the anaerobic training prevalent in masters swimming today. Admittedly there are good reasons why masters training concentrates on anaerobic sets rather than aerobic. For one thing speed is a real concern for most of us old codgers so we need to practice at being fast. For another thing we consider a 200 to be a distance event. With a population who race mostly fifties and hundreds many who coach masters rightly believe there’s no reason to concern themselves with endurance. But ultimately the reason why more time isn’t spent training aerobically is that we don’t train enough. Why even try if the average masters athlete can’t put in the hours of practice necessary to achieve proper aerobic conditioning anyways. Well, I’m going to be one of the few to bother and at least try. Certainly this is a real gamble on my part as I might not be competing next year much less in three or four. On the other hand I’m weary of trying to ‘taper’ every month for every local race while simultaneously trying to build up my conditioning. I’m also sick of being afraid at the start of any race over a hundred.
My inspiration towards a more aerobic oriented training program came from an article transcribing a talk Eddie Reese gave the ASCA World Coaches Conference in 1998. Titled, “What To Do and How To Do It” Coach Reese discusses how American swimming could be improved and what he proposed needed to be done. It focused exclusively on age group swimming and the need to allow the greatest number of America’s youth to reach their maximum potential while preventing some of our most talented youth from burning out. At least back in 1998 what Eddie Reese thought coaches needed to concentrate on when training age group swimmers were, in order of importance: aerobic conditioning, stroke work (particularly distance per stroke), and the dolphin kick. Sounds good to me, and since James ‘Doc’ Councilman was the ‘go to’ person when I last competed I’m not going to quibble about any minor changes which may have arisen over the past ten years. Besides which, just as Coach Reese likes to quote people who share the same views he does, I happen to prefer a training philosophy which ties in very nicely not only with the giants of my era (Doc and George Haines) but with many of today’s leading figures like Bill Sweetenham and Bob Bowman. And of course, let’s not forget Eddie Reese. Take a gander and find out how a world class coach views our sport by reading his presentation. It’s exactly as I thought it should be.
We first tried to see how high I could lift my arms from the prone position without engaging my shoulders, but didn’t get much farther than a few centimeters before they started seizing up. Next we tried having me completely relax and rely on her to move my arms. No luck there either.
Reminding me about the perils of ‘end-gaining’ she then took hold of an arm with one hand while resting her other on my shoulder blade and while moving the arm applied a certain directed pressure to my shoulder. I was almost immediately rewarded with a dull ache from deep within the shoulder. Wonderful stuff! After about thirty seconds of this she then went to the other shoulder and did the same to that side. Once finished Gaby said she'd not do that again; my shoulders were far too resistant to tackle in a direct manner and we’d have to ‘trick’ them into releasing by using more indirect approaches over time. I only partially accepted her verdict. Figuring I could duplicate the shoulder position I decided I’d work my shoulders on my own. So for the rest of that day and the following I would revisit my shoulders on a regular basis and work them for a couple minutes. By the second evening, however, my lower back started to hurt. The next morning I woke up to back pain which necessitated a prescription anti-inflammatory before leaving for my next Alexander lesson. Gaby shook her head at my story. “Never work at recreating the feeling”, she explained, “because what feels right or comfortable to you right now is almost certainly something which comes from habit, and for you habit is not good.” Serves me right for trying to hurry things up.Speaking of putting in the required time and effort rather than take short cuts I decided early last month to abandon my aspirations towards setting any notable times this year and instead concentrate on building an appropriate aerobic base for two or three years in the future. A significant departure from the anaerobic training prevalent in masters swimming today. Admittedly there are good reasons why masters training concentrates on anaerobic sets rather than aerobic. For one thing speed is a real concern for most of us old codgers so we need to practice at being fast. For another thing we consider a 200 to be a distance event. With a population who race mostly fifties and hundreds many who coach masters rightly believe there’s no reason to concern themselves with endurance. But ultimately the reason why more time isn’t spent training aerobically is that we don’t train enough. Why even try if the average masters athlete can’t put in the hours of practice necessary to achieve proper aerobic conditioning anyways. Well, I’m going to be one of the few to bother and at least try. Certainly this is a real gamble on my part as I might not be competing next year much less in three or four. On the other hand I’m weary of trying to ‘taper’ every month for every local race while simultaneously trying to build up my conditioning. I’m also sick of being afraid at the start of any race over a hundred.
My inspiration towards a more aerobic oriented training program came from an article transcribing a talk Eddie Reese gave the ASCA World Coaches Conference in 1998. Titled, “What To Do and How To Do It” Coach Reese discusses how American swimming could be improved and what he proposed needed to be done. It focused exclusively on age group swimming and the need to allow the greatest number of America’s youth to reach their maximum potential while preventing some of our most talented youth from burning out. At least back in 1998 what Eddie Reese thought coaches needed to concentrate on when training age group swimmers were, in order of importance: aerobic conditioning, stroke work (particularly distance per stroke), and the dolphin kick. Sounds good to me, and since James ‘Doc’ Councilman was the ‘go to’ person when I last competed I’m not going to quibble about any minor changes which may have arisen over the past ten years. Besides which, just as Coach Reese likes to quote people who share the same views he does, I happen to prefer a training philosophy which ties in very nicely not only with the giants of my era (Doc and George Haines) but with many of today’s leading figures like Bill Sweetenham and Bob Bowman. And of course, let’s not forget Eddie Reese. Take a gander and find out how a world class coach views our sport by reading his presentation. It’s exactly as I thought it should be.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Let’s Talk About Trans Fats
Concerns about trans fats, arising primarily from the use of partially hydrogenated oils, started arising as early as 1988. In 1992 the Center for Science in the Public Interest reversed its position (it was encouraging substituting trans fats to minimize saturated fat consumption) to one which cautioned their use; and by 1994 a flood of studies with adverse findings eventually led the American Journal of Public Health to estimate trans fats were causing 30,000 deaths annually in the U.S. (a more recent study by Harvard nutritionists has upped this to 100,000). A real public relations problem for the food industry – it turns out trans fats are exceptionally profitable and convenient for food manufacturers. They can be made from cheaper, near inedible plants such as cotton to basically duplicate the effects and mouthfeel of expensive butter or lard and possess other significant characteristics. For one, since the created fat molecules are only distantly related to anything organic they last a long time, far longer than anything occurring naturally. And longer shelf life means less spoilage. For many years partially hydrogenated oils exhibited much greater durability when used as shortening in deep frying because of less susceptibility to rancidity. Their use even has cultural benefits since they're based on vegetable oils, a fact which avoids any conflict with animal fat dietary restrictions observed by such major religions as the Jewish Kashrut (kosher), the Muslim Halal, vegetarianism in Buddhism, and Hindu’s Adhimsa. You can see the food manufacturers' dilemma. Here they have this wonder product which creates food which customers’ love to eat at considerable savings but it has this one teensy weensy little problem – it sorta poisons them. What should they do?
Well they did what industry does when market and profitability is threatened. They fought tooth and nail against any restrictions on their use. Even so by the turn of the twenty first century public awareness of the hazard posed by partially hydrogenated oils had grown to unmanageable proportions. In September 2002 McDonald’s announced it would eliminate trans fats from its menu but then almost immediately recanted citing the need to ensure continued quality in taste. It may have just been a cynical public relations play - and they were forced to pay seven million dollars to the American Heart Association in 2005 for misleading advertising. Since trans fats have nothing to do with taste the about face was probably more a result of learning how much money changing away from partially hydrogenated oil was going to cost. There are some fast food burger chains like California’s highly successful In-N-Out who have never used them. Yet despite the economic penalties more and more food companies started switching away from trans fats. Even worse, legislation to restrict trans fat in manufactured food was growing. In 2003 Denmark became the first country to legislate restrictions on trans fat use, prohibiting trans fat content in excess of 2%. Canada, after an aborted effort in 2004 because of an election, passed its own legislation in January 2005. In the United States New York City became the first jurisdiction in the country when on December 5, 2006 it banned trans fats in all city restaurants effective July 1, 2007. KFC announced in October 2006 it would be switching over to trans fat free oil in all its Canadian and American outlets by mid-2007, and so joined Wendy’s and its 6,300 stores who had announced earlier their switch would be complete by August 2006. In face of such pressure even the behemoth McDonald's had to capitulate. On January 30, 2007 it announced it had finally selected its new deep fry formula and would gradually introduce it across the country with full implementation expected before the end of 2007 (now pushed back to early 2008). Jeez guys, hope it doesn’t affect your bonuses too much.
But if you’re breathing a sigh of relief your favorite restaurant has stopped poisoning you you can stop. Recently there have been accusations Wendy’s trans fats levels aren’t what they’re claimed to be. And, of course, there are all those foods sold in the supermarket. Since January 1, 2006 the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has mandated packaged foods must include trans fat content on their Nutrition Fact labels. The FDA had proposed to put an asterisk in the % Daily Value column with a note that "intake of trans fats should be as low as possible” but under pressure compromised by leaving the space blank. It's true, take a look at a label the next time you’re shopping. Another major concession was allowing manufacturers to claim zero trans fat when the amount in a single serving is less than half a gram (in Canada the threshold is one fifth of a gram). It’s even worse when you consider it’s the manufacturer who determines how large a single serving should be. For example I picked up some crackers marked with a large green flash declaring “Zero Trans Fats” but on inspection discovered partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil was the third most used ingredient. I have to think Christie’s assertion a pitiful seven crackers constituted a single serving was a major reason the trans fat content was below the magic threshold. So beware and vigilant when you’re out shopping.
However results from new studies keep on rolling in and none of them are good. If becoming one of the 100,000 who are dropping dead from a trans fat caused heart attack every year isn’t enough of an incentive perhaps this six year study¹ from Wake Forest University will help. Two groups of monkeys were fed identical amounts of calories at what was calculated as a subsistence level.
¹Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (2006, June 19). Trans Fat Leads To Weight Gain Even On Same Total Calories, Animal Study Shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 16, 2008, from www.sciencedaily.com
²Why Fast Foods are Bad, Even in Moderation, NewScientist.com, 12 June 2006
Two excellent sources of information about trans fats (and which provided the bulk of the facts used in this post) were Wikipedia’s article on trans fats and the website of BanTransFats.com.
Well they did what industry does when market and profitability is threatened. They fought tooth and nail against any restrictions on their use. Even so by the turn of the twenty first century public awareness of the hazard posed by partially hydrogenated oils had grown to unmanageable proportions. In September 2002 McDonald’s announced it would eliminate trans fats from its menu but then almost immediately recanted citing the need to ensure continued quality in taste. It may have just been a cynical public relations play - and they were forced to pay seven million dollars to the American Heart Association in 2005 for misleading advertising. Since trans fats have nothing to do with taste the about face was probably more a result of learning how much money changing away from partially hydrogenated oil was going to cost. There are some fast food burger chains like California’s highly successful In-N-Out who have never used them. Yet despite the economic penalties more and more food companies started switching away from trans fats. Even worse, legislation to restrict trans fat in manufactured food was growing. In 2003 Denmark became the first country to legislate restrictions on trans fat use, prohibiting trans fat content in excess of 2%. Canada, after an aborted effort in 2004 because of an election, passed its own legislation in January 2005. In the United States New York City became the first jurisdiction in the country when on December 5, 2006 it banned trans fats in all city restaurants effective July 1, 2007. KFC announced in October 2006 it would be switching over to trans fat free oil in all its Canadian and American outlets by mid-2007, and so joined Wendy’s and its 6,300 stores who had announced earlier their switch would be complete by August 2006. In face of such pressure even the behemoth McDonald's had to capitulate. On January 30, 2007 it announced it had finally selected its new deep fry formula and would gradually introduce it across the country with full implementation expected before the end of 2007 (now pushed back to early 2008). Jeez guys, hope it doesn’t affect your bonuses too much.
But if you’re breathing a sigh of relief your favorite restaurant has stopped poisoning you you can stop. Recently there have been accusations Wendy’s trans fats levels aren’t what they’re claimed to be. And, of course, there are all those foods sold in the supermarket. Since January 1, 2006 the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has mandated packaged foods must include trans fat content on their Nutrition Fact labels. The FDA had proposed to put an asterisk in the % Daily Value column with a note that "intake of trans fats should be as low as possible” but under pressure compromised by leaving the space blank. It's true, take a look at a label the next time you’re shopping. Another major concession was allowing manufacturers to claim zero trans fat when the amount in a single serving is less than half a gram (in Canada the threshold is one fifth of a gram). It’s even worse when you consider it’s the manufacturer who determines how large a single serving should be. For example I picked up some crackers marked with a large green flash declaring “Zero Trans Fats” but on inspection discovered partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil was the third most used ingredient. I have to think Christie’s assertion a pitiful seven crackers constituted a single serving was a major reason the trans fat content was below the magic threshold. So beware and vigilant when you’re out shopping.
However results from new studies keep on rolling in and none of them are good. If becoming one of the 100,000 who are dropping dead from a trans fat caused heart attack every year isn’t enough of an incentive perhaps this six year study¹ from Wake Forest University will help. Two groups of monkeys were fed identical amounts of calories at what was calculated as a subsistence level.
She fed one group of monkeys a diet where 8% of their daily calories came from trans-fats and another 27% came from other fats. This is comparable to people who eat a lot of fried food, says Kavanagh. A different group of monkeys was fed the same diet, but the trans-fats were substituted for mono-unsaturated fats, found in olive oil, for example. After six years on the diet, the trans-fat-fed monkeys had gained 7.2% of their body weight, compared to just 1.8% in the unsaturated group. CT scans also revealed that the trans-fat monkeys carried 30% more abdominal fat, which is risk factor for diabetes and heart disease. “We were shocked. Despite all our enormous efforts to make sure they didn’t gain weight, they still did. And most of that weight ended up on their tummies,” says Kavanagh, who presented her findings at the American Diabetes Association meeting in Washington DC, on Monday. “This is walking them straight down the path to diabetes.” This is the first study to show such a dramatic result on abdominal fat, adds Dariush Mozaffarian at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, US. “The days of thinking about fats just as calories are over,” he says.²If your health doesn’t do it for you perhaps your appearance will.
¹Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (2006, June 19). Trans Fat Leads To Weight Gain Even On Same Total Calories, Animal Study Shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 16, 2008, from www.sciencedaily.com
²Why Fast Foods are Bad, Even in Moderation, NewScientist.com, 12 June 2006
Two excellent sources of information about trans fats (and which provided the bulk of the facts used in this post) were Wikipedia’s article on trans fats and the website of BanTransFats.com.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Disagreeing with BBC News
Every morning I get up, turn on BBC News, and put in a few minutes of much needed back stretches and abdominal crunches. A couple of days ago I was rewarded with a short blurb on Michael Phelps and the possibility of him beating Mark Spitz’s record in Beijing. That’s what she said. Obviously she was talking about Phelps bettering the seven gold medals Mark Spitz won in Munich and towards the end of the piece she finally came out and said this, but her opening remark was limited to the topic of Michael Phelps breaking Mark Spitz’s record. I immediately took issue with this. Not only is Phelps faster, much faster, in every one of Mark Spitz’s seven gold medal, world record setting events but his competition today would also leave Spitz behind in their wake. A couple of prominent swimmers have publicly questioned the possibility of Phelps achieving eight gold medals at Beijing and with very good reasons: Stefan Nystrand and Pieter Van den Hoogenband in the 100 free, Peter Vanderkay and Grant Hackett in the 200 free, Tae-Hwan Park, Larsen Jensen, and Grant Hackett again in the 400; Ryan Lochte in the 200 and 400 IM; Aaron Peirsol along with a host of swimmers in the 100 back, and Lochte and Peirsol together in the 200; and last but not least Ian Crocker in the 100 fly. In reserve there are several more men from all parts of the globe close enough to know that with a breakthrough swim they too could be standing atop the podium at Beijing. Beyond the fact both Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz are men, American, dominate the sport, and will be competing in several Olympic swimming events there’s nothing comparable between them at all.
I did appreciate, however, the clip they used to open the report. It was a half-torso shot showing Phelps slicing through the water on his stomach with his arms held in a streamlined position. He was kicking and clearly moving fast. I’m rapidly coming to the belief swimming’s biggest change over the past forty or so years is not so much in stroke or turn techniques as in the much heavier emphasis on kicking to provide more propulsive force. When I swam as a child the generally accepted rule-of-thumb had kicking limited to contributing up to a maximum of around 15% of a swimmer’s forward motion – and that was for the sprint events. Kicking's primary purpose was only to maintain a correct body position to minimize drag. Now we’re using better kicking for better speed. At least that’s what I believe, and to put theory into practice I’ve made kicking, especially dolphin kicking, a much higher priority in my training. I understand this will take time. Bob Bowman has talked about the fact he and Michael decided to work on his turns after reviewing his Athens performance and it took three years before those turns stunned the swimming world at last year’s FINA World Championships (OK, officially it was only the Australians’ who publicly announced the need to ‘catch up’ but I’m sure the rest of the world were thinking the very same thing). Jonathan Miller, a Canadian backstroker who reached national contender status and who has articles in both the USMS and the MSC websites, has said it took him six years to transition his kick from being one of the weakest areas of his stroke to his most competitive. I’ve only been working on my kick for three months so there’s still a long way to go but I’ve already seen measurable improvement. Not a whole lot certainly: during one recent kick set Ian caught up and passed me so quickly I checked to see if he was wearing fins. He wasn’t. Lots and lots of work to do.
I did appreciate, however, the clip they used to open the report. It was a half-torso shot showing Phelps slicing through the water on his stomach with his arms held in a streamlined position. He was kicking and clearly moving fast. I’m rapidly coming to the belief swimming’s biggest change over the past forty or so years is not so much in stroke or turn techniques as in the much heavier emphasis on kicking to provide more propulsive force. When I swam as a child the generally accepted rule-of-thumb had kicking limited to contributing up to a maximum of around 15% of a swimmer’s forward motion – and that was for the sprint events. Kicking's primary purpose was only to maintain a correct body position to minimize drag. Now we’re using better kicking for better speed. At least that’s what I believe, and to put theory into practice I’ve made kicking, especially dolphin kicking, a much higher priority in my training. I understand this will take time. Bob Bowman has talked about the fact he and Michael decided to work on his turns after reviewing his Athens performance and it took three years before those turns stunned the swimming world at last year’s FINA World Championships (OK, officially it was only the Australians’ who publicly announced the need to ‘catch up’ but I’m sure the rest of the world were thinking the very same thing). Jonathan Miller, a Canadian backstroker who reached national contender status and who has articles in both the USMS and the MSC websites, has said it took him six years to transition his kick from being one of the weakest areas of his stroke to his most competitive. I’ve only been working on my kick for three months so there’s still a long way to go but I’ve already seen measurable improvement. Not a whole lot certainly: during one recent kick set Ian caught up and passed me so quickly I checked to see if he was wearing fins. He wasn’t. Lots and lots of work to do.
Monday, February 11, 2008
A “Unique” Breaststroke
At practice tonight we had as our main set a bunch of 100 IMs. Coach pointed out a couple of errors in my breaststroke pull during the set and then after I’d finished gave me a more detailed and broader critique. It appears between my new pull and admittedly still decidedly wonky kick Brad can tell me with a big smile that I’ve developed a rather unique style of breaststroke. It must be really bad. That’s what comes when you try to make several changes all at the same time without any significant feedback. To counter this I had hoped to have attended a couple of stroke clinics, see where I’m making my mistakes and how to make the necessary corrections. Unfortunately what with the shortfall in pool time and expanded membership our parent swim club is experiencing this year we masters have only had one stroke clinic this season – and I just had to be away on business for that one. Hopefully sometime in the near future we lowly seniors will be able to pry the underwater camera away from the other groups long enough for me and the rest of my teammates to get a look at what we’re doing.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
You’ve Gotta Be Kidding Me!
A while back 17thman’s thumbs started to stick out instead of keeping with the rest of his hands, and he wondered if drilling more with hand paddles would correct the problem. I took the opportunity to point out this typically was symptomatic of a bad back and suggested paddles probably wouldn't help. Sure enough he was having a difficult time breaking in a new chair at work and his back was hurting. Sometimes it’s impressive how much minutiae one learns from years of physiotherapy.
Course learning never stops. A month ago I told my Alexander teacher about a problem in my right big toe I was experiencing: a sharp, burning sensation much like sciatica but much more localized and particularly evident doing kicking drills with fins. She immediately questioned whether I had my toes right. “You’re sure it’s the right and not the left?” she asked as she bent down to check how I stand on my feet. Yea I was sure. “Did you know tight back muscles can cause your thumbs and big toes to stick out from their normal resting position?” she said conversationally while manipulating my right ankle. Well I knew about thumbs but I didn’t know about the big toes. “The thumbs are caused by upper back problems and the big toes from lower back and hip difficulties”, she explained, “ ...causing your big toe to rub up against the fin”. “You’re sure it’s not the left that’s the problem?” she persisted. Well readers, it doesn’t take a detective to know which side of my body she thought most of my problems stem from. But after a couple more minutes she left off inspecting my feet and ankle positioning and returned to our regular lesson. In Alexander Technique trying to correct specific problems is known as end-gaining, something particularly frowned upon because the process ends up only adding still more corrections to an already overburdened musculature instead of addressing the originating problems. And that, friends, is how our postures deteriorate in the first place. A week later I was giving the same explanation to one of my massage therapists. “But if it can bother you even when you’re not swimming with fins it has to be more than that”, he said out loud as he puzzled it out. “You must have pulled your ____ muscle, that one travels all the way from the big toe to your hip”, he concluded. Well that made sense to me, and even if it didn’t stop the pain it was good to know as I pounded up and down the pool with my fins hurting all the time. But yesterday I had a session with my second massage therapist (I use the two of them because of their contrasting styles) and of course told him about my troubled right big toe. “Aahh”, he immediately responded when I’d finished, “you have a metatarsalphalangeal joint sprain – you’ll have to stop using your fins for a month or two”. See, that’s why I have two massage therapists. What’s a metatarsalphalangeal joint sprain you ask? Turf toe. I’ve gotten turf toe from swimming! You’ve gotta be kidding me!
Course learning never stops. A month ago I told my Alexander teacher about a problem in my right big toe I was experiencing: a sharp, burning sensation much like sciatica but much more localized and particularly evident doing kicking drills with fins. She immediately questioned whether I had my toes right. “You’re sure it’s the right and not the left?” she asked as she bent down to check how I stand on my feet. Yea I was sure. “Did you know tight back muscles can cause your thumbs and big toes to stick out from their normal resting position?” she said conversationally while manipulating my right ankle. Well I knew about thumbs but I didn’t know about the big toes. “The thumbs are caused by upper back problems and the big toes from lower back and hip difficulties”, she explained, “ ...causing your big toe to rub up against the fin”. “You’re sure it’s not the left that’s the problem?” she persisted. Well readers, it doesn’t take a detective to know which side of my body she thought most of my problems stem from. But after a couple more minutes she left off inspecting my feet and ankle positioning and returned to our regular lesson. In Alexander Technique trying to correct specific problems is known as end-gaining, something particularly frowned upon because the process ends up only adding still more corrections to an already overburdened musculature instead of addressing the originating problems. And that, friends, is how our postures deteriorate in the first place. A week later I was giving the same explanation to one of my massage therapists. “But if it can bother you even when you’re not swimming with fins it has to be more than that”, he said out loud as he puzzled it out. “You must have pulled your ____ muscle, that one travels all the way from the big toe to your hip”, he concluded. Well that made sense to me, and even if it didn’t stop the pain it was good to know as I pounded up and down the pool with my fins hurting all the time. But yesterday I had a session with my second massage therapist (I use the two of them because of their contrasting styles) and of course told him about my troubled right big toe. “Aahh”, he immediately responded when I’d finished, “you have a metatarsalphalangeal joint sprain – you’ll have to stop using your fins for a month or two”. See, that’s why I have two massage therapists. What’s a metatarsalphalangeal joint sprain you ask? Turf toe. I’ve gotten turf toe from swimming! You’ve gotta be kidding me!
Saturday, January 26, 2008
In Terms of Quality Swims Our Masters Women Leave the Men Far Behind
This past Wednesday practice our main set was an 8 x 50 or 100 choice best average on 3:00; meaning we were to go as fast as we could while maintaining the same pace for all eight reps. Of course because we’re masters we don’t put in the necessary kilometrage to properly gauge such efforts: for fifties I aim for a 95% effort the first couple and then go as fast as I can for the rest; and with hundreds I try to stick to a 90% effort throughout. Unfortunately since I was the only one in my lane who wanted to go hundreds we went fifties, and not being a sprinter at the best of times I really struggled throughout with some depressingly slow times. Shocked I was not. Since the start of January I’ve moved to my next stage of training intended to better develop my aerobic conditioning by adding a kilometer to each of my workouts while continuing efforts to revamp my stroke techniques. I’ve also radically increased the number and distance of my kick sets, and have made enough progress out of the pool in my physiotherapy to necessitate wholesale changes in the way I use my body. I’m tired and sore. If Phelps, Coughlin, Lochte et al can be compared to mountaineers perched high on the mountainside then I find myself so deep down in a valley well I have to bend my neck back merely to sight the sky. While some day in the future I will see my times improve to respectability right now any progress I’m likely to see will be minor and hard fought for.
What is a good time, a quality time, for a master swimmer? What sort of times can we reasonably shoot for? We can’t compare ourselves to the elite, but assessing performance upon existing masters world records has enormous pitfalls. Many are notorious for being ‘soft’ – slow times known not to be representative of the relevant age group’s true capabilities; and this number increases dramatically as we travel up and down the age groups either towards old age or youth. But then again, are the supposedly ‘hard’ records really that good either? To decide what constitutes great in masters swimming I ended up using as my benchmark something I saw being cited as proof of Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen’s bona fides: that she’d raced fast enough in masters to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials. To me this appears like a good basis to judge performance. The qualification times are derived directly from the real world of elite swimming yet are still within reach of our very best masters swimmers.
Two further questions and some particular aspects of this analysis need to be answered and clarified before I present my findings. The first question is at what age exactly does an athlete become a master? FINA recognizes eligibility at the age of twenty five while most countries set as their minimum age at nineteen (clearly for participative inclusiveness only). Also the reality only times from sanctioned masters event are eligible for masters consideration needs to be included in the equation. Times from the open circuit, even in FINA sanctioned events, are not counted and consequently there are several well known international swimming stars who are excluded by this technicality. To minimize this effect I’ve arbitrarily determined ‘true’ masters competition only commences at thirty for women and thirty five for men. While I’ve tried to include all those eligible swimmers both past and present who were still swimming in open competitions I’m certainly going to miss some of them. I apologize in advance. Let me know of any possible candidates and I’ll check to see if they should be added to the list. The second question is what Olympic Trials should be used as the benchmark. Not what country, that’s by default the U.S. (hats off to USA Swimming and its historical data base), but what year. The last Trials where short course times were accepted for qualifying purposes and thus listed were the 2000 Trials; and since most masters events are short course I’m only using this year’s Trials as a comparative for those who qualified swimming long course. As my primary benchmark I’ve settled on using the 1992 Trials. Interestingly I didn’t find the time differences between 1992 and 2008 particularly significant, something I’ll have to study and write about later on. Accordingly my list shows qualifying times by event, age group, the qualifying swimmer, his or her country, whether the qualification was long or short course, open or masters sanctioned event, and (if long course) whether the time also qualifies for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials. The times are arranged fastest to slowest. So here you are – the world’s Greatest Masters Swimmers so far.
Three observations. One, the list is completely dominated by ex-Olympians. Two, you don’t see many qualifying here in the distance events do you? And three, just look at all the women!
Of course noting the domination of ex-Olympians in a list of the great masters swimmers is not particularly enlightening so I’ll not discuss that any further. The lack of anything over 200 meters is to be expected too. Aerobic metabolism, which starts to become a significant factor after some twenty seconds of effort, passes the initial boost received from ATP-PCr metabolism within a few more seconds and eventually overhauls glycolysis, which takes over from ATP-PCr as the body’s primary source of energy, at around the two minute mark. The ascendancy of aerobic metabolism, not coincidentally, marks the end of the sprint events. Aerobic capabilities decline with age – precipitously if the individual stops the activity for any length of time. Building it back up even partially takes years of effort typically not available to adults with other, more pressing concerns. So the domination of the sprint 50 free here is expected. I’m most impressed by the swimmers who qualified in the 200, the longest sprint distance. To be successful in the 200 after retiring from open competition means continuing to soldier on in the pool putting in lots of kilometers.
The real stunner is the ratio of great female master swimmers to the male equivalent, women qualifying 37 events to 6, an amazing 6:1. Even if you exclude Dara Torres who has qualified in an unbelievable eight events in three different age groups, the women still lap the men with ease. I speculate the difference comes from a vastly greater participation rate by elite women, which continuing with my conjecture, may rest upon how differently the two sexes view the notion of swimming as a team sport. In this hypothesis the two sexes approach the team concept in such different ways it affects the way they view swimming after retirement and, ultimately, the number who reenter the sport. I propose males only give lip service to the idea of belonging to a team, at least in so far as swimming is concerned, reserving this to games such as football, volleyball, and car racing amongst other endeavors. No man would seriously deny belonging to a team is essential for achieving elite status – but he'll rationalize in the end only he's going to be standing on the starting block. Being driven as much by the competition as by success they simply move on and don’t return once they become uncompetitive. On the other hand I suspect women truly buy into the concept of team swimming: finding deep satisfaction in the personal relationships developed in pursuit of shared dreams. So while like men the elite women don’t return to masters for the competition they can and do return for the sociability they associate with the sport. More elite women equals more quality performances - and the women win going away. Sound reasonable?
Update: Floswimming has an interesting video with Jimmy Tierney, coach of Northwestern's womens swimming, who contrasts the differences between coaching men and women and the often divergent methods used to motivate them.
What is a good time, a quality time, for a master swimmer? What sort of times can we reasonably shoot for? We can’t compare ourselves to the elite, but assessing performance upon existing masters world records has enormous pitfalls. Many are notorious for being ‘soft’ – slow times known not to be representative of the relevant age group’s true capabilities; and this number increases dramatically as we travel up and down the age groups either towards old age or youth. But then again, are the supposedly ‘hard’ records really that good either? To decide what constitutes great in masters swimming I ended up using as my benchmark something I saw being cited as proof of Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen’s bona fides: that she’d raced fast enough in masters to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials. To me this appears like a good basis to judge performance. The qualification times are derived directly from the real world of elite swimming yet are still within reach of our very best masters swimmers.
Two further questions and some particular aspects of this analysis need to be answered and clarified before I present my findings. The first question is at what age exactly does an athlete become a master? FINA recognizes eligibility at the age of twenty five while most countries set as their minimum age at nineteen (clearly for participative inclusiveness only). Also the reality only times from sanctioned masters event are eligible for masters consideration needs to be included in the equation. Times from the open circuit, even in FINA sanctioned events, are not counted and consequently there are several well known international swimming stars who are excluded by this technicality. To minimize this effect I’ve arbitrarily determined ‘true’ masters competition only commences at thirty for women and thirty five for men. While I’ve tried to include all those eligible swimmers both past and present who were still swimming in open competitions I’m certainly going to miss some of them. I apologize in advance. Let me know of any possible candidates and I’ll check to see if they should be added to the list. The second question is what Olympic Trials should be used as the benchmark. Not what country, that’s by default the U.S. (hats off to USA Swimming and its historical data base), but what year. The last Trials where short course times were accepted for qualifying purposes and thus listed were the 2000 Trials; and since most masters events are short course I’m only using this year’s Trials as a comparative for those who qualified swimming long course. As my primary benchmark I’ve settled on using the 1992 Trials. Interestingly I didn’t find the time differences between 1992 and 2008 particularly significant, something I’ll have to study and write about later on. Accordingly my list shows qualifying times by event, age group, the qualifying swimmer, his or her country, whether the qualification was long or short course, open or masters sanctioned event, and (if long course) whether the time also qualifies for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials. The times are arranged fastest to slowest. So here you are – the world’s Greatest Masters Swimmers so far.
Three observations. One, the list is completely dominated by ex-Olympians. Two, you don’t see many qualifying here in the distance events do you? And three, just look at all the women!
Of course noting the domination of ex-Olympians in a list of the great masters swimmers is not particularly enlightening so I’ll not discuss that any further. The lack of anything over 200 meters is to be expected too. Aerobic metabolism, which starts to become a significant factor after some twenty seconds of effort, passes the initial boost received from ATP-PCr metabolism within a few more seconds and eventually overhauls glycolysis, which takes over from ATP-PCr as the body’s primary source of energy, at around the two minute mark. The ascendancy of aerobic metabolism, not coincidentally, marks the end of the sprint events. Aerobic capabilities decline with age – precipitously if the individual stops the activity for any length of time. Building it back up even partially takes years of effort typically not available to adults with other, more pressing concerns. So the domination of the sprint 50 free here is expected. I’m most impressed by the swimmers who qualified in the 200, the longest sprint distance. To be successful in the 200 after retiring from open competition means continuing to soldier on in the pool putting in lots of kilometers.
The real stunner is the ratio of great female master swimmers to the male equivalent, women qualifying 37 events to 6, an amazing 6:1. Even if you exclude Dara Torres who has qualified in an unbelievable eight events in three different age groups, the women still lap the men with ease. I speculate the difference comes from a vastly greater participation rate by elite women, which continuing with my conjecture, may rest upon how differently the two sexes view the notion of swimming as a team sport. In this hypothesis the two sexes approach the team concept in such different ways it affects the way they view swimming after retirement and, ultimately, the number who reenter the sport. I propose males only give lip service to the idea of belonging to a team, at least in so far as swimming is concerned, reserving this to games such as football, volleyball, and car racing amongst other endeavors. No man would seriously deny belonging to a team is essential for achieving elite status – but he'll rationalize in the end only he's going to be standing on the starting block. Being driven as much by the competition as by success they simply move on and don’t return once they become uncompetitive. On the other hand I suspect women truly buy into the concept of team swimming: finding deep satisfaction in the personal relationships developed in pursuit of shared dreams. So while like men the elite women don’t return to masters for the competition they can and do return for the sociability they associate with the sport. More elite women equals more quality performances - and the women win going away. Sound reasonable?
Update: Floswimming has an interesting video with Jimmy Tierney, coach of Northwestern's womens swimming, who contrasts the differences between coaching men and women and the often divergent methods used to motivate them.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Discovering Yet Another Technique I Need to Learn
Not a swimming technique but rather a method of teaching proper posture and movement, the Alexander Technique has been around for over a hundred years. Named after the technique’s innovator F. Mathias Alexander, who developed it from purely empirical observations of his own body and his own problems, the technique is aimed at allowing an individual to recognize and change habits which interfere with well integrated skeletal and muscular functioning. It was Alexander’s belief the daily stress and repetition inherent in modern daily life causes the body to compensate in ways which create still further problems. Eventually the body begins to work against itself, pitting muscle group against muscle group, until free flowing and efficient movement becomes in varying degrees impaired or, under certain conditions, impossible. It’s a difficult concept to grasp but you can try this simple posture to gain a better understanding of the problem. First attempt to stand on one leg with both your arms held outstretched from your sides for fifteen seconds. Most readers of this blog should be able to do this – it’s a basic test for inadequate musculature given to senior citizens. It might take two or three tries but no real problem right? Now try to do the same posture but with eyes closed. I’m betting 99% of my readers won’t be able to stand more than a couple of seconds, much less the full fifteen. Welcome to the teeming masses. The reason why we fail is our dependency on visual inputs to provide the constant stream of corrections we need to remain standing. Without them our non symmetrical and conflicting muscles overwhelm our sense of balance and we fall out of the posture. If you’re an athlete this clearly isn’t a good thing, but for many these problems can develop into actual physical deformity. Alas this has been the result for me. I exhibit an observable curve in my lower back, a significantly higher left shoulder than my right, a backward canted head, and hips which for all intents and purposes could be considered completely fused. For the morbidly inclined you can view my pictures from November here. When I started rehabilitation only the need to eliminate my back pain preceded the desire to correct my crookedness. Yet despite three years of extensive physiotherapy, chiropractics, yoga, stretching, some weight lifting, and two years swimming I’ve seen no apparent change in my posture. I’ve lost weight, gained muscle, and now enjoy better overall conditioning; but still no improvement in the way I hold my back. So late November I finally decided to go ahead and see if Alexander Technique could solve my problems.
Now Alexander Technique works by providing the body with new references for holding itself rather than continuing along the well trodden path established by the harmful habits and demands of everyday life: and it relies heavily upon a teacher’s efforts to guide the student through touch and words. Sometimes knowing I’m in the proper position is easy – because I feel a definite floating sensation as muscles which have been working for years finally get a few seconds of relaxation. Then there's the times she's effusive in her praise when I hadn't realized I'd even moved. And at still other moments the position I’ve been guided into requires considerable concentration and effort. The process is unlike any other physiotherapy I have known. Overall the training works on simple movement to begin with, such as sitting in a chair or walking up and down stairs, and progresses as the teacher determines he or she has seen enough progress to move on to other areas. I’ve spent much of the past two months limited to learning how to properly stand up and sit down but there have been lessons which were directly applicable to my swimming. In one lesson my teacher commented on the significant difference in the way I hold my shoulders and asked me to demonstrate how I use my arms and shoulders swimming freestyle. A couple of simulated strokes later she was apologizing for criticizing something she knew little about but then proceeded to explain why my stroke was all wrong from an Alexander viewpoint. Instead of initiating my stroke from the shoulder (i.e. starting my overhead recovery from my deltoids) and then by still more shoulder rotation propelling my arm reach forward she explained how my recovery stroke should only incidentally impact the shoulder. What she recommended to increase my stroke's efficiency was instead to allow my arms to follow my elbows up and then extend through the finger tips in an effortless manner rather than trying to muscle my arms from the shoulders. Does any of this sound familiar? We never did get to discuss the reasons for my shoulder differences but at that point I didn’t care, so pleased was I that the Alexander Technique could correctly point out defects in my stroke. Even better, and to my agreeable surprise as I had little real expectations from these lessons, I believe I can see improvements in my back and shoulders after only a couple months. I’m looking forward to the end of season in March when I’ll retake my pictures and actually can compare the changes over the past few months. I’m also sure my hip flexibility has significantly increased for another encouraging development. As a counter point, however, all these structural changes going on have affected the way I use many of my muscles - necessitating not only the retraining of several key muscle groups but also demanding further stroke changes. I can take solace, however, that all this seems to be leading eventually to a new and better foundation for my swimming. Things are looking up.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Another Question for Dara
I know at least some of you out there are reading my blog. In October I wrote “When Less Doesn’t Mean More” about how Dara Torres’ reported training regime didn’t jibe with any recognized training approach for sprinting; observing she was neither spending the hours in the pool typically associated with Olympian-level sprinters nor apparently relying on the innovative theories of Mike Bottom and his “Less is More” training style. Only three weeks later the New York Times came out with the story “Torres is Getting Older, But Swimming Faster”, which addressed almost every one of my questions. I’m sure it was just a coincidence and fortuitous timing on Torres’ part the article came out when it did.
While I’m firmly ensconced among those who believe Dara Torres is using some performance enhancing drug to achieve her spectacular results in the pool there remain many others, coming from the same population who buy lottery tickets and think Diebold voting machines produce reliable vote counts I’m sure, who believe without a failed test we necessarily must consider her ‘clean’. Despite the many instances of proven, long-time cheats who passed their drug tests for years this lack of definitive proof is admittedly a significant obstacle to overcome. One source for the circumstantial evidence I use to bolster my case is from comparing her recent performances to other recognizably more accomplished swimmers. So I’m always on the look out for details and facts about great swimmers both past and present to compare against Torres’ own career.
Yesterday I discovered a treasure trove of comparable facts in this month’s Outdoor Magazine. In his excellent article “The Big Chill” Christopher Solomon reveals several previously unknown facts about the incomparable Michael Phelps. All excellent fodder intended for later posts except for the one I’m going to discuss and compare to Torres here and now, which reveals he put on fourteen pounds (6⅓ kgs) of muscle in the three years prior to his phenomenal performance at last year’s World Championships in Melbourne. Now this isn’t a particularly noteworthy accomplishment for a twenty two year old male even if those pounds are being added to an already well developed Olympian frame. As one of Torres’ defenders stated in response to an observation I made about her muscle gains prior to the 2000 Sydney Games, “How often have I read this about a kid going to the NBA? Are they all taking steroids?” The answer is of course not. Young men engaged in strenuous activities or physical exercise can in most cases add the necessary sinew to handle pretty well anything. Yet it does take considerable effort and time to do so. Phelps' coach Bob Bowman had to institute a dry land program of one to two hours strength training three times a week on top of the 70,000 or so meters Phelps swims every week to give him his extra muscle. And he started the new regime right after the 2004 Athens Games when Michael was nineteen years old. Dara Torres, on the other hand, is noteworthy for taking only one year to add seventeen pounds of muscle as she prepared for her Sydney Olympics - and that was at the advanced age of 32. I think it needs to be noted she's a woman and not a man. After all she gave birth to her daughter only a little over a year and a half ago. I wonder how she managed it? The muscle gain I mean, not the child.
Now the ‘Torre-bles’ will invariably want to point out Dara’s muscle gain was then and this is now, and she’s currently racing ten pounds lighter than her Sydney Games days. Not a particularly convincing argument for me. Times change and as WADA identifies new ways of cheating and shuts some doors pharmacology continues to open new ones, always keeping a step or two ahead. Torres is certainly using something better and less detectable now than eight years ago because she’s swimming even faster at the age of forty. But perhaps Torres has some other explanation for her newfound speed and if so I’d be most interested in hearing it. Maybe past and present coaches Richard Quick and Michael Lohberg could even tape a couple of videos for Floswimming and share with everybody what they and Dara have learned about building power into her stroke over the past ten years. If not, and if she can’t arrange for the New York Times to get the details out, I suggest she use some other paper – Washington Post perhaps, or the Miami Herald, or even the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. I don’t really care. I’ll be watching all or them. Such is my fascination with Dara Torres.
Read my first article on Dara Torres (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
While I’m firmly ensconced among those who believe Dara Torres is using some performance enhancing drug to achieve her spectacular results in the pool there remain many others, coming from the same population who buy lottery tickets and think Diebold voting machines produce reliable vote counts I’m sure, who believe without a failed test we necessarily must consider her ‘clean’. Despite the many instances of proven, long-time cheats who passed their drug tests for years this lack of definitive proof is admittedly a significant obstacle to overcome. One source for the circumstantial evidence I use to bolster my case is from comparing her recent performances to other recognizably more accomplished swimmers. So I’m always on the look out for details and facts about great swimmers both past and present to compare against Torres’ own career.
Yesterday I discovered a treasure trove of comparable facts in this month’s Outdoor Magazine. In his excellent article “The Big Chill” Christopher Solomon reveals several previously unknown facts about the incomparable Michael Phelps. All excellent fodder intended for later posts except for the one I’m going to discuss and compare to Torres here and now, which reveals he put on fourteen pounds (6⅓ kgs) of muscle in the three years prior to his phenomenal performance at last year’s World Championships in Melbourne. Now this isn’t a particularly noteworthy accomplishment for a twenty two year old male even if those pounds are being added to an already well developed Olympian frame. As one of Torres’ defenders stated in response to an observation I made about her muscle gains prior to the 2000 Sydney Games, “How often have I read this about a kid going to the NBA? Are they all taking steroids?” The answer is of course not. Young men engaged in strenuous activities or physical exercise can in most cases add the necessary sinew to handle pretty well anything. Yet it does take considerable effort and time to do so. Phelps' coach Bob Bowman had to institute a dry land program of one to two hours strength training three times a week on top of the 70,000 or so meters Phelps swims every week to give him his extra muscle. And he started the new regime right after the 2004 Athens Games when Michael was nineteen years old. Dara Torres, on the other hand, is noteworthy for taking only one year to add seventeen pounds of muscle as she prepared for her Sydney Olympics - and that was at the advanced age of 32. I think it needs to be noted she's a woman and not a man. After all she gave birth to her daughter only a little over a year and a half ago. I wonder how she managed it? The muscle gain I mean, not the child.
Now the ‘Torre-bles’ will invariably want to point out Dara’s muscle gain was then and this is now, and she’s currently racing ten pounds lighter than her Sydney Games days. Not a particularly convincing argument for me. Times change and as WADA identifies new ways of cheating and shuts some doors pharmacology continues to open new ones, always keeping a step or two ahead. Torres is certainly using something better and less detectable now than eight years ago because she’s swimming even faster at the age of forty. But perhaps Torres has some other explanation for her newfound speed and if so I’d be most interested in hearing it. Maybe past and present coaches Richard Quick and Michael Lohberg could even tape a couple of videos for Floswimming and share with everybody what they and Dara have learned about building power into her stroke over the past ten years. If not, and if she can’t arrange for the New York Times to get the details out, I suggest she use some other paper – Washington Post perhaps, or the Miami Herald, or even the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. I don’t really care. I’ll be watching all or them. Such is my fascination with Dara Torres.
Read my first article on Dara Torres (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
Welcome Back Isis!
Isis keeps a blog called “The Secrets of Isis” where masters swimming ranks high among her many varied interests. Now swimming is known for being a sport with minimal injury risk, but when we do have serious problems it generally involves the shoulder. Unfortunately 2007 saw Isis’s shoulder go under the knife twice trying to correct a chronic injury, initially restricting her to endless kicking sets but eventually forcing her out of the pool altogether. Now she’s back in and needs some cheering to complete her recovery! If you are curious about what rehabilitation from a shoulder injury entails for a swimmer this is a great blog to encourage you to correct those technique problems now or give your shoulder a rest; with neat surgical pictures and some graphic descriptions of the complications which arise from post-operative infection. A well written blog: one which you will find especially appealing if your interests also include literature and/or a fondness for knitting.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
School Time Nightmares
Monday night was the first practice after a two week Christmas break and finishing a few minutes of announcements Coach warned before the workout commenced that he hoped we had been doing ‘homework’ over the holidays and kept up with our swimming. That caused me to immediately flashback to my boarding school days – where not having one’s homework done brought disastrous consequences. Caning students was still in vogue back then. Actually, I realized with a sigh of relief, I had been doing my ‘homework’; at least I’d done a little over 20,000 meters in the two weeks we were away. Not enough of course but still a lot more than all but a handful of my teammates. And almost immediately after that thought I groaned because I had done some ‘homework’, 2,700 meters of it, the night before – including 6x100 back on 1:50, 600 meters kicking without flippers, and a combined 600 meters of fly and breast – and was still feeling it. At the time I figured our first night back would bring with it a fairly easy practice, and so wrote out what turned out to be a more difficult than usual practice set for Sunday (doesn’t it always seem easier to write a workout than actually swim it?). And here Brad was insinuating tonight’s workout would be tough. In the end it was hard but not crushingly so, though some in Lanes Five and Six would probably disagree on this particular day. Coach, clearly in a sadistic mood, released the workout in dribs and drabs to keep anxiety high:
12x50 free warm-up done in three sets of four (3 @ 0:50 + 1 @ 0:45)
4x100 free @ 1:50
4x100 kick (w/fins) @ 2:00
4x100 IM @ 2:00
1x100 free @ 2:00
3x100 IM @ 1:50
After finishing the last 400 meters both Doug and I figured at almost the very same instant we’d be seeing more declining IMs such as 1x100 free @ 2:00 and a 2x100 IM @ 1:40, and then 1x100 free @ 2:00 followed by a 1x100 IM @ 1:30; but Brad tripped us up and instead went:
4x100 free: first @ 1:50
second @ 1:35
third @ 1:30
fourth @ 1:25
Brad did give Lane Six the option of doing the set with the intervals ten seconds faster which we declined, but I did notice Doug pushing to finish the last hundred under 1:15. I was happy just to make the interval.
Choice of warm down (I did an easy 100 back)
Since we had a short hour to swim the 2,600 plus warm down the workout had a fair amount of meters in it. I know when we finished I was feeling pretty ‘wobbly’ in the legs. So it turned out I ended up rather roughed up despite the fact I had done my homework. Life really can be unfair.
12x50 free warm-up done in three sets of four (3 @ 0:50 + 1 @ 0:45)
4x100 free @ 1:50
4x100 kick (w/fins) @ 2:00
4x100 IM @ 2:00
1x100 free @ 2:00
3x100 IM @ 1:50
After finishing the last 400 meters both Doug and I figured at almost the very same instant we’d be seeing more declining IMs such as 1x100 free @ 2:00 and a 2x100 IM @ 1:40, and then 1x100 free @ 2:00 followed by a 1x100 IM @ 1:30; but Brad tripped us up and instead went:
4x100 free: first @ 1:50
second @ 1:35
third @ 1:30
fourth @ 1:25
Brad did give Lane Six the option of doing the set with the intervals ten seconds faster which we declined, but I did notice Doug pushing to finish the last hundred under 1:15. I was happy just to make the interval.
Choice of warm down (I did an easy 100 back)
Since we had a short hour to swim the 2,600 plus warm down the workout had a fair amount of meters in it. I know when we finished I was feeling pretty ‘wobbly’ in the legs. So it turned out I ended up rather roughed up despite the fact I had done my homework. Life really can be unfair.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Swimming is Harder Than It Looks
When I first joined the Hyacks it was with the idea I’d give it a shot for three months and at least learn how to swim fly and perform a decent backstroke rollover turn. A year and four months later not only have I failed to master either fly or turn but I'm also entangled in correcting the many other flaws this old body depends on. Take simple, straightforward freestyle. I’ve succeeded in changing my stroke’s old style underwater s-curve to today’s more accepted straight arm but now struggle with a strong tendency for my left hand to enter well over my centre line, giving me a pronounced loping style of swimming. Almost certainly an idiosyncrasy developed to allow me to bring my face clear of the water to breathe. In a sport which revolves around a swimmer’s core and maintaining the body’s horizontal axis both are serious flaws. Correcting them will be a long and uncomfortable process. In backstroke I’m experiencing problems holding a correct body position and completing my stroke. After mentally reviewing past races I’ve traced part of my breathing difficulties in back to poor body position, with too deep hips resulting in an overly upright body position and consequently an increased susceptibility to inhaling water. I now realize this is why most of my water swallowing episodes come after emerging from a turn: I get hit by the backwash my poor turn technique creates at a particularly vulnerable point of time. As my dragging hips come from a combination of an ineffective kick, weak body rotation, and a badly fading finishing stroke - problems stemming from my flexibility and overall strength issues - any resolution is equally far away. This desperate need for more strength shows up in dramatic fashion in fly, where I still struggle to swim a complete hundred in good form. On the plus side my technique is showing slow but steady progress, enough to still nurse hopes I can put together a decent race before season’s end. That’s good, because the less said about my breaststroke the better. The technical and strength requirements of breast unfortunately highlight my personal deficiencies which will take years, if ever, to correct. So while every practice on my own I try to spend at least one set doing the stroke and related drills frankly I strongly doubt I’ll ever be any good at it. Then on top of all else my ongoing struggle with endurance and aerobic conditioning throws its shadow over everything I do in the pool. Progress in these two key facets of swimming has been both meager and fleeting – apparent improvement one day seems to dissipate like a mirage the following workout.
I expected to find obstacles between where I am now and peak performance. It is, however, a little frustrating. I understand you can’t just turn on a switch and become an elite swimmer. It takes years of effort for even the supremely talented, so I understood it would take considerable effort at my advanced age to develop enough conditioning and technique to start putting in decent races. Yet it’s only in the past few months that I’ve slowly awakened to the sobering fact the road is longer, and the work harder, than my initial calculations. Still, this is good. To paraphrase Prospero a prize too easily obtained is a prize too easily dismissed. The desire to swim faster also doesn’t consider the real reason I’m swimming is for my health and well being, the pursuit of which necessarily should be a lifelong endeavor. I might not be competing in a couple years time but I’ll probably still be swimming. It seems there’s really no rush at all ... there's plenty of time to perfect my strokes.
I expected to find obstacles between where I am now and peak performance. It is, however, a little frustrating. I understand you can’t just turn on a switch and become an elite swimmer. It takes years of effort for even the supremely talented, so I understood it would take considerable effort at my advanced age to develop enough conditioning and technique to start putting in decent races. Yet it’s only in the past few months that I’ve slowly awakened to the sobering fact the road is longer, and the work harder, than my initial calculations. Still, this is good. To paraphrase Prospero a prize too easily obtained is a prize too easily dismissed. The desire to swim faster also doesn’t consider the real reason I’m swimming is for my health and well being, the pursuit of which necessarily should be a lifelong endeavor. I might not be competing in a couple years time but I’ll probably still be swimming. It seems there’s really no rush at all ... there's plenty of time to perfect my strokes.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Looking Forward to a Better New Year
After taking virtually all of December off I thought I’d put in at least an appearance to show I’m still around. This past month has been consumed by work, primarily two divorce cases I’ve taken on a contingency basis (which in these cases pretty well means pro bono) – one getting close to the end, and the other most unfortunately just beginning. Both are incredibly vicious, cut-throat battles where the men, both marked as multimillionaires, are arguing they’re effectively bankrupt and challenging their ex-spouses to prove otherwise: a difficult and costly challenge in their particular cases. The first is getting quite famous, at least in local legal circles. It’s been going on since 1999, when the Respondent claimed he couldn’t afford the less than $1,000/month in child support for his three young children anymore and simply stopped paying. Going into its ninth year (thankfully I only became involved in 2003) the case is still before the court, with combined legal expenses of both parties which (if I extrapolate the other side's litigation costs on the basis of our own billable hours and disbursements) must be getting close to a million dollars. The Defendant is on his third set of lawyers and the case itself is now being tried by our second judge. All over a few tens of thousand dollars in missed child support because of the Respondent’s claim of insolvency! Frankly everyone associated with this case is desperately searching for someway out of this mess. Such is the absurdity of our court system and human irrationality.
Enough of my whining. I have a lot of articles either in various stages of completion or planned for the coming year, and here I’m referring to my opinion pieces rather than the various and sundry posts I also write marking my efforts to establish myself as a ‘serious’ competitive swimmer. It’s a fairly easy process to dash off some commentary concerning a particular workout, or write about the myriads of problems presented by my poor swimming technique or about race results, but much more difficult and time consuming to write opinions on what are often controversial subjects. Regardless I believe these opinions are the heart of my blog, and have been rewarded in turn by learning a great deal in writing them. For example I’ve had an article on trans fats sitting around for some time, my problem getting it into print is a desire to change it’s emphasis from merely disclosing the undeniable hazards of trans fats into a critique of the food industry’s trans fats disclosure rules, something which is being manipulated and exploited to an outrageous degree. Of course I haven't forgotten about Dara Torres, having several works-in-progress concerned with or related to her. In a piece with the rather long title, “Viva La Différence: The Impact of Aging on Female Athletes (Or Why Medical Science Says Dara Torres Can’t Be for Real) I go about showing why the rule-of-thumb decline for female performance of 3% per decade applies even to Ms. Torres. In another post titled, “Dara Torres v. The IOC”, an article not particularly flattering to the IOC either, I discuss the devastation Dara Torres would bring to the Olympic movement and amateur sport in general should she actually individually medal at Beijing and consequently the IOC’s obvious but belated desperation to stop her and her ilk. In a similar bit of writing with the title, “Dara Torres: All Alone and Leading the Way” I draw comparisons between Torres and other ‘great’ athletes who were subsequently found to have cheated, placing particular emphasis on baseball icon Roger Clemens, whom Americans have often held up as an example of why Torres is for real. I find the irony I can now also use Mr. Clemens as one of my own examples to be absolutely delicious. I'd roll in it if I could. Other posts concerning her have titles such as “Money, Money, Money”, “The Ethics of Cheating”, and “A Woman’s Prerogative: Dara Torres and Her Ever Changing Training Regime”. Self explanatory no? But there are many more subjects I’d like to cover, especially since this is an Olympic year. With titles ranging from “Competitive Swimming: The Best Sport on Earth for Children”, through “A Case in Point: Britain’s Search for Olympic Swimming Success”, and “An Open Letter About the Unfairness in the Way Canada Goes About Selecting It’s Olympic Athletes”, to “In Praise of ‘Doc’ Councilman”, “The Great Arthur Lydiard”, and “The Psychology of Sprinters” I have a plethora of topics to choose from. Hopefully 2008 will allow me to tackle at least these and some of the many, many others I've jotted down over the past year. I hope you’ll stick around to read them. Happy New Year!
Enough of my whining. I have a lot of articles either in various stages of completion or planned for the coming year, and here I’m referring to my opinion pieces rather than the various and sundry posts I also write marking my efforts to establish myself as a ‘serious’ competitive swimmer. It’s a fairly easy process to dash off some commentary concerning a particular workout, or write about the myriads of problems presented by my poor swimming technique or about race results, but much more difficult and time consuming to write opinions on what are often controversial subjects. Regardless I believe these opinions are the heart of my blog, and have been rewarded in turn by learning a great deal in writing them. For example I’ve had an article on trans fats sitting around for some time, my problem getting it into print is a desire to change it’s emphasis from merely disclosing the undeniable hazards of trans fats into a critique of the food industry’s trans fats disclosure rules, something which is being manipulated and exploited to an outrageous degree. Of course I haven't forgotten about Dara Torres, having several works-in-progress concerned with or related to her. In a piece with the rather long title, “Viva La Différence: The Impact of Aging on Female Athletes (Or Why Medical Science Says Dara Torres Can’t Be for Real) I go about showing why the rule-of-thumb decline for female performance of 3% per decade applies even to Ms. Torres. In another post titled, “Dara Torres v. The IOC”, an article not particularly flattering to the IOC either, I discuss the devastation Dara Torres would bring to the Olympic movement and amateur sport in general should she actually individually medal at Beijing and consequently the IOC’s obvious but belated desperation to stop her and her ilk. In a similar bit of writing with the title, “Dara Torres: All Alone and Leading the Way” I draw comparisons between Torres and other ‘great’ athletes who were subsequently found to have cheated, placing particular emphasis on baseball icon Roger Clemens, whom Americans have often held up as an example of why Torres is for real. I find the irony I can now also use Mr. Clemens as one of my own examples to be absolutely delicious. I'd roll in it if I could. Other posts concerning her have titles such as “Money, Money, Money”, “The Ethics of Cheating”, and “A Woman’s Prerogative: Dara Torres and Her Ever Changing Training Regime”. Self explanatory no? But there are many more subjects I’d like to cover, especially since this is an Olympic year. With titles ranging from “Competitive Swimming: The Best Sport on Earth for Children”, through “A Case in Point: Britain’s Search for Olympic Swimming Success”, and “An Open Letter About the Unfairness in the Way Canada Goes About Selecting It’s Olympic Athletes”, to “In Praise of ‘Doc’ Councilman”, “The Great Arthur Lydiard”, and “The Psychology of Sprinters” I have a plethora of topics to choose from. Hopefully 2008 will allow me to tackle at least these and some of the many, many others I've jotted down over the past year. I hope you’ll stick around to read them. Happy New Year!
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Good Pool, Lousy Swimmer
The Nanaimo Ebbtides host an excellent swim meet even if their city is a little off the beaten path. It’s a fast, modern pool kept at the right temperature for competitive swimming, has plenty of warm up/cool down lanes, and other than a slight hiccup at the start of the meet with their timing system this year, is always very smoothly run. Of course to really enjoy a meet I have to swim well too. As Hamlet would say, “Ay, there’s the rub”. The less said about my 200 back the better. I started out at a good pace but had some problems with shortness of breath early on, choked on some water at about the sixty meter mark, and then struggled to recover any sort of breathing pattern thereafter – my race pretty well finished at that point. Going into the turn at the hundred mark I discovered I couldn’t (wouldn’t) duck my head under at the wall (remember my hesitation about not wanting to make proper flip turns at the UBC meet two weeks ago?) and consequently coasted in on my stomach and was disqualified. In my 100 free I went out much too slowly and then merely continued the same pace the last fifty rather than accelerating. I felt good with my stroke staying reasonably intact, to the point of thinking right afterwards I had had a decent race but my final result said otherwise: less than two seconds faster than the time I swam a year ago at this same meet; and that time was with only three months training. In my all important 100 back, where I was trying to qualify for my AAA time (even going so far as to scratch my fifty free to provide more rest) I once again went out much too slowly. I think I was still in shock over my 100 free and had already resigned myself to a substandard time. I touched outside even a personal ‘best’, finishing about two tenths off that mark, in a race where anything less than a two second improvement would have been disappointing. Oh well. It’s not as if improvements come in steady, predictable increments. The only real bother is the limited number of master races gives only a few opportunities to test oneself each year; and with this meet a washout it means I’ll have to reswim my backstroke events at Duncan to reestablish my confidence rather than try out a couple other, less swum events such as the 200 free. Much of my problem stems from my expectations for improvement, where I’m looking to tear chunks of time off rather than improve a mere second or two. To my disgust I still struggle in the 200 back with a time quality-wise the equivalent to my 100 free, causing me to consciously punish myself by immediately scheduling another 200 back for the very next meet (I suffer a lot in the 200 back). Ultimately I’ll start swimming the race properly but until it happens I’m building quite a phobia about it, especially the pain of the last fifty since my suffering starts to build as soon as I push off on the second hundred. And I’m completely frustrated with the lack of progress in my 100 free since I’ve definitely improved all aspects of the stroke and should be swimming much faster. My fly and breast, on the other hand, have been from day one works-in-progress so expectations here are low anyways; nor do I have any real hopes in the near future for a decent 200 individual medley because of those same two strokes. Ignoring the 50 sprints as novelties better suited to test all out speed rather than legitimate events in their own right leaves my 100 back standing alone as my sole competitive event at this time. And even this needs some improvement before I can call myself a real backstroker. Two more months until my next meet. I’ll find out then just what sort of talent I truly do possess.
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