Crazy Swim Dad

Ominous sign to start the morning

2011-01-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

Based on my informal poll of how many swimmers are in my lane each morning (yes I keep track), swimmers like to get their exercise out of the way early in the morning. That means, alarm clocks and groggy marches to the pool while it's still dark out.

I'm not complaining, it actually feels good to start the day with 60 minutes of swimming. Sort of invigorating. Definitely eye opening. A good way to start a day.

Until, ominous signs start greeting you just as you're waking up. The first sign I saw today as I walked up to the pool?

Danger. Chlorine.

How the heck am I supposed to stay motivated with that staring at my face at O Dark Thirty? Danger. Chlorine. Hey wait, I'm about to jump into a freakin' pool loaded with this stuff. I've been reading a lot of Greek Mythology (OK OK the Percy Jackson series) and the Gods are always throwing out signs to the heroes. Is this a sign? Is swimming dangerous? Will a freakin' minotaur be sitting poolside when I try to get out? Or will a half man half shark beastie be swimming laps when I hop in?

I thought long and hard about not swimming when this "sign" confronted me this morning. But then I realized that I'd already made it through the alarm clock, if I could do that I could probably deal with Danger. Chlorine.

Swimming bobbleheads

2011-01-13T16:34:00.000-08:00

OK, I know, the whole point of swimming is keeping your head still and bobbleheads just defeat the h3ll out of that purpose. But, why aren't there promotional swimmer bobblehead dolls?

The World Series Champion San Francisco Giants just announced their 2011 promotional schedule and as is required by state law, there are 4 bobblehead giveaways (Cody Ross, Aubrey Huff, Gerald Posey and Tim Lincecum).

Intrigued, I decided to check our friend EBay to see how much last years' Lincecum bobblehads go for. Seems like $10-200 is about the range. Wow. That's cool, except that I don't have one to sell. So, I guess bottom line it doesn't really matter.

Well, if a Lincecum bobblehead costs that much, how much for a Phelps bobblehead? That guy is a LEGEND. Quick EBay search reveals? None for sale. No Coughlin bobbleheads or Lochte bobbleheads either. Maybe people are just holding on to these priceless gems.

Google image search? Nada...no bobbleheads for any of our aquatic heroes. This is a farce! Why aren't swimmers given equal bobble treatment? I'd even collect a Garrett Weber-Gale bobblehead if you could put a sound chip in there to remind me to eat my vegetables!

So, I made a mockup of a Michael Phelps bobblehead for all of you manufacturers reading this blog. First I made one of Natalie Coughlin, but she's my daughter's hero and it just looked too weird and I couldn't do that to her. If somebody could just make this bobblehead, swimming would be on its way to the mainstream!

Graphin' my FLOG!

2011-01-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

I FLOG quite regularly. Honestly, if I flossed as much as I FLOG, my teeth would be much whiter and my dentist much poorer. But, alas, my priority lies with FLOG'in.

USMS provides a really easy to use online tool to log your fitness goals and accomplishments called the FLOG (hey, this is a family friendly blog, what did you think it meant). Every day after I swim, I post to it before I drive away from the pool. This FLOG powers Go the Distance, an event designed to provide me a free swim cap by early Spring. In 2010, I swam 120 miles. In 2011, I plan on 130 miles. This is easily tracked here.

But, what is even cooler is that USMS provides a fantastic spreadsheet that allows you to track additional details and provides a lot of fancy graphs and calculations. If you work this thing right, you can add other more detailed graphs as well. I won't bore you with my Excel-nerdiness but will show you two graphs that I am going to be tracking all year. I call them Free-scatter and Kick-scatter.

In Free-scatter, I will track MPH over the course of the workout against the percentage of freestyle swam. It will obviously show how much faster at freestyle I am than those "other" strokes. The interesting part will be just how much faster. Behold, my first two data points of 2011:

0.2 miles per hour seems like a lot, let's see how that changes over time.

In Kick-scatter, I will track MPH against the percentage of kick sets. The idea is the same, to see how much speed is lost when I stop using my spindly arms.

Notice the fantastic benchmark of my January 1 all-swim session? I can only go down from there I guess.

There are other methods to track progress against time but first I need to understand the correlation of speed vs. stroke. Then more graphs and more graphs and more graphs will emerge. That is the power of the FLOG.

I taught my daughter something

2010-12-29T15:48:00.000-08:00

When it comes to swimming, my 10 year old daughter kicks my ass. She's faster, she can swim longer, she knows all four strokes. And she can flip turn. She's, like, the complete package.

She is officially on her December break, which runs from the end of JOs to the first Monday in January. But she never did her swim-a-thon to raise money for the Oakland Learn to Swim Program so she had to get those yards in somehow.

On Christmas Eve off to Campolindo we go for open swim, hop in the water and I find out that she does about 8 laps to my 5 or sometimes 6. What she doesn't know how to do is to keep her mind focused while doing long long sets. This is something that she never has to worry about at swim practice because they work almost exclusively on strokes and technique, rarely ever venturing into a set longer than 100-200 yards at a time. But, for a swimathon, you just have to swim and swim and swim.

So I got to to teach her something. During a short wall break, I asked her what color the band aid was about two-thirds of the way down the lane. She had no idea. So I told her my secret, as I swim, I look for something like that, some small thing at the bottom of the pool that I try to learn as much about as possible in the brief moment when I can see it each lap. Usually, it's a hair elastic or a band-aid or an unusual leaf. One time it was a living salamander.

In this pool, it was a blue band-aid with some sort of holiday motif living 10 feet under the surface. It took us about thirty laps to agree that it was a polar bear fishing but it made those thirty laps go a lot faster and less painful.

Now if she could just teach me to swim butterfly.

12 Days of Christmas set

2010-12-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

OK, you know the song:

12 Drummers Drumming
11 Pipers Piping
10 Lords-a-Leaping
9 Ladies Dancing
8 Maids-a-Milking
7 Swans-a-Swimming
6 Geese-a-Laying
5 Gold Rings
4 Colly Birds
3 French Hens
2 Turtle Doves
And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

But what about the set? Well I don't exactly know it either but I sure as heck swam it this weekend...and I hated it. But that's only because I don't believe that the "other strokes" should be allowed into a civilized swimming pool. Each number represents the number of 25 yard laps in that part of the set and then, from there, the coach would make up something painful and seemingly arbitrary about how to interpret the lyrics. He

12 Drummers Drumming
11 Pipers Piping = something to do with Indiana IM and FYI, the leader in my lane made us do 13 of these, some Christmas spirit
10 Lords-a-Leaping = 5 50's with 5 "streamline jumps" in the shallow end
9 Ladies Dancing = 9 laps of backstroke
8 Maids-a-Milking = 8 laps of breast stroke
7 Swans-a-Swimming = 7 laps of butterfly
6 Geese-a-Laying
5 Gold Rings = 5 sprint 25s of freestyle
4 Colly Birds
3 French Hens = 3 laps of descending freestyle
2 Turtle Doves = 2 laps underwater
And a Partridge in a Pear Tree = 1 lap of sculling while singing a Christmas Carol

When, and if, I remember the rest, I'll edit this post to benefit future generations and general internet knowledge.

Now, here's the funny part. I consider myself a smart man; truly, it's the only thing I have going for myself but sometimes I have to wonder about even that. Two days after swimming this set, I was in the middle of a 300 yard freestyle set, just the sort of swim that's long enough to let your mind wander (in the hopes that you make a mistake and only swim 250), when it occured to me why the 8 maids a milking were doing the breast stroke. Seriously, the coach on deck even pantomimed milking while describing it and I still didn't get it. Sheesh.

Merry Christmas and to all a good swim.

Eyes in the back of their head

2010-12-02T12:07:00.000-08:00

While having lunch with my daughter's swim coach a few weeks back, he mentioned that the best coach he ever had made him feel like he saw everything in the pool. Like the coach was only watching one swimmer and that was him. Thinking about it, that's a pretty cool trait to have as a coach, especially when you have 15 swimmers in a pool.

Then I realized that my coach has that. It actually freaks me out a bit because my stroke (especially breaststroke) has been known to crack the lens of a camera when it tries to focus. It's so ugly, I routinely ask to be last in my lane so nobody has to see it.

So far Brian has only commented on my freestyle but he's pointed out most of the things that I do wrong. Every time I explain to him how I'm going to fix some problem he diagnosed or my plans to get my hips up or something, he reminds me of something else I'm doing wrong that would just make it all worse. Seriously, it's like there is a list of 15 things he needs to fix.

Anyway, I got lucky today. My two lane-mates were having him watch their freestyle and he gave me that look that we was going to critique me too. So, I did the only smart thing, swim really fast right up on my lane-mate's heels so that he wouldn't have time to watch my stroke at the end! I got away with it, too.

Some day my stroke will be better and I won't have to worry about these critiques but without the critiques my stroke will never be better. The true paradox of swimming.

Officially official

2010-11-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, I attended an officials training session for 3 hours. I learned a few things, most notably that I cannot see a breaststroker's legs on a small TV from 5 feet away; at least not well enough to DQ them. It's better at the pool, but it doesn't bode well for instant replay in swimming. I also got to quiz a veteran official about every single DQ my daughter has ever had and challenge him on the audacity that a complete swimmer like Chopstick would ever turn non-continuously. He backed down but for some odd reason, he didn't go and reverse all of her undeserved DQs.

Anyway, at that point, my main concern was, where the heck am I going to get blue pants? But I pressed on and took the online test on Monday. I got one wrong and continuing in my theme of challenging authority, can't tell how it was wrong. Please review:

"In the butterfly: At the turns and the finish, is it permissible for a shoulder to be dropped after the final arm pull and prior to the touch?"

I say no since the rules clearly state that "at each turn the body shall be on the breast.....once a touch has been made, the swimmer may turn in any manner desired." So, according to the question, the swimmer needs to be on the breast because it is prior to the touch. How can you be on the breast if you have dropped a shoulder? Sounds like the swimmer is somewhere less than parallel to the water surface to me.

I'm sure there is more to it but I need an answer on this one. And I will get one this weekend because I am officially "shadowing" at Chopstick's meet. I think I need four days of shadowing and a recommendation and I become an official. At which point, all swimmers must refer to me as Doctor DQ.

Escape the tyranny of the stopwatch

2010-10-15T14:21:00.000-07:00

Swimming is a fantastic sport. It's not a zero sum game, you don't have one winner and one loser in each game. Because of the stopwatch, you can compete against goals and not feel like a loser because lane 4 beats you every time. That's one of the primary lessons I've wanted to teach Chopstick about swimming. Worry about yourself and your effort. And it has worked.

But unfortunately, this isn't all happening in a vacuum. The stopwatch has also caused problems. Chopstick will get out of the pool after a fantastic swim and be more concerned over whether her time was a personal best than the fact that she nailed the fly to back turn. This is even more exacerbated on events where she's close to a goal like a far western or JO.

We ended up getting in tiffs after races because she just couldn't leave the emotions in the water. I told her it's OK to feel disappointed in a swim, it's a matter of how you handle that disappointment and channel it. But all of our little tricks to overcome this problem were just bandaids on a wound.

It took a while to realize it but the real problem was me. Despite my calm, understanding and patient demeanor; deep down I care about the times. And she knows that I do. She'd look for clues in my face as she got out of the water to see how her time was. I'm pretty sure she cares about them because I care about them.

That's not to say that she doesn't want to swim fast for herself, but the time obsession has to be because of me. Heck, she couldn't even tell you what her best time in any event is but she asks me after every race if it was a best time. Yep, that's on me.

Luckily, Tuesday morning I had a moment of clarity. Screw the stopwatch. We can't let it run our lives. And we can't let it hurt her enjoyment of swimming. So, we're going to try something new next weekend. We're just not going to look. I won't keep my spreadsheet in my back pocket. I won't look at the scoreboard. She wont ask me what her time was. Her coach might give it away but he usually doesn't pay attention to the times until Monday, can't see why he'd do anything differently this time.

We'll check once, after her last event on Sunday. We'll go write the times down and collect the ribbons. Maybe find some surprises in there and maybe not. I am pretty sure we'll learn a lot about ourselves and her motivations though.

I've always maintained that Chopstick swims because she likes ribbons. I'm going to do my best to get out of the way of the reasons and stick with my most important role in her swimming, emotional support, encouragement and making sure she has a towel when she gets out of the pool.

Put this thing to use

2010-09-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

During the 6 weeks between meets that this unfortunate time of year brings, our suit-drying rack really has it easy. A couple of suits from me, a couple from Chopstick. Nothing to really get it worked up. This is how it looks during the "dry" season:

Notice how a couple of suits feel the luxury of taking over three pegs. There's room so that the wettest suits don't have to drip on the drier ones. It's like a freakin' resort for these suits.

Now, Chopstick has her first meet of the new season this weekend. Then it's off to the races with a meet every other weekend through the JOs, then an extra one in December because we can. Look for the updated picture of a well-used drying rack from this Sunday. It should be loaded with the week's practice suits, my suits, about a trillion towels and a bunch of caps.

Bring on the meets!

Some coachin'

2010-09-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

Including me, there were only two people in my lane today. My lane-mate, Mike the bald guy, is faster than I am...not significantly but enough that lane splitting made more sense than circle swimming.

But, alas, this too was challenging. Not in the sense that it was difficult but it challenged me to try to keep up with Mike. And I kind of did. More accurately, I really TRIED to keep up with him. And what happens when I *try* to swim fast? I swim sloppy.

So I got pulled aside by the coach on deck and he gave me some pointers that I should know but don't always put into practice. The best part is that from then on I knew he was watching and I really had to concentrate on that long glide and keeping one of my goggles in the water while breathing. It helped, my stroke count dropped by about 5 and I was certainly not working as hard. Mike was still faster but not by as much.

So it worked and I now know I have to be careful when I try my sloppy tired stroke. Coaches could be watching.

6500 yards per week, that's all we ask

2010-09-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Since I've become a Manatee my yardage has gone up dramatically. To the point that I'm thinking I might just make my 2010 mileage goal. Or at least my modified 2010 mileage goal, you know, the one I modified once I finished taking the months of June and July off from swimming.

To make the original goal (150 miles), I need to average 7600 yards per week. To make the modified more realistic didn't swim all summer goal (140 miles), I need to average 6500 yards per week.

Now that I'm a manatee, this is actually do-able. They have an absurd number of options for practice times and they make me work harder. Since I joined on September 1, my workouts have averaged 2270 yards. If I swim three times per week, that banks me over 300 yards per week on my modified goal. If I swim 4 times per week every other week, I actually bank 345 yards per week over my original goal.

Considering I've swam 5 times in 9 days due to the incredible number of available workouts, this might just be do-able. No more missing a whole day just because I slept in, I can go that evening. If I can't make Friday because of a meeting, I can go Thursday. And, best yet, when Chopstick doesn't have a meet, there are weekend practices.

I'm thinking I can do it. 6500 yards per week. That's all we ask.

Swimming replays ..... Pan Pacs Redeux

2010-09-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

Last night, my wife had some friends over to discuss share-cares and carpooling and stuff so I took the kids downstairs to watch some TV. Of course, nothing good was recorded but I noticed I hadn't deleted the Pan Pacs. The kids agreed and we decided just to watch races that Chopstick likes and fast forward through the rest.

So, we started off with the Women's 200 IM mainly so that Chopstick could compare her time to these guys and see how much work she has to do. We spent the first part of the race trying to decide how to pronounce Kukors, but, wow, did we get into it after that. I didn't notice we'd gotten loud until I noticed that Chopstick was yelling for Ariana Kukors on the breast-stroke leg like she could actually hear her (never mind that we're in Northern California and the race was in Irvine....AND over a week ago). But she yelled, "go go go" everytime her head came out of the water and then we watched with disappointment as the Australian won.

It was doubly hard since it was the same Australian who beat Natalie Coughlin in the 100 or 200 back a few weeks ago when the Pan Pacs were on our TV live. And to top it off, we've all decided that the Australians have the best suits. The best suits and they beat two of our favorite swimmers. Insulting.

The next two races we watched made it worthwhile. Ryan Lochte (the baddest man on the planet) and Rebecca Soni were almost world recording! Watching them race that line was so exciting that we forgot to care that we were being loud enough to hear upstairs. If only my 5 year old son cared about swimming and joined in, maybe we could have exhorting them to the actual records, but it was close enough for us.

After a few more races, we were done, we went crazy for the men's 400 MR and called it a night, happy to have enjoyed the racing in this way too long off season. The best part about all of it? We already knew who had won and still cheered like it was live.

Crap. I'm losing weight again

2010-08-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

I usually don't weigh myself because no news is good news sometimes. But since I got to the pool early this morning and had the option of sitting in the hot tub watching the 6AM people finish their swim or stepping on the scale to kill about 45 seconds, I went with the latter.

Before I get to the heart of the matter, I'd like to point out that I just took about two months off swimming. One month without swimming and then a month of going on days when the masters weren't swimming to try to get myself back in shape. So I should have gained weight.

But I didn't. Not only didn't I gain weight, I'm down two pounds from what I thought was the lowest I could go. And this was before my brutal workout at the hands of the evil Other Coach Bill. Who knows how much I took off during the hour swimming because I was scared to get back on that scale.

Of course, the only option is to eat more. I just have to figure out how to do that. Going to McDonalds isn't too good of an idea because I really like the idea that my cholesterol is low. I think protein rich food will help: almonds, chicken, etc. Maybe an extra almond butter and jelly sandwich in the afternoon would be good too.

I read on the boards that swimming isn't good for weight loss but it sure as heck seems to be doing the trick on one of the few people in the world that doesn't want it. I guess it's better than the alternative but still. And I thought the biggest problem from swimming was going to be smelling like chlorine.

Crazy flip turns

2010-08-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

I asked a rhetorical question on twitter a few days ago: "who in the h3ck invented the flip turn?" I said this because the darned thing appears to be the twisted invention of some sadistic contortionist. Not because I really wanted to know that it was Tex Richardson. That said, I'm glad to now know that. I can curse him now.

In one week, I am moving from my sedate leisurely 1 person per lane private club pool to a Masters team. I am comfortable with the fact that I'm going to be in the slow lane and I am OK with 4 to 5 people per lane. But I am going to lose the ability to just do whatever the h3ck I want when I want to. And I'm not comfortable with my weird little Irish Jig of a turn at the wall. There are going to be sixty year old ladies breathing down my neck, I can't afford a slow turn.

So I now flip.

That gets its own paragraph because it's so durned funny. My flip turns are a mess of flailing arms, bubbles and confused searches for the wall. I do my flip and then have to look for where the wall is. Because if I just push off of whatever is nearest my feet, it could be a lane line, the floor, the air above or even the swimmer in the next lane. Seriously, I have to warn people that I flip now and that it might not be safe near me.

And yet I continue. I do sets of 100s, thus giving me 3 opportunities to flip each time. I land about 50% of them. I still can't keep my composure enough to do a proper streamline dolphin kick (SDK for those of you not hip to the acronym). But at least on those 50%, I'm heading in the right direction.

The best ones are when I time the wall wrong, either taking a breath too late or trying to get one last stroke in. On these, I stubbornly try the flip anyway but find myself jammed up against the wall with nothing to do but surface. Usually I do one of those "I meant to do that" stretches and look around the pool and then off I go.

In one week it's not going to be people in the next lane that have to worry, I'll have 4-5 people in my own lane running for cover.

Oh wow, now I've done it

2010-08-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

I am officially a Manatee. Though I've never actually been to one of their practices. Or met their coaches. Or seen their locker rooms. And I only know one other swimmer on the team. But I have seen their website so I am officially a Manatee.

I just joined US Masters Swimming. Now that I'm a member they may let me in on the secret: is it Masters or Master's? I think Masters but I've heard it both ways.

I did join for a very good reason: my pool club membership is set to expire and it's less expensive to join a team and swim there than to keep paying for a ritzy club for the sole purpose of swimming. What I'll miss: lanes to myself. What I won't miss: the monthly bill.

Now that I'm a Manatee, I'm going to go to their practice on Friday as a drop-in. And I'm going to register on the USMS site so that I can get the Go The Distance cap I've already earned. And see how much more I need to swim in the last 4+ months of the year to get a water bottle.

Go Manatees!

About 6 months later....SDK Time

2010-08-11T10:19:00.000-07:00

~ 6 months since my last post and I can say truthfully, "I still swim." In fact, just yesterday, I started a renewed commitment to the SDK. See, I still can't flipturn so I do this little Irish Jig at the wall: I grab the wall, touch my feet on the bottom, pull them up to the wall and push off with a weak little triangle of arms approximating a streamline and I flutter kick like I'm trying to get something off my feet. H3ll, that's not effective.

Over the summer, Chopstick went to a Nike Swim Camp (off topic, it sucked) and like most swim camp-like things, they handed out some hastily xerox'd copies of articles from swim magazines in the late nineties. Well, one of them was extremely useful; it talked about the difference between good, better and great swimmers. To paraphrase, the good swimmer does what the coach tells them, the better swimmer works hard to do exactly what the coach is telling them as well as possible every time, while the great swimmer does the above but also has individual goals to improve on top of what the coach is telling them. The example is that in each practice, you do 100s of turns, the great swimmer is going to do the SDK exactly perfectly with a goal of getting to the flags a millionth of a second faster each time.

Chopstick and I both took this article to heart. For her, it's any number of tips/critiques/suggestions her coach has told her over the years...making sure she's continuing to work on them even after it's slipped his mind. For me, it's actually doing an SDK slash turn combo that won't get me DQ'd if I ever race. So, now I grab the wall, awkwardly pull my feet straight to the wall, trying to keep my knees high, and then push off the way I see Chopstick doing it. Then I streamline as tight as I can and dolphin kick. It is faster, it's closer to how I really want to do it. And it's a bit awkward so I've had to practice practicing it. But, it's better.

Also, ab muscles.

Masterful......

2010-02-26T15:08:00.000-08:00

I've been threatening this for some time...I am going to swim with the Masters. That phrase sounds a bit like swimming with the sharks and for me it felt like that. I was a bit nervous and more than a bit hesitant to get up to the pool by SIX AM in the morning.

So I was taken a bit by surprise when the other Coach Bill parked himself by my lane as I finished my first 100 this morning. He told me that the 6AM crowd was getting a bit too crowded and that some of the swimmers were going to invade my space, 7:00 to 7:40 land. He said this in the future tense but then suddenly Sally (maybe not her real name I won't tell) announced our sets and everyone took off. With the obvious expectation that I'd be joining them. Only one thing to do, swim.

I had to modify their sets a bit due to my lack of Individual Medleyness, preferring my only too strokes of freestyle and backstroke. And the 200s were a bit much for me so I did 150s for those two sets. But other than that, I did it. I made up those missed yards and kept up with all of the intervals. Of course, they were slow people intervals but still faster intervals than I'd ever done. Like a true master, I'll list my set the way they do:

Warmup
200 free
300 drills (100 of kick, catchup, fingerdrag)

Main set
6 x 100 free at 2:05
2 x 150 free first slow second at pace
8 x 50 free at 1:05

Warmdown
200 free

So there you have it, I've taken the plunge and now don't have much of a choice but to swim with them at 7AM every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I'm there anyway and they're in the lanes near me so I'll just have to be masterful. And, yes, 2000 yards is the most I've ever swam at a time.

The BEST meet entry I've ever done

2010-02-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

I just entered Chopstick into a meet at swimconnection. I've done this before, it's not that unusual. In fact, many months I do it 3 to 4 times. But this one was different, this was the Junior Olympics. It's always funny telling non-swimmers that, because the Junior Olympics sounds very impressive. And it is but not as impressive as they think it is.

But back to the entry. I paused for a bit when doing it, reflecting on how proud I am that she made it.

Back at the "last chance" meet in the fall, she had just turned 9 and could smell the JOs. She was about .6 seconds away on the 50 back and about 1.5 seconds on the 100 back. To qualify and not have to worry about qualifying again for the next 2 years, she just had to drop that amount. And she swam her tail off that day on those 2 backstrokes. But she ended up missing the 50 by .01 seconds. You read that right, point zero one seconds. She missed it on the 100 by .20 seconds. If they hadn't called it the "last chance" meet it might not have been so difficult but it really bummed her out.

Flash forward to her next meet, the first one of the winter session. She knew that she could drop 0.01 seconds and holy toledo she did, dropping 0.33 seconds. I did my usual trick of writing the accomplishment on my hand to show her and her smile was HUGE. It's funny what I remember from that smile is her braces, I had never noticed that she picked cool colors for them. Then, as she was standing in line for her ribbon, I went to check the official results to doublecheck and saw a different set of letters than I expected next to her name. Not JO but DQ. She had done an extra little kick right before her flip. Aarrgh. DQ's don't usually bother her, but not on THIS event!

For this past weekend, we both just tried to squash all expectations. She doesn't swim well at frigid meets and this one qualified. Cold, wet, dreary, miserable, and did I mention wet. She hopped in the pool for her 50 back, had a great start, a great turn, and a perfect finish. I finally got the nerve to look at the scoreboard....38.93! So, I drained all emotion from my face, got my best deadpan going, and said, "it's not just a fast meet for you" as she walked back to me. I didn't get her this time, she had already looked at the board and knew she had it!

So, we composed ourselves and started toward the warmdown pool. And, then it happened. I looked over and saw a white-jacketed official walking towards the timers with a DQ slip. We watched and he went straight to her lane. I told her not to worry and to stay right there; I ran over to him, looked over his shoulder and saw, "heat 5" on his slip. Chopstick was heat 6! Success! It was official, my daughter is a Junior Olympian!

After our heart rates went down, she went to warm down. I congratulated myself on an excellent gene pool and she went for her post-race debriefing. Her coach had seen the time too and said that he knew she'd get it. I didn't want to thell him, but he apparently was the only one who knew that, he could have clued us in.

All this reflection happened very quickly while doing the entry for the JOs but it was vivid. Chopstick had some hurdles on this one and like the trooper she is, she overcame them. And now she's entered in the JOs.

A JO by any other name

2010-02-09T12:10:00.000-08:00

This weekend Chopstick got her first JO time. As she finished the 50 back, I watched nervously at the board waiting to see what it would show for lane 6, not caring one bit about the place just the precious number. And the number was under 39.49....in fact it was 39.08! I contained my excitement and did what I usually do when a new milestone is reached (done previously for her 4 8&under PRTs), I wrote JO in sharpie on my palm.

She got out of the water looking pretty content with her swim and reacted well to my smile but I had a surprise for her. I said very clearly, "you couldn't have gone faster than that?" Judging by the look she gave me, my act is getting old and she knew I was up to something so I opened my hand for her to read the magical letters. Jay Oh.

The funny part is that what I remember about the smile is her braces. I noticed the colors that she'd chosen (blue and a lighter blue) I guess because I had a lot of time to look at them. She finally asked, "I did it?" And, yes she did. She was a Junior Olympian.

I say "was" because it turns out she DQ'd on her turn. She was a bit away from the wall and gave an extra kick that I guess she wasn't supposed to. She doesn't remember it but I do now that her coach explained what it was. She's had enough DQs to know that they're not a bad thing, just a reminder to be diligent with your stroke. But this one was different, she wanted this one bad after missing out on the Fall JOs by .01 seconds. All I could tell her was that she swam a JO time and will do it again. DQ or not, she can swim with the JOers and will.

Next meet, the 50 back is her first event on Sunday, an excellent time to get her JOiness back. Unfortunately, the meet after that it's right after the 100 fly (though she may do the 100 breast instead). For the "last chance" meet, it's after either the 200 free with a break or 100 breast. So she has three chances but two of them she's going to most likely be tired from a big event first.

No matter what she's swam a JO and will again but it was an unfortunate time to turn wrong.

Out of breath

2010-02-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

Am I crazy or am I not as out of breath as I used to be while swimming? I don't know when it happened but I suddenly realized it today: I can swim without stopping. Much, without stopping much. I am routinely doing 100-200 yards between breathers and even then they are limited.

According to my Go the Distance graphs, I'm doing pretty well, closing in on 1.5 MPH. The big drop that you see early in the month is when I started doing kick sets for the first time...even at only 100 yards, that slows me down dramatically.

The last two days have been fairly spectacular at 1.36 MPH (distances of 1800 & 1400 yards). But I know why yesterday happened. Bikini Girl was in the lane next to me and she just never stops, kind of like a Terminator but, you know, a waterproof one. I realized that if I was hanging out at the wall, she'd notice and laugh all robotically at me. That is just something I don't want.

It's important to note why this matters to me. In the six months that I've been swimming, only three swimmers have been consistent this whole time. The Other Coach Bill, Dale, and Bikini Girl. The Other Coach Bill is always helpful, if he sees me breathing like crazy or kicking funny, he'll help me out so I don't mind flailing in front of him. Dale swims several lanes away usually and she considers *me* a good swimmer; when she sees me huffing and puffing, that is a sign that I'm working hard to her. But Bikini Girl is about my speed (a little slower) and about my fitness level (except for the Terminator never stopping thing). I don't want to look like a wimp next to her.

Of course, this is exactly why I need to get up an hour earlier and swim with the Master's Team. Peer pressure group motivation is a powerful and useful tool. I *know* it would make me a better swimmer.

Go the Distance: numerical motivation

2010-01-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

I'm not an official member of US Masters but they still kindly let me use their Go the Distance spreadsheet to keep track of my yardage, err mileage. And I'll be damned but it is motivating. Every morning that I don't want to swim, I think what that will do to my daily average and my yearly projection. I think how many extra yards I'll have to swim to make up for it. And I get up, curse the very existence of Speedo, and make my way to the pool.

So, in the interest of full disclosure, my goal for 2010 is 150 miles and I'm on pace for just over 190. So far I've swam 15.28 miles. And here is what was running through my head this morning as I approached my eleven hundredth yard, "if I swim 100 more yards, that increases my projected total 1200 yards or about 0.7 miles." And those extra 100 yards seemed like a small price to pay for that benefit. So I swam a 100 yards more than my lazy ass wanted to.

Another thing they do is publish daily results. That's less motivating because it amazes me that the guy at the top of my age group has swam over 40 miles more than I have already (note: there is something wrong with him). But, there is hope, I'm going to try to keep at 50% of the great Rob D who is winning his age bracket by a healthy 4 miles. Since he blogs and tweets like there is no tomorrow, I can see any time he puts in one of his patented 10,000 yard days and swim an extra couple hundred every day that week to try to catch up.

All told, this is better motivation than trying to catch up to Chopstick's times because I believe that is impossible. So I'll just keep going the distance and try to tack on an extra hundred whenever I think of my spreadsheet.

Aren't you scared of lightning?

2010-01-21T13:32:00.000-08:00

Like most of California, Oakland has been besieged by rain this week. Freakin' buckets of the stuff, sometimes mixed with its dastardly cousin the hail pellet. Not pleasant for land based creatures but not so bad for aquatic minded folk {interesting aside, both of my hobbies (sailing & swimming) are done rain or shine}.

Yesterday morning, after swimming my yards, I was in the clubhouse drinking my celebratory cup of coffee when a woman asked me, "what's it like to swim in the rain?" I didn't have a good answer, I think I mumbled something like, "you don't really notice it .... even though I thought somebody was splashing me at one point today."

But then she dropped the bombshell, "aren't you scared of lightning?" The club has a big sign posted that the pool has to be evacuated in the case of lightning but then again, I'm not really sure I'd see the lightning while swimming so there's very little chance I'd even know to leave the pool. So I told her the truth, "well, I am scared of lightning because I know I'm supposed to be but really it seems pretty darned unlikely." My other hobby, sailing, involves floating on water with a 40 foot lightning rod attached to the boat, how could it be worse in a pool surrounded by huge oak trees?

So I guess I now have to figure out if I am scared of lightning. I know my daughter's practices are halted during lightning. I know my club's insurance policy makes them post signs that the pool must be evacuated. But I also know that it's exceedingly rare to have lightning in the Oakland Hills and that by the time it happens I'd already be dead. So I don't think I am. For now.

One Thousand Eight Hundred Yards of Glory

2010-01-18T16:02:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I swam my contraband set, the secret setlist that a Master's swimmer had inadvertently left behind at the pool last Friday. All day Saturday I made sure I got enough rest and Sunday I had a good breakfast to get ready.

Sunday afternoon, I headed up to the pool and got to work. I brought the setlist with me and pasted it to a kickboard by the wall like I'd seen others do it. I even looked official.

As I started up I realized that the warmup set intervals were kind of lame so I chopped 30 seconds off of them knowing that when I got to the 100s, I'd need those 30 seconds back. And, I did, I used up all four 30 second credits in the first four 100 sets.

Then I got to the mysteriously titled set where I was to swim some stroke known as "other than free". Since I realized that this was a made-up fantasyland stroke probably designed to confuse the competition if the setlist ever got into enemy hands, I decided just to skip those 200 yards. I figured that if I still had energy left after the sprints, I'd do those 200 with a real stroke.

But then I got into the sprints and found out I really enjoyed that part. The intervals gave plenty of rest and I even found that my times were getting faster as I went along. The only problem was my calves were cramping since I rarely kicked that hard (as an aside I had a banana before going up there so this should *not* have happened). I have to admit that I love the feeling of hitting the wall at full speed and having a wave catch up to me as I pull up. I need to do more of that.

But after the sprinting, I knew that I wasn't going to make up the "other than freestyle" set but felt pretty darned satisfied with my 1800 yards, the most I'd ever done, and with sprinting to boot.

With some slight modifications I think I can do this insane 6AM master's workout. If I get an alarm clock that is.

As an aside, there didn't seem to be any "missing" master's swimmers at the pool this morning; word may not have gotten out that one of them didn't shred the setlist. I'm not saying anything.

Swimming contraband

2010-01-15T11:28:00.000-08:00

I got up early to swim this morning only to find a pool full of master's swimmers (read as no lanes). So I sat in the hot tub and watched. They were doing 25s and I thought, h3ll I can do 25s. It looked like they were sprinting one way and lollygagging on the way back, something I know I can do. Then they started sprinting 25s and hanging out at the wall for a long time. Again, one of my specialties.

What I got out watching them is, "I can do that." So then I swam. And after I swam I got something else out of the effort, someone had left their set list glued to a kickboard. With a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching, I surreptitiously peeled it off and ran into the locker room. I had info!

I looked over the intervals they were doing and they all looked do-able. Except maybe the 100s I'll need to add 15 seconds to. And it fits my pace, about 2000 yards in an hour. I've never swam that long but I do about 1100 to 1200 yards in half an hour so I should be able to get to 2000 in double the time.

I'm going to give it a shot this weekend and if I can do this, I can try to get up at 6AM one morning and see how the slow lane feels.

Huge Relief

2010-01-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

Today, Chopstick's winter session practices started. I am now no longer in charge of getting her to swim; her Mom drives her, her coach coaches her (interesting thought, should the word "Mom" be changed to "Driver" to make that sentence more accurate?). For me, it solves my worries that I'm an overbearing Swim Dad since I'm out of the equation until the next meet in about a month.

So, to celebrate, I swam 1400 yards this morning bringing my daily average up to 1130 -- a full 30 yards higher than my daily goal for the month. This goal will have to be modified once I start swimming with the Masters for a full hour instead of 30 minutes but I'll believe that once I see it.

Anyway, I feel better about my swimdadishness and my swimyardageosity today. So I thought I should blog it.

Oh crap, is this me?

2010-01-06T13:13:00.000-08:00

9 Year Old Marvel What? But How?

In this thread on the Masters swimming forum, the guy asks a pretty innocuous question but quickly starts inadvertently revealing a lot about himself. He's one of the bad kind of swim parents, those that are over-involved but doesn't realize it. Those that are obviously over-involved are easy to dismiss. But, those in denial? That say they're just looking out for their kid's best interest? Eck.

The problem is, I straddle that line. I am a ridiculously supportive father; I assist and help and encourage and really do all the right things. But it's the assist and help parts that can very quickly go wrong.

Read the thread linked above, outwardly this guy isn't so bad but he is way too involved in his daughter's coaching and consistently presents the situation through his eyes and only through his daughter's when getting defensive.

I try to react the same way win or lose, good time or bad but I can't always do that since I want her to do well so badly. The one thing I've been very good at is that I don't coach her, I support her. Her coach rocks, all I really have to do is make sure she's at the meet and has proper clothing and food for the conditions. Yet I still walk to the blocks with her, hold her towel while she warms up and down, and track her times so she doesn't have to. Seems a bit over-involved, doesn't it?

Where I'm really on thin ice is during her team's breaks. I hate the idea of a 4 week break, it's just too hard to stay in swim shape if you don't swim at all for that long. Worse yet, she gets cranky as hell during that break. So I insist that she swim 1 to 3 times per week, either at the same time as I do or with a workout that her coach developed for her. She's 9, she probably doesn't need that, I can just have her run around the block a few times to wear off that excess energy.

I'm not even going to get into my addiction to her times, my spreadsheets are overwhelmingly complex, intricate, detailed and over-thought. She doesn't know the level that I obsess on that and probably never will. My only defense is that I did the same thing with my baseball cards when I was a kid and track my own workout times pretty religiously. I like numbers.

So, I think I'm a borderline obsessed parent and should probably back off while keeping the good things: that look she gives me right after a swim when she swam fast, the fun of having her teach me stroke technique, my spreadsheet, etc. But maybe I should stop caring if she goes to 2 or 3 practices per week. Possibly stop carrying her towel all around the pool every meet. And definitely don't talk about time standards around her.

Six in the morning

2010-01-05T11:07:00.000-08:00

6 in the morning police at my door

Fresh adidas squeak across the bathroom floor
Out the back window I make my escape
Don't even get a chance to grab my old school tape

Thanks to Ice T, these "lyrics" are the first thing I think of when I consider 6AM. It's not a time to wake up and be productive, certainly not the time to be out of bed, and most definitely not a time to be swimming. That's what 7AM is for. 6AM is for escaping the police.

But I'm in my 40s now and have to run from the police with much less regularity so I think it might be time to try Master's swimming. I've been availing myself of the coach anyway so I might as well really be in.

This thread gave me an odd bit of inspiration. I've already conquered the worry that the original poster had; I see these guys every M,W,F anyway as I get in the pool as they leave. I've even spoken to a few. But the real kicker was the point one guy made that 3 weeks of team swimming = 3 months of individual swimming.

I have improved dramatically in every way but one important one. Breathing. I still suck breath after every 50. But I've found that I can maintain more with appropriate motivation and I think that's what the team can give. So I'm joining.

Unfortunately, that means being at the pool at 6 in the morning.

Damn that imperial measurement system

2009-12-30T10:17:00.001-08:00

I have never understood swimmers' disdain for short course yards. Who cares if the rest of the world doesn't do it, many if not most of our pools are 25 yards long and it really just matters if you beat the guy next to you (for racers) or what your total distance was (for lap swimmers).

Until today. Because today was a special day, we'll call it VM Day for Victory over the Mile Day. I swam a freakin' mile.

It wasn't easy, I had to pre-plan my self-trickery. I carefully counted out my normal swim distance with 12 sets of 100 for 1200 yards. All along I knew there was 500 odd more yards at the end, but I tried to pretend those weren't going to happen. When I got to 1200, I just told myself to do 50 at a time until I got to 500. Once I was there, it was easy enough to do another 50 and BOOM I had made a mile. Or had I?

I am very well aware of the peculiarities of our measurement system and that a mile is 5280 feet or 1760 yards. And I had just swam 1750 yards. It is easy enough to round up and that really would have counted in my book but it just kept eating at me as I stood at the side of the pool panting and gasping for breath that 10 yards more and I would REALLY have swam a mile.

But here's the problem, what is 10 yards in a 25 yard pool? I sure as h3ll wasn't going to swim 50 more yards for the sake of getting 10 more. And I wasn't going to swim 25 and have to walk back in the cold. And I really didn't want to swim an inch more than I had to swim to satisfy my mile.

So I made a crude measurement. The flags at my pool are wrong, they are actually 13 feet from the wall instead of 15 so that wouldn't help. About out to the ladder and back would be a touch over 5 yards I figured, but I'd go two strokes past that just to be sure. So I swam out, stopped, stood up, started again and touched the wall for my official mile.

Give or take a yard.

Over 90% there

2009-12-29T11:17:00.001-08:00

US Master's Swimming has a great program called Go The Distance. The point is to have a measurable fitness goal that you can track. Since I'm not a USMS member, I don't have access to the online calculator but they have a nifty spreadsheet that I've been using.

With this spreadsheet, I set a goal of 12 miles for December and am proud to say I only have a third of a mile left in the next two days. I'm thinking about splitting it up into two 300 yard days or possibly even EXCEEDING my goal.

I'm not a big fan of upping my goals dramatically day by day, but a solid goal of 12.5 miles in January is very achievable. That is basically 1100 yards per day for 20 days. February has the same 20 weekdays, so I'm thinking of going for 1200 yards per day and getting to a bit over 13.5 miles by then. At that point, I'll be so darned fit I'll never have to swim another day in my life and may just give up the sport.

But until then I have my December goal. I plan on letting out a big whoop when I finish my 24th lap tomorrow.

Three to Two ratio

2009-12-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

That's the ratio of my humbling swim this weekend. I invited Chopstick and a friend up to the pool to get their pool-legs back before practice starts again next week for them. I figured we'd each swim about a half hour and they would do a few more yards than I did but that it'd be pretty even.

Well, crap, it turns out they swim about 150 yards to each of my 100s. And I'd be at the wall hoping that a meteor would hit to reduce the pool to a waterless hole in the ground just so I could breathe again and they'd be practicing flip turns waiting for me to be ready to go again. Remember, these kids are 9.

Anyway, it was motivating and kept me going for longer than I expected given the past few days of junk-food (candy and cookies and ice cream and pie) eating. I needed to swim and they made sure I finished.

Once I'd finished my 1000 yards and they had logged 1500, I was done. But they still looked fresh so I asked if they wanted to just do a bit more and finish up a mile? Why not so off they went, swimming the last 250 yards with ease.

We were then confronted with a problem...the hot tub is on the far side of the pool and we had all our gear with us (camera, flip flops, goggles, etc). So we decided to swim over with all this stuff. I did the smart thing, backstroke kick holding the stuff in my hands by my side. Chopstick decided to hold her flip flops but still do a full backstroke swim. And Chopstick's friend thought it would be fun to do backstroke with flip flops on her feet. Ignoring the fact that we got some crust in the pool, it had to have been a pretty comical sight watching us "race" to the other side like this. But then again I'm laughing because I won.

And in other important swimming news, I finally had someone there to take a picture of my new splish suit and my new goggles!

Splish Bonus!

2009-12-22T12:40:00.000-08:00

Many of you (or at least O Docker) have been anxiously awaiting news on my new superstar Splish jammers. Well, I got them. And by "them" I mean "them". For some incredible reason, Splish sent me an extra pair. Not the exact same style but just a bit different enough that I can wear them on alternate days and look like I have a huge closet full of suits.

That is the pair I ordered. And I got them, but I also got a pair with the same superstar panel but with the rest of it in black. Thank you Splish! In fact, I would recommend ordering from them just in case the same thing happens to you. Maybe Rob Aquatics can order more goggles!

Since I ordered these to swim in rather than just to look good in, I decided to wear the black pair to the pool today. For the first time in months I wouldn't be wearing my cheater suit. I've been reading about these cheater suits for months now and I expected my speed to drop off a cliff. But it didn't happen which is just more proof that it's the NSA perpetuating this urban legend to destabilize the swimming industry and make room for Halliburton to take over the swimwear market.

I swam my whole 1200 yards in 30 minutes. I'll thank the suit for that.

Another milestone: 200 Yards NONSTOP

2009-12-17T11:39:00.000-08:00

I think I know how Charles Lindbergh must have felt after flying NONSTOP across the Atlantic because I did something equally amazing this morning. I swam 200 yards NONSTOP across my pool. Yep, 8 laps without stopping to replace a lung. I don't want to know how long it took me and because of oxygen deprivation I don't even remember much about it. But I did it. 200 Yards. NONSTOP.

This is another in the long list of accomplishments that must make real swimmers laugh but are really keeping me going. I have basically taught myself to swim over the last 4 months. Before August I had never done more than 1 lap across a pool and I was doing more of a modified doggy-paddle and pretending to do the things that make it look like swimming. Now I can swim 200 yards NONSTOP, do 1200 yards in a bit over 30 minutes, almost beat Chopstick in 50 yards, and cracked the mythical 2 minute barrier on the 100 free by 20 seconds. I'm a freaking phenom.

I don't even know what tomorrow holds. I have some extra time before having to leave for work so I might try to swim a whole hour or a mile or try one of those esoteric strokes that are rumored to exist. The world is my limit now.

One Hundred Yards of blazing fast speed

2009-12-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

As I've slowly conditioned myself to swim longer distances in between stops at the wall from half a lap to a full 25 yards to 50 yards and now to 100 yards, I thought it would be nice to time myself for a new distance. 100 yards.

I was about 400 yards into my swim, looking at 8 laneline abacus markers next to me and thought, "now is the time." I took some extra time to gather myself and prepare for my impending asphyxiatingly horrible death and then pushed off from the wall.

I knew I had to pace myself and make sure I took enough breaths in the first two laps so I settled on a 2-2-3-3 pattern and concentrated on long strokes. As I got near the wall, I knew I had to do something better than usual but settled for my usual pull myself up, grab some air, and get back under water awkward turn. My trick for doing it faster was to not spend any time looking around to see who was impressed by my 25 yard sprint or fixing my bedraggled hair.

Anyway, at the 50 mark, I still felt OK since I hadn't really pushed myself but I couldn't quite tell from the clock what my split was. I kept the same breathing pattern for the third lap, thinking that I could hammer it on the last lap and not breathe as much. Well, on that I was wrong, by the time I was heading back on my last lap I had to do a 2-2-2-2-2 pattern, I was DYING. I did hold it together to not breathe for the last 10 yards and pulled into the wall, ripped off my goggles and looked at the clock.

It was NOT what I was expecting. I was pretty sure I'd be somewhere around two minutes. When I saw the big red hand on the 40, I thought there is no way I did that in 2:40 and there is no way I did it in 1:40 but one of the two had to be right (I'm good at math that way). It turns out I exceeded my expectations by about 20 seconds.

So, as I got closer to Chopstick on the 50 free, I now have a new goal, 23 more seconds to catch up to her on the 100 free. Maybe we can both do our first 200 frees at the same time!

The Dirty Dozen

2009-12-14T11:25:00.000-08:00

More than a few real swimmers read this blog and either remember their early days learning to swim or laugh at my pathetic attempts. Either way, I think I'm providing a service. And this weekend I hit another incredible milestone worthy of equal parts admiration and ridicule. I swam 1200 yards (known in swimming circles as a Dirty Dozen {well, not really, I just made that up}).

But, yeah, I swam 1200 yards and was darned proud of myself. It turns out on weekends, I'm not constrained by that annoying "have to get to work" factor. I can swim a couple of extra laps if I'm up to it. And it turns out that yards 1001 to 1200 are no harder than yards 801 to 1000. I just need a few more minutes to do them and a bit of motivation.

The minutes were easy but the motivation was tricky this weekend. After swimming my 1000 yards, I went over to the diving well to work on flip turns (I'm scared to do them in 3 feet of water since I tend to go off the wall STRAIGHT DOWN). I tried one, got a bunch of water up my nose, and ended up in the middle of the pool with no clue how I got there. Actually, it reminded me a lot of my college days. But I realized that I shouldn't be doing this without adult supervision and went back to the lanes with the intention of getting out of the pool.

Once I was in the lane, I thought, "8 laps isn't that many....especially if I do 4 at a time." And, before I could think better of it, I pulled my goggles back down and pushed off the wall. Next thing I knew, I'd finished my first Dirty Dozen.

Splish Competition Swimwear

2009-12-11T09:42:00.000-08:00

We have unsuccessfully been trying to buy Chopstick a Splish swimsuit. Nothing seems to fit, and we're going back for attempt #3, maybe going from thinstrap to racerback. That stinks because she likes to practice with thinner straps. But, the suits seem to really be designed for older kids (interesting note: then why have small sizes?). Oh well, she'll end up with a cute swimsuit for practice even if it takes 35 returns.

On the other hand, I also swim every day and my cheater suit that I got from Finis for a ridiculously low price will eventually wear out. So, I'm getting myself a cute pair of Splish Jammers. And, since I'm a superstar, I'm going with these:

Man, I'm excited about this. Adding a little spice to my 7AM swim will be good.

What a difference a kick makes

2009-12-09T10:43:00.001-08:00

I have to confess, I'm not a very good swimmer. I've been doing it for going on 4 months now and though I’ve seen a lot of improvement, there is still a lot of work to do.

One thing I have going for me is that I really want to get the stroke right. I’ve seen what a smooth efficient stroke does for my daughter and I want that. There are a ton of kids that flail through the water trying to get to the other wall through brute force while this little blonde machine just smoothly glides past them with seemingly no effort. Other than not being little and blonde, that’s what I want to look like.

So, I’ve solicited input from Chopstick, her coach, and the ever helpful local masters coach. I try to work on one or two things at a time and really get it right. First it was breathing, then my arms (I guess it’s called the pull), then it was more pull, a bit more pull, and finally it’s time for the kick. It’s time for the kick for the sole reason that it will help my latest quest with the pull: reducing stroke count.

I’m getting that stroke count down, working on the glide, keeping my elbows high to use my whole forearm/hand paddle, and streamlining off the wall as much as I can. I had plateaued at 17-19 strokes per 25 yards. So I tried kicking (little fast kicks with an almost straight leg like Gary Hall, Sr. recommends) and wow, it works. But it hurts. I can’t do it on every lap without feeling pain but I did a few laps with 15 strokes just by kicking better and harder.

What really resonated with me was Gary Hall, Sr.’s assertion that your kick can’t disturb your streamline, that drag is worse than the benefits from big kicks. That makes sense. So, I stopped these wide unproductive kicks and just tried to kick harder and faster and I could feel the speed difference and was shocked that the wall came up so fast. In fact, I felt a lot more momentum as I hit the wall.

Now I just need to build up the leg strength to keep up that level of effort for longer because it definitely works.

Brrrrr, it's cold out there

2009-12-08T16:15:00.000-08:00

Maybe the best part about cold weather is that it gives you something to talk about with the other schleps who swim at oh dark thirty in the morning. Such gems like, "cold enough for you" and "have they fixed the pool heater yet?" get floated around and really create exceptional pool camaraderie. Seriously, when it gets under 40 degrees, I get warmed by all of the friendships I'm developing.

Not really, I just jump in the pool because even with the freakin' heaters broken, 74 degree water is better than 38 degree air. The club says it's actually 77 now and will be 80 once they receive the new heater but I don't believe them. Brrrr.

But this isn't about me. I'm a grown man and can deal with a bit of cold weather to stay fit. My 9 year old daughter, on the other hand, is small and hasn't accumulated layers of walrus like blubber to keep her warm in the winter. So, she is going to be REALLY cold if we swim tonight. She swam this weekend with the pool missing one heater and being 77 and it wasn't so bad. Earlier last week, she swam with it missing two heaters and being 74 and went running for the hills after something like 400 yards.

Tonight is going to be a real test of how much she loves swimming. I'm going to get in the water with her in a show of solidarity but, still, it's cold in that water. If we bail at 400 yards or even don't get in, I'll understand.

Renegade Meet

2009-12-02T13:59:00.001-08:00

Every once in a while you have to feel like an outlaw -- just do something on the jagged edges of civilization. Being a middle aged responsible father of an age group swimmer, I have found the perfect outlet: the off-season meet. Chopstick’s session ended last week with the kids getting a 4 week break before starting up again in January. But the meets don’t end so she won’t either. She’s going to a renegade meet!

Meets are a bit different when the coach isn’t around. She can’t get helpful tips from him, no last minute instruction, or post-race analysis. But the biggest difference is in warm-ups; she’s not allowed to dive off the blocks without a coach to say “ready go.” I am apparently not qualified to say that so I have to grab a coach and ask him/her to yell it. We’ve only gone “renegade” once before and it wasn’t hard to get a coach but still, I’m pretty sure I can yell “ready go.”

Despite these difficulties, there are three good reasons to do a renegade meet. Number one, her very good friend on another team does it and they have a blast at these things. Two, she enjoys meets, she really does. And, most importantly, three, she gets cranky as h3ll when she takes too much time off from swimming.

I’m going to expand on number three because that’s where my motivation lies. Cranky kids make me cranky and that makes them the target of my crankiness. Nobody wants this. I understand what’s happening; she’s used to swimming 3 to 5 days per week, her body is accustomed to that. Without those swimming days, that energy has to be released somehow. And that somehow is crankiness. It usually takes about two weeks to manifest so, in my mind, 2 weeks is about the length of time she should stop swimming. Seems pretty simple.

So, Chopstick is doing her coach-sponsored workouts for two weeks and then we rebel and swim. Fight the power.

A Tale of Two Walls

2009-12-01T10:07:00.000-08:00

It was the best of turns, it was the worst of turns. With all apologies to Dickens, this first sentence kept running through my head this morning. What was bothering me is why were my turns off of one wall so much better than the other? The difference is so dramatic that it takes me 2 more strokes to get across the pool one way vs. the other.

My initial belief is that there is a current in the pool. This is actually pretty likely given the difference in stroke count, distance in the push off the wall, and times of the 25s. It really wouldn't take a lot to affect performance.

But there could be other external influences. On the slow wall, I would have a striking view of Mt. Diablo in the distance. On the fast wall, a bunch of old people in the hot tub and the dreaded pace clock. Maybe my body is resisting leaving the beautiful view subconsciously?

Or it could be microscopic differences in the depth of the pool. Both say 3 1/2 feet but I swear it feels shallower over on the slow end and the kids on Chopstick's team all tell me deep pools are faster.

Or I could just be tired being halfway across the pool. Either way, I'm only going to count my times on the fast lap from now on.

Running sucks

2009-11-30T16:10:00.000-08:00

The family and I went up to the mountains for Thanksgiving weekend. It was an incredible time, good food, good family, crappy weather, and no pool. Umm, yeah, about that last part. I swam Wednesday morning before we left, got a good workout in, saw a different set of people at 8:30 than I usually do at 7:00, and then hopped in the car and drove. I realized I’d be three days off without swimming, nothing I couldn’t get used to.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, my wife informs me that because she’s scared of mountain lions, bears and cave-dwelling-meth-addicts-in-the-country, I was to go running with her. No big deal, I’ve run before and she assured me that I could keep up. It was all so simple, run for 20 minutes one way, do a little u-turn and run for 20 minutes back. Of course, the oxygen was the good kind, known as 3500 feet above sea level ferchrissakes. But it turned out that swimming has me in better shape than I thought. My legs were giving out before my lungs were; which was somewhat expected.

The big surprise happened on Thursday morning. As I struggled to pour coffee, she threw my shoes at me and said, “we’re off again.” Umm yeah, again? My legs still hurt. But, with images of bears and lions and meth addicts attacking her, we went running. {a quick aside, I was not there to protect her; rather, she can run faster so I was kind of the sacrificial buffer}. Other than a gaggle of turkeys that ironically almost ran us over (this was Thanksgiving morning), it was a pretty safe run.

Except for my shoes. It turns out that I have these fancy cool puma shoes that look like running shoes but really aren’t. And by the end of the run, my feet were pointing this out to me. I don’t think I broke any bones but a few of them must have bent in ways that they weren’t supposed to because I limped around for the next two days, using a combination of nasty weather and possible surgery as my excuses to not go again. Possibly, ever again.

When we got back to Oakland, I grabbed my swim bag, hopped in the car and headed for the blissful non-bone-threatening pool to start up on some real exercise again. As soon as I finished my last lap, I went into the locker room, grabbed my "running" shoes and tossed them in the garbage.

But wait there's more

2009-11-23T16:33:00.000-08:00

I had a very nice swim this morning; I worked on long strokes and keeping my stroke count down. After the weeks of having the plague, I’m finally starting to feel strong in the water again. So I swam and swam and kept swimming until I’d finished my laps.

My usual practice is to take off my goggles and enjoy the view for a few minutes after I’m done. You know, catch my breath before getting out of the cozy water and into the 50 degree air. While doing this, the local master’s coach stopped at the wall as part of his intervals. Seizing the opportunity to mess up his workout, I asked him how many yards he’d done since we’d been swimming about the same length of time. It turns out he’d done 1500 in the time that I did 1000. Really not so bad actually.

But then he pulled a quick one on me. He said, let’s do four 50s at a 1:15 interval, except that he did 75 and I did 50. Basically, it was a way to show me how team workouts would help. I had no way to weasel out of it so I said, “sure, what the h3ll”. And like that the red hand hit the 30 and we were off.

I finished the first 50 with about 30 seconds to rest while Bill (the coach) was waiting at the other wall. As I came into the wall for the second 50 I heard something. Yep, it was Bill catching up to me. He just out-touched me and he pointed that out. Hmmm, next one we’d be at opposite ends again so I coasted into the wall though I still had about a 25 second rest. Which I knew I needed because I didn’t feel like losing again.

The clock hit 15, and I took off. As I did my turn, I saw him coming into the wall the other way, I figured I had about a 7-8 yard “lead” on him. Could I hold him off? Well, I’d rather give up breathing than lose twice in less than five minutes so I just put everything I had into it and out-touched him by about a quarter of a body length. But, the point is I out-touched him.

I went back into my “whew, I’m finally done” repose with my goggles on deck before he pointed out that I might want to swim a few more laps to warm down. He then said that we’ll do it again tomorrow and keep going until I can work up to ten 50s at 1:05. At that point, I have to join the team. Sure seems fair to me. I have a feeling I can do ten 50s at 1:15 OK, but it might be hard to lose that extra 10 seconds rest that is needed for the 1:05 interval.

It never ends.

Webbed fingers

2009-11-18T11:59:00.000-08:00

I've seen Waterworld; I know that if we covered the Earth in water a few of us would mutate quickly to get gills and webbed fingers. And then maniacs on jetskis would try to kill us. But then again we'd get to sail a post-apocalyptic trimaran so all would be OK. But I digress, I want to talk about the webbed fingers not Kevin Costner.

After my swim this morning, the local coach mentioned that I'm getting faster. Obviously fishing for a compliment, I obliged and pointed out how great his tips were. He responded beautifully by saying, "if you like those, well how about this one!" and told me that he noticed that I kept my fingers pressed tightly together and that I should allow just a touch of spacing in between them.

My counter-intuitive alert system went off and alarms starting flashing. What the heck? Don't make a paddle? How does *that* make sense?

Standing at the wall, hogging up two lanes for this conversation, we proceeded to experiment pushing our hands through the water with various amounts of space in between our fingers. Sure enough, I felt almost exactly as much push through the water with a slight space but a lot less turbulence at the bottom of my hand and wrist. I guess by allowing that small amount of water through, it reduces vortexes and other non-hydrodynamic stuff. Or maybe I was just looking for some good to come from it.

I had to get to work and didn't have time to try a few laps out with my new technique but I'll experiment tomorrow. Anyone else out there in blog-land do this?

Jinxed Pool

2009-11-16T15:58:00.000-08:00

Chopstick had her first bad meet in almost a year this weekend. After one race, she actually complained that she felt “slow”. I can tell you this isn’t typical; usually her worst times are about 0.2 seconds slower than her personal best. This weekend, she had 5 events where she was 1 to 3 seconds slower than her best time.

There is only one logical conclusion: the pool is cursed. Nothing else makes sense. It wasn’t all bad, she had 3 personal bests but even that statistic is misleading. On her 50 back, she dropped 0.59 seconds and she needed to drop 0.60 to make a JO. On her 100 back, she dropped 0.77 seconds, but she needed to drop 0.97 to make a JO. Think what would have happened without the pool being jinxed.

This is where my “practical” side comes in. I am a very logical, solution-oriented person. Think Spock with a longer wing span and attractive ears. I can’t send my daughter out to a jinxed pool to swim, I need a way to combat this. How do you fight fire? With water. How do you fight bad water? With good water.

So the obvious practical solution is to get a couple of jugs, take a tour of the Bay Area’s luckiest pools (starting with those where she got PRTs), and take a couple of scoops of water from each pool. Bring a bit of that water to a pool which we believe might be cursed (I’m looking at you Soda Aquatic Center in Orinda) and fight bad energy with good.

My first thought was dump a couple of ounces of fast water into their pool but Homeland Security might raise an eyebrow at the weird Swim Dad pouring liquid into a pool before a meet with hundreds of kids. Next idea was to dump a cup on her head before every race but then I pictured how Chopstick would react to that during the upcoming winter season and nixed that idea. So, we decided that she’ll just splash a tablespoon or so on her suit and hands before each race as part of her ritual.

Now I just have to talk the poolkeepers at Mills, Chabot, and Walnut Creek to let me have a gallon of their pool water without getting arrested.

Stroke count

2009-11-12T10:16:00.000-08:00

As I was finishing my swim yesterday, the local masters coach asked me my stroke count. I dusted off my dazed and confused look that I use for such occasions and said, "huh?". Of course I know what it means but I never thought about how it might actually apply to me and/or my swimming. So, I said, "give me 40 to 42 seconds and I'll tell you" and I took off from the wall.

40 to 42 seconds later, I announced, "22 going North, 25 going South, there must be a current in this pool." He told me that I should try to get to 20 and that he averages 13; so for every two laps I do, he's able to do 3 laps with the EXACT same effort. Light bulbs started going off all over the place for me. I want to swim with less effort; that will make my life better.

So now I had a goal, 20 strokes per lap. I thought I could stretch my arms a bit, possibly kick harder, and if all else fails, shorten the pool. I knew I had to get to 20 somehow. Then I went to Chopstick's practice yesterday and counted strokes on the kids doing backstroke. Hmm, the fastest kids didn't even do their first stroke until well past the flags. Maybe I could actually, streamline and kick under water for a bit before starting to swim. It's faster even if it messes up my breathing.

I tried that this morning and did 20 strokes on my first lap. On the way back, 21 (remember the current). I kept refining it and could consistently do 18 both ways after a bit of effort. I was more out of breath because I wasn't getting my first breath for longer but I think it was worth it.

There really was only one test I could do to see if it was helping. Time myself. Off the wall, streamline, swim, bad turn, streamline, then swim, hit the wall and look up at the pace clock. THIRTY-SIX SECONDS! That's almost as fast as Chopstick and 2 seconds faster than my previous timed swim!

I need to bring Bill some flowers or something to thank him for the second best advice he's given me. Wow, 18 strokes, 36 seconds. I am finally getting there.

Sail Camp swimmers

2009-11-10T09:08:00.001-08:00

There were no meets this weekend. This is, of course a very rare occurrence but very welcome one. Because I got to marry my two favorite things: the kids and sailing.

About a month ago, we took one of Chopstick's very good friends (a classmate though on a rival swim team) out sailing. They sat up on the rail and came up with an incredible idea...a sailing camp. As it happens, the entire population of this sailing camp was swimmers. Which is helpful since it gives me more time to go back and get them if they fall off.

The other (and more accurate) reason that it's helpful is because swimmers are strong. This wasn't going to be a pleasant day on the water, these kids were going to learn big boat sailing....things that they didn't learn this summer in the dinghies they have at sailing camp. They would have to trim and hoist sails, steer the boat, and tie knots. It's really the trimming and hoisting because the loads are a lot heavier on a 28 foot boat than an 8 foot one.

After the hard work, they got to play. Sitting on the low side, they dangled their feet over the water and I tried to hit waves that would get them wet. This was my subtle introduction to open water swimming for them. "Alright, kids, this is 57 degree water, get used to it!"

Next weekend we're back to the swim meets but for one weekend this fall, they had a break and didn't even fall in the water.

Aging up not as easy as expected

2009-11-04T10:36:00.001-08:00

Chopstick's first 9/10 meet was this weekend. She had been really excited about aging up, looking for new challenges and a new set of goals. We had talked about the lack of ribbons she was going to encounter and all seemed OK.

Usually when a kid ages up, they go through the procession of C division, B division and then A division so they're not immediately thrown into the ranks of the fastest kids that are up to almost 2 years older. But Chopstick had already achieved the A division in all but the breaststroke in every distance that she'd already swam. So, basically, she was stepping in against the sharks.

She responded well in the pool, continuing to drop time in all but one event this weekend (including a very unexpected 2.7 seconds in the 100 free). But I don't think she was prepared for what it looks like on the results sheet to be 20th. Swimming a time that a week earlier was a PRT and a lock for 1st, 2nd or 3rd was now 20th? She handled the first one well. The second time it happened, she let out how much it bugged her. She's part pissed and part sad. Both completely understandable.

Now, I'm not the type of parent that says "harden up kid" or "oooh, it'll be alright" with a big hug. I go for solutions. The first one, to Jeff Gilooly 19 kids didn't seem practical so I went to option 2. Pretend these are preliminaries and consider your position in the finals. 20th is 4th place in the C final. Not bad for a kid who is 9 and 4 days. Next goal is the B final (she got that in one event, forget which one). Basically, we're creating a few more arbitrary divisions for her even if she doesn't get a real ribbon. It seems to work for now.

But, until then, she still has breaststroke, her favorite B division haven. She got 1st and 6th place ribbons in those events. Unfortunately, in the 50, she's now A division and in the same old predicament.

Just found a new site

2009-10-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

I've been following the college recruitment wars with disinterest. Sure, I want Felicia Lee to go to Cal but it's not really that important to me. But, hey, Felicia Lee, if you're reading this, "Go Golden Bears!". Hope I didn't violate any NCAA guidelines with that unabashed exuberance.

Anyway, back on point, I just found a new site collegeswimming.com which keeps track of these things and has a message board and might be of interest. To me, this interest will start in 8-9 years when Chopstick is old enough to go to college. I already spend 105% of my disposable income on school so I would really really like to see a college scholarship in the offering. So, I'm going to support this new site, click on some ads and hope they're still around in 8 to 9 years to report on "Stick, Chop has committed to UC Berkeley {or Stanford or Princeton}" I have no doubt she'll make it into one of these schools, I just want a way to pay for it.

Oh, and I guess the first step is to swim fast; I'm going to watch her at swim practice to make sure she's still doing that.

Counting down the laps

2009-10-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that I have to lie to myself and play mind-games to get myself through my laps. I'll tell myself I'm only doing 28 today, and then say, how about 4 more at that point and then say, well, darn, it's only 8 more, I'll just do 4 and then right at the end say OK, the last 4 are easy, might as well just finish the thing off. And a lot of valuable energy is wasted in figuring out ways that I'm going to finish what I started.

Then the idea of the pool abacus was born. A visual representation of how much I'd done and how much was left. Let me explain:

You see those blue things? Not only do they keep the lane line floating but they move. You can slide them up and down the wire as you see fit. So, once I complete my first 50, I casually flip one forward, continuing to do this until I've completed 10 sets of 50, then I reverse direction, pushing them one by one back towards the middle of the pool until none are touching the wall. I am then done.

This way I can easily see that I'm halfway done and there is an immense sense of satisfaction when I reverse direction. I also satisfy some OCD tendencies by having a routine every time I get to the wall. And most importantly I can tell when my deceitful mind games confused myself so badly that I'm pretending I did laps that I didn't. 40 laps means 40 laps thanks to my new abacus.

Putting 8 & unders to bed

2009-10-20T11:14:00.001-07:00

I've mentioned before that Chopstick is ready to take on the challenge of the 9/10 Age Group. She has motivation, new goals, and a big challenge ahead of her. We thought it would be fun to symbolically put the 8&U behind her by organizing all of her ribbons, trophies, medals, and All Star Swim Cap into their own box and get ready for the next phase.

Truthfully, I just thought it'd be cool for her to reflect a bit and revel in the success she's had. So we organized them first by place and took the picture.

I think we were both a bit shocked by how many blue, red and white ribbons she had. Over 2/3 of all of her places (including the medals from the two meets that gave 1st/2nd/3rd medals) were podium finishes. That was pretty cool.

So we organized them chronologically next. Of course the 2009 stack was bigger than the 2008 which was bigger than the 2007. And the later ones were much more of the fancy A division ribbons. Neat to see, but kind of expected.

What she did next was really cool. She started flipping the 2009 ribbons over, finding the same race from a year before and comparing times. That's the spirit I've always hoped for -- improvement being the prime motivator (despite my obsessions) and racing only against herself.

It was cool to spend some time reliving the races until we packed everything up neatly in the 8&U box and put it away under her bed.

Flippin' the right away

2009-10-16T14:57:00.000-07:00

After her 50 yard backstroke race last weekend, Chopstick tried to tell me what was wrong with her turn. Not actually knowing how to do a flipturn, much less a seemingly impossible backstroke flipturn, I didn't get it. She explained a few more times and it slowly sunk in. She is a right-handed backstroke flipturner and got caught in between strokes. This made her have to glide for a bit at the wall before she could turn.

She made it very clear that she knows how to do it with both arms but just has never practiced the other hand. And it didn't seem like a good idea to do it during a race. Especially one that she was winning and would go on to win by about a second. But the kicker is, she missed her JO by 0.6 seconds. And I think she wants that 0.6 seconds.

Her coach calls this tendency a "favored arm". I see it myself on my turns...if my left hand gets there first, I pull up to grab with my right hand and turn counter clockwise. When I tried it the other way, it felt wrong, like I was in Australia or something.

So we're going up to the pool to practice the turn until she feels comfortable on both sides. She *hates* practicing outside of practice. Sometimes she reacts like I'm asking her to give up her favorite teddy bear when I suggest it. So it was weird to have her remind me that she wants to do it this weekend. I guess she really wants that 0.6 seconds.

I'll take advantage of this rare pool time with her to attempt once again to learn to do a flip turn, maybe I can get some minutes back from my own goals. Report on Monday.

Cutting it short

2009-10-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's superhuman swim, I was psyched to get into the water today. I got up early, fidgeted around the house until it was time to leave and headed to the pool. Everything was going perfectly.

I jumped in the water, swam a really nice 100 yard warmup and felt strong. And I think that was where the problems started -- I started swimming like I felt strong. After my first three fifties, I noticed something was wrong. I was swimming too fast and killing myself. I tried to slow down but the damage had already been done, I was just wearing myself out really quickly.

I started getting discouraged but still tried a few of my techniques to trick myself into swimming more. Nothing was working. When I got to 20 laps, I rationalized. I'm swimming tomorrow so that Chopstick can work on her backstroke flipturns, I'll just make the laps up then. I swam 4 more laps to warm down and called it a day.

A bit of a lame way to end the week but I'd rather call it early and live to swim another day than completely demoralize myself by making swimming a chore. So, I'll put in my laps tomorrow AND have Chopstick work on my flip turn. That should make up for it.

Rest stops, true story of a wallflower

2009-10-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

The local master's coach has given me some very good advice over the last couple of months that I've been swimming. I usually take a while to put it into practice but so far I've done everything stroke related that he's suggested. And it's helped.

The one thing that I can't bring myself to do is the intervals. He suggested that after warming up, I do 10 sets of 50s at 1:15, basically giving myself 25 seconds of rest after each 50. Then warm down.

I truly love this idea but just can't bring myself to do it. Then I noticed something odd. I was completing my 40 laps in about 30 minutes. Basically I was doing 20 sets of 50s at 1:30 intervals. So I wasn't far off, I just needed to cut 5 minutes off of my overall time and I'd be there. I just had one problem, those five minutes were all spent hanging onto a wall sucking up as much oxygen as I could.

But that was my hint. If I am ever to become a better swimmer, I need to stop being a wallflower and just swim. My first strategy for eliminating those 5 minutes was to do a continuous 100-150 yard warmup without stopping, taking advantage of still being somewhat strong at the start before imploding a lung. The next step was to take a look at the wall clock at each rest stop and force a limit on myself. With these two techniques, I got it down to 26 minutes (1:18 pace) by the beginning of this week. I just couldn't tell where the last minute was going to come from.

After my swim yesterday, I found my minute. It was at the far wall, the one that I stopped at after only 25 yards of swimming. If I eliminate that stop and swim all 50 yards nonstop, I'd get my minute back (anyone else picturing the paperboy from Better Off Dead yelling "my two dollars!"?). So, I tried it this morning, forcing myself to swim 50 yards at a time, doing a 100 yard straight warmup, and never letting my stop go beyond 30 seconds (except the time or two that I lied to myself to get an extra 5 seconds).

At the end of the swim? 25 minutes. 1000 yards. 1:15.

Drying out

2009-10-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

I moved to a new office a few weeks ago -- a fact that is hardly swimming related until you realize that I swim before work. And therefore lug a wet swimsuit and towel all the way out to the office with me everyday. When it was still 100 degrees where I work, it was easy to dry out, just leave it in the car with the windows cracked and I'd have dry swim paraphernalia by the end of the day.

With the onset of Autumn, this technique wasn't working too well. But, thankfully, we moved. And now have an unused shower at the office! So I can hang dry my gear and have it ready for action the next day!

Now I just need to find a good way to remember to not leave my hangers in the gym locker room.

Swimming in the rain

2009-10-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

We had a bit of a storm roll through here. I'm a sailor and was more interested in securing my boat than what effect it would have on my swimming but I'll admit to a pretty low-level anxiety about what it would be like getting to the pool at 7AM on a stormy morning.

Well, it wasn't as bad as I expected. The best part was I had the pool to myself; the Masters team must have cut out early and my usual poolmates were nowhere to be seen. So I jumped in and swam, figuring that if Chopstick can do meets in the rain, I can swim for 30 minutes and retreat to a warm, dry locker room.

Well, it was nice for about 5 minutes. It was dark and gloomy out and the pool was really well lit so I could see the bottom clearly and it was a pretty calming experience. But then I started thinking (very often my downfall). Why wasn't anyone else here? If I were to drown, how long would it take until someone even discovered me? If I can't see anything on land, who knows who could be lurking behind those redwood trees!

So I just started swimming faster to get it over with sooner. It started getting a bit lighter and people started showing up. A couple of people I'd never seen and then finally one of the usual suspects. All was becoming normal....except for the 20MPH wind and horizontal rain. But that doesn't concern a swimmer. Until said swimmer needs to get out of the water and that time was fast approaching.

As I finished my 39th and then 40th laps, I started to plan my escape. Do I run to the locker room ducking to avoid the rain? Do I make it a two-step process, stopping at the hot tub for a quick warmup? Or do I walk confidently for the 20 feet over to the locker room like a mature adult should?

I decided on the last one, walked tall over to the locker room and ducked into the sauna where I'd stashed my towel 30 minutes earlier and hugged it for dear life to warm up.

End of an age group era

2009-10-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the end of an era...an age group era. After Chopstick got the 4 PRTs at the last meet, I think we both wanted to just get this one over with, move on and age up. She'd been dropping time so furiously lately that we really had no expectations going into this one (except the 50 breast which she hadn't swam in forever).

She exceeded those expectations by dropping almost 8 total seconds -- with 7.5 of those coming in the 50 breast. But, she also dropped time in the 25 free, 50 free, and 50 back. She matched her PB in the 25 breast. Overall, very successful.

So she ends her 8&U career with this ledger:

25 free: 16.01
50 free: 35.40
100 free: 1:20.06
25 back: 18.87
50 back: 40.09
25 fly: 17.19
50 fly: 38.31
25 breast: 22.56
50 breast: 49.34
100 IM: 1:27.56

But, now as a 9 year old, she's in a really good competitive position. She's in the A division for all of the events she's swam but well off the ribbon-getting pace. So, she has a wall of girls to get through to start collecting ribbons again. She swims for ribbons. So this is important.

She's close enough to a JO in the 50 back and she could conceivably drop .6 seconds in the next month that she has to get there. She and her coach both know where to find those .6 seconds, it's just a matter of practice time and gauging the flag to wall distance better.

But, though she wants a JO, she really wants ribbons. For the next two years she won't be an automatic last heat/middle lane that she has been lately and that's going to motivate her. If she can see (or sense) feet in front of her, she tends to swim faster. So, the new era begins in 3 weeks.

My favoritest race so far

2009-10-06T17:19:00.001-07:00

After writing up the first two of my favorite Chopstick races, I saw a theme. I love the races where she overcomes something. Her first swim ever, she had to overcome uncertainty and a fear of the unknown. In the relay race, she had to dig down to swim her heart out despite being 25 yards behind in a 50 yard race.

In my favoritest race ever, she had to overcome a self-induced hurdle. She was racing short course yards in Walnut Creek at an Olympic sized pool. The Aquabears run two courses, a boys side and a girls side and do a great job keeping them coordinated so the starts are staggered. Except on the 8&U 25 yard races. This is because the 25 yarders start on the other side of the pool so that the timers don't have to move. All of the amplification equipment is on the other side so there is usually some sort of starting block confusion. Especially when you have a boy's starting sound happening right after the long whistle for the girls.

Chopstick heard that sound, started to lean into her dive, realized too late that it was the boys' start, and just fell into the water. This happens all the time in 8&U races but very very rarely in the last heat. She pulled herself out of the water quickly and just looked at me with the cutest, most adorable, and most embarrassed smile I had ever seen. She just didn't know what to do.

So I made a joke (not a good one but I had to think fast)...."at least you're already wet now". She smiled again while the starter asked her to face the pool again for the start. She didn't have time for her OCD routine of checking and re-checking her goggles. She just curled her toes over the wall (no blocks on 25 yard races), got in position on the cue, dived in on the horn and ABSOLUTELY FLEW to the other side of the pool. Her first PRT was borne out of her most embarrassing moment ever at a meet.

The thing is, I knew there were multiple PRTs in her future (she's at 4 right now) but the determination just to swim like crazy after the false start was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen her do. Afterwards I joked that she should fall into the pool more often.

I've been more and more amazed at her speed in the pool over the last two years but that's dwarfed by how proud I am of her personal growth that's come from swimming. That embarrassed smile is my favorite part of her race for the simple reason that she got back in the pool and swam after it.

The more you drive, the less intelligent you are

2009-10-06T12:47:00.000-07:00

That title is the greatest line from one of the greatest movies of all time, Repo Man. And it kind of applies to swimming in a round-a-bout way. The more you think, the worse your stroke is.

In all facets of my life, I believe that the less moving parts involved, the better the outcome. Less is more. Consider a baseball swing...if you plant your front foot, extend your arms, watch the ball and keep your back elbow high before the swing, you can hit the ball. Once you start adding little twists and complications, the swing can go haywire in an instant.

I have to keep reminding myself of this with my swim stroke. I absolutely cannot do everything right when I'm swimming. If I have to think about keeping my legs straight and feet pointed AND worry about a high elbow and clean hand entry AND watch the bottom of the pool and keep half of my goggle submerged during a breath, I'm going to drown. So I'm worrying about one thing at a time, hoping to get that to be second nature before moving on to the next concern.

I am very far from any of it feeling natural but I know it's possible. I ask Chopstick what she thinks about while swimming and she doesn't know. She just swims because her coach has gotten all of the mechanics to be second nature as he slowly refines it bit by bit. If an 8 year old can get there, a 41 year old should be able to pull it off too. And have a simple stroke that makes me faster than Shaq.

This post brought to you through the generous support of the Tillerman Less is More Foundation.

Lumbering freestyle

2009-10-05T12:08:00.000-07:00

I started on this journey to learn to swim about 7 weeks ago. I had high hopes...first off, learn to swim; second, swim fast; third, be faster than my 8 year old daughter (since replaced by Shaq as arch-nemesis). And, I'm moving towards these goals nicely.

The first week that I hit the water, my beautiful wife had a chance to see me swim a few laps. She described it as lumbering. That might have been a kind description. I know for sure that I forgot to kick a lot, slapped at the water with my hands, and spent most of my time gasping for air. I was lucky I didn't have to see what it looked like, but it must have been quite the sight at 7AM for everybody else.

Since then, Chopstick has given me a few pointers, the local masters coach has given me a few pointers, and I've read a lot about proper technique. I really concentrate while at the pool that I'm swimming correctly knowing that some day that will translate to the speed I need to beat Shaq.

Chopstick took some video this weekend and I am open for critique (other than the weird filming anomaly when she's walking next to me and it looks like I'm not moving). Most of my readers are better swimmers than I am, so please have at it.

Keep in mind, this is my warm-up speed before Chopstick gave me a few pointers on arm position. But, still that's what I look like when I lumber along freestyling.

A little bit extra

2009-10-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

OK, now that I've been congratulated for making A THOUSAND YARDS, I decided to do it again and, really, it's getting kind of old-hat on the second day of A THOUSAND YARDS. So, afterwards I decided to do something extra.

I've been reminded more than once by Chopstick that swimming is more than freestyle (this coming from someone who is probably going to be a Flyer when she grows up). So, I thought I'd try a couple of laps of those "other strokes."

I know I can do backstroke (not well but I can make it across the pool) so that one wasn't even on the table. But breaststroke? That is possibly a more unnatural movement than a golf swing...it just shouldn't occur in nature. I kicked off the wall (neglecting the zoom as I don't actually understand what that is) and started channeling my inner-frog. Umm, I made it to the other side but I would be hard pressed to actually call it breaststroke. I was under the impression that the forward motion comes in the glide portion of the stroke but the only way I moved was when I was pulling back. As to the the kick? Chopstick's coach is always talking about the kick "firing"...mine was more "fizzling." But, still, I made it across. Though I think I would have been DQ'd.

I wasn't about to try a full on butterfly. That would have been suicide not to mention humiliating. So I tried to just dolphin across the water, something I have found fun in the past. Chopstick gave me instructions last night on how to breathe while doing it and that was all good except that my forehead kept smacking the water after the breath. Turns out I'd never tried 25 yards of this particular "fun" exercise. It's definitely not as fun when breathing is introduced into the equation. Halfway through, I realized that and just swam back to the wall giving up on my aspiration of rock-hard abs for one day at least.

So, that was a bit of a failed experiment other than the new milestone I hit today: ONE THOUSAND FIFTY YARDS!!!!!

One thousand yards

2009-09-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

A thousand yards is the benchmark for a running back in a single season.

A thousand yards is a very long stare.

A thousand yards is about as many as you can mow without sharpening your lawnmower blades.

A thousand yards is also a goal I didn't know that I had until this week.

It just didn't seem realistic. My first day swimming I did 350 and that included some kickboarding, some pretend backstroke, and some rest stops in the middle of the pool. I quickly got realistic and started adding on 100 yards per week after I got to 500.

This week was supposed to be my 900 yard week, a number I got to yesterday by tricking myself with oddly effective mind-games. Then today I realized that I wasn't tired at the end of the workout yesterday; why not just swim 4 more laps at the end?

So I did. It seemed pretty easy too and I can't think of a reason I couldn't do a whole lot more if I had time in the morning before work. If I can do 1000, why not 1200? Why not a mile?

Actually there are probably pretty good reasons to not push myself when I have a pace clock drill that I'm supposed to be doing. So, here's my new plan:

10 laps of warmup
10 sets of 50s on a 1:20 interval
10 laps of warmdown

I know I can't do all 10 sets of the intervals yet so I'll just do as many as I can; whatever amount I miss by I'll just add to my warmdown. And keep doing a 1000 yards for a while.

Chopstick's first meet of the season

2009-09-30T10:17:00.001-07:00

Holy Freakin' Frijoles, it was hot this weekend. The kids got to jump in the pool every once in a while, the parents just had to stand there creating sweat puddles as they pretended to cheer on their kids. People in the desert should get this heat, not those lucky enough to live in the Bay Area.

But Chopstick did swim and she swam her little heart out. I am convinced she's faster when she sees splashing near her, she's just not a good front-runner, and luckily there were some fast kids at this meet. I'll just give her rundown: 2 firsts, 2 seconds, 1 third, 1 fourth, and 1 fifth. Included in those were 6 personal bests in 7 events (just missed on 25 free). And, here's the kicker, 3 PRTs. In two of those PRT swims, she came in second, meaning there was another kid even faster.

I'll brag first about the 50 fly. Wow. She hadn't swam this event since last May so we were pretty sure she'd drop some time but neither of us saw this coming. She chopped 7 seconds off the time and beat the PRT time by over 2 seconds. She was seeded second in lane 5; the girl in lane 4 (possibly a robot or alien, I'm looking into this) couldn't possibly have expected any competition since she had a seed time 6 seconds faster than Chopstick. But from the start it was a Race with a capital R. Chopstick was just behind her the entire way, probably about a headlength tops. She knew this girl was winning the whole way and I'm convinced that accounted for at least a second or two off of her time. It was a thing of beauty. Her coach started his critique with the greatest sentence: "not many 8 and unders can swim a 50 fly that fast"; then he talked about how to make it faster.

The 50 back was similar, she touched .02 seconds behind the winner. Oddly enough I saw her peek over at one point so she knew where she was in the race. Like any odd head movement, it veered her left for a few feet, possibly accounting for the .02, but I sure as heck don't care, she PRT'd the heck out of that swim. I think I expected a drop, just not that much of one.

I don't remember a thing about her 25 back. I know she won, I know she got a PRT but I couldn't tell you anything about that race. That's not like me, I think I can blame heatstroke. Yep, it was that hot.

Chopstick and I had really tried to dampen expectations for this meet since she'd dropped so much time in the last couple of meets so we were pleasantly surprised by her times at this one. She has one more meet left as an 8 & under and she's at the point where she just wants to get it over with to move on to the 9-10 age group. The only thing really left hanging right now is her 50 breast time; she hasn't swam it since May and a big drop is pretty expected. She'll leave a pretty nice set of times behind her as she moves on to the next challenge. And when she's 9, there will be a lot of feet kicking in front of her to motivate her swims even more.

Bonus laps

2009-09-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

After almost dying yesterday, I was a bit apprehensive going to the pool this morning. I didn't like the idea of getting dizzy from swimming. Swimming is supposed to increase health not decrease it.

After jumping in the pool and going through the first few stages of hypothermia, I swam a few warm-up laps, nice and slow, concentrating on my new improved breathing technique. I felt good, all lingering traces of the plague seemingly gone.

Now I had to decide my strategy to trick myself into swimming a full work-out. I usually go for the "I'm 1/4 of the way there" then "1/2 way there" then "just four more laps" until I'm finally done.

Today, I decided to lie to myself. I told myself that I'd do 24 laps, then when I got to 20, I'd spring the "haha you fool, I lied, you have 12 more to go, haha". And that worked. But then midway through lap 28, I realized that I still felt good and started planning a sneak attack. Bonus laps! I planned on finishing 32, and announcing the need for 4 more "bonus laps."

These bonus laps don't do much for me, I can't redeem them at any store, they don't get me a discount off of the club membership and they sure as Hades don't win me any points with my lungs. But they're in the bank now and I hope they might just pay off on the day I decide to race Chopstick in the 100 yard freestyle (1:20.03 in case you're wondering).

Lungs: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em

2009-09-28T13:35:00.001-07:00

Anybody who has been following my travails of learning to swim knows that my biggest issue has been breathing. I have tried every single method of doing it wrong from sucking down water, to forcing hyperventilation, to holding my breath for extended periods. I think I have it nailed now except for that I don't alternate sides yet. But that I can overcome.

But now I have a new issue. I was sick last week and still have some residual effects including, but not limited to, phlegm. It's my body getting rid of the last of the icky stuff and I'll jump at any chance to use a word like phlegm but it is adding a problem, it makes it really hard to breathe.

Last week, I forced myself to do half-workouts while sick so that I didn't lose every hard-fought ounce of "in-shape-icity" that I had. No need to make today any worse than it had to be.

Feeling better today, I knew I was going to put in a whole workout and tricked myself into it by continually saying, "four more laps and then you're done" every four laps. It worked, I finished the whole thing (32 laps for the win!) and went back to the locker room satisfied. I rooted through my gym bag for all the shower accoutrements and started feeling woozy, dizzy, and light-headed. I sat down and evaluated...it had to be because of the lingering ickiness.

Wow, all that effort to get into cardiovascular shape and one little semi-sickness that didn't even keep me home from work once makes me feel woozy. I'm convinced, I need to go shopping for a better set of lungs that won't cause me all this trouble.

This might get interesting

2009-09-25T09:12:00.000-07:00

CK .... wait, scratch that, I'm giving her a blog nickname {blognick if you will}...I'll try Chopstick. So, re-start.

Chopstick's first meet of the season is this weekend so I'll serve up a story of my favorite race at this particular pool. It was a relay meet, a format which is very very different than a regular meet. You know, because they're relays. And because there is a ton of team spirit; kids watch their team-mates, more eyes are on the pool at any given moment and you really see the kids step it up if others are counting on them.

This particular race was one of those crazy formats where each kid did two different strokes in some incomprehensible order so that you can be absolutely sure that none of them had ever practiced the turn that they needed. Chopstick was doing free to fly, 25 yards of each.

One thing about Chopstick's team is that they never ever have enough 8&U girls to make up a relay team so she was only doing the mixed events. She was the anchor of this relay, finishing up free and fly as previously mentioned. As her team-mate was coming into the wall for her to start her leg, I looked up and saw that the other 3 teams in the pool were just about to finish their freestyle leg and had about a 25 yard headstart on Chopstick.

Up on the block, her arms followed her team-mate into the wall just as she'd been taught, then, BANG, she was off with one of the best dives I've ever seen her do. As she popped out of the water, arms stroking, legs kicking, her competition had finished their turns and were starting the butterfly, all pretty even.

I was standing behind her coach and I saw him slowly scan the pool, first looking at the three boys starting their butterfly, then Chopstick doing her freestyle and he calmly said to nobody in particular, "This might get interesting.".

That comment totally took me by surprise; when I looked at the pool more observantly I realized what he meant, Chopstick was reeling these kids in more and more with every stroke. For a moment it seemed like they were swimming in molasses and she'd picked the only lane filled with actual water. She made her turn and they were only a little more than half the pool length ahead of her.

And it was time for her butterfly. When Chopstick swims the fly, she is always moving forward, sometimes I think something is pushing her from under the water but there isn't that up and down motion you usually see in kids this age. It felt like the whole freakin' meet was watching as she just kept getting closer and closer to these three boys. It was getting interesting for sure.

It was coming down to a photofinish, she was almost caught up as the timers stood up to go peer over the side of the pool; I was suppressing screams and whoops and hollers at the side of the pool as it looked like there was a tiny chance that she'd catch these kids. And then they all touched the wall bang-bang-bang-bang.

I looked up at the board and her lane wasn't first. Or second. Or third. Her team had come in fourth. 0.2 seconds behind the kid in first. It was the absolute happiest most amazing fourth place finish I had ever seen.

Chopstick had shown the first glimpse I had ever seen of a competitive spirit that went beyond just wanting to do well. She had seen how far behind her team was and swam the race of her life to get them back into it. It had gotten interesting and beyond. I didn't have a stopwatch on her, I have no idea how fast she went, I have no idea if those other kids had lead weights on their ankles, I just know that she didn't see a 25 yard headstart in a 50 yard race as anything other than a challenge.

Every once in a while we talk about our favorite races and until a month ago, this was always the top of the list. For the simple reason that she had made it interesting.

My favorite swims, 1st in a series

2009-09-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

I came to be a swimmer the honest way; it was painful to have my 8 year old daughter dust me in the pool. She has motivated me, taught me, and entertained me through the first two years of her swim career. It is truly inspiring to watch her swim, she's like a little blond dart in the water.

I have a ton of favorite swims that I can share but it's appropriate to start with her first one, the 25 back. It was her first race and we had no idea what to expect. We were in some weird town named Hercules, I'd seen the freeway exit before but that was as much as I knew about it. Finding a beautiful oasis of a pool in this town was not expected, but there it was and to this day it's one of my favorite meet locations.

CK was really nervous, I was overwhelmed, and the swimming world didn't know that she was coming yet. I gave her the advice that I give before a race to this day, "make sure you make it to the other side and don't sink." If she could accomplish those goals, she would succeed.

Well, in CK's early years she didn't swim a 25 yard backstroke, she tried her best to make it about 27-28 yards by zigging, zagging, and trying to hit each lane line at least once. But she did what has become her habit when she's doing something bad, make up for it with sheer speed. She was all over that lane and I could see the relief on her face when the flags showed up and she stopped her strokes and reached her right hand out way too early for her landing.

When she touched the wall it hit me: she was first. She had won her first heat! Her first reaction, "why are these people handing me a tootsie pop?" I ran around the pool to bring her a towel, wrapped it around her, and was overwhelmed by her smile. She didn't know her time, she didn't know she'd won the heat, she didn't know that her first race got her a B time, she didn't even know what a B time was. But she knew that she hadn't sank. And she had a lollipop.

To this day, she has that same smile when she does something great in the pool. This little smile that grows when she sees me. She's always looking for me to tell her the time or if she hit the goal, but she knows when she was fast and the numbers are usually just icing on the cake. She still gets nervous before some races (I never know when it's going to happen) and I still tell her the same advice. I like to think that the advice brings her back to that first race when she made it to the other side without sinking.

Breathe in breathe out

2009-09-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

In other words, what goes in must go out. And I'd been doing that wrong. When I first started swimming laps 5-6 weeks ago, I asked two authorities how I should be exhaling during my stroke. My 8 year old daughter said that she does a continuous exhale so that she's ready for her next inhale. That same day, we were hanging out with one of the faster 12 year olds on the team, she said that she holds her breath, then does a big exhale right before taking a breath.

I tried both ways and found I liked the holding your breath technique more. At least I thought I did. Fast forward to last Friday when the Master's Coach actually gave me two pieces of advice: 1) breathe into your stomach, and 2) exhale continuously. He brought up really good points too. I don't hold my breath when playing basketball, why would you when swimming. And I have limited time to take my breath, might as well be absolutely sure I can maximize that time.

This morning I tried it and found it was really really helpful. I was about halfway through my laps when my usual next-lane-neighbor showed up; I commented about the Master's Coach's advice and she noted that she could tell -- I could actually talk in between laps! At the end of my laps, I really felt I could keep going and didn't feel as tired as usual. I'm on the right track.

I had a chance to talk to him after my laps and thank him for the help. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to find out more about the master's team and what they did in the mornings (besides getting up at an UnGodly Hour). They swim a lot more yards...and faster. But he pointed out that I am doing a little less than half their work out in about half the time, I'm not as far from being ready as I think (especially with my top secret new breathing technique).

Since he could tell I'm interested, he gave me some steps to get ready. It's called the pace clock. I often see swimmers at the wall, staring at the pace clock getting ready for their next laps. I often stand at the wall catching my breath, staring at the pace clock so it looks like I have a reason to be there. But now I will. I told him my times (39.5 seconds full speed, ~50 seconds regular speed for a 50 free). He wants me to do 10 sets of 50 on a 1:15 interval, basically giving me ~25 seconds of rest in between 50s. And keep doing that until I can work it down to a 15 second rest.

At that point I'm ready for the slow lane.

CK & the four strokes

2009-09-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

The great film experiment went pretty well. Not perfectly since we were still working on our cinematographic style (you know, where to point the camera, stuff like that) but we got some good footage and have an idea of what we can do.

CK still doesn't have the timing down so there isn't a whole bunch of my stroke, but that's OK since hers is better to look at anyway. I didn't edit anything, just put the four clips together (in proper medley order mind you). This gives an idea of where I want to go with it as we get better and can get longer uninterrupted shots of us swimming. By the end we were even experimenting with swimming behind with the camera outstretched following each other. But that turns out to be a recipe to get footage of bubbles.

Anyway, here's CK & the Four Strokes:

Man, this camera is going to be cool, next up is a collection of flip turns. Not mine of course, I find them dangerous.

Breathe into your stomach

2009-09-18T13:06:00.001-07:00

With a worried look, the master's coach looked over at me and said, "You OK?" I responded with "aeeahdhhah ahdasfhhhahahha" or some other representation of trying to talk when your lungs have stopped functioning. I help up 1 finger asking for a moment, took off my goggles slowly, and finally said, "I think my lungs are abnormally small for a man my size."

Now here's when you can tell a coach is a good coach. He should have said, "you're an idiot" and moved a lane or two farther away from me for safety's sake. But he didn't, he said, "do you breathe into your chest or your stomach?" At this point, I should have said, "are you crazy? take a freakin' physiology course you swimming mutant!" But instead I stifled my fatigue-based anger and answered truthfully, "my chest I think" and he spent some time explaining how I could breathe more deeply in the same amount of time. He also gave me other advice but I am not about to try to work on two things at once.

OK, breathe into my stomach, a place where the Flying Spaghetti Monster did not place my lungs. I'll try that. First lap I kept gulping water for some reason. AND my goggles leaked. I must have been doing it wrong. Second lap, my eyes stayed dry but I kept gulping water. It was getting better.

I only had 8 laps left when he gave me this advice and the first two were obviously wasted with my thirst for drinking chlorinated water. But the last six? Yeah, it felt like I was getting more air. A new routine threw my stroke into complete disarray but I was getting some more air. I think with a bit of practice, this might work. Once I get past the idea that my lungs are in my stomach now.

Putting the Crazy in Crazy Swim Dad

2009-09-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

I recently read an article about mistakes that swim parents make (I'll link to it if I find it again). I don't make a lot of them. I try really hard not to pressure CK, we don't force her to go to practice more than the minimum 3 days per week (her decision if she wants a 4th day). I realized very early on that I'm not a swim coach so I don't mess with her coach's instructions. I'm supportive.

But one of the pieces of advice is to not co-opt her thing. Swimming is her thing and from day one I've researched and learned more and more about swimming to the point where you'd think it was my thing. I get overly excited by her success. And now I'm swimming 6 days a week. Have I co-opted swimming from her?

She enjoys teaching me but resists the idea of going up to the pool just to swim. Maybe it's that she's getting exactly the right amount of swimming now and doesn't need any more or maybe I'm too involved in her "thing". Since her swimming is more important than my swimming, I'll just back off on how much I talk about it and see if that makes it better.

But, then again, her first meet of the season is in a week and a half, and it will be hard to keep the Crazy out of Crazy Swim Dad then.

Slow and Low.....that is the tempo

2009-09-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

I don't expect that many will remember the song Slow and Low, written by Run DMC for the Beastie Boys. I got it stuck in my head while swimming today because I tried something new. I wanted to see what happened if I swam slowly and didn't try to wear myself out so much.

It was nice. I actually swam the whole 800 yards faster because I wasn't stopping so much and felt like I had more in the tank at the end. Also because I was going slower I could concentrate on my stroke more and pay attention to the whole thing. But, I still have my bouyancy problem: I'm skinny. So I would sink at that speed if I didn't kick harder...and I don't want to sink.

With all of this, I know my stroke was better but I'm not sure if my kick was holding up its end of the proper technique bargain. So afterwards, I did my drill. I don't know the name of it so I'll just call it "kickies". I did five sets of "kickies", really concentrating on kicking from the hips, pointing my toes and doing fast short kicks. Man, "kickies" are hard and by the end I was kind of pissed that the pool even has a diving well for me to do these things. But I did them.

With all of the progress, I'm ready for my next stop: 36 laps next week. I usually test myself on Friday or the weekend to see what Monday will feel like with the new distance but I'm pretty sure if I keep it Slow and Low, I can do it.

What's changed since I started swimming

2009-09-16T09:53:00.001-07:00

It's been about a month since I've started swimming so it's time to take stock of my progress. What's better, what's worse, and what's changed.

Better:

My stroke looks better. My wife told me that I looked like I was lumbering the first time she saw me try laps. Now she says I look smooth in the water. Yeah, I look smooootthhhh.
I can swim more laps but still not as many as I would have expected.
I'm a tiny bit faster.

Worse:

I'm waking up earlier.
I find it normal to walk around in what looks like male lingerie (jammers).

What's changed:

I'm drinking less coffee. Don't know why and certainly can't figure out the cause and effect but the timing is too close to be coincidental. This is good, I needed to cut back.
Oftentimes, I smell like chlorine. This didn't used to happen.

I still can't beat my daughter but that's a lame goal anyway. Now, I just need to beat Shaq (38.7 in the 50 free). That I can do, especially since it's not a moving target.

But, back to me. I think I'm a better swimmer than I was a month ago, I've kept at it even on mornings I didn't want to get up early, but I still have a LONG way to go fitness-wise. That might be middle-age talking but I can't use that as an excuse. Yet.

After thinking about it, no need to change my goals. Just keep at it and see what's different at the end of another month.

What would it take to make me a Master's swimmer

2009-09-15T09:08:00.001-07:00

This was a question asked on the Masters Swimming Blog. I think the answer is too detailed to put in a comments box...besides I have a daily word-quota to hit on my blog.

The reason I'm not a Master's swimmer is simple: I'm intimidated. Never mind that I'm a self-taught swimmer who's only been doing it for 4 weeks, I KNOW that joining a team will solve a lot of my swimming issues. But I'm still intimidated by the length and ferocity of their workouts. I've watched the end of a few Master's workouts and those guys are SWIMMING. I know that I can't do that yet. But, eventually, and hopefully soon, I will be able to.

But then the next problem crops up...meets. And this is where I have some experience as a Swim Dad. I knew going into CK's first meet about where she was compared to the other kids. I was able to counsel her to not feel overwhelmed, in fact she won her first heat ever, getting a B time. From there, I've always had enough information about meets, time standards, and what to expect that I could help solve any anxiety that she might have.

I can't find any information like that to solve my own anxiety. From the results that I've seen, it appears that every 40-45 year old master's swimmer swims a 25 second 50 free. Since I don't, why would I get in the pool with them? But, logically, I know that isn't true but take a look at the results. Where are the meets that have the slower guys? Where are the A/B/C standards to help me gauge my progress?

I know that the entire US Master's organization is only about 5 times the size of Pacific Swimming (the SF Bay Area), but still, is that it? No introductory meets to let new swimmers dip their toes in before having to race these 25 second freaks of nature?

So, that's what it would take for me...some small sign that it's not that drastic, that a reasonably fit new swimmer isn't going to be all by himself at the back of the pack, that there's a way to join, and more importantly race, with similar swimmers. Call it the Newbie challenge and I'm in.

Tried my first drill

2009-09-14T11:23:00.001-07:00

So far I have been just swimming...you know, one side of the pool to the other with the least amount of near-drowning possible. I've worked on my technique for the sole purpose of the aforementioned minimization of near-drowning. Anybody who has ever swam knows how it goes, head east for 25 yards, turn, head west for 25 yards, repeat 'til near death (though pools, unlike tennis courts, are allowed to be positioned anywhere on the compass rose so it might be N/S for you).

Well, I did all of that this morning but then I gave myself one last task: to improve my kick. I had read about a drill that can do this without the dreaded kickboard. Go to the diving well, cross your arms and tread water by kicking with your feet pointing straight down. Apparently, this very closely resembles what a freestyle kick should look like...if you bend your knees too much you drown, if you don't kick hard enough you drown, if you do anything at all wrong you drown. Self-preservation says, do the darned kick correctly.

And I did. I still think there was too much knee action in it but I could feel the burn in my thighs a lot more than any other attempts I've done to improve my kick. The only downside is you're supposed to do this in 20 second sets but this lady went and stood in front of the clock midway through my second set. Every time I'd move over to see the clock better she'd move. I think she wanted me to drown.

But I foiled her evil plan by finally looking at the other clock. And not drowning.

Start of project video

2009-09-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks to The SwimChannel, I have a video of exactly what I'm trying to work on...freestyle breaths and rotation. Consider this an "after". Soon, there will be a "before" video that might scare my more timid readers.

How To Breathe Properly While Swimming Freestyle on Howcast

Complex machinery

2009-09-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

Swimming is like a golf swing...dozens of moving parts that just don't occur in nature in that order. Every time I concentrate on hand entry, or my pull, or rotating my body, or kicking properly, something gets forgotten. When I'm really moving I think that I know what I'm doing but I bet I just look like a hot mess.

My wife has solved this problem for me. She bought me an underwater camera.

I used one of these on the Pac Cup last year and found it exceedingly useful for sailing AND I got to use it to film CK a few times underwater. But it wasn't mine, I just used it as the official photographer of Team Oceanaire.

But now, I have my own underwater camera and I also own an 8 year old who can go under and film my stroke. How can my stroke not get better? For one, I could look at it, throw my hands in the air and give up on the whole experiment. Or, I could be dazzled by the apparent beauty of the whole thing and decide that you can't improve on perfection. But what I'm really hoping happens is that my vanity kicks in and I just want to see myself filmed more so I keep working on the stroke.

Either way, my almost 10 readers per day will get to see some amateur swimming action live and underwater!

Out the window

2009-09-10T09:21:00.001-07:00

Well, that plan went up in smoke. I didn't bring my fancy full-color printout of my planned workout, let alone put it in a waterproof sleeve for the pool. So I didn't swim...HA....of course I swam, I just tried to modify the workout based on what I remembered.

I knew that there was a warmup, a core workout, and a warmdown. I also knew that in the core workout, I was supposed to do some maximum reach type things. Also, I watched CK in the water last weekend and at practice yesterday and realized that she did what Gary Hall, Sr recommends, rotate your body as you extend your reach. So I did that too. And I did a time-trial mid-way through. I didn't mess with any kickboard stuff because I'm still confused by one of the things it recommended.

I think it was effective because I feel the workout more than usual.

When I did my 50 yard time-trial, I pushed almost as hard as I did on Monday so I'm pretty sure my time was comparable (I cut 3 seconds off my previous time). Based on that, I am also pretty darned sure that CK took it easy on me in the 50 since that would put her 7 seconds slower than her best time. Oh well, I'll catch up (umm yeah, keep telling yourself that).

One last note on today. When I asked CK about the kickboard freestyle using one arm at a time, she had never heard of that much less done it. She explained the catchup freestyle drill and that seems like it does something similar so I tried it. Holy Guacamole, that is hard. I could only make one lap of it; I'm pretty sure I would have drowned if I'd tried more. I think I should only do it under adult supervision.

As for tomorrow, if I remember my workout sheet, I might give it another try. Otherwise, I'm the guy at the end of the pool making stuff up as he goes along.

New workout from swimplan.com

2009-09-09T13:20:00.001-07:00

The first time I went to the pool to swim laps, I went armed with a workout from swimplan.com conveniently stuffed into a waterproof sleeve. I was ready for a workout. Reality set in pretty quickly when I figured out I could barely swim.

It's been a month since then and I can swim 800 yards now, including 50 without stopping for a smoke (just kidding I don't smoke). So I'm thinking about trying it again. What the hey hey, might as well have some structure to this thing to keep it interesting. Here's what swimplan came up with (once I decided a kickboard would be cool).

==================================================
Duration 30-45 mins
Distance 800yd

Warm up

• 2 x 50yd Any Stroke (even pace), rest 0:15 / 50yd
Swim your choice of stroke at a steady pace.

Build up (repeat 4 times)

• 1 x 25yd Single Arm with kickboard 6 x left, 6 x right, rest 0:10 / 25yd
Freestyle swim using one arm at a time. Complete six arm strokes with the left arm followed by six complete strokes with the right arm. The non-stroking arm holds the kickboard out front and swaps with the stroking arm every six strokes.

• 1 x 25yd Freestyle Kick with kickboard, rest 0:10 / 25yd
Freestyle kicking using a kickboard. Grip the front and rest your forearms on the board. Your chin should just touch the water.

Core

• 4 x 50yd Freestyle Swim, leave on 01:35 / 50yd
Freestyle swim, starting every 50yd set on the defined time period. The departure time combines your swimming target time and rest time, so the faster you go the more rest you will have. Conversely, the slower you swim, the less rest time you will have.

• 2 x 50yd Freestyle Kick with kickboard, rest 0:20 / 50yd
Freestyle kicking using a kickboard. Grip the front and rest your forearms on the board. Your chin should just touch the water.

• 2 x 50yd Freestyle DPS, rest 0:15 / 50yd
Freestyle swim with maximum Distance Per Stroke (DPS). Concentrate on long, efficient strokes and a high streamlined body position to reduce drag in the water. Count your strokes per lap and try to reduce.

Warm down

• 1 x 100yd Freestyle Easy, rest 0:20 / 100yd
Freestyle swim at a slow, relaxed pace.

==================================================

It seems harder than what I usually do and gives one key component. If I vow to follow it, I'll have to push off the wall when it tells me to push off the wall. If it says 50, then I can't stop halfway through. If it says 1:35, then I can't hang out 5 seconds longer. I think it will help. I'll know tomorrow.

I have to eat more

2009-09-09T10:35:00.000-07:00

Apparently swimming burns between 500 to 900 calories per hour (depending on which website you look at, level of effort, and your weight; seriously there are a lot of variables here). I've already been given the advice to eat a bit before the morning workout so your body has something to burn but I've also noticed that I am eating a lot more during the day.

I can't be burning *that* many more calories but I guess after years of my highest exercise being getting up from the couch to find the remote, walking to the copier, and riding a vespa, then swimming 30 minutes is a lot.

I just downed a couple of packs of instant oatmeal, hopefully that can hold me off until lunch. Unless I have to walk to the copier a few more times.

New season starting

2009-09-08T15:16:00.000-07:00

In a few minutes, my wife is going to pick CK up from school, give her a snack and take her to swim practice. It's starting again. This is CK's third season and I'm amazed by how much more I know about swimming now and by how much better CK is.

On Sunday, she gave me a short lesson that really really helped. Then on Monday (Labor Day) we raced again. This time, she knew to count the seconds until I came in so that we'd see how I'm doing.

First race, 25 yards freestyle. She beat me by 4 seconds.
Second race, 25 yards freestyle (me) v. backstroke (her). She beat me by about 2.5 seconds.
Third race, 25 yards free v. butterfly. She beat me by about 3.5 seconds.
Fourth race, 25 yards free v. breaststroke. I won! I was too excited to count by how much since it just didn't matter. And I don't think I can count in tenths of seconds anyway.
Fifth race, 50 yards free v. free. She was up about half a second into the wall, got about another 2 seconds on me during the turn (I can't flipturn) and I held on to only lose by about 2-3 seconds. I think she was pacing herself too much on the beginning and just didn't have any urgency on the second 25. So, two things happened, I can maintain a pace better than I used to for 50 yards and she really didn't put much effort into this race. But still, I felt good.

I did take that moment to step out of my selfishness and talk to her about her pacing. On a 50 long course, she does it as a sprint so why does she pace herself on the first half of a 50 short course. Shouldn't that be a sprint too? We'll see if that helps, she has that race at the end of September.

I am so psyched about the upcoming season for CK; her improvement in the last six months has been so remarkable that there is no way she can keep up the pace but it sure will be fun watching it. We're trying not to talk about PRTs too much (we refer to them as Potato Radish Turnips) so that we don't jinx it but (knock on wood) she has a heck of a chance of getting a few more in the next two months.

Of course, helping her is self-defeating for my own goals but I think I can live with that. If we can have Potato Radish Turnip casserole a few more times.

Lesson learned

2009-09-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

CK and I jumped into the pool together, planning on just playing around; as far as she was concerned, she was still on break and she wasn't about to do any "swimming". That changed quickly when I said, "hey just tell me how my kick looks" and swam by her. She completely ignored my kick and said, "your hands shouldn't make that splash." She then took about 30 seconds to show me how they should make a shallow dive and how much my elbow should be bent. I did a couple of strokes with her watching to help refine it and I could feel the difference in the ease of the stroke and the forward momentum. Remember, she's 8.

Sunday was my off day so I didn't really plan on doing any laps but I wanted to take my new stroke for a test drive and CK said, "well, might as well get into shape for the season" and started doing a weird set of freestlye, backstroke, butterfly kick. I let her get tired and asked if she wanted to race? Might as well ask John Madden if he wants a chicken wing...of course, she wanted to race.

I had a secret weapon, my new stroke. She had a not-so-secret weapon, she's fast. It didn't even out. When I got to the wall, I asked how much she beat me by and she said about 2 - 3 seconds. I have news for you, in swimming, 2-3 seconds is a "f'ing eternity" (that's for Matt who doesn't read this blog).

In CK's mind, racing isn't just freestyle so we negotiated the next stroke - backstroke, figuring it's the one I'd lose by the least in. She showed me how to do a race start and we were off. My first memory of this race was thinking, "is that splashing next to my head her arms or feet?" Since the splashes went away quickly, I realized it was her feet (note: we were sharing a wide lane).

This time when I got to the wall, she had counted down how much she won by, and said very nicely, "only 3.5 seconds, good job" and she patted me on the shoulder like an obedient dog. Very kind but I know that she counted slowly.

Well, if I'm going to get beaten at least have it be by the best. And by best, I mean my daughter. She's the best.

Top Ten Swimming Blogs

2009-09-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

My sailing blog is the only 4-time entry on Tillerman's World-Famous Top Ten Sailing Blogs list, making it every year since the list's inception. I know I have to start small with my swimming blog but I'm just not used to not being a worldwide blogging leader.

Of course, my fame has never translated to hits since I write about myself, something I am again guilty of with Crazy Swim Dad (quick: count how many times the words I, my, me, and mine are in this blog!) and I am really not that fascinating of a topic.

Luckily, there is a list to aspire to...the SwimmingWorld.TV Blog Roll. Let me quote it:

"The following are many of the top swimming blogs in the world"

The key word there is "many". That implies (or at least I infer) that there is room on this list for Crazy Swim Dad. Once CK's season starts up again (next Tuesday), my opinions on her times and the insane world of age group swim meets are going to light up the wire. The editor of the SwimmingWorld.TV Blog Roll won't be able to help but take notice and include me! Then victory will be mine.

But first a wager with my dear reader. Which will come first, swimming 20 laps without a stop at the wall to trade in for a new lung or inclusion on the Mighty SwimmingWorld.TV Blog Roll?

Chewing bubblegum in the pool

2009-09-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read Reach for the Wall, you should. Paul Tenorio is doing what I'm doing, only better. You see, he's younger, actually knew how to swim when he started, and is writing a column for a division of the Washington Post. But, there are similarities. We both kick slowly.

I was told that about a week ago by the Master's Coach. Since then, I've really concentrated on kicking correctly and have noticed a huge difference. Not in my speed, but in my stroke. I don't seem capable of remembering to do my arm strokes correctly, kick properly, and breathe all at once. One of the three has to give and not breathing isn't an option currently.

So, I have to isolate I think. Do a few laps with a pull buoy to work on my stroke. Do a few laps with a kickboard to work on my kick. And then finish up with the whole shebang for a while. I think I'm getting fit enough to be able to do this (I did a bonus 4 laps this morning to put me at 28 which equals 700 yards for the math-challenged amongst us).

So next week, I will do 2-4 laps of pull buoy, 2-4 laps of kickboard, and 20-28 laps of whole shebang. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to chew bubblegum and swim at the same time with practice.

My competition

2009-09-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

I know that if I ever actually learn to swim properly, I'm going to join a Master's Team and go to meets. I can only have a goal of getting fit for so long before I need something more. I will probably never catch up to CK as she has such a headstart on me and is going to improve much faster. So I have to race other middle-aged men. Someday.

Right now, my competition is at the pool at 7A every morning. They're the same people most every day. I have to keep reminding myself that since they're actively swimming (and not stopping at the wall every couple of minutes) they don't really have time to watch me swim. So I can stealthily steal all of their secrets. So here's who I see every morning.

The Old Lady in Red: this lady always picks the lane next to me, usually about 10 minutes after I get there. She always stops at the hot tub first, sits there for a few minutes then walks up to the pool, hops in and goes without any delay. Then she just goes and goes, never stopping. I pass her, have to stop at the wall to re-inflate a lung, watch her do her turn, pass her again, and repeat the process until I'm half dead. I'm not even sure she's ever noticed that I'm there flailing around. She might be a robot.

The Masters Coach: this guy is also a machine. He swims most days after the Masters practice from 6A-7A. He'll have to make small talk and give advice to a bunch of the swimmers but when he goes, he goes. The dude is STRONG, when he's swimming it's fast and effortless with just really good form. Every once in a while he pulls out these crazy plexiglass paddles that tell him if his stroke isn't perfect. Those scare me. Oddly enough, he wears a red speedo just like the lady above. But I've heard him talk; definitely human.

The Chatty Guy: actually, he's chatty with everyone but me. Probably because I'm a newbie but maybe he's seen me swim and can't stifle the laughter. Actually, I shared a lane with him once...I'm faster but then again I have to stop at the frickin' wall all the time. I've also seen him drive into the parking lot; I feel safer knowing he's in the pool while I drive to work.

The Young Chick in a Bikini: she hops in the pool and then shoots across the pool at absolute full speed, kicking up water and not breathing once. On her second lap, I can see why she doesn't breathe, she pops her head up like she's doing breaststroke completely slowing her down. Then by the third lap, I see what's going on with the frantic strokes; she dinosaur arms her stroke, not reaching very far at all. I'd also like to point out that I'm not staring at the young chick in a bikini, she just happens to get there when I'm about done so as I catch my breath in the pool, I can see her swim.

The Super-Swimmer: this lady very quietly swims perfectly. She's usually two lanes down from me and it's just transfixing to watch. Like the Master's Coach, it's effortless and fast. Her flipturns are picture-perfect and she seemingly can go forever at a very consistent speed. Her workout is actually fairly short but I have absolutely no doubt that there are a lot of laps in that short amount of time. She's inspirational. Seriously.

There are a couple of other swimmers but they don't show up every day. I won't even get into the 6A to 7A crowd; if I get there too early, I hide out in the lobby until they're done. That's just flat out intimidating. I'm hoping to not get names for these people, I'll just refine the nicknames as I go. Until then, I wonder what they call me?

Ratcheting up

2009-08-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

The pool was empty this morning thanks to the abrupt end of our heatwave. As I walked down to the club, the masters coach walked by and said, "it's all yours" and sure enough it was empty. Understandably, too, the freakin' place was cold, wet and foggy. If it had been a bit darker, it would have been spooky too. I'm wondering how I'm going to handle winter.

Today was good though. I minimized my breaks and swam hard through the whole session, really concentrating on kicking. I also tinkered more with my breathing and am getting comfortable with my technique. I think that's going to be key to the non-stop issue, plus I probably need to throttle back a bit on my pace but I'm not sure how to do that. Whatever, I'll get there, I can tell.

Right now I'm like that annoying guy on the freeway, who speeds up, passes you on the right, gets caught in traffic, has to slow down, switches two lanes to end up behind you again, speeds up, passes on the right, gets caught in traffic and never actually gets anywhere despite all of the machinations. Since I don't know how to pace myself, I'm wearing myself out. But, I'm still learning.

I increased my laps to 24 and am going to keep at that for this week before considering increasing it again. My favorite lap used to be #15 because I was almost done...when I got there today, I thought, "crap, NINE more?!?"

On the plus side, I did a fast 50 in the middle (I think laps 13 and 14) and did it in 49 seconds, 4 seconds off my previous time. When I can get that down to 40, I'm going to challenge CK to a race mano a nina. I'm scared what her time will be at that point but at least I'll have my cheater suit to help out.

I fell short

2009-08-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to go 20 laps without stopping this morning. I only got through 14. At that point, I had to take a few moments to catch my breath. How the heck do people do it?

This old lady in the lane next to me was like the freakin' Energizer Bunny, she just kept going and going. Sure she swam slowly, but I'm trying to swim slowly. Is it her, ahem, extra buoyancy? There is no way she's actually in better shape than I am; is she just in better swimming shape? Is that a "thing", swimming shape?

Or is it my form? Am I wasting a bunch of energy doing stupid things that I don't even understand? Remember, I've never had a swimming lesson in my life...I'm just trying to swim the way my 8 year old does. A guy in the locker room mentioned that it gets easier as you do it better. I think I need to do it better.

But, here's the Catch-22, I'm not wasting money on a swim lesson until I can actually swim for that long without killing myself. Why pay for an hour if I can only swim for 20 minutes. How the heck do people do this?

Anyway, I think you need to swim more to get in better swim shape so I gave myself 4 penalty laps at the end just to teach myself a lesson. On to next week.

This is not boring

2009-08-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

At least to me, this isn't boring but CK's swim season starts up again the week after next. I already have the meet sheets for her first two meets (the last ones before she turns 9 and I have a whole host of other things to track) and I'm plotting out her events.

She is doing 2 each of 25 free, 25 back, and 25 breast. She is also doing each 50 twice. And the 100 free twice. The two events that didn't work out from these meets are the 25 fly and 100 IM, both of which she is already 1st on her team's historical top times. That's nice.

If I had to guess, she'll end up on the top 5 in all 4 25 yard events, 50 back, 50 fly, 100 free and 100 IM. Not sure about 50 free. I'm also anticipating PRTs in 25 free and 25 back in addition to her already-earned 25 fly. Expect all sorts of excitement and exclamation points on this blog if and when any of these things happen.

Alright this is boring

2009-08-27T10:39:00.001-07:00

All I'm doing is swimming. And all I can really say is that it's getting easier, I'm on track for my goal, and it's time to set a new one.

This morning, I swam my laps with minimal stoppage and completed it in half the time I did when I started 2.5 weeks ago. I really think I can do 20 laps non-stop tomorrow. Heck, old ladies do it, and I'm a strapping middle aged not-quite-athlete. So, I'm doing it tomorrow even if it kills me. And it probably will.

Yesterday morning, I talked to the Masters coach at the pool. He encouraged me to join them but completely understood that I really need to get my conditioning up first. What gives me confidence that he's good is that he didn't offer any advice until I'd already brought up my kick; he then mentioned that he watched me a bit and noticed that I'm bending my knees WAY TOO MUCH. He even accused me of being a runner since that's what usually causes it. But, alas, it's just that I'm a crappy swimmer.

Hair of the Dog

2009-08-25T11:12:00.001-07:00

I ended up skipping my swim last night for two reasons. I still ached like crazy and there are people at the pool in the evening. I just can't imagine strutting out of the locker room in my suit with kids and families looking on. In the morning, it's still kind of dark and the old guys in speedos are far worse than I am. Yeah, I didn't swim because I'm embarrassed. Ouch, I just admitted that.

But I went this morning and I'm kicking myself for not going yesterday morning. Sheesh, I did my normal laps, felt completely out of breath but surprisingly strong. And, I'm a lot less sore after the swim than I was before. Something about lactic acid that I don't completely believe but is probably true anyway.

But here's what I realized. I'm strong enough to swim a LOT more laps, I just don't have the cardiovascular endurance. But I have to do more laps to be able to swim more laps. I feel like I'm at a bit of a crossroads or plateau even. So, I'm going to continue towards my goal of swimming 20 laps without stopping. But I'm also going to do another 10 laps afterwards of just kickboard. It will help my kick and give me an extra cardio workout.

Maybe, just maybe, I can break through this little "out of breath middle aged guy" problem.

So much pain, no gain

2009-08-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

I skipped my swim this morning. I woke up on time, so that's not it. I had my bag packed and ready to go, so that's not it. I am excited about this week, so that's not it. So, why didn't I swim this morning? Because I went sailing yesterday.

Man, am I sore after yesterday's beating. It was a typical SF Bay afternoon (25+ knots out of the WSW); the difference was we were on an amped up race boat that wanted to round up at any opportunity. Basically, I was sitting on a vertical surface (I have a bruise in the shape of the cleat that I was sitting on) wrestling with the boat for hours.

I've taken aspirin, slept in 45 minutes extra, and am resting all day at my comfortable desk and I'll get back in the water tonight. The upside is that I won't miss a day of swimming, the downside is that people will see me in my suit.

Kicking it Old Skool

2009-08-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

As my tweet suggested, I successfully completed all of my laps freestyle. Yep, no kickboard/bacsktroke laps for the sole purpose of getting to breathe for 50 yards. I did take breaks at the wall but kept those short. That was my goal for this week...getting fit enough to swim freestyle the whole time. And to get there I had to figure out my breathing patterns which I have now.

That fitness level was going to come just from doing it. But I needed more. I had to start doing it better too if I want to achieve next week's goal. So I'm starting to kick more and believe me it hurts. I doubt I'm doing it *right* but I am doing it more. I can feel the difference when I kick....it's just faster and I'm higher in the water. Ooh boy, does it burn though; teaches me a lesson for going through life with these dinky thigh muscles.

So, if I can kick better, continue to breathe properly, and continue to get fitter, can I do all 500 yards without a break by next Friday? Well, I need to learn how to turn at the wall...that exchange reminds me of trying to shake hands with a leftie...I eventually get it right but there's a lot of confusion in the process. I'll have CK show me some techniques.

Speaking of her, the results from last weekend were finally posted and her PRT is official now. I guess that means that she is Pacific Recognized!

Now these are swim trunks

2009-08-20T13:25:00.000-07:00

I wore my cheater suit today and cannot tell you how uncomfortable I was all the way to the pool. I am a modest person and this is not a modest swimsuit....since it's a family blog I will not tell you my thoughts as I took my sweatpants off or ever ever post a picture of me in this thing. Let it suffice that I jumped into the pool quickly and immediately thanked the Costanza effect. It made the suit a bit more comfortable.

Now, here's the thing. When I told CK that I got my new suit, she said, "I hate cheater suits." She's 8, she doesn't really know what a cheater suit is, but still there is the fact that this swimsuit was designed to make swimmers faster and/or more efficient. And today I was faster and was able to swim longer and had a better kick and didn't get out of breath as fast. But I'd been trending that way anyway and I honestly believe that any streamlined jammer style suit would have helped me with the drag I'd been self-inducing. But still, I don't feel right about this suit. But, since I laid down $25 for it, I'm wearing it.

Today's workout was great. I did my 20 laps, stopping very briefly at the wall compared to the last few days. I don't think I'm ready for my non-stop 20 laps but I think I can do it soon. I only took off one 50 for breath-relief and will certainly do all 20 laps in freestyle tomorrow. Maybe another week until my non-stop goal?

To get there, I need a better kick. I can feel the difference when I really put effort into the kick....my head comes out of the water better and my whole upper body sits higher. And it's faster. But my spindly legs just aren't doing it for me. I think I'll do my weekend non-swim exercise as a treadmill or elliptical to get some extra cardio and leg exercise. CK gave me an impromptu lesson after dinner last night and I just couldn't get my legs to do what she told me. Hey, it's only 2 weeks into this venture, I guess.

To summarize: cheater suit makes me feel like an exhibitionist, it might have helped me swim better and I need to kick. And next week my first goal will be met.

It's getting better all the time

2009-08-19T11:49:00.001-07:00

The title of this post is a Beatles song but it applies nicely. This morning was by no means easy but I'm swimming better. Still wearing myself out but doing it more efficiently. I only had to take 4 laps off for breathing catch-up (kickboard and backstroke) and was able to make 16 of them in freestyle with minimal stops at the wall. I figure when I can do 20 laps without stopping, it's time to start figuring out real workouts. Until then, I just pretend to adjust my goggles while stopping at the wall.

In other exciting news, I got my super suit today. Turns out that Finis is actually in Livermore, about 1/4 of a mile from where I work. After ordering it, I called them to see if I could just come over and pick it up but unfortunately it had already shipped. No worries though because it arrived at my desk within 24 hours of ordering it. This is officially the first time I've ever bought a swimsuit that comes with instructions. I had better be faster.

Really good workout this morning

2009-08-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

I only did the 20 laps but did the whole thing at a very reasonable pace. For me, that is, a very reasonable pace for me. For the first 10 laps, I did 50s without stopping halfway through but I still could only do 25s for the second half. I didn't feel like dying once out there. That, my faithful reader, is progress.

I got there after the swim team had cleared the deck but still pretty early; getting up at the crack of dawn is getting easier. I even had time to make coffee for my wife and houseguests before leaving. I feel accomplished. Why I bring up the early part is that there is a woman who swims like the wind who is always there from 7 to 7:30. I want to be like her. Her stroke is perfect, she does flipturns (something I will not attempt without multiple lifeguards on duty) and *she never stops swimming*. I totally want to be like that. I guess it's another goal.

In other important news, I have moved into the "serious swimmer" segment of my training. I will no longer wear surfer shorts after this week (true story: my shorts come with a built-in bottle opener). I have purchased jammers, you know those knee length tight trunks that are designed for the less than modest set.

RobAquatics posted on twitter about a blowout sale on technical suits and it turns out that the technical jammers are only $25...basically the price of regular old everyday jammers at Big 5. If these suits are supposed to help keep you buoyant and compress your muscles and make you faster, why wouldn't I train in them until I actually have the lung power to swim long enough to learn to keep my hips up on my own. Take advantage of FINA's flip-flopping ways on these suits. So, yeah, I will look like a poser but it's dark when I swim, nobody should know.

And, I need every bit of help I can get to swim as fast as my 8 year old (did I mention she got a PRT last weekend?).

A tale of two weekends

2009-08-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

CK had a great weekend swimming; I took the weekend off.

CK swam six events over the three days and continued her time-dropping ways, cutting 8 seconds in the 100 free (expected), 4 seconds in the 100 IM (not expected), about .7 to .8 seconds in both the 25 free and 25 fly (good surprise). 25 back and breast were within .2 seconds of her personal bests.

This was a weird meet since it also included a lot of summer league swimmers and her team didn't actually attend. She just wanted another shot to drop her times before taking 2 weeks off from swimming and 6 weeks from meets. Mission accomplished, including a PRT in the 25 fly. That is cool.

Me? Well, I have decided to swim on weekday mornings only, taking the weekend off. When I got back to the pool this morning, I felt a lot stronger but a lot worse off aerobically than I was on Friday. I think my muscles need the rest but I can't afford to lose what little aerobic capacity I have; maybe I'll need to do at least one day on a treadmill or something.

Even with that setback, I pushed myself a bit more this morning, doing 4 laps at full speed (including the 53 second 50) and stretching out to 24 total laps. 600 yards!!!

I tried to go early so I could get to an earlier than usual meeting at work but found out that there is a master's team that practices from 6 to 7. I was informed they'd make room so I'd have a lane but pride gets in the way. If I had to share a lane, I'd get run down; if I get my own lane, it would be plain embarrassing. Better to lurk in the lobby until 7:05 when everyone is out of the pool and hope they don't notice me flailing on their way out of the locker room.

The good news is that if I ever get fit enough to swim more laps, I might look into the team as a way to have a better, more structured workout. Until then, it's all about trying to keep up with an 8 year old who can now swim a 1:20 100 free. I have a long way to go.

Eating & drinking

2009-08-14T10:18:00.001-07:00

I've been doing early morning swims (well, early for me); I get to the pool at around 7:15. That's AM, morning time. I realized a few days ago that I should probably wait for my morning cup of coffee until after the swim; no sense in artificially pumping up the heart rate before I did it through exercise (I am over 40 you know).

Then this morning, I eavesdropped on a guy who is apparently a master's coach talking to another swimmer about breakfast. He was basically pleading with her to at least have a scrambled egg before coming up to the pool. And it makes sense. I've read that you burn something like 600 calories an hour. What's your body going to burn if you haven't eaten in 12 hours?

So, my new regimen will be to eat some protein-laden super-food on the way to the pool...time for some research. Otherwise, I'll eat all of the kids' Balance Bars.

I'm NOT joining the swim team

2009-08-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

Professional Blog Commenter Oh Docker asked me about CK's little brother NK's reaction to all of this swimming stuff (you know: meets, practice, obsessed Dad, time trials). He's turning 4 next month and of the age where he and all of his friends are just learning to swim. The problem is, he thinks every time we go near a pool, it's some conspiracy to get him to join the swim team.

The conversations go like this:

Me: we're going up to the pool today
NK: I am *NOT* joining the swim team

Me: your swim lesson is at 4 today
NK: I am *NOT* joining the swim team

Me: I heard you put your whole face in the water today
NK: I am *NOT* joining the swim team

Me: Dude, you're really tall and have freakishly long arms, perfect to be an Olympic Swimmer
NK: I am *NOT* joining the swim team

Yeah, so he's apparently *NOT* joining the swim team, Oh Docker.

Not so big meet this weekend

2009-08-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

August is CK's off-season so technically she should not be swimming any meets this month. But after coming within .3 seconds of a PRT in her 25 back at the El Cerrito meet, she really wanted another crack at it.

Her friend from school (who coincidentally got a PRT in the 50M breastroke that same weekend) always goes to the Aquabears meet and says it's a nice, relaxed meet. She thought it would be fun to do so we signed up. After clearing it with her coach, he gave some workouts for her to do (those are the ones I've been directing) and we made the plans.

The thing is, her times go by a certain pattern. After exceptional meets like the last one (personal bests in every event), she tends to level off for a month or two, plateau if you will. That's fine because she has 3 more months of being 8 to get those PRTs and she can go to a meet without putting any pressure at all on herself; if she drops time on any event, it's a bonus.

What is good is that there are going to be some other very fast kids at the pool and she responds well to fast swimmers. When she knows there's someone in the lane next to her that's fast, she swims faster. Thankfully, I do a lot of research before meets and know who could possibly be there. If I tell her there's an uber-swimmer at the meet (like, say from the Santa Clara Swim Club which was there last year), she puts a little extra kick into her stroke.

I don't know, I put it at 50/50 whether she can drop time in any of her 5 events this weekend. I'll update the blog via twitter with her times through the weekend.

Swimming Laps for $200, Alex

2009-08-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

Alex: The answer is "Everyone in the pool."

{cue Jeopardy music here}

CSD Question: Who can swim further and faster than me?

Yep, I swam another 16 laps this morning...started panicking about getting to work on time so I cut it short. Good thing, too, I almost had to leave one lung, both arms, and a ton of pride in the pool; no way I could have brought those with me if I'd kept up the swimming.

Damn, I'm scheduled for another go tomorrow morning...will this never end?

The Morning Swim

2009-08-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

I did it. I got up early....errr, strike that, I got up late but decided that I didn't mind being late for work for an event as momentous as this one...and went to the pool for a Morning Swim. See the picture above...I live in the hills in the SF Bay Area, we get fog. And it was cold.

But, luckily, the water was warm so I got right down to the business of my newest goal; 20 laps non-stop (remember, short course 25 yard pool; 20 laps = 500 yard). I hopped in the water, did 50 yards of freestyle, then 50 yards of backstroke kick, then 50 yards of freestyle and then 50 yards of backstroke swim and alternated from there until I'd done 16 laps. I then did a full speed 50 yards of freestlye, then warmed down with a leisurely 50 yards of freestyle kick with a board. Yep, I was making it up as I went along.

The long and short of it is that I'm on track; I am building up stamina, barely swallowed any water, and think that the morning schedule will work if I can get up a bit earlier. Plus I get to hang out with the old guys at the club to start my day.

Practicing practice

2009-08-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

To avoid repetition, I'll just say it now, "CK swam further and faster than I did". I'll keep that in my clipboard and paste it into every post. Believe me, I'll trumpet the day that's not true, maybe even start a new blog.

But Sunday was supposed to be an "off-day" for me. I had to go to the pool for CK's (and 2 friends') workout but I wasn't planning on swimming. Sure, I watched the 8, 9, and 12 year old closely to see their techniques but that was it for me. After their workout, we spent a couple of hours up at the club enjoying the beautiful weather, having lunch and looking for the mysterious junked car in the ravine.

But then I spotted my opening: a lane open, all kids busy, and nothing for me to do. I was going to practice swimming (not swim laps but practice for swimming laps, believe me, I can abstract this further, don't dare me). So, I set off to see if my breathing was getting better from all the tips I've been picking up. Sure enough, I was able to do 50 yards straight without swallowing water even though it was at an "easy" pace. That's progress.

I did another couple of laps to see how alternating freestyle and backstroke would allow me to maintain my lungs and that, too, seemed like a good idea. At this point, I had a question. Once you breathe in, do you hold the breath, then breathe out right before breathing again or do you let it out in measured doses the whole way? The 8 year old (CK) says she breathes out the whole time and then takes a breath. The 12 year old prefers to hold her breath then exhale completely right before taking a breath. I tried both ways and think that CK's method works better for me for now. I am open to suggestions right here on the blog.

So, no real yardage to report, but I did 250 yards in preparation for tomorrow's attempt at 500 (umm, yeah, the kids all did 1700). The plan is to not experiment but try to keep a consistent breathing technique the whole time. And not breathe water.