Category: Swim

Open Water Swimming!

Three reasons tonight why I love my wife –

1. Bathtime is Daddy time (provided he’s not working late). She thinks I do this as a favor to her. I think she lets me do it as a favor to me.
2. The comment a couple of months ago about “Hey, you don’t look completely ridiculous in those (bike clothes)” after I’d dropped the first fifteen-ish pounds.
3. ‘Cause even though my mother is arriving for a week tomorrow (and is apparently trying to eat gluten free!), she says “Sure, why don’t you go swimming tonight” and means it when I mention it after the boys are in bed.

Not pausing to ask twice, I threw the wetsuit in the car and boogied on down to the Mystic Y. Parked at Williams Beach, stripped down to the compression shorts, pulled on the wetsuit, walked past the sullen teens sneaking cigarettes on the beach towels while trying to figure out if anyone will mind if they start making out on the beach before dark, and waded out into the water.

Wetsuits rock. This being my first swim in the wetsuit, I didn’t know what to expect. Well, I did, kind of – I’ve been in over the top of my neoprene waders enough in my fishing days to recognize the slow, cold, creeping wet as I waded out to waist deep water. But once I took the plunge and started swimming, things were much better. The suit was really nice – kept me toasty, and had exactly enough flotation to ease my fears of drowning. I could concentrate on figuring out how to navigate and breathe without remembering not to sink all at the same time.

I swam for about 20 minutes. Not sure how far, my guess is 500 yards or so. There’s a row of pilings in the river about 20 yards off the beach, about 25 yards or so apart. I swam the length of the row four times, then out to a collapsing structure twice, and back to the beach.

After last week’s tri, durteemartini mentioned “You have to go all arms on the swim so you can save your legs”. I think she’s completely right, especially in a wetsuit. I was getting next to no results out of my kicks, but the pulls felt really good.

Back to the car – for tonight, call it the “Transitionmobile” – out of the wetsuit, pull on shorts over the other shorts and a shirt, pull on the sneaks (no socks!) and hit the road. The idea was to do about 20 minutes total, since the wife was thinking about heading to the grocery when I got back, and it was quarter to nine as I was getting out of the water.

Head south towards Mason’s Island – what a spectacular evening for a run! The temperature was perfect, the humidity was perfect, there was a total lack of annoying insects, and the first fireflies I’ve seen all season. As I crossed the bridge to the island, a guy and gal were fishing, and had actually hooked a fish! Good on them. Turning south to run along the east side of the island, I looked out past Dodge’s island, out towards the mouth of Fisher’s Island sound and the open Atlantic.

The moon was large and red coming out of the summer haze on the horizon. The sun had set, but it was still very much twilight, so the effect was almost one of a second sunrise. I almost came to a complete stop as I tried to take in the evening – the green of the land, the indigo of the sky, the muted blue-green of the sound, and the moonrise.

Wow.

Glance down at my watch, and I’m approaching the 10 minute mark. Almost time to turn around, ‘cept not quite. The legs feel good, so I continue “out” for another minute, and turn around at about 11:15, and pick up the pace on the way back.

FLYING.

Or at least feeling that way. Slow down to chat with the folks fishing – they lost the fish, but are using freshwater trout rigs with like four pound test line. Poor them. Pick up the pace again.

For some reason, I remembered there being a hill on the approach back to the Y, but I haven’t run on Mason’s island for a long while. There’s not a hill, maybe a slight rise, and before I know it, I’m back at the Y. 21 minutes round trip. So I did cut a minute off of the trip back, which is all good.

Got home, cleaned the bathroom, and rinsed out the wetsuit. Chocolate milk and a couple glasses of water – pshew, I’m ready to sleep. Night y’all.

Well…

I am a triathete officially now. Results will be here, I assume. Or maybe here

I’m not sure if I’m pleased or not – mostly because I don’t have the results with me, only breathless looks at the clock as I went through the transition area. I think my times were: ~11 minutes for the swim, ~40 minutes for the bike, and ~25 minutes for the run, for a total of about 1:15, give or take 5 minutes. The swim, I know, took forever. The whole thing’s still kind of a blur, so the times may be off by up to 10 minutes either way.
Continue reading Well…

Jitters

So I’m doing a Tri tomorrow. Not quite sure why, but I’m all worked up about it. Actually, I do know why I’m all worked up about it – the new junior engineer in the office is doing the race, too. She’s great – smart, attractive, picks up new stuff quick, etc, so on and so forth. And she’s 10 years younger than I am, which means that I’m getting stomped.

Not that I wouldn’t get stomped anyway; it’s just that this time I’m getting stomped by someone I know.

I don’t think it’d bug me as much if we’d run together before, but until lunch on Monday neither of us knew the other were into running, etc. And schedules being what they are – Monday she didn’t have shoes, Tuesday I had T-Ball, today was a wreck – it’s an unknown. So tomorrow’s the first time we’ll get to judge pace, etc, for each other, and I don’t want to seem rude. But I’m kind of nervous about the whole Tri thing anyway…

AND to top everything else off –

Congratulations! You have been accepted into the ING New York City Marathon 2005! We are so glad to have you joining us along with athletes from all 50 states and more than 100 countries. Sunday, November 6, is less than five months away, and all of us are working hard to ensure that your race experience is the best ever. Coming off an incredible event in 2004, this is a challenge. But we love challenges, and you can expect a number of enhancements this fall, such as a smoother start for the fastest runners and dozens of great live bands along the course. We’ll keep you posted between now and then, but in the meantime bookmark http://www.ingnycmarathon.org, our official Web site, and visit it often for the latest news.

Crap.

Now this isn’t just an exercise in theory.

Back to the question at hand, though: Item the first – any cyclist knows that the absolute last thing that you want to do the day before a huge ride is major work on the bike. So what do I do tonight?
1) Swap wheelsets – this is kind of justified, I was checking spokes, and the winter set had one spoke where the nipple wasn’t even finger tight.
2) New brake pads. Again, somewhat justified – the old pads were original from 2001, and were pretty well glazed. Not squealing, but I didn’t feel a whole lot of grab on Sunday’s ride.
3) New cassette – finally threw on the 12-23 SRAM I’ve been staring at all spring.
4) New chain.
Yeah. But being smart got me fat. Jeff pointed that out a couple of days ago. I think that’s my new motto.

Let’s see – blew off Monday as a rest day after Sunday’s epic. Ran 4-ish Tuesday noon-ish after spending the morning sitting the baby (Hey Jon – remember, “the sitter’s not supposed to sit upon the baby”) while Missy and Jake checked out Kindergarden. Jake was kind of freaked out about the whole deal, but there’s a bunch of kids from his pre-school in his class. Half day, afternoon – jeeze, I wish I had his schedule. Then actually got to play at the t-ball practice. The dad-kid ratio was about 2/3, and there were only about 5 kids at the practice. So we let them actually try to hit, and tried to keep the other kids entertained by playing catch. Good times, except I have no gauge on how hard I throw any more.

OK, back to tossing and turning.

Double your pleasure

Ran this afternoon – 35 minutes, I’m guessing somewhat over 4 miles. I did the circuit of the Newport Navy base, with a couple of side roads. The take-away is that what used to be challenging hills aren’t any more. This stuff works. Showered before heading back to work, and hit the old balance scale in the locker room – 169. Which isn’t bad, considering I haven’t been watching what I’ve been eating at all for about a month, and have been really, really stressed out about work. Now, all I need to do is drop the work stress, and I should be able to shed pounds.

Silly me had used the socks in my gym bag on Monday to ride. But, I knew I was not going far, so I went ahead and ran without socks. No blisters. I think a lot of that has to do with the work I’ve done on form – again, I haven’t tried any of them fancy-dan schemes, just concentrated on light foot strikes and not driving my heels. But it was nice to know that it’s working. I’m also noticing that my shoes aren’t wearing as fast as they used to. AND the wear pattern’s all under the ball of the foot, instead of the massive wear I used to get on the outside of each heel. Hmmmm….

I headed over to the Y to swim after a thrilling game of “Ants in your Pants” with Jake, baths, and story time (We’re doing “A Light in the Attic” – one of the ones tonight was about a pirate named Claude; I need to remember to send it to a co-worker of the same name). Did 1500m – 250 w/u breast, 2X500m freestyle sets, and 250 c/d breast. The swim didn’t feel great, but it didn’t feel bad considering I don’t think I’ve swam in about a month.

I think I’m skipping the Mystic River Valley Tri this weekend – no wetsuit, and I think the half mile swim might kill me after laying off the nautical stuff lately. But, I’m giving serious consideration to running the Terramuggus Tri series in Marlborough. I’ve got buy-in from the wife, and it doesn’t seem like a killer event – 400 yd lake swim, 12 mile bike, and a 5K run. It’s 6:30 on Thursdays, which means I need to leave work those days at 4 PM sharp, but it’s doable.

Marathon training starts in about two weeks for the Mystic Places Marathon. The NYRR plan builds weekend mileage really, really quickly, but at this point, I’m really pretty confident that I can do this. The Bluff Point race felt GOOD; my guess is that I could knock out a half at this point without too much pain afterwards. I entered the lottery for New York, but at this point, I’m focusing on Niantic, am going to run Niantic, and if my legs don’t fall off, may give New York a try two weeks later. Dumb? Yes, but being smart got me fat.

Which is why the short tri on Thursdays really kind of appeals to me – works out the competition jones, works out the multi-sport jones, but allows me to really focus on marathon which remains my focus for this year. Well, that and shedding another 20 lbs.

As promised –

Here’s the sunset…

Made it in for a swim on Friday; Saturday and today were busy and gnasty, so I blew it off. Not a huge week, but again, I’m in maintinence stage for the near future. Swim was great – only had time for 1000 yards, but it was much like Thursday’s night run – I was able to keep accelerating without heading into the anaerobic zone.

Little Desparate Housewives tonite, little reading H2G2, and an early night to get a jump on the week.

Splash

Hit the pool this morning! Rock on for actually getting out of bed when the alarm strikes.

1700 yards – 200 warmup, 1000 crawl, 250 bilateral breathing, 50 backstroke, 100 crawl, 100 cooldown. No busted heels.

Yesterday’s ride still has me pumped. Shaving time off of Friday’s time was a boost to the ego, and there were a couple of times when the bike was really singing. Watching cycling on TV has kind of changed my riding style. I used to ride much like I drove; coasting into corners and avoiding use of the brakes as much as possible. Now (traffic permitting), I’m riding a lot more aggressively. If I can see that the corner’s clear, I’ll accelerate into the corner, break as I enter the turn, and then hammer as I come out. All the while with Bob Roll in my head saying “What Billy needs to do now is to ride that thing like he’s stole it to see if he can hold off the sprinter’s trains…”

A further two observations from yesterday’s ride:
– I need to raise my seat about a half inch. Why? ‘Cause there’s a half inch of cushion missing off my rump.
– Cycling does use a totally different set of leg muscles than running.

I’m re-evaluating my interm training plan from now until I kick off serious marathon training, and thinking that I’m probably better off just concentrating on getting in a good 40-60 minutes in every weekday, a long ride/run on Saturday, and rest and yard work on Sunday. My goal at this point still needs to be losing the remaining 15-20 lbs that I need to shed to get into true “fighting” weight, with the secondary goal of making fitness as crucial a part of my personal life as checking e-mail. So expect a lot more riding in the near term – why? ‘Cause it makes me happy…

Good News!

I’ve learned to walk naked on stilts! – Homer Simpson

The good news is only sort of …

I hit the pool this afternoon. The Y pool, mostly out of guilt of using the base pool last week. 1700 yards, mostly good. I wasn’t quite into it, but I was making do. The pool was kind of crowded, but I figure that’s just good practice if I ever do actually do a race…

Anyhow, things were going well until I hurt myself.

Yep, I hurt myself swimming.

Really.

Dig this – I was doing a flip turn, all good and proper – tucked my head into my chest, pulled my legs up and over, and BANG! clocked my ankle on the edge of the pool. Then, I clocked my head on the bottom. Ouch.

Popped up out of the water with my ankle throbbing. Wiggled it for a while, and decided that I was done swimming for the day. Sat on the edge of the pool ’til I thought I could put weight on it without falling, and then limped to the locker room. I think it’s going to be all right for running tomorrow, but if it hadn’t been raining all day, I’d shift cycling/running days to keep the weight off.

Good Friday

Great Friday, actually, after my earlier rant…

I’m doing taxes this week, so will not be commenting much. I will still be reading y’all’s stuff – it keeps me going.

Anyhoo, after griping here Friday morning, and raining on Chris’ parade, I got off my butt and decided to talke a long lunch Friday, said “Snot be darned”, and hied hither to the pool. 1700 meters, felt great.

Then, I drove over to the Copp Family Property town park, parked the car, and hopped on the bike. 14 miles @ 15 MPH average, 56 minutes. THEN I strapped on the sneakers and ran a quick three miles. OK, ran a quick first mile, then slogged through two more.

I dunno, I guess spring was in the air…

The swim was great. I have no idea what my swimming pace is. As far as how have I been working on form – I’ve been using two guiding principles: First, if you look at critters that swim, usually they do it without making much of a rucus at the air-water interface. I suppose there’s some stealth involved, but my biggest guess is that splashing is pretty darn inefficient. Some energy that could go to pushing a body through water must go to making sound and displacing water vigorously enough to break surface tension and arc the water through the air. The second is that the motion needs to feel, well, fluid. I’ve scanned a couple books on swimming, and those two principles seem to bear out.

The bike ride: 15 MPH – Honestly, I’m a little disappointed. I thought I could push out at least a 16 MPH ride. BUT, I was holding back a bit since I wanted to at least run a little bit, and I intentionally hit a couple of pretty long climbs. For a first real ride of the season, I’m not entirely upset.

The run was much better than I’d expected after swimming and cycling. Other than your core, the three sports do work drastically different muscle groups. First mile was in the 7:30 range, second in the 8:30, and last in the 9:30 range, so I was clearly fading fast.

Saturday and Sunday were both yard work and family days. I’d been late at the office a couple of nights last week, so rather than carving time for working out, the boys and I spent a bunch of time in the yard, on the swingset, laying down lime and fertilizer, and clearing brush.

Another close to great day!

Training continues to improve. The head cold is kind of hanging around and making me feel generally sluggish, but not so bad that it kills me.

Today I used the base pool for the first time – Man, was it cadillac! Kind of soft, squishy walls, crystal clear water, a degree or two warmer than the Y, beautiful building with lots and lots of natural light through opaque glass bricks, and possibly the best showers I’ve ever run into in a gym. Nice, clean, warm locker room, too, though it had wet/dry carpet, which always kind of creeps me out disease-wise.

The actual swim was good, too – 2000 yards (goal was 2200, but I’ve come to realize that the alltriathlon.com projected workload is a bit more than I can tote; since I’m not training for an event, I’m shooting for 80-90% of the scheduled workouts). Breakdown as follows:

250 yds Breast – Warmup
500 yds – Moderately hard
100 yds Breast – recovery
1,000 yds – easy, but the goal was the distance – all but one turn was a good flip; the other was a hand on wall turn
100 yds – hard, practicing breathing on both sides – kind of screwed me up setting up for turns, but I felt like I was really cutting through the water; nice strong strokes
50 yds Breast – cooldown

And I was shot at the end.

No major insights today, though I have finally learned how to swim at a moderate pace instead of having to thrash to keep my head above water. I was much quicker to start breathing every stroke on the left instead of every other stroke, and I think that helped me avoid oxygen debt. But I’m sure I looked like a wuss.

Tomorrow – An hour on the bike! I am so completely pumped I cannot express it in words. I may even actually go to bed early tonight!

March Madness

or “Stop me before I fix again”.

The good news is that the new training program started off gangbusters – 2200 meters in the pool. The first 1700 were great, and I banged out the last 500 without too much whining. It did help that there were chicks swimming this afternoon, so god forbid that the slowly slimming white guy (I’m avoiding the whole “middle aged” which is the surest sign that I’m there) show any signs of weaknenss. No, instead I slowed way down and did the distance swimmer thing of nice big arm circles on the strokes.

Felt really good for not having swum in a couple of weeks. The first three sets of 10 laps were probably the finest 1500 meters I’ve ever swum – every one was big circles with the arms, full extensions through my fingers and toes, and a hard kick off the wall upside down at the end of each 25. The last set of 500, though – can they add Knox Blox mix to the water and change the viscosity? Swear on my sainted mother’s grave (she’s not dead, but bear with), the water just felt thicker.

The other good news is that my beloved iBook is on its way home. I like my Linux machine (Dell Inspiron 3700 PIII 500 MHZ, running Fedora Core 3), but I cannot get the WiFi working on either my D-Link DWL 650+ or Dell 1350 wireless PCMCIA cards, so I’m tethered.

Tonight – did some more work on the T. Rex cutout for the beanbag toss at the Boy’s birthday. Looks good. The big event, though, was the bike clean-a-thon. I degreased the crap out of everythingn that wasn’t welded on to both my Cannnondale and my old Trek. Good stuff. Took the cranks off the Cannondale for the first time since I got it, and remembered the old materials lesson about metals in long-term contact with Aluminium. Oh well – a coat of grease and it’ll be fine for another 4 years.

The Trek is a different story. I’d bought paint at the model shop to patch a couple of scratches. Then I caught Fixedgear referencing a site on home-made headset presses (which work fine, BTW, and don’t cost $100+). Dan Goldenberg (The other site) has got a bit on painting frames. Now that I’ve got the bike apart, the scratching is a little bit more widespread than I though, and I’m seriously thinking about doing it. Be a lot easier to do it now than when it’s back together…

Unless, of course, someone wants to send me a ‘cross frame… (30″ inseam, usually run about a 52-53 cm frame)