Stretching like Dara

As some of you know, I'm about as limber as an uncooked noodle. What's worse, it seems I'm getting less flexible as I get older. I knew I needed to do something before I turned into a dry rigatoni, but I just wasn't sure where to precede.

Research is showing that the kind of stretching I did as an age group swimmer (static stretching, the kind where you hold a muscle in one place without moving) is counterproductive. Static stretching before exercise has been shown to reduce your ability to perform explosive movement, which in turn inhibits swimming performance. And contrary to popular belief, it is useless for injury prevention as well.
http://stronglifts.com/5-reasons-why-you-shouldnt-do-static-stretches/

So I did a little googling. And this came up


hmm....well if Dara Torres is doing it, it must be good! Dara's resistance stretching program involves simultaneously contracting and elongating a muscle. In other words, the muscle stretches at the same time as it contracts against resistance. The workout lasts about 15 min (5 if I do arms only) and after doing it for 2 weeks I am feeling looser.

In other swimming news this week...Karen is back! After a brief hiatus from long distance workouts to concentrate on pool meets, Karen is back to join me for super long swims. She is going to compete in her first Swim Around Key West this June and wants to be ready!

To celebrate, Karen and I attempted a test set of doom. Honestly, I didn't think I had much chance of making it all the way through, but I am so tired of doing the some old long workout that I was ready to give it a try. Here's what we did:

Warmup: 1500

Test set (swim 100 easy after each set of 10):

9 x 100 on 1:20, 1 x 100 on 1:15

8 x 100 on 1:20, 2 x 100 on 1:15

7 x 100 on 1:20, 3 x 100 on 1:15

6 x 100 on 1:20, 4 x 100 on 1:15

5 x 100 on 1:20, 5 x 100 on 1:15

4 x 100 on 1:20, 6 x 100 on 1:15

3 x 100 on 1:20, 7 x 100 on 1:15

2 x 100 on 1:20, 8 x 100 on 1:15

1 x 100 on 1:20, 9 x 100 on 1:15

10 x 100 on 1:15

500 cool down

Total: 13,000

What I liked about this set was that it focused on controlled pacework. To have any chance at making it, the set had to be swum smooth, loose, but reasonably fast. If we went a little too slow, we would miss the interval, but going too fast would tire us out and cause us to miss it in the end. I also liked that the set was broken into reasonable chuncks. We started each set of 10 with confidence from having made the previous set. With new each set, we only had to make one more 100 on 1:15 than on the set before. And before we knew it we were done! We made it!

The next day, we celebrated Daisy's 35th birthday (in dog years) and Jason's 34th birthday (in human years).




Sneakers and I threw a Spanish style fiesta with tapas, sangria, and plenty of rum punch. There was salsa dancing...



a brief episode of the running of the bulls...



and when Sneakers started to feel jealous, he got to wear the birthday crown for a while.



Finally, Jason closed the evening with a traditional Flamenco fan dance. Believe it or not, he was nursing a serious hangover this morning...



Week 16:
Mon: swim 3200
Tues: swim 5000
Wed: swim 4800, run 3 mi, 40 min abs
Thurs: swim 4300
Fri: swim 13,000
Sat: rest
Sun: swim 6300, run 3 mi, 30 min abs
Total: swim 36,600, run 6 mi, 70 min abs

Beaverdam 5280 swim

Saturday was the first open water race of the year, the Beaverdam 5280 1 mi race. The water was a nippley 63 degrees. Most people wore wetsuits, but not DAMA! We were among a handful of swimmers who swam naked (aka no wetsuit) but we put up a fine showing - I was the overall winner, Derek Parr was 3rd overall male, Dawn Franklin was 2nd in the 40-44 age group, and Jason Mask was 3rd in the 30-34 age group. Well done!

Dawn picking up her award



After the 1st turn buoy I took a little unintended detour. To put things mildly, my sense of direction is not the best (I used my GPS to get to work for the 1st 6 months of my new job). After I passed the first turn, I simply couldn't remember where the next buoy was. After looking around for a few seconds, I put my head down and just started to swim. I went in the right general direction, but overshot the next buoy by quite a bit - by the time I got there the lead pack had passed me by about 200 ft. I had to work very hard the rest of the race to catch back up! After the race, the first male swimmer said that he had thought about drafting off of me to the finish but didn't quite trust my navigational skills so he went at it on his own.
Lesson learned: a few minutes studying the course before a race is time well spent if you are a navigational bonehead.






















(Yes, it is rather difficult to get lost on a rectangular course. I'm just THAT talented).

I wasn't sure I would be able to make it through my long swim the next day, but I hobbled through it. 15,000 yds is the longest practice swim I have ever done and this was the workout:

15 x 100 on 1:30 (1500)

3 x 500 descend on 7:30 (3000)

10 x 100 on 1:30 (4000)

4 x 400 on 6:00 (5600)

10 x 100 on 1:30 (6600)

4 x 300 descend on 4:30 (7800)

10 x 100 on 1:30 (8800)

4 x 200 on 3:00 (9600)

10 x 100 on 1:30 (10600)

4 x 100 descend on 1:30 (11,000)

Big Set of Doom (rest 15 sec after each swim)

25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 275 250 225 200 175 150 125 100 75 50 25 (14,600)

400 cool down (15,000)

This set was done continuously on a 1:30 pace, with no stopping between sets so it took exactly 3hr 45 min. I've been doing variations of this for my past few long swims. On good days I'll hold a 1:15 pace through the workout, but when I'm tired I'll hold a 1:18-1:20 pace (yesterday was one of those days).

I'm starting to get very bored with this set. If any of you fellow swimmers have any long swim sets that you would like to send my way, I would be very appreciative. Here are my criteria:

- I like to swim a variety of distances during the workout

- In the interest of time, the workout has to be pretty continuous (without much stopping between sets) and all freestyle to almost all freestyle. Also no kicking, sculling, etc.

Week 15:

Mon: swim 4100 yds
Tues: swim 5000
Wed: swim 4500, 40 min abs
Thurs: swim 4600
Fri: rest
Sat: swim about 2800, including race
Sun: swim 15,000 yds

Total: swim 36,000 yds, 40 min abs

Happy Easter!

I was planning to swim through this week and take next week as a recovery week, but the water gods conspired against me. I got pulled out of the pool during my long swim due to lightning (the 1st time this year, so I can't complain too much). Then my arms decided to go on strike for the rest of the weekend. So it was a good weekend for cross-training...

Here's how week 14 shaped up:
Mon: swim 3900 yds
Tues: swim 5100
Wed: swim 4100, 40 min abs
Thurs: swim 4900, run 5 mi
Fri: swim 11,700
Sat: rest
Sun: run 5 mi, 30 min abs
Total: swim 29,700 yds, run 10 mi, 70 min abs

Also, open water season starts next weekend for me, with the first race of the year! I thought I would post my tentative race schedule for this year:

4-18-09 1 mi Beaverdam lake http://www.triangleopenwater.com/5280.html
5-23-09 2.4 mi Lowcountry Splash http://www.lowcountrysplash.com/
5-30-09 NC state open water championships
6-13-09 12.5 mi Swim Around Key West http://www.fkccswimaroundkeywest.com/
7-11-09 Chris Green Lake 2 mi Cable Swim http://www.cableswim.org/
7-25-09 10 mi Kingdom Swim http://www.kingdomswim.org/
8-30-09 Harris Lake 1 mi swim http://www.triangleopenwater.com/nuclear.html
9-12-09 Big Shoulders 5K USMS national championships http://www.bigshoulders.org/
9-26-09 Smith Mountain Lake 5K swim

Feeling better

First and foremost, the pug is feeling much better! After 2 weeks on his special diet he is no longer scratching and his hair is growing back! Sneakers is adapting nicely to his new food (I think he realizes that ounce for ounce, he has the most expensive dinner in the house.) An added bonus - Sneakers no longer has crusty buildup in his wrinkles. We used to call him crusty old man (because of his face, and because he loves staring at naked people in the shower, but that's a story for another day). Now the nickname only halfway applies!



Daisydoo is also raking in the benefits of Sneaker's new lifestyle. She is getting his old, weight maintenance dog food (the one he can't eat anymore because of his allergies). Because Daisy needs higher calorie food, we have been mixing the dog food with Jason's homemade chicken stew (which to us was a culinary experiment gone bad, but to Daisy is a delicacy).

I have been feeling much better too. I am getting used to the increased yardage and am no longer so on and off at practice. My 10,000 yard long swim on Friday felt like a sprint!

First Open Water Swim of the Year

Today, Jason and I ventured out to do our first open water swim of the year. It's early in the season so we thought it might be a little cold, but it was a sunny day and we were feeling dizzy from doing so many laps in the pool. We decided to try out Beaver Dam, since we had never been there before and we have a race there in a few weeks. What's nice about the lake is that is it closed to gasoline powered boats so it is very safe for swimmers.

I told Jason that I didn't want to swim if the water was below 60 degrees because I thought it would be unsafe, since we had not yet begun to acclimate to the cold. He readily agreed. We took out our trusty ducky thermometer...

And it read a toasty 70 degrees - bathwater by channel standards!

Of course, if we had 2 ounces of brains between us, we would have realized that it would be much colder in the middle of the lake that in the ankle deep water by the shore (we found out later that the temperature in the deeper parts of the lake was 65). But of course if we had that much brains our lives would be much less interesting.

It was COLD! Initially Jason stopped me every five minutes to make sure I was lucid. Eventually we got used to it, warmed up, and lasted for about 3 miles. Clearly I have a long way to go to adapt to the cold!

Week 13:
Mon: swim 4300 yds, 40 min abs
Tues: swim 5700
Wed: swim 4800, run 5 mi
Thurs: swim 5400
Fri: swim 10,000
Sat: run 5 mi
Sun: swim 4800, 30 min abs
Total: swim 35,000 yards, run 10 mi, 70 min abs