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

Swimming for a cause

People who train for long distance events often decide to put their hard work to good use and use their events to support a charity close to their hearts. In marathons, triathlons, cycling events, etc there is no shortage of "teams in training" and other such groups. See, training for athletic events is essentially a selfish endeavor - we put tremendous amounts of time and energy into pursuing our goals, but this is of little benefit to others or to society as a whole. But by supporting a cause, athletes are able to use their events to serve a greater purpose.

I counted myself as lucky since neither myself nor my immediate family members were inflicted with any serious maladies (mental quirks? Yes. Questionable tendencies? Perhaps. But no serious maladies to speak of). That was until very recently, when I noticed some changes in my favorite little man.



Sneakers has been losing some of the hair on his chest and under his legs. He has been itching and scratching these areas as well, meaning his problem is more than pug pattern hair loss. It turns out the little guy is seriously allergic to something. It's not life threatening, but it is a terrible nuisance that deserves our sympathies.

Sneakers requires a bath once a week, in special medicated shampoo. After he is lathered up, he must remain all soapy for a full 10 min before he can be rinsed (and before he can rub himself dry on our furniture).

As you can see, Sneakers is being amazingly brave and tolerant of his weekly bath. Much more distressing is the special diet that the vet has put him on. He can eat nothing except his special dog food (made of rabbits, potatoes, and kangaroo meat) and carrots for his treats. He gets nothing else! As any pug would tell you, carrots are NOT treats. Sneakers is hungry for some better food and I don't blame him one bit.




So I'd like to take this opportunity to raise awareness for K9 skin allergies, a very common problem among pugs. The next time you see a pug with a sparse patch of hair do not stare - the pug is a hero, doing his best to get by on carrot treats!

Week 12:
Mon: rest
Tues: swim 6000 yds, run 3 mi
Wed: swim 4500, run 3 mi
Thurs: swim 5200, 40 min abs
Fri: swim 14,000
Sat: run 5 mi
Sun: swim 6,300 walk 3 mi
Total: swim 36,000 yds, walk/run 14 mi, 50 min abs

New York!

The Ducks in Central Park

Not much swimming news to report this week. You may have figured it out already, but I take every 3rd week as a recovery week and this was one of those.

Week 11:
Mon: swim 4100 yds, 40 min abs
Tues: swim 4600
Wed: swim 4100
Thurs: swim 5600
Fri: swim 7600 30 min abs
Sat: in NY - walk 1 million miles
Sun: in NY - walk 1 million miles
Total: swim 26,000 yds, 70 min abs, walk 2 million miles



More interestingly, Jason and I went to NYC this weekend to celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary. We left on a 6:00am flight on Sat. morning and returned at midnight on Sun night to squeeze as much fun into the weekend as we possibly could. It was a blast! Jason had never been there before and true to expectation he had much diarrhea of the finger (my name for his excessive, explosive picture taking).

Here are a few:

Swimming to my own beat....

I am sad to report that after a short 3 and a half months of life, my SwimM3 player has passed on. Perhaps it is now making music in a better place, blasting Bruce Springsteen and Kanye West for long distances swimmers in the sky.

As soon as I find the receipt, box, etc I will mail it back and try to get it repaired/replaced. But having swum this whole week with no music except the voices in my head, I've realized how dependent I've become on this little device. From now on, I'm going to use my SwimP3 player only during long swims (yes, I know I said this before, but this time I mean it!)


R.I.P, swimP3


Making my own music

Week 10:
Mon: swim 4100 yds
Tues: swim 4700
Wed: swim 4100
Thurs: swim 4800
Fri: swim 10,000
Sat: rest
Sun: swim 5300, run 6 mi
Total: swim 31,000 yds, run 6 mi

Stroke of genius

Have you ever had one of those thoughts that, once conceived, you knew that your life - and dare I say it, the world - would never be the same? A moment of truth so profound that its ripples were bound to shape not only your life but those of generations to come? Well, dear friends, I had one such revelation this week. It can be summed up in one word - slurpees.

This weekend Karen had to go out of town, so we did our long swim on Friday after work. We didn't have much time (a 13,000 yard practice takes us about 3 hr, 15 min. The Homestead pool closes at 8:30, so we both had to rush over after work). I also didn't have time to eat much that day, so I grabbed a quick bagel and then stopped at a gas station to pick up some Gatorade. That's when I saw it - sitting inconspicuously in the corner, its juicy insides sloshing around in frozen splendor. The slurpee machine. It hit me - wouldn't a slurpee be a tastier, more concentrated form of Gatorade?

Just as expected, the slurpee proved itself to be a delightful little energy drink. The only problem was, I had only one and it lasted through only the 1st half hour of the workout. After it was gone, I made it through the rest of the practice with noticeably less vigor.

Outside of Halloween, there aren't many occasions where it's desirable to squeeze as much sugar into your body as possible, but long swims might be one of them. Next time I will skip the Gatorade and have 2 or 3 slurpees instead. Of course this will necessitate another kind of training...

Training for the inevitable brain freeze


Now, there are bound to be naysayers. Some might say that the icy waters of the English Channel would not be the place for the consumption of a frozen beverage. But that is the way with all great ideas. Did people not laugh when Galileo said that the earth revolved around the sun?

Week 9:

Mon: swim 5100 yds, 40 min abs
Tues: swim 5300
Wed: swim 4200, 40 min abs
Thurs: swim 4000
Fri: swim 13,000
Sat: run 7 mi, walk 2mi
Sun: walk 2 mi, swim 3400, 10 min core exercises

Total: swim 35,000, walk/run 11 mi, 90 min abs/core exercises