Fear

I was standing on Prouty Beach this morning, the occasional tear running down my face.

Dark clouds were moving like lumbering elephants across the sky, and the wind was shoving the water into small waves.  Air temp was somewhere around 60.  I wasn't sure quite what the water temperature was, but I had dipped my hand in and it was warmer than the air.

I did not want to be there.

I was cold, and the idea of getting colder was freaking me out.  I wasn't sure how well my kayaker was going to deal with the wind, and if it got much stronger, it might be strong enough to push him over.  While I knew that the water wasn't cold enough to do me more than discomfort if I were swimming hard, my kayaker was not a serious swimmer, and didn't exactly have my built-in wetsuit. Yes, he had a life-jacket.  Everyone, even the serious marathon swimmers who were being nice and kayaking for someone else that day, was wearing life jackets.  It's a good habit.

Anyway, I was standing on the beach thinking of bailing on the swim when one of those marathon swimmers who was giving up water time to kayak came up to me and asked me how I was doing.

"Not so great," I said.  "I don't think this is my day to swim."

"What's scaring you?" she asked.  She didn't bother to ask if I were scared or not. She's a real swimmer.  She knew better.  "You know, we all go through this sometimes."

Here's the thing. I knew she was right, and I was kind of grateful for the "we." I don't really know her entire swim resume or anything, but I know quite well that as a swimmer, I'm totally not in her league.

"Is it the cold or the waves?" she asked.

I shrugged and started babbling. "No it's not the waves and I know the water's like 67, but it's freezing in the air and I... I don't know if today's my day."

I was also undertrained, which I didn't mention.  While I've been working hard all winter, about three weeks ago, I had a freakout trying to get into a cold lake to start doing some training and hadn't done any real swims since.

"How far are you supposed to swim?"

"Four miles," I said.

"Well, you have some choices.  You can get in and try to swim the four miles.  You can decide to get in and do less.  Two miles, maybe or even just to the first buoy and back.  You can just decide today isn't your day and stay out of the water."

She didn't try to blow sunshine up my butt, but she did bring me around to realizing that I did need to make a conscious choice no matter what I did.  I was still scared enough of the water that I was babbling and not making a lot of sense when I was talking.

"Oh, I can totally swim two miles," I said waving my hand.  And I can.  Two miles is not a challenge.  It's just a weekend training session.  "And I know I shouldn't let the cold keep me out.  I'm doing Alcatraz in August and --"

"Then you do need to get in the water," she said.  "Go ahead and try for two miles.  When you get to the second buoy, you might feel so good, you do the whole four, or you might decide today's the day to swim two.  Just try to think of something positive to focus on.  Sometimes it can be something like, 'My ears feel really good.'  Just anything.  Smile underwater.  If you keep your head down, you won't have to worry so much about the cold air temperature."

So, I did get in.

This was a rougher swim than usual.  The weather really was challenging.  Swimming in waves isn't too bad a problem for me.  I spent my childhood on the Potomac, in the Chesapeake Bay and at Virginia Beach.  Waves might be a pain in butt to plow through, but I have bilateral breathing down pat and can breathe on any side I need to.  Swimming into the wind ain't the world's most fun and having one's kayak support constantly blown off course isn't ideal.

And yet...

Part of me was enjoying it.   I was worried and emotionally fragile, but I was out there, dammit, and that was good.  

But I confess that happy thoughts weren't going through my mind, but this:

I know it's dorky for a simple two mile swim to require a lot of bravery. I felt that way, knowing everyone else was swimming six or ten miles. Still... Getting in that water was very hard this morning. And thanks, Charlotte, for taking the time to help me out. I am deeply grateful.

That's going to play hell with their data

My work was giving out Microsoft Bands for a fitness tracking thing.   I love gadgets, so yeah, I'll take one.  It's really kind of a cross between a fitness tracker and a smart watch.

Yes, it's utterly useless in terms of swimming or even manually entering swimming activity. However, I did get a little use out my fitness tracker.

Confirmed, yes, I sleep light. Also got my resting heart rate.

 55.

 Which at my age and weight isn't supposed to happen. That's for athletes.

 Oh wait...

 :P

Step on THIS!

Like many an American company, my employer is interested in population health.  In fact, more so than most.  I work for a hospital. 

They’re pushing another “be more active” initiative that involves, yet again, step counts.  This gets me a slight eyeroll.  Show me a health professional attending to patients that isn’t getting in that 10,000 steps a day gold standard.  I mean, really!

However, they don’t only employ health professionals.  Take me.  I’m a total desk jockey unless I’m teaching a class.  (You can’t teach an effective class being sedentary. Good teaching is fairly active performance art)

To log your activity, they want you to use some sort of activity tracker (Fibit, Garmin… a few others).  You can’t manually add activity.  I guess it must be for some study or something, so they’re only accepting synced activity from a tracker.

I was all like, okay, I track my swims with a Garmin.  We’re all good, right?

Nope.  They only track steps. 

I was offended at first, but I think I’ve finally figured this one out. It’s not that steps are really is a good activity standard.  But it is easy enumerate and to track.  Give out a step counter, let it sync with your database and boom! You’ve got all kinds of data for your study to push certain types of activity.

Aaaannnd, here’s the swimmer.

Electronic tracking activity for a swimmer is hard.  It takes pretty sophisticated programming to figure out what in the hell a swimmer is doing, and tracking heart rate in the water uses devices that are mostly an expensive pain in the ass.

Still, I’m going to come out as “BAD EMPLOYEE DRAIN ON COMPANY RESOURCES SEDENTARY” after having signed up for this, even though I’ve already swum for about an hour before I go in to work.

Dramatic Improvement

I've been whining about my slow swimming speed on the blog enough to be a bore, I know.

So today, I do not whine but talk about a technique that has helped me.  Well, two techniques.

The first is a technique I learned about reading some Total Immersion discussions.  Yes, I know there's a controversy about whether or not these techniques are really all that effective or not, and goodness knows you can't plot a data curve from one point.

It's called Patient Lead Hand.  The idea  is that you don't start the pull until your reccovery hand enters the water.  Essentially, you've always got a hand leading and spearing the water.

The second technique was really more of a mental image than anything.  I saw that on the SwimSmooth site.  You visualize pushing the water with your stroke to the back wall.   If you keep that in mind, it helps with the early vertical forearm and several other aspects of stroke mechanics.

The last week or so, I've been cruising along at 2:42/100 yards for my freestyle sets.  While an improvement over last year, it's still really slow.

This morning I decided I was going to try this patient lead hand thing and the push the water to the back wall visualization for a week and see if there was any improvement.  I was expecting to take a speed hit.

Nope.   Today, my cruising speed was more like 2:32/100 yards.  Ten seconds per hundred is pretty big.  While 2:32/100 is still damned slow, it's an amazing breakthrough for me!

Just a Lap Swimmer

Overheard a discussion about swimming today and was kind of taken aback. So much so, that I kept my mouth shut rather than jumping in on a couple of strangers. The individuals in question were discussing triathlon training and referred to someone else they knew who swam for exercise as "Just a lap swimmer" with a kind of dismissive wave of the hand. First, there's nothing wrong with being "just a lap swimmer."  Swimming is great exercise, after all.

But what else brought me up short was, "How in hell would you know?"

If you looked at my training of a weekday morning, you'd see a middle-aged lady seriously given to enbonpoint with no gear but a watch going back and forth in the pool -- sometimes faster, sometimes a little slower, but pretty steadily swimming for between 45 minutes and an hour and a half.  No gear but cap and goggles.  Sometimes a water bottle.  Certainly no kickboards, pull buoys, paddles or fins.*

Friends, 90% of my training is *gasp* swimming laps!

While not yet a marathon swimmer, I'm certainly a real and for true open water swimmer.  I sign up for and swim real events and everything.  (Though is it bad I like my training swims with my husband kayaking beside me better?)

So, am I a *dismissive wave* lap swimmer?

And so what if I were?




* Nuttin' wrong with any of that stuff.  I just... don't.  That's all.

Disappointing Spring Scream

I got in the open water today.

Air temp: 57F
Wind speed: 6mph
Quacker's Water Temperature Report: 50F (~10C)

You know how Han Solo says, "Never tell me the odds?"

It may have been wiser not to get a water temp before I got in.  I think I may have been psyching myself out.

Nonetheless, I'm going to say right here that people who call 50F "still okay" (I'm looking at you, Loneswimmer) have a serious problem, and should be restrained for their own protection!*

So, did I get in?

I did.  And I'm pretty disappointed.  I couldn't do any real swim. Not really.   I probably spent a total of five minutes in the water at all, did a few strokes of breast stroke, and a few of crawl before I just had to get out.  My husband tells me I actually whimpered when I started the breast stroke, and he's never heard me whimper before.

So yeah, I am disappointed.  The first swim of the year last year was considerably more successful.

'Course, that was in June, the air temperature was ten degrees warmer, and the estimated water temperature was about seven degrees warmer.  Those seven degrees sure seem to make a big difference.

The solution to this?  Well, Monday, I'm getting in again and seeing if I can stay in a little longer and force myself to swim a little further.

Alacatraz and Lake Memphremagog ain't gonna swim themselves, right?

* Note to the humor-impaired.  The author of that blog is simply a better and more experienced cold water swimmer than I am.

Two Tales of Two Miles

I've been panicking about this summer's swims.  (Stop laughing at me.  I know I was panicking about last summer's.  Calm is just not an adjective people associate with me, what can I say?)

Anyway, my response to panic is to review my workouts and make sure I'm working out enough/long enough/hard enough/whatever.

I can think of worse ways to deal.

In reviewing workouts, I realized that while I'm putting in frequency, I'm totally not putting in distance.  So, Saturdays are now dedicated to this noble purpose.

What a Real Swimmer calls distance and what I am calling distance aren't quite the same thing, so Real Swimmers can control their snickers, thanks so very much.

I did 3600 yards this morning. I kinda mentally tag it as two miles.  I know for some people that's a lunchtime workout.  See the title of my blog?  Yeah.

On the other hand, I'm not so slow as once I was.

This was the first time I swam two miles in a pool a bit over a year ago.  I was wondering if I could and I was happy with the swim.  Yes, I could.  I enjoyed it and it helped me relax about a swim I was going to do that summer.  But I won't say this wasn't a challenge.   I was pretty worn out after it, I got cramps in my calf and I took a pretty epic nap that afternoon.

Fast forward to today.  Was I pushing?   Well, yeah, it was a workout, and if you're training for something specific, you do need to push yourself some.  But was I pushing like I would if I were racing?  Hell, no.  There was no question I could, and for all that I was joking this morning about doing an EPIC SWIM then taking an EPIC NAP, I'm not really wanting anything other than lunch and to spend the afternoon knitting while watching historical documentaries and brainless superhero films.

Part of the speed increase is simply that I don't fall back to slower strokes as often.  I'm almost to the point where I can do front crawl just about forever.  I don't because it's not really a great idea not to mix things up. 5/6 of the workout was free.

I'm somewhat less panicked, now, about next summer.   For the Son of a Swim in June, the real prep work other than my regular workouts, is to take the heavier freestyle volume into the open water and trust my kayaker to navigate.

For the Alcatraz swim in August?  I dunno.  Open water swims, cold showers and try not to think about sharks.  We've got a lot of lakes near where I live, so open water isn't a problem.  I'll be in Virginia Beach a couple of weeks before that swim, so lots of ocean training is not a problem, either.  Thing is, the water is a lot warmer in the Southeast than it is in SF Bay.  

Cold showers and as much lake training up in New England as I can get in, I guess...