Very Important Training Partner

Meet my new training partner, Quackers McShadez.  He showed up in the mail today.

Yes, friends, I'm chomping at the bit to get out in the open water.  Yes, I know it's only February.

But I figure that in the interests of not getting my fool self killed come spring, having an idea of the temperatures I'll be swimming in might be a good idea. I'll know how far I should be swimming out into the lake at any given time.

No, that it's a rubber ducky with nifty shades has nothing to do with it.  I stoutly deny it. I need cold, calculating measurements to plan my training. You can believe me because I have my serious face on.

I'm a lot more concerned about cold for this year's swims.  In other chilly water swims I've done. I've been able to wade into the water and get acclimated or (in the case of the one where I just had to jump in) the water was above 65F, so that's not too intimidating.

This August, I'll be jumping off a ferry into the San Francisco bay -- water that is colder than the Official Swims I did last year (though warmer than my early training swims).  I'm too intimately acquainted with the negative effects of the shock of cold water not to take it seriously.*

Sorry, this post was supposed to be all light-hearted and goofy about the rubber ducky thermometer.  But in all honesty, Quackers McShadez might be cute, but he's still kind of a serious training partner.




* Lost a dear family friend several years ago to a kayak accident in early spring.

Is Your Hair Hot?

I'm rather gently and gradually ramping up my distance and pace in preparation for the summer's events.  I figure if I'm a turtle, I might as well go with it and do the slow and steady thing for my training as well.

Right now, I'm improving on a pretty steady curve, so I'm happy about it.

Most of what I do and how I track my improvements are objective.  How many yards did I swim?  How fast did I swim that last 100, or that last 1000?  Am I in the pool at least five days a week?  Either I made it or I didn't.  I have specific measurements I aim for and a specific rate at which I am planning to improve.

For the most part this is as it should be.  But I have a subjective measurement that's my real touchstone for how well my workouts went.

Is my hair hot?

I have long, thick hair that just about reaches my butt.  This gets wetted down and piled on top of my head into a cap pre-swim.  After my swim, I take off the cap, and the hair falls SPLAT! onto my back.

If it's not hot, my times don't matter. It wasn't a good workout because I wasn't working hard enough,  It is an excellent way to tell me I need to set a new pace target.  If I'm meeting a speed target and my hair isn't hot, that pace target is too easy.  This also applies to temperature preference in the shower.  If anything more than a lukewarm shower is uncomfortably hot (and I generally like a hot shower), I'm probably not pushing hard enough, either.

It's subjective, it's fuzzy and my times seem to reflect that it works.

No Matter Where You Go, There You Are

It's 5 am and the chimes on my phone are gently waking me up.

I roll over, turn it off and start grumbling about what I want to accomplish today, when my mantra, "You'll feel better in the water" drifts through my brain.  I get up, take care of this and that, get on my swim suit and throw on several layers.  It was 7F when we got up this morning.  (That's ~-14C for the rest of the world)

Get to the gym, stuff my crap in the locker, shower off in HOT water to brace myself for the shock of...

Woah, warm pool.  Oh yeah, I'm a total rock star, getting in this comfortable pool to do what's essentially a warm-up to the real swimmers.  Lynne Cox, look out.

I do my workout, pushing hard to be under time for the particular distance I'm doing.  Didn't quite make it, but I was all red in the face and breathing hard and feeling mellow, so while disappointed, it was only a little. Mostly what I was feeling was glad of the swim.  No surprises there.

In the shower, as often happens, one of the other people who was in the pool strikes up a conversation.  Now this woman doesn't swim laps but does other exercises in the water.  I'm in favor, myself.  I mean, water is where any sensible person is going to work out, right?

"I wish I could keep up with you real swimmers," she comments after a bit of talk about water temperature (she thought it was cold) and this and that.

I shrug and say, "Hey, you're here, and there ain't nuttin' like a water workout to start the day no matter what."

Inside, I'm trying my best not to crack up since I'd spent the last half hour or so eye-rolling myself for not being a real swimmer.

I know comparing oneself is a thing you just don't get away from.  I see it from people who don't swim as well as I do, and I see it from people who are so far ahead of me swimming-wise that there's no way I'll ever catch up.

I don't even think it's necessarily a horrible thing.  A lot of personal rhetoric is all about feeling good about yourself, and that's fine, but we'd never accomplish anything if there was nothing to which we aspired.

It's really only a problem if it discourages you enough to quit.

You'll Feel Better in the Water

I am a morning person. I love getting up early and getting going on the day.

However, I'd like to define "morning."   That term is reserved, in my opinion, for when there is enough brightness from the sun to see outside.  So, pre-dawn twilight on.

5:30 in the so-called morning at my latitude in the dead of winter is still night.  Dawn, in fact, is about 7:30 right now.

So no, getting up in the dark to get to swim practice isn't easy for me. This fall, I'd grumble, groan and do the "I don't wannas" all the way to the gym.  

Any coach will tell you that's a mistake and attitude really does count.

I'm changing the self-talk.  I'm going to be in the pool, miserable getting there or not, so I might as well see if I can change the mindset to "not miserable."

I just tell myself, "You'll feel better when you're in the water."

This is actually an easy one, as it's the simple truth.  I do feel better in the water.  It's not blowing sunshine up my own butt or sprinkling glitter everywhere.  I'm just reminding myself of something that's simply so.

See, the "I don't wannas" aren't really about not wanting to swim.   I love swimming.  I don't love getting up in the dark, or facing the cold, or rushing through my morning routine to get to work on time, or braving the cold to get to the pool.  (I mentioned the cold twice, didn't I?  I don't mind swimming in cold water, but the bleakness of a New England winter pre-dawn can get to me)

Being in the water and swimming?  That period of time feels awesome.  Well, it's why I chose swimming as a way to be active, for pity's sake. I've never bailed on a planned workout in the middle of it and I'm always a little sorry to get out of the pool.

So, I remind myself of the truth to make sure I get myself in the water and train.

I'm doing a couple of big swims next summer - gonna try for six miles in Lake Memphremagog in June and I'm doing the Alcatraz Sharkfest in August.

Of the two, I am much much more scared of the Alcatraz swim,  Memphremagog doesn't have particularly rough water, troublesome currents, or any record of Great Whites attacking things that are seal-sized.  (I'm seal-sized!)

Not that I'm not intimidated by the Memphremagog distance.  Totally am.  Just pales in comparison to other things, and I've already swum in that water.  Never swam in the SF Bay before.

The only real solution is to be dedicated to practice.  If something terrible happens, it will not be due to lack of preparation.

Anyway, I feel like I've used that one up, anyway.  I was not properly prepared for the Boston Sharkfest last September.  I got incredibly lucky with calm water and a warm day.  That could have ended badly, and I did kind of scare myself when I thought about that.  (And watching people around me get panicky reinforced that little lesson.)  I was pretty scared beforehand, mind. To be frank, I'm always kinda scared before a Big Swim.

But when I get in the water, I always feel better.

Swimming Resolutions

The older I get, the happier I am with things that are simple.

This year's swimming goals are about as simple as you can get them.  Show up for practice.

Am I bored and tired and not feeling it at five in the morning?

Show up for practice.

Am I wishing I could go to bed later instead of the same time as your average third-grader?

Show up for practice.

Am I thinking I could probably still do okay in my upcoming events even if I blow off this one?

Show up for practice.

There are no real problems I have or issues I will encounter that will not be improved by this one, simple resolution.

Nightmares and Morning Miles

If you're an open water swimmer, have you ever had a swimming nightmare?

I had my first Sunday night.  It was about sharks. I was swimming in deep blue water.  It was so blue it was almost as if I were swimming through deep blue ink.  The water was cold, and my skin looked even paler than usual when I looked through it.  It was also nighttime,   My mom was my spotter for the swim.

So I'm swimming along and I see this enormous shape gliding under me.  It's more like the size of an orca, but it's white and is sleeker, not moving with the bouncing glide more common to the orcinus orca, but with the straight lines you associate with Carcharodon carcharias, the Great White Shark.*

Then I look around.

The water is teeming  with these bad boys, gleaming blue-white in the inky water and moonlight, and sliding by with silent menace.

"I can't finish this swim," I say to Mom.

"Of course you can't," she said, utterly calm.  (Which I am pretty sure she wouldn't be if she saw me swimming with a school of Great Whites).

So, I get out onto a floating dock to wait for a boat to pick up us.  But the sharks keep gliding by, bumping the dock.

It took me a minute when I woke up to realize that the swim I was going to do tomorrow was in the pool and not in that shark-infested midnight-blue bay.

I was most distinctly swimming in a bay, interestingly enough.  I'm sure my mind pulled that from my thoughts on the Alcatraz swim I'm going to do next August in San Francisco bay.  Of course the increased shark activity has been a concern for me, even if I do know that it's unlikely to be a concern for that swim.

It freaked me out enough I had to talk myself into swimming in a pool the next morning, reminding myself that no matter how freaked out I was, there was no down side to training in a warm pool that morning.  I'm already swimming with the most dangerous animal on the planet every damn morning, so stop being a whiner!

I've been upping my swimming distance.  I'm up to a swimmer's mile every morning, which is a nice sweet spot.  I'm a slow swimmer, so unless I'm pushing, this takes about forty-five minutes.  It's a nice, emotionally satisfying distance, too,

This is still quite a short distance, but that's about as far as I can go in the time I have available most mornings.  I could swim a whole hour some mornings and starting in the New Year, totally gonna have to.  But that's the limit of the time I have before I have to go to work or get on with my day.

Weekends, I can dedicate to longer swims, which is my general habit, anyway.

The goal is to get in about 10,000 yards a week for the next three months or so, then bump it up to 15,000 yards a week in the spring.  

Junk yardage?

Maybe...  But I think at my weight and fitness level, there ain't no such thing!


* Yes, in the wild, both are dangerous, I know!

More Gummi Bears

I need to start stretching again.

Like many things physical over the past few years, I'd let that one slide.   After an especially rough session lifting yesterday coming dangerously close to breaking Rule One* in terms of how much I increased the weight, I am noticing a reduction in fluid range of motion.  Yes, I'm sore, but this is more than just delayed-oneset muscle soreness (DOMS).  This is a tightness in my joints that means something else.

It wasn't too bad in the pool, but when I tried to hook my bra on after my shower, reaching behind myself was difficult.  I also had a problem with my calf cramping a little during my workout.  This is unusual for me for anything but a very long (for me) swim.  I also find that the more I swim, the more heel pain I experience on the mornings after.  Yes, you'd think that swimming doesn't exacerbate plantar fascitis. I can only guess tight calves and pushing off a wall and going into a full toe-pointed extension isn't helping.  Ballet again.  When I point my toe, I do it hard.  The pointed toe, floppy feet thing is actually kind of hard for me to do.  Amazing what happens when you train to a movement young and do it for several years.

That's a clear indicator stretching is called for. Besides, I know perfectly well that stretching helps reduce repetitive motion injuries on complex joints.  You know, like... shoulders?

I don't stretch nearly as much as I used to.  I come from a ballet and martial arts background -- both activities where you stretch a LOT.  The only activity I can think of offhand where you do more is yoga.

I'm actually used to being reasonably if not astoundingly flexible.  I'm totally not right now.   That's not something difficult to deal with, though.  Put on a little Marvin Gaye in the evenings and stretch out... this is the opposite of a bad time. I used to have a dance instructor who was inordinately fond of Marvin Gaye for the warmups.   It's a nice way to chill out of an evening, and I'll be able to put my forehead on my shin in no time.

I know this is a swim blog, so talking about the other physical things I do might seem a little off-topic.  But swimming is well known as a whole-body activity, and integration of strength, endurance and flexibility are all important to swimming well.

The swimming itself is going well.  I've limited my breast stroke sets to less than a fifth of the workout.  Since it used to be more like a third, I'm totally okay with this.  I'll probably wind up dropping breast stroke sets alltogether at some point, though I freely admit that I'm not too thrilled at the idea of my entire swimming working being the crawl.  It's not really my favorite stroke.

I also really need to be more strict with myself about flip turns.  I really don't like them much, but I know that for distance, it's better to do them than an open turn.  So, yeah... I need to suck that up, too.  It seems that a lot of this process is sucking up the parts I don't like. :)

I'm pushing to increase distance pretty hard, but trying not to be crazy about it.  An injury that keeps me out of the water is really worse than not training at all, so I'm keeping an eye on Rule One and also keeping an eye on that gummi bear jar.

Ah yes, the jar.  It's filling up nicely, isn't it?   It's an interesting motivator to show up regularly.   And it takes away from the all or nothing approach to which I am often prone.  For me, I want things to be perfect or I don't want to do them.  For this workout tracking method, even if I don't get in my yardage or my time is off or whatever, it doesn't really matter all that much.  The most brilliant training session where I'm on, slicing through the water like an orca, getting personal bests on speed and feeling like Neptune Himself still count the same as the ones where I feel tired, slow, and clumsy, inhale water and have to stop halfway through to cough that out of my lungs, have my goggles and cap fall off and keep getting distracted by the guys I'm sharing a lane with who REALLY needs to cut his toenails.

Both of 'em are still one gummi bear in that jar.