But it could have been worse too.1. I didn’t drown. (Obvious from the fact that I’m writing this.) This will be considered a major victory on the day.2. I started off really well, leading the lane, feeling pretty good and moving at a halfway decent clip.3. Then, after 30-40 minutes (of a 90 minute swim), the swimming muscles kind of “quit”. The had gone unused for 8 weeks, and were apparently

I had my first dream about the first day of swim club last night. I hopped in, and was instantly gliding effortlessly through the water, faster than I’ve ever gone before. Perfect body position, excellent roll, catching massive amounts of water with every stroke.I have a sneaking suspicion that reality will be the exact opposite of that in ten days. :-O

Swim: 1400m @ 45minThe first masters swim of the season! Lots of new faces, including two buddies of mine - Scott and Warren - who have been taking me out on rides in north Kanata lately. The only “bad” thing was that we had the overhead of the firs…

2009 has been an interesting year so far.The moments when things fell into place seemed to be outnumbered by those when things felt off - sometimes due to the physical, sometimes to the mental. IMUSA and the Giant Acorn being obvious examples.After IMU…

I used to swim here about once a week, just about all last year. I’ve seen lots of dolphins, but never a shark.Shark sighting in Santa Monica Bay has surfers buzzing — latimes.com More info is available here.

And then tonight I read this article about it. So enjoy. I hope my little journey helps you in your swimming.

Due to the holiday and some pool closures, this, our last week of swimming, was reduced to one day. This weekend marks pretty much the end of the local racing season, with Muskoka 70.3, and a few people off at IM Wisconsin. This also marks the end of the work with my present swim coach, who’s leaving for other opportunities. I’ll admit that it makes me a little sad to have it all come to end.

This was the end of the road, the last triathlon of the year. I wanted to end the season on a good note, so I set out planning on turning in my best possible race. I was a little nervous on the beach because I really wanted to do well, and a little sad that the year was coming to a close. Once things got going, it seems like the summer flew by. I got a good warm-up in the water, slightly delayed

That would describe today’s pair of workouts. With most of the club prepping for Muskoka, I was the only person getting the boot early today (minus the recovering Kona-qualifying IM racer), so I put in a good effort, felt really good in the water, then popped out feeling ready to go. During the few quicker efforts, I was doing a hard, but sustainable, 1:30-:135/100m pulling. That’s doing all

A good mix of activities today. A little swim, a little run, a little bike. The swim wasn’t as astounding as Monday with dramatic improvements, but I’ll keep trying to groove any gains I can make. The run was pleasant with beautiful weather, and the bike was a good session to clear my legs.Swim: w/u - 200m each free, non-free, pull2x(100 back, 30″200 free as 25 head-up/75 ez, 30″300 pull w/

Here we are, less than two weeks from the end of the triathlon/swim program season, and now is when I decide to have a bit of a breakthrough in the pool. Right before I take at least six weeks away from the pool. I’m a genius, eh?The first half of today’s workout was a lot of scull/pull sets. I really tried to get a good feel for the water and make the most of it. As I was finishing the last one,

My elbow is finally better. It made it all the way through today’s swim without issue, although we didn’t do much high speed work today, so I think that helped.Swim: w/u - 200m each free, non-free, pull400 free as 25 head-up/75 ez free, 30″100 non-free, 30″400 free as 200 race opener/200 ez, 30″100 ez non-free, 30″400 pull w/paddles, 30″100 non-free, 30″400 free as 100 hard/100 ez, 30″100 ez

I had expected a good day in the pool, as my muscles felt rested from the weekend, and I wouldn’t have the same issues I did on Monday. I got through the warm-up pretty well, and my form felt nice, but as the set progressed, I could feel my elbow getting inflamed. I wasn’t painful, but whatever I did on Sunday/Monday was coming back. So I pulled the plug early, calling it a day at 1600m. It’s

I’ve gotten up and gone to swimming after almost all of my races. I like splashing around, it helps work out any kinks, promotes good recovery, and it’s not like I can’t use the practice. I felt pretty good this morning, and the workout didn’t look too tough, so I followed the plan. But I guess my muscles were more tired than I thought. I was never able to feel really good about my stroke, felt

Who schedules a race for 8am? Especially when I have to drive 90 minutes to get to the race site? This required an unnecessary 4:50 wake-up call, followed by the fastest “make coffee, pack car” I’ve done in a while. I wanted to be in Orillia by 6:30-7, so I needed to be on the road way too early. Luckily, traffic was light, so I made excellent time.I should note that I switched up my pre-race

A solid swim this morning, with a wide variety of efforts. For the most part, I felt pretty good, but sitting here now a few hours later I can really feel it in my shoulders and back. I felt like I was swimming pretty well, except for the first time through the 300 race pace set. I’m not sure why things fell apart, but they did. When I made the second attempt, I was able to keep my form together

It feels like a little cliche now, my describing my taper week workouts. There’s truly nothing interesting to them, just a little bit of work to keep things humming along, while getting as much rest as I can. And since I have nothing interesting to say, here’s a recap of the day.Swim: w/u - 200m each free, non-free, pull15×100 free, 10″, as 25 drill/75 ez free(1-3: scull, 4-6: catch-up, 7-9:

Swam at lunch: 2×500 (7:22 and 7:28 @ 80%). I know I can do a 23:00 in Portland if I swim hard the entire time instead of worrying about using too much energy and not doing well on the bike and run. Was going to bike easy after work, but realized that I no longer had my race package with instructions and planning because of the computer crash. So, did the planning thing again, and I’m all set.

Some mornings it is just not there. I think I may be drinking a bit too much caffeine recently, and it’s affecting my sleep quality. No matter how tired I am, it’s taking me a while to drift off, and I’m not getting the most restful sleep. Because of that, this morning was a bit rough in the pool. I didn’t have necessarily a bad swim, but the speed wasn’t there, and I was working too hard for

This was another option morning at swimming. With three out of six in my lane having IM events coming up, we could do an IM workout (3×1K), or the shorter, faster workout of the rest of the group. I chose shorter, faster. And it was. Good efforts all the way through, although my times in the last effort wasn’t what I expected, but I guess after all that work, including a paddle set just previous,

Another good morning in the pool. With the crowd either recovering from IMUSA or tapering for IMC-IMLou-IMMoo, it fell to folks like me to lead the charge. And so I somehow ended up leading the lane. I guess if I’m the only one under orders to push the efforts, I have to drag everyone else along. But it was another fun morning, with a mix of efforts. I chose the pull option during the 1K set

Yesterday took a fair bit out of me, more than I would have expected for a short race. But I guess I suffered a bit of a bonk, so last night was spent in the “atheticoma”. (I love that expression.) When I got to pool this morning I didn’t expect too much, and once the coach saw the fading number tattoo on my arm, he asked, “You’re taking it easy today?” And I replied, “I don’t know how easy it

I may usually use song or album titles for my race reports, but I never would have expected to pull out a Meatloaf track. But it applies better than any other for today, so there we go.There had been many predictions of some awful weather for the day, and some good thunder blew through overnight, but race morning wasn’t too bad. It was definitely humid, and the sun was playing hide-and-seek, but

After a couple of months of only swimming the SCM (or SCY) pools, it was a bit of an adjustment back in a LCM pool. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, better even, but once you get accustomed to a turn and push-off every 25m, you miss that, especially on hard sets. Like when you’re doing hard 100s, in the SCM pool that second fifty is “go hard to the wall, get a good push for a few second break,

Tomorrow I go to Yellowstone for a week of fishing (and hopefully catching!). I wanted to completely wear myself down this week, kind of like a crash week that I’ve read about, I guess. I got close. Had I been able to do a 40k bike followed by 5k run tonight as planned, I would be there. However, with 50mph gusts from a crazy front coming through, I decided I didn’t want to chance getting blown

At lunch I swam a 1×1500 in 24:01. Time was slow, but I realized that I finally “found” the “feel” of a “good stroke.” Before all the open waters swims in May, I pulled through my freestyle mostly with arms and pecs, always wondering why I didn’t feel my shoulder roll and using my lats more…like I read about all the time. Back into the pool after five or so open water swims, I felt a change in

I have spent most of the year trying to make the incremental improvements necessary to become a faster swimmer, and move up to another faster lane. After many months leading my own lane, I finally got the opportunity to try my hand with the faster swimmers, and just by being in amongst them, I’ve improved a bunch in the couple of weeks. It’s that little extra push that does all the good.It was a

Big day today. Finally got my butt out of bed this morning and swam 1×1000 with 500s at 8:16 and 8:24. Water is still hot. My pace is way off of what it was last year, when I was swimming 7:40s and sometimes 7:30s, which were at lunch when I swim better because I’ve had a chance to wake up but still significantly faster than where I’m at now.Bike the Barton hill at lunch, but only twice because I

After over a week of highs and lows, I’m starting to feel focused enough to pull together a race report for IMUSA.It was a long and tough and - sometimes - amazing - day.After a few hours of sleep, the Barricudas and I lumbered about in the kitchen, …

So yesterday was an unscheduled day off, similar to Tuesday. My calf is still a bit problematic, so I bagged the run. I don’t like missing workouts, so this is kind of frustrating, but I’ll be back at it. After work today I picked up the Lower Leg Trigger Point Therapy kit so hopefully that will clear things up. It’s not that I can’t run on it, I just know it needs to heal a bit to be 100%.And