Gym Buddy

(It’s available in the App Store.)

I will be trying it out for the first time tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

Endurance, strength, speed, taper, recovery.

The link below takes you to the full article:

The Five Phases Of Swim Training – Triathlete.com

They have example workouts and detailed descriptions.

Normally I swim my 100s on about the order of 1:50 plus or minus a bit. Depends on how fatigued I am and how hard I’m trying. The week before my Malibu Triathlon during my taper week, I did swim some 100s on September 7th in 1:38, 1:37, 1:40 and 1:47. That 1:37 was my fastest ever until last week. I have gotten around 1:40-1:41 a number of times in the past month.

But last Thursday my coach told me to swim 100s on the 1:50s and he said depending on how fast I went, I may only get a few seconds rest. I had already done quite a bit of yardage in the workout, including a 1650 set, but I wasn’t feeling too tired. So I talked to myself and told myself, “OK, c’mon, let’s go.” I put my head down in the water and just tried really hard to go as fast as I could, because I knew 1:50 was going to be tough for me. Something really clicked on that first 100 that day. The water felt solid and I was grabbing onto it and just pulling myself through. It was amazing. I had felt something close to that on a few other occasions, most notably during my recent race at Malibu, but this time it was even better. It seemed I reached the end of the pool in no time, turned around, back to the other end in a blink. Repeat. When I finished my time on the clock was 1:14.

Now I’m a ditz about numbers when I’m in the middle of a hard workout. Somehow I didn’t feel like I’d done anything that amazing just then. I shouted at the coach, “Did you say to swim it on the 1:50s or the 1:15s?” He kind of laughed and asked if I’d really swum 100 or if I’d just swum 50. And due to my total lack of self-confidence in swimming, I immediately doubted myself and figured I’d screwed up. The rest of my 100s that day (about 4 more) were all on the order of 2 minutes. Much slower. And felt like flailing and frantic water-slapping. Ugg. It took some time at home that evening thinking about it until I really believed I’d actually done it. And later my coach agreed. So….

Now I have to try and repeat it. The peculiar thing, and this is true about both my 1:14 and also the swim at Malibu Tri, is that I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing. I was kind of on auto-pilot just saying something like, “Go, go, go!” over and over to myself. I was just automatically doing SOMETHING but I’m not sure exactly what. It seems when I don’t think about what I’m doing, I do it right.

I said to my coach this past Monday, that I don’t know when I’m going to be able to do this again. He said that it will start to happen more and more often. Boy, I sure hope so. My 100s this week so far have all been in the 1:42-1:56 range. Of course, I’ve been tired, so that may have something to do with it. But still, that’s nothing close to what I did last Thursday.

I’m really intrigued by this concept of “holding the water” as Sheila Toarmina describes it. I heard her interviewed on the TriSwimCoach podcast and I have ordered her book Call The Suit. The article linked below talks about some of her ideas in respect to stroke technique:

Hold The Water!

I’m so excited to get this book. I can hardly wait.

I started swimming at the Mt. SAC pool over a year ago, when I found out that they had open lap swimming. Now I’m doing the Masters Swim program and it costs no more to do that than to use the pool for open lap swimming. In fact, they offer all kinds of programs. These programs used to be free to the public, but due to state budget cuts there is currently a fee. The fee is reasonable and the facility is nice. I just really love swimming here so much more than at the gym, and now that I’m getting coaching as well, it’s a no-brainer for me.

In addition to the Masters Swim and open lap swimming, they also offer water aerobics, low impact training, triathlete training and cardio vascular training.

Signup Options

Fall session starts on August 23, 2010. They will be offering the following options.

Open Fitness Swim: Even though the title for this “class” says “Open Fitness Swim” on the website registration, it is actually good for all of the programs listed above. Masters swim, triathlete training, water aerobics, etc. and just plain open lap swim on your own.

Hours for this option: Mon-Thur 11am-1pm, 6pm-8pm and Sat/Sun 8am-10:30. The cost is $110 for 8 weeks (August 23rd-October 17th). You can register for this option by clicking here. To see the evening hours you need to click on the “More” link.

Masters Swim: The Masters Swim option is really more than that. It includes all of the hours and training options from the Open Fitness Swim above, plus there is also an early weekday morning time slot that offers open lap swimming, Masters Swim and triathlete training on Mon-Thu at 5:30am-7:30am. The cost is $120 for 8 weeks (August 23rd to October 17th). You can register for this option by clicking here. The description at this link does not show the weekday afternoon and evening hours unless you click the “More” link.

Session Swim Cards: What if you don’t want to sign up for the whole 8 week session but would like to go swim at the pool every once in a while? Well, then you can buy a swim card that gets you 5, 10 or 20 swim sessions, depending on your preference. The costs are $20, $35 or $60, respectively. The swim cards are described here (click). They are good for all of the hours…Mon-Thur 5:30am-7:30am, 11am-1pm, 6pm-8pm and Sat/Sun 8am-10:30.

Masters Swimming

I want to talk a bit about Masters Swimming. It sounds intimidating. But it does not imply that you are good at swimming or fast or anything like that. Masters Swimming simply means you are at least 18 years old. You can be a beginning swimmer, a former competitive swimmer, or anything in between.

If you think that your swimming could use some improvement, and that you would benefit from some coaching, then you should give Masters Swimming a try. Don’t wait to get better or faster until you consider participating in Masters Swimming. You might as well take advantage of this program and get help with your swimming now. Don’t put it off!

The coach at Mt. SAC is Louis Boehle. He swam for California Baptist University, has experience with adventure racing and was also a member of a relay team that swam a double crossing from Cabrillo Beach to Catalina.

When you first come to workout Louis will probably ask you what you have been doing for your recent workouts and about your goals so he can choose an appropriate workout for you. I’ve found that he gives a lot of individual attention and encouragement. If you want to contact Louis with any questions you can send him email at l.d.boehle@gmail.com.

My swimming workouts this summer have mostly been under Louis’ guidance. Since my goal is to train for triathlon and hopefully get faster, I’ve been working out pretty hard. I’m really enjoying it, though. That’s why I signed up for this program. I needed someone to kick my butt in the pool, because I just don’t do it myself. Maybe that’s not what you want, but whatever it is I’m sure he’ll work with you to pick drills and sets that are suited to you.

Parking

You can buy a parking permit in Building 40 for $40 for the semester. The coin parking meters charge 25 cents for 15 minutes, and the day permits are $2 per day.

Pose of the Month: Squat Pose

I want to thank the Twitter friends @CoolRunning and @turtlescanrun for their positive energy, because that really helped when I was doing the workout. I just thought about “I can do it” and kept trying.

So my actual times were 4:09, 4:08, 4:16 (got confused on this one and stopped early & then had to pick up and keep going), 4:21 (no idea what happened here), and 4:16 (again, got confused and stopped early). Not really my day, but satisfied overall, since after only 3 repeats I was feeling like stopping but I made myself do the last two. In fact, even though I thought I was running pretty hard during the workout, sitting here now at my desk only an hour later, I feel like I could have run harder. Heh. Dunno about that…

Guess I was tired from my fast 14-miler on Friday, plus bike & yoga yesterday. Beats me. I do know that the week before my race I will be resting up so I’ll feel much more peppy and ready to go on race day.

Pacing Makes Perfect: 6 Ways to Train for a Triathlon Swim Start | Active.com

One of the main points of the article, is that just doing time trials doesn’t prepare you for the actual chaos and frenetic swimming of a triathlon. So they have some suggestions to help prepare a bit more for the reality of a triathlon swim.

I may try some of these ideas. I’m about 4 weeks out right now from my first triathlon. Finally getting some mediocre yardage in at the pool. Went swimming twice this week, which is my goal. Swam 2250 meters total this week. 1050 on Tuesday and 1200 today. Really tried a bit harder today and did a few faster sprints. Overall, my swimming is very mediocre and the focus for me in my first triathlon will just be finishing respectably.

So today I went out for my first run in these shoes. I wanted to do 4 miles today, and I thought I’d do the first half mile in the FiveFingers and then switch it up to my usual running shoes (New Balance 769) to finish. I had been wearing the FiveFingers around the house “chillin” for a few hours the last couple of days, and I had done a couple of short sprints down my street, a couple hundred yards or so.

As I started out today, I was paying attention to my foot-strike. I thought I generally run with the midsole of my foot striking, but the heel didn’t like being even close to striking, without padding of any kind, and I found that after a hundred yards or so, that I was actually landing on the ball of my foot by just a teensy bit, and then allowing my heel to drop to the full foot. I liked it.

Due to where I turned around, I actually did a bit over a half mile… 0.6 miles. Then I switched to my NB 769s. OMG. It felt like someone had put pillows under the heels of my feet. I didn’t like the fact that I was unable to put my foot down on the ground as I strode. I felt at first like I was still running on the balls of my feet, but my calves were starting to tighten a teensy bit, so I tried to back off of that and land more mid-foot. Still felt like pillows under my heels. Or like wedge-style shoes at the least. Took a good mile in the regular shoes until they started to feel “normal” again.

Later, about a half hour after the run was done, my calves began to feel just a touch tight, like the muscles were potentially going to have a knot in them. I stretched the calves a few times, but later thought better of it and rolled/massaged them with The Stick. Several hours later, they feel just fine.

I’m planning to run again on Friday. Eight miles total. I think I may do a 3/4 mile in the FiveFingers to start off and then switch to my regular running shoes…

Also today I did my second workout in the hundredpushups.com program. I needed to do the following sets, with 90 sec rests between each: 6, 8, 6, 6 and then my max (but at least 7). I managed to tough out 9 on my last set, but it was hard! Well, I look back at what I did on Sunday, and it was much less, but seemed hard. I guess I got stronger. So… looking forward to the next one. I guess I’ll get stronger still… interesting program.

One of My Favorite Fast Swim Workouts | Active.com

It does look kind of hard. Well, tomorrow I am going to do my first swim workout in a couple of weeks, and I just hope to get in 1000 meters at any speed, really.