Tag Archives: Swim

Rhoto Ironman Boulder 70.3 Recap

Holy crap. That was One. Long. Race. That’s all I need to say about that. The End.

Okay, okay, here’s the play-by-play…

Preparation

It was a tough training season for me:

  • I shopped for a house (using Wes Hobson, a world-renowned triathlete, as a realtor – he is also an actual realtor)
  • I bought a house
  • I moved into the house
  • I had about a hundred job interviews
  • I switched jobs
  • I went to Mexico for 4 days to lay on a beach, drink cocktails with umbrellas in them, and eat some very yummy food between jobs
  • I had a cyst on my knee drained
  • I had knee surgery to remove the remaining scar tissue from the cyst
  • I had a weird pain in my shoulder that lasted for almost a week

In short, I could have trained with a little more… focus… and discipline.

Sleep and Waking

Of course, I got absolutely no sleep the night before the race. First of all, I had to get up at about 4:45 in order to get to the course and have everything set up by 6:20. I went to bed about 10pm and woke up every hour from 12am to 4am wondering if it was time to get up and start moving. Second, I was very well hydrated so I got up to use the restroom every hour, on the hour, all night. It was ridiculous.

4:45am came way to fast. I stumbled down the stairs in the dark, pulled on my tri suit picked up my bag and headed out into the cool pre-dawn air. I rode my bike to the triathlon course, you know, because it felt weird to have only a 56 mile ride planned later and I figured it only made sense to make it an even 60-mile day.

On my way to the course a cab and another car both pulled over and offered to give me a ride, but I actually felt like being on the bike was a good warm up. I also noticed, just as I rounded the next corner, that cars were backed up about a mile and a half to get into the reservoir parking lot. I cruised right by them, pausing just outside of transition to let someone write my number on my arms with a big Sharpie: 1448, and my age on my calf: 30.

There is some strategy around choosing your space in the transition area. You can set up your bike, shoes, food, and other supplies by someone who looks nervous, someone who looks friendly, or someone who looks like this is not their first triathlon. I opted for a veteran and racked my bike next to a guy who obviously knew what he was doing. I asked him questions and organized my space just like his. Towel on the ground, gear sorted by discipline. Running stuff together, biking stuff together, swimming stuff in plastic bag to take to the beach, food and liquid everywhere.

Swim

Once my transition area was set up I headed down to the shore to find someone to talk to. Chatting with other athletes and spectators helped me get my mind off of the 70.3 miles that stood between me, a shower, a nap, and a decent breakfast… or dinner… actually. I tried to eat a cliff bar but gave up a little over half way through. I was so nervous and excited I could barely choke it down.

I was sitting on the ground, with one foot in a plastic bag and pushed through the first leg of the wetsuit (see my guide for putting on a wetsuit) when someone started singing the national anthem. I paused in my struggling to listen and contemplated the ridiculousness of the whole event. I couldn’t help but smile. I was a little surprised that, despite the fact that 4 months ago, I struggled to swim 10 laps in a pool, I was at the start line of a half Ironman.

Once the wetsuit was on I went down to the water to watch the pros start, get water inside my suit and check out the course. The buoys looked really far away. Seriously, very far. I asked a girl next to me if it looked far. “Yeah, it looks really far.” She agreed. Here’s the map of the swim. That little triangle is much bigger in person.

My wave (women 30-34) started at 7:30. I wadded into the water with the other athletes. We wished each other luck and I heard several, “oh no, you go first, I’m slow,” and “please, don’t kick me in the face or swim on top of me”s. So polite!

Finally, the gun went off and I wadded out until I couldn’t touch the bottom anymore. My wetsuit helped me stay on the top of the water and I started my stroke on the outside of the group. It was about the time I reached the first buoy (going clockwise) that I realized that I was kind of tired. I took stock of my body and found out that I wasn’t actually physically tired, I just realized that all my training in a pool prepared me to get a break every 50 yards when you turn around and go the other direction. I started trying to get into a rhythm where I would take 20 strokes and then take a few side-strokes or flip onto my back and count to 10 before flipping back over for another 20 strokes. This gave me a rhythm to get into and worked until the second buoy where the wave of men who started behind us began to catch me.

I was keeping up with them while I was doing the crawl, but would drop behind when I started side-stroking. The water got super choppy, which made it hard to breathe without also inhaling reservoir water. I decided to let the front row of them past me and tried to ignore the headache that was developing due to the fact that my goggles were on so tight to prevent getting water in my eyes or being kicked off.

There were smaller buoys in between the big buoys which kept us on track and gave me little milestones to go between. There were about seven from the last turn buoy to shore. About three buoys away from shore was the low point of the swim for me. I felt like I was so close to being done but I didn’t feel like I was making any progress. I started to swim in little zigzags and tried to focus on just making forward progress.

About that time, I saw Jason standing on the beach and could tell he was looking for me. He waved when he recognized me – still not sure how he did that – about one buoy away from shore. I finally felt my feet touch the ground and stumbled up onto the beach. Jason was able to get right up next the the chute into transition, “That was so fast!” he called, “53 minutes! You are doing great!” I had hoped to finish the swim in less than an hour so I was pretty happy. I meant to thank him for coming. I meant to be excited at this positive news. Instead, I’m pretty sure all I said was, “That swim was really $%&*@ long!” and headed through a little shower and into the transition area.

Bike

It took me a good 5 miles before I realized that I was on a bike. My stomach was a little upset and I had a headache. I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. I tried to force myself to eat a granola bar that I taped to the top tub of my bike and tried not to tip over. “This is the fun part,” I told myself. It took 10 miles before I believed it. I finally started to relax.

One of the many downsides to starting in such a late wave was the pros and early waves had an hour head start on me so they were on their second lap of the bike course as I was just starting out. It made me grumpy to think that they were so far along and I had so far to go, but I tried to keep a good attitude and eventually found it kind of fun to watch them whiz by me. On the second loop, I was all by myself on the course and was kind of lonely.

The volunteers were fantastic. Not only had they mastered the art of handing open bottles of Gatorade and water to moving cyclists, but as the day continued to get warmer, they would spray us with Super Soakers and other misting bottles as we passed through their aid stations. I focused on hydrating, staying relaxed and getting some more food in me. Here is a map of the course and the elevation changes:

When I was about 5 miles away from the finish of the bike leg, the wind started picking up. I was going directly into it and up a false flat. This means that the ground looks flat, but you have to work a lot harder because it’s really a slow ascent. I was tired and wanted to cry just thinking about the fact that I still had to do a half marathon. I considered crying but I felt like I was getting a little dehydrated and didn’t want to waste water – or salt – on tears so I told myself to suck it up, take it one pedal stroke at a time and finish this ride out.

Run

I started the run a little before 12pm. The wind had continued to pick up and the air was hot and dry. I focused on going slow and steady, taking small steps to shake out my bike muscles, and tried to get into a running grove. “Restart.” I told myself. “Forget that you have already been moving about 4.5 hours.”

I saw Jason and my friends Wylie and Mike leaving transition. Jason jogged up to the road and said that they missed me on the bike. They arrived at the course long after I had passed and they had been looking for me ever since. Jason announced that I was, “killing it.” I had forecasted about 4 hours for the bike and I finished in about 3.5. At this point in the race, I was about 30 minutes ahead of my self-projected finishing time. I wanted to pick up the pace, but I knew it was going to be a long, hot run so I kept it nice and steady.

There were aid stations every mile on the run stocked with water, ice water, flat Coke, GU shots, energy bars, and sponges soaking in ice water. Oh, the sponges. I will smile at every sponge I see for years. They saved my life!

My sweat was just evaporating off of me, leaving my skin hot, dry, and salty. I couldn’t keep myself cool. The first time a volunteer handed me a sponge I almost hugged her, but that would have been very, very gross for her so I restrained myself. How you carried your sponge became a funny form of self expression that kept me amused for a mile or two. Some people had their sponges tucked in the back of their hats. Others used them to wipe their sweat off.

For several miles I just shoved one right down my top. The water would run out and soak my shirt and the top of my shorts. Unfortunately, the water warmed up and I couldn’t feel it so I found it worked best to grab two sponges and shove them under the straps of my top near my shoulders.

My stomach started cramping near mile 7 so I started walking once in a while and jogging when I got fresh sponges. I tried to eat my Honey Stingers, but I couldn’t stomach any more gooey sugars and carbs. At mile 11 I spotted something that made me happy. Pretzels. I wanted solid food. And salt. I wanted salt so much that I picked up a handful, shoved it in my mouth grabbed another handful to go and a cup of water. This did not leave me a hand to get my sponges out so I stopped at the end of the aid station, where a volunteer (God bless her) took my sponges out from my top, dunked them in ice water and bravely put them back in my top. She then removed my visor, dunked it in the ice water and put it back on my head. As I started trotting away, she followed me, running a sponge over my back. This woman was a saint.

About the same time, I started feeling blisters on my pinky toes. I wasn’t able to get all the sand off my feet after the swim and still had some in my socks. My toes hurt when I ran, but my hamstrings hurt when I walked so I switched awkwardly from one gait to another before finally settling back on running. “I would get there faster,” I figured. But not by much.

The last mile was miserable. The wind was blowing 25-30mph and it was about 97 degrees. I jogged it in, but I felt like I had to steal every breath I took from the wind that was trying to pull it out of my lungs before I could use it for fuel. Finally, the finish line, and my friends, were in sight. I don’t know how I picked up the pace through the chute, but I finished. 7 hours and 33 minutes after I started. (The clock in the picture says 8:33, but I started an hour after the first gun went off)

It was the slowest half marathon I ever ran, but I had never swam and biked that far before starting a half marathon. I’m usually done with half marathons when restaurants are still serving breakfasts.

My friends, M.E., Seth, Wylie, Mike, and of course, Jason were there at the finish, supportive and amazing. I didn’t really know what to say to them except for, “wow, that was a really long race, thank you for being at the end of it.”

And now, I am half an Ironman.

Recipe for putting on a wetsuit

Ingredients:

  • A wetsuit that is the right size for you
  • At least one plastic bag
  • Rash guard or skin suit
  • Body Glide
  • Very short finger nails
  • Arm muscles and flexibility
Instructions:
  1. Start with a wetsuit that fits. If your wetsuit is too big, it will create drag and cause you to have to work a lot harder to swim. It will also not keep you warm. If your suit is too small it will try to strangle you.
  2. Put on your swim suit, rash guard, or skin suit. Your wetsuit will slide over this suit much better then it will over your skin.
  3. Cover your exposed skin with Body Glide. Pay extra attention to your joints: ankles, wrists, knees, elbows, hips, shoulders, arm pits, neck opening. This will keep the wetsuit from chaffing as you are churning through the water and will make it much easier to pull the suit off after the swim.
  4. Sit down or you will fall down later.
  5. Make sure the zipper on the wetsuit is all the way down. The zipper goes on your back.
  6. Put your foot in a plastic bag and push your bagged foot through the first leg of the wetsuit. Pull the bag off once the ankle of the suit is in the right place. Repeat with the second leg.
  7. Work both legs of the suit up to your knees, then stand up and continue working the suit up over your hips.
  8. At this point, reach down and take all the wrinkles out of the suit from the bottom up. Be sure to use the pads of your fingers because your nails can tear the top layer of the suit. Holes in your suit look unfashionable and will not make you go faster.
  9. Once your suit fits around your hips work it up over your torso, wait as long as possible to put your arms in. You may want to do a little stretching before the next step. My suit is really tight around my arms (probably because I have such huge muscles from swimming) that this next part is pretty difficult for me.
  10. Use the bag again to push your arms though the arm holes on the suit.
  11. Arms are the same as legs, work the suit up from your wrists over elbows and make sure it fits snugly in your arm pits. If it does not fit snugly in your arm pits then you won’t have your full range of motion in your swim.
  12. I always need someone else to zip me up but you might be able to zip yourself with the string that should be attached to your zipper.
  13. If you need some more room around your shoulders and neck, you weren’t aggressive enough pulling the suit up at the beginning. You can probably still get some extra room by starting at your waist and working the suit up. If you still need extra space get to work starting on your ankles and working up again.
Congratulations, you are in your wetsuit. This is probably as difficult as the swim (at least I’m hoping it is) and it’s all downstream from here. I seriously should have trained for getting into the wetsuit. I was exhausted after I figured this out. Best of luck.
By Lindsay Brust

What to Wear for a Half Ironman?

It seems simple, but it’s a complicated question. What can you wear under your wetsuit that will stand up to the wear and tear of a bike seat and not get in your way on the run? I posed the question to the BeginnerTriathlete.com forum and here’s what they had to say:

  • It really just comes down to personal preference. I see most athletes in two pieces, tri shorts + tri top. I like that combination personally for a few reasons. First I don’t think anyone looks remotely good in a one-piece tri suit  and second it’s much easier to use the bathroom with the 2-piece ensemble.
  • I second the two piece, I had GI issues my first HIM which put me in the porta potty each mile of the run, a one piece would have annoyed the heck out of me!
  • I’m a two piece guy. Also, it needs to be tight(er).  I bought my first outfit too big and ended up rarely using it.
  • I like to rock the onesie.
  • I just started wearing a one-piece this year, and really like it.  I agree they don’t look as good as the two-piece, but I’m getting over that.  I have worn it at a few sprints and an olympic and am likely to try it for my upcoming HIM.  For a full IM though, I really think I would go with the two-piece for two reasons: 1.  The porta potty thing 2.  At T2, depending on conditions, it might really be nice to quickly trade in that tri-top for a clean, dry, and perhaps loose-fitting top.  Wearing a 2 piece, and keeping that spare top in your T2 bag, you have that option.
I decided to try out the two piece ensemble. I splurged and ordered Pearl iZumi’s Pro Tri Singlet and Shorts:
If you are near the Boulder Reservoir on Sunday, August 7th and you see an exhausted girl with short brown hair wearing this, start cheering, because it’s me!
by Lindsay Brust

Swimming Drills

A big thanks to my friend Mary, a swimming instructor at the Colorado Athletic Club in Boulder, for these amazing drills that helped me transform from being scared of drowning to a slow and slightly more confident swimmer. They also keep me from getting to bored spending hours in the pool.

All joking aside, these drills are gold. Enjoy!

Here are Mary’s Notes: 

*Perform drills slowly at first and then with varying speeds. The goal is to work on technique, going faster and ultimately holding the same technique while going faster!

*No matter what drill you are doing, follow it with at least a length of full stroke swimming!

  • kick on side w/ one arm extended – maintain high, long body position and keep head down (except to breathe). Switch sides by 25.
  • 4 count – building on the last drill… start on one side with your arm extended, hold for a count of 4 then take one full arm stroke to rotate to the opposite side. Hold there for 4 counts and repeat. Execute quick switches, work on rotating shoulders and hips and maintain proper body positioning.
  • gallop – building on last drill… instead of one arm stroke for each switch, do 3. Focus on long strokes, quick hips and full rotation.
  • single arm breath – stroke with the extended arm while keeping the other arm by your side. Remember to keep rotating your body fully to both sides and drive with your head.
  • sculling – sweeping your hands through the water. The goal here is to feel the water and learn to “hang” onto it at every stage of the pull. Try front scull, mid scull and back scull while using a pull buoy to minimize the kick.
  • head up, underwater recovery/tarzan drill – advanced doggie paddle! Focus on your catch.
  • tennis ball/closed fist drill – Tennis balls are preferred if you can use them, but tightly closed fists will work too. This will teach you to use your entire forearm when pulling underwater and will help you feel the water better when swimming with open hands.
  • fingertip drill – swim normally but graze the top of the water with your fingertips as your take each stroke. Make sure to do this for the entire length of the stroke!  The goal here is to practice high elbows.
  • sighting – essential for open water swimmers trying to maintain a straight line. Try raising your head every couple of strokes to mimic searching for an object and resume swimming normally with minimal interruption to your rhythm, balance and speed.
  • long-axis combo – freestyle and backstroke are both long-axis strokes (head-to-toe rotation). Alternate 3 strokes of freestyle and 3 strokes of backstroke. Drive the rotation of strokes with your hips instead of “muscling” through the water with your kick.
  • hypoxic training – works the lungs. Try swimming a 100 (4 lengths of the pool) breathing every 3-5-7-9 by 25.
Lindsay Brust

Freestyle Hand Entry

After my fantastic bike ride on the Boulder half Ironman bike course yesterday morning, I met the equally (if not more) fantastic Mary Miller for a stoke analysis and swimming lesson at the Colorado Athletic Club. If you don’t know Mary, you are missing out. Not only is she a fabulous athlete but she’s also a really cool person. Mary had good news for me. I’m probably going to survive the swim. She seemed pleasantly surprised by my stroke, though I have to admit, I do set people up to assume the worst when it comes to my swimming ability.

We “warmed up” by doing a couple of laps sharing a lane. This alone was an extremely eye opening experience. The first thing I noticed was how much water she moves while swimming. I was approaching the wall at the same time she was leaving it during one lap and I think the force of her push and first couple of strokes after that almost pushed me into the next lane. I realized how different her mental approach to swimming must be compared to my approach of “conserve energy and survive.”

Her main piece of advice was that I be much more aggressive with my hand entry. I had been allowing gravity to drop my arm from a recovery position into the water then down so that my body went up and I could breathe. I thought that this must conserve energy when really, it probably just caused me to bob up and down a lot, making me pretty inefficient.

Mary suggested that a more aggressive hand entry would give me forward motion and set up my pull to be much more powerful. It would also cause my shoulders to rotate more naturally and allow me to breathe without turning my head as far.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. During recovery, be sure to keep your elbows high
  2. Think about leading the entry into the water with your thumbs (slightly, don’t over exaggerate this) about the height of your goggles or swim cap
  3. Push your hand and arm forward in an aggressive motion about 2 inches under the surface of the water
  4. If you do it right, this aggressive motion will turn your body onto the side so your tummy and back faces the sides of the pool (I had been trying to get this turn to come from my hips with very limited success)
  5. If you move your upper body with this kind of purpose your legs will, almost automatically, do what they need to in order to stabilize your motion so you don’t need to think about them anymore
She suggested I do 5 sets of 100 meters thinking about that – about 10 laps – resting for about 10 seconds every two laps. While it sounded counter intuitive to me at first, this also regulated my breathing and allowed me to go much further without needing to stop and gasp for breath as much. Thanks Mary.
Lindsay Brust

Tri… Backwards

My long workout last weekend was a backwards triathlon. I made some coffee and put on my running clothes before taking a little time to lay out what I was going to wear for the bike ride. Then I put all my swimming gear in a backpack with some clean dry clothes so I could grab it quickly on the way to the pool.

I started out by running for about half an hour along a trail near my new townhouse. The trail was well packed dirt and gravel and gently rolling under shady trees. It was awesome. What a find! I felt well rested, refreshed from a couple of days off due to my knee draining. My iPod recently quit on me so I used my iPhone. I have been hesitant to introduce my iPhone to my sweaty hobbies for fear that it would get salty, dirty, and gross. But, since my choices are, use the phone I already have or shell out $100 for a new iPod, I stopped worrying about the potential saltiness of the phone. I downloaded the Nike+ GPS application and covered about 3.4 miles in about 32 minutes. Anything under a 10 minute per mile pace is pretty good for me. I was excited. Lindsay Brust

Next, I biked about 60 minutes in the rolling flats north east of Boulder. I am very bad at planning what to wear on a bike. I always under dress. I think it’s because I run so slow that I always get so warm from the lack of breeze that I don’t compensate for the fact that I ride slightly faster then I run. Regardless, it was a gorgeous day with just a couple of things I needed to slow down for.

By the way, this train wakes me up at night pretty frequently at it passes about a block away from the new townhouse. I underestimated how loud train whistles are. I should know better.

My swim, as usual, was the hardest part of the workout. I was a little warn out from the run and the bike — which, for the record is two workouts for anyone not living in Boulder. Normal people would throw in the towel at this point and go get breakfast and take a nap. Not me. I had to go not drown for a while.

I only made it about 20 laps, which is crazy because a few weeks ago, I was really proud of myself for not drowning for 20 laps. Now, it’s just 1/2 as much as I’m going to need to do and 1/3 as much as I should be doing. (I dislike fractions almost as much as I dislike swimming.) Anyway, I survived. I treated myself to mimosas, sweet potato fries and laying on the couch watching a chick flick. You know, what many people skip directly to on Saturdays.

Biking and Laps. Always Laps.

According to my new program, I needed to bike for about an hour and then swim another insane amount of laps last night. I’m exhausted just looking at the schedule. The good thing about being on a schedule is that it takes a lot of the emotion out working up the motivation for me. I just try to do as much as I can. I still haven’t been able to complete a “full” swimming workout yet, but every time I get in the pool, I need to rest a little less and can go a little further. It’s a good guide for me to follow… or try to. You can find my schedule here. Thanks BeginnerTriathlete, for keeping me moving. Someone has got to do it. Lindsay Brust

I would have loved to get out on an actual bike yesterday, but since I had to do all my training after work, I decided to go to a spinning class. Despite my comment about motivation in the previous paragraph, I try to make it as easy as possible to go from one workout to another. I’m very gifted at coming up with excuses for not completing my workout so I have to organize things in a way where I have as few ejection points as possible. Having the pool with plenty of lanes, and all my gear, in the same building makes it more difficult to get side tracked by the happy hour special less then a block away.

The spinning class was good. We did a lot of intervals which is a sneaky way for me to get stronger. I have the “I can do anything for a minute” approach to biking. Then, I just spin. So you have to make me work for short amounts of time. Following the spinning class, I was suppose to do about 29 laps in the pool. I did 21 and called it a night.

I’m having my draining procedure done on my knee today. At least it’s a good excuse for a couple of rest days. Wish me luck.

Dealing with the Elements, part 1

I read recently that someone in training should stay on their schedule no matter what the weather looks like. The reason for this madness is that it prepares you to perform with whatever kind of weather you are dealt on race day.

This is difficult for me as I’ve always been a fair weather participator in any activity. In fact, if there is a cloud in the sky, I like to just stay in bed. Okay, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but I will say that above everything, I hate being submerged in cold water. It’s one feeling that I can’t seem to just tough it through. I find being cold and wet supremely unpleasant and whenever I find myself in that kind of position, I try to get out of it immediately.

So, I was surprised when I found myself running across the street from the Colorado Athletic Club (CAC) to the outdoor pool wearing nothing but a swimming suit and a towel at 8:30am on a Saturday when it was 40 degrees outside and windy. The CAC has an outdoor pool that is open all year round so that crazy people can swim outside when there is snow on the ground. I joined three other crazy people for my first masters swim class taught by a very fit 22 year old named Zach. From what I can tell, master’s swim just means that adults who are very good at swimming all get together and relive their competitive college days while speaking a weird language I don’t understand. Ladders. builds. intervals. I have no idea what any of these things mean.

Zach told me to “warm up” with 300 (meaning about 6 laps). After 6 laps, I’m usually not only warmed up, I’m exhausted. Then I was suppose to kick for 3 laps. I don’t know how I can have three marathons under my belt and thousands of miles running and when I try to move through water using only my legs, I move slower than a snail’s pace.

Pulling follows kicking. When you work on your pull, you place a floaty between your thighs and just use your arms to move. This is my favorite part of swimming. I can just drag my useless legs along, I float better and I can take my time. I don’t get near as out of breath. I would pull the whole damn 1.2 miles of the tri if they would let me use a leg-water-wings. Zach asked me to do 400 (2 laps) of another stroke next. Aside from my ridiculous breast stoke, I don’t think I know how to do any other strokes. It’s amazing I haven’t drowned in my bathtub by now.

Then we did something like intervals at 110. I’m still not totally sure what this is. I think you do a lap and then you get to rest for some undisclosed amount of time. I was sure we’d been swimming for about 3 hours when it was only suppose to be a 60 minute class. I looked longingly at the hot tub across the lawn chairs and wished it was sunny and I had a margarita.

We still weren’t done. Next came ladders or building or something like that. I had to ask what this was. I felt so lost as to what I was suppose to be doing. Zach patiently explained that I should swim easily for the length of the pool then build my effort on the way back so that I was “really moving” by the time I reached the starting place. I tried. I really did. I don’t think my pace changed at all but I looked like I was working really hard when I hit (okay, reached gasping) for the wall because I was really out of breath.

He did end up giving me some great pointers about my swimming. Apparently, I’m a wiggler and my hips are going the opposite direction then then should be. He told me to try to get use to breathing on both sides because he thinks that will even out my stroke. Finally, Haylee, the ex-competitive swimmer kicking my ass in the next lane gave me a the best tip. With your catch, the hand that moves the water back under you during your stroke, pretend like you are grabbing and pulling yourself over a barrel. I immediately felt a giant improvement and I felt like I was riding higher in the water which made me more comfortable. I lost track of how many laps I swam but I am guessing it was around 22-25. My furthest yet… and about half of what I need to do in August. I’ll be swimming a lot this coming week, stand by for hilarity.

800 Yards of Swimming

A couple of weeks ago, I coerced a friend into giving me a swimming lesson after learning that she was a competitive endurance swimmer in college. I explained my dilemma to her, “I might drown if you don’t help me,” and I’m sure, after watching me flail around in the pool for a few minutes, she saw my point. During the lesson she showed me a lot of different drills I could practice to increase my endurance and efficiency. I have a place to start!

She surprised me later that weekend with 13 workouts that begin at 800 yards and scaled up to 1700 yards per workout. I have to swim 2112 yards the day of the 70.3 but I feel like once I’m in sight of land, nothing is going to stop me.

I have a plan. I love a plan. I feel better with a road map in hand to get me from being a land-oriented person to someone who can swim further then a mile. Confidently, I wandered off to the pool to practice my technique. It only took about 20 minutes to get discouraged again. It took me 4 tries to complete the first 800 meter workout she gave me. The highlight of these 4 workouts was that I got to sit in the hot tub and drown my sorrows in bubbles, which is officially the best way to drown sorrows – bubbles.

Finally, Sunday, I finished workout #1:

  • 150 yard easy swim, “warm-up” (I took the liberty of adding quotes to warm-up because I’m exhausted after this)
  • 4 x 50: 25 drill, 25 swim
  • 4 x 25: count your strokes and decrease the number of strokes per length
  • 4 x 50: 25 drill, 25 swim
  • 150 yard easy swim, warm-up (I’m so tempted to skip this)

Success! Now I only have 1312 yards to go.

Using Golf Scores to Measure Swimming Efficiency

I had my first swimming lesson for the Ironman 70.3 over the weekend. My friend Mary teaches swimming lessons so she has a lot of practice explaining techniques that come so naturally to her after swimming for so long to rookies like me. I think that is a very important trait that is under appreciated in teachers. Especially since I ask a lot of very novice type questions such as, “do you breathe out your nose or your mouth underwater? Where do you rotate, from your hips or your whole body? Are you sure I can’t use fins during the triathlon? Maybe that way I could keep up!”

As a runner, I’m used to measuring how well I’m doing by going further and faster. If I’m putting in the miles my schedule calls for, I assume I’m good to go. As as swimmer, I wanted to be able to measure my efficiency, and Mary gave me a great way to do that. It’s called The Golf Score. Here’s how you calculate it. Swim one lap in the pool and track these three metrics:

  1. Exactly how many strokes you take to get down and back
  2. Exactly how many seconds you take to get down and back
  3. Your heart rate at the end of the exercise. This can be calculated by taking your pulse for 6 seconds and multiplying that by 10.

Add those three numbers together. This is your golf score. The goal is to decrease the golf score. Preferably each number would decrease as you become more efficient (less strokes), decrease your time (get faster), and lower your heart rate (not work so hard). I’m excited because I can have fun by making a game out of it.

What tricks do you have to make training fun?