I’ve gotten a lot of questions and emails about the Naples Island Swim for this year and I have some good news for those of you that like it as much as I do. We didn’t have a host for it this swim at the beginning of the year, but Shore Aquatics has stepped up to make sure this event keeps going. I’m really stoked about this and can’t wait to hear more. So a big thank you to Shore and our new event director Merritt!!! I can wait to go down to Long Beach in August to do some swimming!
I drove up to Palo Alto on Friday night for the Rinconada Masters Meet. I met up with my friend Sarah for dinner to load up on Indian food and talk swimming a bit. She had a meet this weekend too but not the one I was going to so it was good to sneak in some dinner to catch up a bit.
In the morning I went to the pool way early even though I wasn’t in the first event (1000 free). I mainly just wanted to get a place to park since I heard like 220 people preregistered and the pool doesn’t actually have a parking lot! I grabbed a good spot and then went to check out the pool. It was pretty frosty in the morning and the pool was really steamy. Since I had hours before my first event I decided to go on an adventure on foot. I grabbed my iPhone and looked for the nearest place to eat some breakfast. I ended up wandering around for like 2 miles through some neighborhoods and a little downtown area and landed in a diner for some eggs and bacon. Afterwards I took a longer way back to the pool just to go exploring. It warmed up quite a bit while I was wandering. In theory it was supposed to be cold and windy all day but that never really came true.
When I got back to the pool it was considerably more populated. I ran into my Pacific Masters friends Jim from the Manatee Masters and John from Santa Rosa and set up my stuff by them right along the edge of the kid’s wading pool. It’s a good thing I had them to talk to because I had to wait forever for my first event. I don’t think I swam until almost 1 o’clock! While I was around I also saw Erik from Santa Rosa, Coach Chris from Mountain View and I got to met Jana from Menlo Masters who reads the blog! As a surprise bonus I met a couple people from San Luis Obispo (down where I live) who recognized my name over the loud speaker as being “that search engine guy.” I don’t think I’ve had work cross over into the pool like that before so that was kind of funny, one of the guys had just called my office Friday afternoon… small world huh? :)
Anyways, let’s get to some swimming shall we? My first event of the day was the 50 freestyle. I was stoked to finally be getting in a race! The swim was ok but it felt a little “off.” The blocks felt a little squirrelly and I had a subpar push off and dolphin kick of the turn. I swam a 25.6 which is par for the course right now, but it didn’t really feel correct. I just sort of wrote it off as being the first swim of the day and moved my focus to the 200 free.
Me and the 200 free just can’t quite come to terms with each other. Last time I swam it I went out way fast and gassed out hard. This time I went out too slow and never made it back. Although I gotta say my last 25 was probably the fastest of the whole race so I had something left in the tank. Upside is I made a new friend with a dude who beat me by about a second in the next lane over. It was his first meet in about 25 years, I always like to talk to people in their first couple meets back just to soak in that happiness and excitement. I’ll figure this thing out eventually… I just don’t see any reason why I can’t get down to around 2:00 flat but I keep swimming closer to 2:07-8. Maybe next year I’ll get my SCY time more where it should be.
At this point it was getting really late in the day and I decided to just swim the 50 fly and scratch the 100 free since I had a big drive home and wanted some daylight for it. Since I only had one event left I really wanted it to count. I tried to focus a little harder before my race and be really aggressive off the start. I’m pretty sure I growled a little bit underwater while kicking off the dive :) My 50 fly wasn’t a best time but it was up there. I swam a 26.4 which I’m plenty happy with for a midseason meet that also happens to be in a big string of meets (I have 3 meets in a row this month!).
After my race I got changed and started the big drive home. Normally I would have written my recap last night, but honestly I just wanted to go to bed instead! So here you go… a meet wrap up just a day late. Next week I’m swimming in Santa Clarita, mainly 50’s this time around.
I thought this was interesting... never seen this posted at a meet before
busy on deck
this pool never stopped being busy! Tons of people were in the water!
I had an unreasonably gorgeous day for a swim in Santa Maria today, it was one of those where no one wanted to get in the pool because we just wanted to lay out on the deck and soak up the sun. After about 15 minutes of talking and avoiding doing work we all got in and did a modified version of a workout from a few months back.
400 reverse IM, kick/drill/kick/swim
2 x 200 kick @ 4:00
2 x 200 free IM @ 3:30
2 x 150 kick @ 3:00
2 x 150 IM (no fly) @ 2:30
2 x 100 kick @ 2:00
2 x 100 IM @ 1:45
2200 yards
So… we didn’t get to far today, but we had fun so I guess that counts for something :) Today was probably my last workout before I head north for the Rinconada Masters meet on Saturday. Online entry closed today, but it looks like deck entry will be available. I’m swimming the 50/100/200 free and the 50 fly. I’m really curious to see how the 2 novice events go… I’ve never seen that before in a meet. The other thing that is way beyond me is the concept of a 1650 YARD FLY! Holy crap! Who does that? For those of you capable of such a feat, I salute you!
Since I’ve never been to this pool I had to do my pool recon via Google Maps. It looks like we have 14 lanes and it’s at least deep on one end judging by the diving boards.
I’m excited about having some deep water for my 100 free. I swam a really good time for me at the Fullerton meet last month and I feel like I could have swam it faster if it weren’t for the part where I had to totally change my dive to compensate for the 4 foot deepness of the pool! This meet will also hopefully be redemption for my 200 free. I swam a best time at Rose Bowl in the rain, but I gassed out hard in the process. Like embarrassingly hard, admittedly it was after swimming a 500 and a 1000 free… but still… it was pretty weak. I’d like to see what I can do here when I’m not totally exhausted! Anybody else planning on being there?
For those of you that are charitably inclined it might have crossed your mind to give some money to US Masters Swimming to support their mission, and if you’re like me you probably had no idea how to actually do so! At last years convention I heard about the USMS Endowment Fund for the first time and started looking for some more information about it. USMS recently set up a page on the site that spells out what the Endowment Fund is all about and gives you a way to make a donation. Currently it’s a write a check and fill out a form kind of a thing, there’s talk of making it all online during the year.
Here’s a snippet of their description of the program:
The USMS Endowment Fund is the charitable arm of U.S. Masters Swimming. Established in 1989, the fund provides grants to programs with a focus on medical and health research on the benefits of swimming, development assistance for new Masters programs, outreach to other adult fitness organizations, and education to improve leadership, address swimming and adult fitness issues and to help Masters programs with special needs.
If you go to usms.org/giving/ you can read about some of the things the Endowment has supported and learn how to give or apply for a grant.
This is something you’re probably going to be hearing a lot more about in the future from USMS. Our new president (and my teammate at CVMM!) Jeff Moxie has a big vision for what USMS could do to reinvest in swimming via the Endowment Fund, and personally I’m excited about the potential to do good stuff!
You might have noticed me talking earlier in the month about being HeadBlade’s picture of the month for March, I’m still pretty geeked out on it. Even my mom thinks it’s pretty cool!
Anyways, I thought that I would do a quick video to show you how using a HeadBlade works. I’ve been a user since I started shaving my head regularly way back when I was in the Army. So here’s some video I took this weekend in my hotel of me shaving and mumbling about shaving… it’s riveting documentary work for sure :)
If you want to get a HeadBlade for yourself or just go check out their stuff you can do that over here.
** just for full blogger disclosure, on top of being a long time fan I am a member of their affiliate program
if you have a cat, you have to buy this... just saying... click the picture for more
So what does a cat dressed as a shark have to do with anything? Well nothing, it just makes me happy :) Anyways, moving on to what was actually going on today… I got in a solid 3k with my Santa Maria masters friends. We started with just 2 of us but finished with about 6. It’s still a little windy and chilly (California chilly not real chilly) out here, but the sun was out and shining so while you were in the water it felt like a nice summer day. On the deck it wasn’t quite the same sensation!
Repeat x 4
200 swim @ 3:20
100 IM @ 1:40
50 drill (IM order)
100 kick
Repeat x 4
150 free
100 free
50 free
3000 yards total
In other news… I’m going to be doing some videos for USMS and blueseventy during the course of the summer. While I’m traveling around the country I’ll be on the look out for interesting people and fun teams to drop in with! I’m not exactly sure when all of this is going to get going, but when I start putting stuff out there I’ll let you guys know all about it!
I had a rough day at the office. It felt like my brain was trying to escape my head all day… not bueno. I wasn’t sure if swimming was going to help or hurt, but I figured fresh air and chlorine fix everything so I might as well try!
I hit the gym right after work and reminded myself why I typically don’t do that! The pool was pretty busy and I was sharing my lane with between 2 and 4 other people. Generally that’s not a big deal in a long course pool, but when every one is doing their own thing and no one is the same speed it gets real messy real quick! I was the fast guy in the lane so I ended up doing a lot of passing and weaving. Sometimes I just turned at the middle of the pool to find open water… and speaking of open water, the wind was out of control tonight! We had little baby whitecaps in the pool and wind spray when you’d swim towards the far wall. It was nuts! So instead of long course meters, I’ve decided today’s swim will be measured in OCM (obstacle course meters).
200 swim
200 kick
350ish swim (would have been pull but my buoy was blown away!)
200 swim
10 x 100 mainly free with a few 50’s of stroke mixed in
200 kick
100 swim
2250 ocm total
After my swim I drove down to the edge of downtown San Luis Obispo and just took a walk. I probably walked about 2 miles around the city without much purpose, a good use of my time for sure! I probably need to do that a little more often. I can’t wait until the sun starts staying up later so I can cruise the beach in the daylight during the evenings.
Today was the Cal Tech Pentathlon which is one of my favorite meets and it didn’t disappoint! We had over 200 swimmers in attendance, and despite rain in the forecast it stayed sunny until the very last moment on the pool deck. One of the best parts of today for me was the turnout from my team. We had one of the bigger groups of swimmers of any team at the pool and everybody did awesome! We had a lot of best times, team records, and some first time swimmers which is always exciting. A lot of my favorite swimmers from the rest of SPMA were out today too, and I finally got to meet a couple people in person for the first time that I’ve “met” online through the blog. Personally I had a really good day in the pool and I’m very happy with my swims… well I wasn’t so excited about my backstroke, but everything else was on point.
My first race was the 50 fly and I was in heat 25 or 26, because like I said… there were a TON of people there! I felt like I started real strong and felt good through the whole first length. I got to the wall at an awkward point and ended up doing a bit of a glide into my turn instead of a short half stroke. On the way back my feel for the water deteriorated a bit, but I still felt fast. I ended up finishing with a 26.08 which is a personal best in yards by about half a second so I’m pretty stoked with that! I really want to get into the 25’s before the season is over.
50 Fly
Up next was the 50 back and honestly I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I’m just not connecting in backstroke these days. I ended up swimming a 31.68 which is slower than what I swam last year, as a matter of fact it was barely faster than my breaststroke! Yikes… I need some work there!
While I was waiting around for the 50 breaststroke I was telling everybody I had a good 50 breast in me today, I could feel it! Well it turns out I was right… I swam 32.23 which is about half a second faster than my previous best time and really fast for me. I’m starting to kind of like the 50 breast despite having been a devout non-breaststroker most of my life. I’ve been tweaking my stroke a lot here in an attempt to get better at it. I’m trying to throw my hands a lot faster and I’ve added the dolphin kick to my pulldown. I’d be pretty excited if I could get this thing into the 31’s.
50 Breaststroke action
My 50 free time was middle of the road, not slow but not my best work. The time would have been a little bit better if I would have timed my turn better. I barely made contact with the wall and that sapped a lot of my momentum. I still managed a 25.49, but it should have been better.
The last race of the day was the 100 IM which was a breakthrough swim for me last year at this meet. I had similar success this year! I dropped about 2 seconds off my previous best! I think an improved breast stroke and just better fitness in general played a major role here. It hurt pretty bad when I finished, but the swim itself felt really solid and I’m really happy with the time.
Overall I ended up 4th in my age group which is cool with me seeing as I pretty much got rocked last year. I’m still not in danger of winning, but I’m a lot closer to being a contender in some events.
Despite having 2 cameras and an iPhone on me I didn’t take very many pictures… my girlfriend did manage to catch all my races (except my backstroke) on video however. The video and a few pictures are below.
I came down to Thousand Oaks last night and I swam with CVMM this morning out at the Rancho Simi pool in Simi Valley. This was the first time I’ve swam at this pool (I usually do the CLU workouts when I’m in town), and I really liked it. We swam SCY today but they do LCM workouts here too.
Thursday was Coach Ahelee’s birthday and a group of swimmers that she’s worked with in Orange County came up to swim with us today. So mixed in with the regular CVMM crowd we had Novas and Nadadores! After having us all warm up together she split us into 3 groups… those of us racing tomorrow, and then the rest of the group was broken up by speed. After hearing their workout I’m glad I have a meet tomorrow! It was a tough one!
My group did a bunch of shorter swims of all different strokes since tomorrow’s pentathlon is a 50 of each stroke plus a 100 IM. We finished up by doing a whole bunch of practice starts. I don’t really get to practice ever so this was nice for me and I took advantage of it. I got a lot of feedback from Ahelee on my start and what we can do to make it faster. She even had me try a few track starts just to get used to it so I can start working them into my races in the future.
After workout we hung out in the rain and ate birthday cake! Rancho Simi was the place to be this morning… swimmers from all over SPMA, diving and cake… what’s not to like :) Tomorrow I’m off to the races… in the meantime I’m just having a lazy day in Thousand Oaks.
Ahelee giving instruction on deck while Coach Nancy gives it from in the water
obligatory underwater self portraiture
pre dive
airborn!
that first kick upon entry
dolphin kicking away... that looks like way too much knee bend to me... hmmm
birthday cake!
Ahelee and Jeff (our USMS president) on deck; Nancy, Heidi and Jason in the water
Today’s swim felt really good, I love lunchtime swims! I’m starting to think that I might be solar powered, I’m always way more energized after a swim in the sun. We had a pretty good group of swimmers out at the pool this afternoon, but it was so nice on deck it was kind of hard to actually get us in the water.
We started with some 100’s on a pretty easy interval and I tried to just focus on swimming them clean and consistent. All 10 came within 3 seconds of each other so I’m pretty pleased with that. When we got to the 3 100’s with fins on I had a few problems keeping my fins on! I kept popping out of the heel on my right foot during flip turns. I think my fins are like a half size too big. Anyways, here’s the workout:
10 x 100 free @ 1:40
4 x 150 kick w/ fins @ 2:40
100 easy
3 x 100 free w/ fins @ 1:15
200 cool down
2200 yards total
It wasn’t long but it got the job done! I probably won’t get to swim tomorrow because I’ll be traveling, but I’m planning on dropping in with my Thousand Oaks team on Saturday and then racing at CalTech on Sunday.
