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.
**Results are available here There should be video of the meet posted by LiveSwim.net this week, I’ll post the link here when it’s live!
warm up in the competition pool
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.
To be perfectly honest I was in a pretty crappy mood all day. I missed my lunchtime swim yesterday and I’ve been wrapped up in my end of month report cycle at work. Well we finished up reports at work this afternoon and I escaped to the pool around 7pm. We had waves of rain blowing through the area and that kept the crowd in the pool to a minimum. The rain was so cold compared to the water in the pool that it kind of burned and felt prickly when it hit you… odd, but definitely a cool sensation!
In my pyramid I sprinted that last 100m and it felt really good. The rain was coming down really hard, the wind was blowing and I had some Metallica pumping through my SwiMP3… all was right with the world and I was happy :) Tomorrow I should be back to my regular schedule with a swim in Santa Maria. I really need a good intense short course workout to get ready for CalTech this weekend!
Getting my swim junk together... fins, weird suits, SwiMP3, & Camera
Rain!
odd self portraiture... I just like the glowing green light
Quick shot from last year's 1 mile open water champs at Lake Millerton outside of Fresno
With the posting of the one mile champs yesterday, all 5 2010 USMS Open Water National Championships are now open for entry! I’m going to all 5 and I’ve gotten my entry in for all except one because it doesn’t have online entry. I’m a little slow with actual mail and checks, paper isn’t really my style.
1 Mile Championships
May 29th outside of Charlotte, North Carolina – enter online here
2 Mile Cable Swim Championships
July 10th in Charlottesville, Virginia – enter online here
3-6 Mile Championships (6k)
June 19th in Colorado – enter online here
6+ Mile Championships (10k)
July 17th in Noblesville, Indiana – enter online here
Hopefully there’s a swim in here that piques your interest. I realize a lot of these are a little while out, but now isn’t too early to start picking out some events :) Anybody planning to swim any of these? I’ll see you there!
So I’m pretty geeked out about this… I’ve been a HeadBlade fan for the better part of a decade now, and for the month of March I will be gracing the site as the HeadBlade picture of the month! They gave the blog and my tour a shout out and got in a quick paragraph on USMS while they were at it!
If you’re not familiar with what HeadBlade does, they make a suave razor made specially for your head. If you’re bald like me it’s a must have. Look out for a “how to” video from me in the next week or so showing how a HeadBlade works.
The first of the month is always my toughest day at work, so a big thank you to the guys at HeadBlade for spicing up my day! This was a real crowd pleaser in the office :)
If you want to learn more about HeadBlade, check out HeadBlade.com or just ask me!
My coach Ahelee sent me a note today letting me know about a swim clinic with Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen going on this week in North Hollywood. Karlyn is a fantastic swimmer, prolific world record holder/breaker (we’re talking hundreds), and frequent contributor to Swimming World Magazine. There’s still spots available if you want to get in on the clinic.
Thursday, March 4th from 5:30-9:30 PM
Location: East Valley Family YMCA in North Hollywood, 5142 Tujunga Ave,
North Hollywood, CA Register online at: http://aquaticedge.org/registerNow.php
The other big thing going on is the CalTech Pentathlon in Pasadena on Sunday! This is one of my favorites and a very fun event. I think this is going to be one of the most attended 1 day meets in SPMA this season. There’s already about 120 people registered right now and the online registration is still open until the 6th at 9PM, deck entries will also be available. I would recommend getting registered now to skip the deck entry line and save $10.
