2009 September | Rob Aquatics Masters Swimming Blog

US Aquatic Sports/USMS Convention Wrap Up

I’m sitting in O’Hare right now waiting for my first flight on my way back to California and I figured right now was as good a time as any to try and recap the blur of the last few days. I’ve basically been constantly engaged since Wednesday afternoon and inside a giant hotel. A tip for any of those that are planning on going to convention, don’t expect to leave… at all. The biggest excursion I made was across the street from the parking lot to sit on a bench and eat some pizza. Otherwise I was in the hotel at a meeting, workshop, the bar or the “auxiliary meeting room.”

The committee meetings were very interesting for me to sit in on. Even though the USMS national office is starting to take over large chunks of the day to day of Masters business, especially in marketing and communications, there is still an epic amount of work done by volunteers to keep this organization moving. I sat in on the Fitness Committee, the Coaches Committee, the Sports Medicine and Science Committee, part of the Championship Committee, and the first session of the Open Water and Long Distance Committee. I also sat in on some good coaches presentation/workshop type events, a LMSC communications workshop, and of course the House of Delegates. You might have noticed that I hit a lot of coach’s events even though I’m not a coach. A big reason for that is even though I don’t coach I have a big interest in the growth of USMS and I think a lot of it starts with the teams and the coaches. I wanted to know what they’re trying to do to grow their programs and support Masters.

Outside of all the official stuff I got to do a lot of great networking with other swimmers from all over the country. I also got to meet a lot of people for the first time in person that I know through the blog, facebook or the USMS forums which was really cool.

I’ll probably keep bringing up convention stuff on the blog for a while, but here are some of the big highlights for our crew from Southern California:

My coach Nancy Kirkpatrick Reno from Conejo Simi Aquatics won the USMS Coach of the Year award!!! I am very excited for Nancy, I’m a big fan :)

Julie Heather from SPMA won the Ransom A. Aurthur award which is the biggest award USMS gives out and it was very well deserved for all the work she does for us.

Michael Heather from SPMA was elected VP of National Operations.

Jeff Moxie from SPMA and a member of my team (Conejo Simi) was elected president of USMS!

The Mission Viejo Nadadores were one of 2 teams presented with the USMS Club of the Year (Go Mark and Ahelee!).

In non-SPMA related news, the 2011 SCY Championships were awarded to Mesa Aquatics in Arizona. The 2011 LCM Championships were awarded to Auburn in Alabama.

There is a lot of work to do in the coming year, but I think we are going to see big things from USMS in 2010!

Suit Debacle – USMS Convention Edition Continued

So here’s a scan of the language for the USMS recommendation

Below are the choices we were given to vote on for implementation for Short Course Yards season. The numbers written on the side are my notes of how many votes each option recieved.

I want to point out that I made a mistake in my original Saturday night post. I meant to write shoulder to knee, not shoulder to ankle. I fixed it in the post but I’m sure somebody saw it. Sorry if I caused any confusion. Hopefully the above straightens things out for everyone!

And just to remind you guys one more time, this isn’t a rule yet. It’s highly dependent on what goes down at the FINA Masters Technical Committee this week.

Suit Debacle – USMS Convention Edition

**UPDATE: Click here for a scan of some of what was voted on

Ok so I just got out of the final meeting of this year’s house of delegates. The last action item was, dun dun dun…. swimsuits. It finally happened. Up until this point hardly anyone mentioned it, it was like bringing up religion or politics in casual conversation… not a good idea. Once the floor opened up the comments got pretty hot for a little while.

2 major things went down here but I will forewarn you that all this may be completely meaningless depending on how things go down next week with the FINA Masters Technical Committee.

1st off, the USMS rules committee proposed suit restrictions. THIS IS A RECOMMENDATION NOT A RULE!!! The short version is men and women get the same suits, shoulder to knee in textile (the definition of which is tbd). Zippers and drawstrings are allowed. Modesty suits are still ok and taping is only allowed for medical reasons.

2nd we voted on how long to keep suits in regards to short course yards season. In case you forgot we’re the only country that bothers with SCY. The 2 choices that people were voting for were: 1. dropping the tech suits as soon as the FINA Masters swim wear rule is adopted 2. Keep tech suits for SCY until June 1st (when SCY season ends) or later if FINA adopts no standard.

The vote was much closer than I would have expected. 101 to 93 in favor of dropping the suits earlier rather than later. Boo. I still think FINA has plenty of flip flop left in it and this was probably a whole lot of fighting for nothing. We’ll see how it goes down. From what I understand we still get to ride out the rest of SCM season in techsuits.

More info will be coming out on this in the next couple of weeks, but I want to remind you all again that this still doesn’t mean anything per se. There are a lot of variables floating around, but I wanted to share what’s gone down so far.

Argue amongst yourselves, I have a banquet to get to!

USAS Convention So Far

I got to Chicago on Wednesday and I haven’t been outside of the hotel since! Also this just in…. I need to start drinking coffee! Apparently sleeping at this convention isn’t worked into the schedule. I started at 7am yesterday, finished my meetings around 9pm and didn’t end up back in my room until 2am, yikes. Beyond that, the convention is going really well. I’ve met a ton of new people and learned more about who is behind some of the decisions USMS makes. I’ve had a lot of good conversations with other people from my region, plenty of folks from the Illinois and Wisconsin delegations (they must be drawn to my slowing reemerging Wisconsin accent :)), random strangers with Masters Convention badges in elevators and hallways and I even got to sit down with Rob Butcher (our executive director) for dinner on Wednesday. Last night I was in our meeting room at like 1 in the morning talking with the current USMS President and the head guy from Masters Diving while I enjoyed a fancy plastic cup of boxed wine, why not right? :)

During the day yesterday I sat in on the Fitness, Coaches, Championship, Sports Medicine, and Open Water/Long Distance Committees. By the way if you were curious…. 2011 SCY Nationals will be in Mesa, AZ and 2011 LCM will be in Auburn, AL.

I’m sure a lot of you are waiting with baited breath to hear what’s up with suits. So far nothing really. The coaches committee voted to recommend going along with whatever FINA says, but that’s just a committee recommendation not a decision from the house of delegates so don’t get all worked up just yet. FINA masters is meeting next week, that has potential to be a big deal for us.

I have to get back to the convention floor but I wanted to shoot a quick update out into the internetz. If you’re out here and you see me say hi!

Quick Swim at Highland Park Country Club

I swam with my new swim friend AJ at the Highland Park Country Club today. I met her at Big Shoulders and she invited me to come workout while I was in town. Not being one to pass up an invitation to swim, I made sure to get down here early so we could swim before she had to teach her masters class. Originally we were going to swim in the Lake, but the surf was up so we opted for the country club instead. The facility was really nice, especially the locker room. It had super fancy wood faced lockers with digital locks on them.

AJ talked about this being a recovery workout but it didn’t really go that way. We moved at a pretty good clip and I was really feeling the 2 workouts from yesterday. My left shoulder is displeased with me at the moment. No swimming for me tomorrow morning!

Here’s our workout:

200 swim/200 kick/200 pull

4 x 100 IM order (kick 25/drill 50/swim 25)

10 x 150

50 easy

8 x 50 kick

200 cool down

3150 yards total

After swimming I had a super good breakfast in downtown Highland Park and then went up to Gurnee Mills to look for a suit. Like a fancy person clothes suit, not a swim suit. I guess there’s a party at the convention on Saturday that is kinda dressy and I don’t want to look like a total schlub. Where I live business is done very casually… multiply that by being self employed and in the internet industry and you have a guy that’s almost 30 without a suit. This was a lot harder than I had hoped though. My shoulders are pretty wide and I have a really tough time finding coats and dress shirts that fit me. In a suit coat I need at least a 48 to fit my shoulders, anything less than that and I’m liable to have Tommy Boy style fat guy in a little coat moment… but then they tend to flare out like a dress on the way down, boo. I finally found something in the last store I went into that looks half way decent so I am excited.

Just got into the convention hotel. I’ll keep you guys updated with what’s going on here at the US Aquatic Sports Convention.

So anyone else notice the typo? :)

Last Swim in Wisconsin with the Elmbrook Masters

Tonight was the last stop on the Wisconsin Leg of my Midwest Masters World Tour. I dropped in with the Elmbrook Masters team in Brookfield. I sent a few emails to the team last week and they were nice enough to let me drop in for an evening. Tonight they were swimming at Brookfield East High School and the pool was crowded! Lots of swimmers spread across about 6 lanes.

I could feel my early morning workout while I was in there, but I still had a lot of juice left. I thought that I was going to fade real hard but I managed to maintain a pretty healthy pace throughout the whole workout.

Here’s what we swam tonight:

400 warm up

4 x 25 drill IM order

Repeat x 3
50 drill @ 1:00
3 x 150 free

50 easy

300 dolphin kick w/ breaststroke arms w/ fins

300 IM broken by 50 @ 1:00

50 easy

2700 yards total

Tomorrow I leave for Illinois for some swimming and then off to the USAS Convention!

Early Morning Swim in Oconomowoc

Image Source: YMCAatPabstFarms.org
For those of you that have never been to Wisconsin… yes Oconomowoc is really the name of a place, I promise. I woke up super early and made my way out to the Pabst Farms YMCA to work out with a masters group there. I put the whole thing together via my twitter friend Lindsey. She was cool enough to let me drop in with them and to hook me up with a guest pass, thank you!

We got going at about 6am and it was a group led workout, no coach this morning. Everyone was on the same interval but the distance was split up into 3 different groups. I stuck with the middle distance set up since that’s what the majority of everyone else was doing plus I’m hitting another workout later today.

Here’s today’s workout:

300 warm up

Repeat x 3
50 @ 1:00
100 @ 2:00
150 @ 3:00
200 @ 5:00

Repeat x 2
4 x 50 kick @ 1:30
100 IM @ 2:30
4 x 25 kick @ :45
100 free
4 x 50 kick @ 1:30
1 x 100 IM @ 2:30

3000 yards total

The workout was pretty good and besides being really shallow on the one end, the pool was nice. I’ve only got one more stop on my Midwest World Tour before I move this show back down to Illinois again! I’m off to do Wisconsin-y things this afternoon until it’s time to go swim again in Brookfield.

Hello Wisconsin! Dropping in at Schroeder Aquatics

Tonight I went out to the Schroeder Aquatic Center to swim with the masters group out there. I hadn’t been out there since age group state championships way back in probably 95 or 96. Originally I was going to swim in the morning but I ended up with a ticket to the U2 show down in Chicago the night before. My buddy Too Much Metal Fred that made my sweet swim parka hooked it up for me. The U2 show was nuts! I was down on the field in Soldier Field and the stage they have set up is basically a spaceship… but I digress…

I got down to the pool and found the office so I could pay to swim. It’s $10 for a one time drop in. We got going around 7 and the game plan was to do your own warm up until the workout was put up on the big board where they would normally show results. The workout was really good for me. I needed a good swim after doing Big Shoulders the other day. It was also nice that everyone was doing the same workout but not on the same pace. It gave me a chance to sand bag and talk with the coach a bit while I was getting warmed up. The girl that was coaching (Jess) was super nice and had a good eye for technique. She called me out for my high head position just like every other coach I know :)

I felt really good in the water, especially off the walls. Normally I don’t like bulkheads but I got some monster push offs in that pool tonight. The one thing that was sort of hard to get used to was swimming indoors. I forgot how hot and stuffy it can get in a big indoor pool like that.

Here’s tonight’s workout:

400 warm up

4 x 200 (kick, pull, drill, swim non-free)

Repeat x 4
2 x 50 catch up drill
2 x 50 kick

4 x 100 free @ 1:30
4 x 50 @ :50
3 x 50 @ :45
2 x 50 @ :40

6 x 25
1 x 25 easy
4 x 25 perfect stroke
1 x 25 easy
2 x 25 fast

4 x 75 (25 dolphin kick, 50 swim)

Tomorrow I have 2(!) swims planned. One with a team at the Y in Oconomowoc and then an evening workout with the Elmbrook masters in Brookfield. I’m also pretty stoked to have an open water workout in Illinois coming together on Wednesday. My Midwest World Tour is coming together pretty nicely :)

How Can We Make USMS Better?

A big part of why I’m out here in the Midwest this week is that I was lucky enough to get a delegate slot for South Pacific Masters to go to the US Aquatic Sports Convention. The convention is where representatives from different LMSC’s all over the country come together to come up with ideas to improve, promote and govern masters swimming.

So here’s my big question to the internet swimming public at large: How can we make USMS better? I want to know what you guys think. Leave me comments or send me an email at rob@robaquatics.com with your ideas or opinions. The convention doesn’t start until Thursday so you’ve got a little bit of time to think about it. Thanks in advance for your input!

2009 Big Shoulders 5k Wrap Up

**Results are posted here

Chicago!!! Check out that view!

I swam the Big Shoulders 5k this morning, wow. What a cool swim! All the big buildings downtown are pushed right up to the lake, it felt like we were swimming through downtown. Very unique venue.

I got down to the beach around 6:45 and spent the next 30 minutes standing in lines. First line was to check in and get your correctly colored cap and timing chip. Next line was for your goody bag, 3rd line was for t-shirts, and the last line was for body marking. Considering there were about 800 people swimming this all went pretty smoothly. It didn’t give me as much time as I wanted to get acclimated though. I managed to spend about 5 minutes in the water getting used to the temperature and the feel of fresh water. Since I forgot/lost/misplaced my BodyGlide I ended up going with my Finis Tights instead of my Blueseventy Nero because I was worried about cutting a hole in my neck again. I ground up my armpits pretty bad though, I was really missing my BodyGlide about 3k into the race!

I was in the first wave that started at 8am, it was in water start which I’m not a huge fan of. They strung out a rope of the start line and sent us off with a siren. The rope thing was a good idea until some one decided to swim over the top of it instead of under it. I managed to sneak under but I think whoever was behind me caught a facefull of that rope! At the beginning I got stuck behind a slow group so I had to make my way to the outside to find some open water and cruise past some folks. I had a problem with navigating on this course. The buoys were really far apart and I couldn’t see them until I was real close. I mainly sighted off of other swimmers to keep me on track.

While swimming out there it was really easy to get distracted by the scenery. It’s not often that you get an unobstructed eyefull of the Sears Tower while you’re swimming! The other thing that was sort of cool was how clear the water was. I could see straight to the bottom for most of the course. On the way to the first buoy there was a big plant/algae forest. Didn’t see any fish though.

I ended up crossing the line at 1:21:02 which is a few minutes faster than my last 5k swim. Once I do a few more of these I should be able drop that time quite a bit (hopefully). I was 246th out of I’m what I would guess was 550-600 swimmers that did the 5k, wetsuit swimmers included. I was 14th in my division which means I was either totally manhandled by my age group or a bunch more 25-29 year olds signed up after the first psych sheet was released. We’ll find out tomorrow when they release the results online.

After the swim I got to hang out with some of my teammates from CSAM and meet a few new people that recognized me from the web. Now I’m up in Wisconsin and I’m off to go hang out with some old friends in Milwaukee!