Sorry the blog has been a little light recently! I’ve been on the road quite a bit. Tuesday night I was in Mountain View for a trip to Google, but I did manage to sneak in a quick visit with some folks from Finis which was pretty cool. After finishing up Wednesday at Google I drove home to basically take nap, and then this morning I was back in the car en route to Thousand Oaks.
I drove down early so that I could work out with my adopted team, the Conejo Valley Multisport Masters. I was worried about my shoulder failing on me during the swim like it’s been prone to do recently, but I actually ended up having one of the best workout swims that I’ve had in quite a while. We had a pretty good contingent of swimmers in the pool for lunchtime. If your team does lunchtime workouts, especially outdoor lunchtime workouts, go do one! It really is the best way to break up your day.
Anyways… Here’s what I remember from the workout:
400 swim 100 kick 6 x 25 drill odd, swim even
6 x 150 pull 5 x 300 swim
8 x 25 IM order
200 cool down
3650 yards total
Not bad for an hour at lunch! Afterwards I went out to lunch with Peter from my team and now I’m just hanging out waiting to go to the SPMA annual in person board meeting. I should have some exciting news from that later :)
2009 SPMA SCM Regionals in Long Beach hosted buy the Long Beach Grunions is coming up in a hurry! Personally I think that this is the big event of the Short Course Meters season! Since there’s no SCM Nationals, this turns into a big travel meet for a lot of people. How can you go wrong with a fast pool right next to the beach? You really can’t. If you’re looking for a travel meet, keep in mind Long Beach isn’t too far from LAX. I anticipate a lot of fast folks showing up from all over the country.
You can enter online all the way up until the 23rd of November, but if you want to save a few bucks and get your name into the program you need to get yourself registered today! Early entry expires at Midnight on Monday the 16th of November.
So I’m not real excited about how today went for me. I went out to Avila Beach and the weather was outstandingly beautiful, almost too hot and sunny. Unfortunately the water didn’t feel the same way!
When I got down to the beach I did what I do every week and waded out in the water up to like mid-calf. It was pretty cold, definitely mid 50′s. Niel’s measurement from off the pier was in the 55-56 degree range. Regardless it was pretty cold. The water at Avila tends to range like 3-4 degrees downward from our measurements depending on where you are. There are some gnarly cold water upwellings hidden out there.
I tried really hard to get acclimated to the water and swam all the way out to the first buoy where we normally start our swims. Normally I get cold, then burn, then go neutral. Today I got stuck in cold, in a bad way… I just couldn’t hang. I ended up swimming back to shore, I didn’t want to do something stupid like go hypothermic 500 yards off shore. I ended up hanging out in the shallow water talking swimming with Sylvia who was out to spend sometime in the ocean today, but not necessarily swim too far.
I felt like a loser for having to swim back in, but you have to remember the ocean is no joke. I’m not saying don’t push yourself, I’m just saying know yourself enough to know when you’re going to get yourself into trouble. As much as I don’t want to, I think I need to start bringing along a wetsuit for my open water swims as a just in case kind of maneuver. I don’t know if I’ve hit my cold water limits or if just being kind of sick and worn down took a couple of degrees off my tolerance, we’ll see. I should be back in open water action the weekend of Thanksgiving, hopefully things go better then!
last week the waves were scraping the bottom of the pier!
I’m still fighting my left shoulder… I say swim, he says no… we’ve compromised at about 2000 yards. I started today’s workout alright but about 1500 yards in I started hurting and around 2000 I was grinding so it was time to get out.
200 free 4 x 50 kick 2 x 100 Free IM
150 free 3 x 50 kick 2 x 75 back
100 free 2 x 50 kick 2 x 50 breast
50 free 1 x 50 kick 2 x 25 fly
500 yards of mish mashed free/kick/swearing
2000 yards total
I hate quiting a workout early, but I’m sure I would hate only having one swimmable arm even more. I’m hoping to do a bunch of CVMM Workouts next week while I’m down south, so I’m really hoping I can get a handle on this so I can go about my regular swimmery business!
In an effort to amuse myself and improve this situation, here is a ridiculous and unnecessary picture:
I got myself entered into the Southwest Masters Turkey Shoot meet at Pierce College Sunday which is going down next Sunday, November 22nd. They didn’t have this meet last year because the pool was being renovated… the renovations are now complete and I’m excited to check out the updated pool!
This meet is a good chance to tune up for SPMA Regionals in Long Beach, and to get in some relays that aren’t usually available at smaller meets. Both the 400m Medley relay and the 800m freestyle relay are on the schedule.
I have a mix of my regular events and not so regular events going on for this one. I’m entered into the 100m fly and the 50m fly which is pretty normal for me. I’m taking another crack at the 50m breaststroke after my semi-disastrous swim at PMS Champs in Walnut Creek a little while ago. The way out in left field event selection however is the 400m IM!!! I’ve never done this event and I guess it’s finally my time.
By the way, if you happen to be in LA next Sunday for the Golden Goggles I highly recommend swinging up to Woodlands hills for a swim! It’s only like 20 miles from Beverly Hills! Anyways, go get yourself registered and I’ll see you there!
Today was a fairly short workout in Santa Maria, we did about 2500 yards which is good because that’s probably all my shoulder was going to take anyways. We did a lot of backstroke today which isn’t really my thing, but during the warm up I had an awesome 100 fly by accident. I had no intentions of going fast, but I swam about 1:10 in a drag suit from a push on a 100 fly. Whoops. Not that it was a bad thing, I just didn’t mean to. Too put it in perspective, I was swimming 1:15-1:20 100 frees. I blame the fast fly on the monofinning I’ve been doing. Anyways, here’s the workout:
10 x 100 @ 1:40 choice (I did 8 free, 1 fly, 1 back)
200 back 100 free 150 back 200 free 100 back 300 free 50 back 400 free
2500 yards total
Speaking of ye olde monofin… I took it out again last night and had a ton of fun with it. I did a few slow-ish laps and then went nuts with it. The pool I swim in at Pismo has no gutters so whatever you push out comes right back at you. You wouldn’t believe the waves I had rocking in that little pool last night! There were some teenagers there that were totally confused by what I just did to the pool. Fun :)
Yesterday I was lucky enough to have pro photographer Mark Savage take some shots of me during my butterfly events. Mark swims for SCAQ, but he also happens to be an excellent portrait and celebrity photographer. You can check out Mark’s blog here. I am beyond stoked at how awesome his shots came out!!!
Yesterday’s SCM meet hosted by the Santa Clarita Masters was livestreamed by LiveSwim.net which was pretty awesome… what makes it even better is that they have uploaded all that video to be watched again online!
start of the 50 fly (pic courtesy Patrick from Rose Bowl)
I had a really good time today hanging out with the Santa Clarita Masters for their SCM meet (and their 3rd meet this year! thanks guys!). The weather was just about perfect, 75ish and sunny with no wind. We had probably 125+ swimmers out there today and a whole bunch of my swim friends were in attendance. The vibe around the pool was really positive, the meet was well run, and I think everyone had a really good time.
I was a little apprehensive about the actual swimming portion of the swim meet because I’ve been having shoulder issues recently. I felt totally awful in the warm up pool, not what I was hoping for. I decided to just hop on the blocks for my 100m fly, see what happened, and base the rest of the day off of that.
Apparently I have quite the Pavlovian reaction to the starter’s beep. I launched into my race with a general disregard for my overall well being. The 100m fly hurt pretty bad, but not in my shoulder. I repeated my 1:06 from UCLA, I can’t get mad at that. I did get a brief lesson in just how fast someone can swim the 100m fly today though… a dude in my heat swam it in 54 seconds… wow… it’s not so often I lose a 100m race by 12 seconds!
My next 2 races were 50′s. I did the 50m free first and it felt pretty good. I swam a 28.47. Not a best time, but I was within a few hundredths of a second of it. I thought the 50m fly was a good swim as well. I went 29.99… one more hundredth and I would probably be less positive about my swim :) It wasn’t as fast as I would have hoped, but good considering I almost missed it completely! I just barely made it to the blocks for this one, I was too busy talking and having fun instead of paying attention to what event we were on! I got some video of the 50m fly below…
My last race was the only one I set a personal best in and the one I was least happy with. I swam my 100m free in a low 1:04 which is a couple tenths better than my last outing. However my last 100m free attempt was semi-disastrous with 2 missed turns. I think on a good day I could break out a 1:02 high… it’s just yet to happen. Oh well, I’ve got a couple more shots at it before the year is up.
I only took a few pictures today, but I did luck out and had some bonus pictures from my friend Patrick waiting for me in my inbox when I got home. Somewhere in the near future I should have a couple of shots from my super photographer friend Mark Savage so keep an eye out for those! (UPDATE: Check out the pictures Mark took of me here)
Today’s CVMM contingent… fun fact, me and Peter wear the same size B70… figure that out
Me, Coach Chris from Mountain View, and Patrick from Rose Bowl
50m fly (pic courtesy Patrick from Rose Bowl)
more 50m fly (pic courtesy Patrick from Rose Bowl)
Santa Clarita’s SCM pool
Since I was sore all over after the meet I was planning on skipping my ocean swim tomorrow, I need a day to recover. I got a phone call that sealed the deal for my sleep in instead of swim plan on the way home from the meet… my mom called me all worried about me swimming because there’s supposed to be 14-18 foot swells tomorrow! Holy crap! Avila is usually around 3 feet maybe! I might go to the beach tomorrow but just to watch the water, I’m in no shape to throw myself into 14 foot swells!
