It’s Almost the End of January… Have You Signed Up for GTD?


This may be my favorite GTD tracking mechanism!

That’s my friend Helene up there with her personal USMS Go the Distance (GTD) progress chart that she has up in her Classroom… how cool is that? Helene, like myself, participated in GTD all last year and we’re both big fans! Here’s a snippet of a note she sent me about it:

“Setting a goal, and watching it become a reality (I guess more than just sitting back and watching!) has been an awesome experience. GTD has been wonderfully inspiring.”

This is one of the things I like best about GTD is that you can set your own goals and get to them in your own way. Helene decided she wanted to swim 100 big miles in 2009, she tracked her distance with GTD, and hit her target late in December! High five Helene! My only question now is what’s the target for 2010?

As of this moment there are 945 participants across all of USMS in GTD… seeing as USMS is 50,000 members deep I think that number should be way bigger! You can read more about the program and get signed up here.

A few bonus pieces of GTD news have come to my attention since the last time I wrote about it. First off, it’s sponsored this year and there are prizes! Check it out:

Secondly, you can now get daily results! I am super geeked out on this! There’s been a few days that I’ve gone to the pool just to ensure I stay at the top of my age group in GTD. If we were still in once a month mode on the results side I wouldn’t have that push.

If you’re using GTD right now, go here to see where you stack up in the daily results!


Go Get Signed Up Now!

January 22, 2010 | 8 Comments »

Swimming in the Storm


Batten down the hatches!!!

Well it’s still ugly outside here in California but, at least in my neighborhood, we didn’t get any lightning today so swimming was on the menu. The wind and rain were coming down pretty hard when I was driving to Santa Maria but the rain slowed down at the beginning of my workout… it came down like crazy at the end though! I started out with about 500 yards by myself and 3 other guys joined me as time went on.

There was no planned workout for today so we winged it. I started with my own warm up and when the other guys joined me I started to warm up again! After that we recycled a set from last week good for 1000 yards and then did some fast swims for me since I have a meet on Saturday. We did 10 50′s alternating fast and slow. My first fast 50 I swam a 30 second 50 fly in a sparkly drag suit from a push so hopefully I’ve got it in me to go a lot faster this weekend in my LEGAL techsuit.

400 swim
200 kick
400 swim

Repeat x 4
25 @ :30
50 @ :50
75 @ 1:15
100 @ 1:40

10 x 50 alternating fast/slow by 50 @1:00

2500 yards total

Tonight I sat in on my first SPMA conference call as an Executive Board Member. We covered a lot of good stuff and I think those of you in the SPMA region are going to be happy with what we get done this year. If you guys ever have any feedback about what’s going on in the region feel free to let me have it! As Member at Large it’s kind of my job to listen!

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Late Night Swim at Pismo Athletic Club


Pismo had up to 25 foot waves today!

Out here in California we’ve been having actual weather, or as the natives perceive it… the end of the world :) In all fairness some of the storms that have blown through here have been pretty gnarly. Today the wind was out of control and we even had lightning! I skipped out on going to Kennedy in SLO tonight since outdoor pools and lightning don’t seem to go together so well.


Loki is having none of this thunder business

I decided to make a late night trip to the pool at the Pismo Beach Athletic Club because it’s sorta kinda inside. The pool is outside the building but inside a sunroom kind of extension. I got in the water around 8:45pm and pretty much had it to myself for the whole workout.

200 swim
200 kick w/ fins
100 pull with Finis PT Paddles

4 x 100 IM Order

200 free
300 free
400 free
300 free
200 free

100 easy

2500 yards total

Assuming electricity doesn’t flow freely from the sky tomorrow I should be in Santa Maria swimming with my group down there.

January 21, 2010 | 2 Comments »

YES!!! Tech Suits are Legal in USMS Until May 31st 2010 for SCY!


Tech Suits For the Win!

After FINA passed down its magical retroactive ruling over the weekend, USMS went into action to decide how to apply it to our membership in regards to the Short Course Yards season that only exists here in America. The Rules Committee and the Executive Committee hashed it out and decided to keep the tech suits alive until the end of SCY Season. As a suit lover I’m biased, but I think this was a good call because if nothing else the SCY season has already started and we might as well finish with the same rules we started it with. Just a reminder… when it comes to meters the new suit rules apply immediately.

Here’s the notice of Emergency Rule Change from USMS: http://www.usms.org/rules/20100119swimsuits.pdf

January 20, 2010 | No Comments »

Quick Visit to USA Swimming’s Long Beach Grand Prix


Phelps being hounded for autographs by swimmers

Sunday night after the One Hour Swim I went to the Long Beach Grand Prix with my coaches Nancy and Ahelee. I’ve really never been to a meet as a just a spectator and it was cool to start with a meet that had so many big names in it! All kinds of swim stars were floating around… Phelps, Grevers, Katajima, Lezak, Hardy, Soni, Kukors, Vollmer, Hoff, Sutton, Pelton, and more! I’d also like to point out that a local Masters Swimmer who has been a bit of a regular since summer at SPMA meets was in the mix as well. Tamas Kerekjarto of FAST was in the A final of the 200 yard free and the 200 yard fly! Now I feel much better about losing the 100m fly to him by like 12 seconds at Santa Clarita back in November!

We got to Belmont (the same pool that I swam in last month for SPMA Championships) early to watch warm ups. The areas non-Athletes could access were pretty well protected, but I did get to hang out behind the scenes a bit with LiveSwim who was handling the live streaming for SwimNetwork. Chris and his guys were out in full force with cameras all over that pool and up on the diving towers! While I was back there I ran into one of my training buddies from Santa Maria who was there coaching which was cool.

Before the meet itself actually got started I worked my way back to the bleachers so I could watch the races. We sat in the good section… the bleachers down by the deep end… it was super crowded and they were turning people away from that area who didn’t already have seats w/in 30 min of the doors opening. Luckily Nancy grabbed us seats early.

I’m a little behind on the news in regards to this meet, there are plenty of recaps and results out there so I’m just going to give you a few of my observations and some pictures…

  • It’s not as cool being Micheal Phelps as you would think… the guy can’t move at meet without being coated in kids. Michael had a USA Swimming guy follow him around the whole time and hold his stuff so the kids wouldn’t attempt to run off with a surreptitiously acquired souvenir!
  • Phelps is a procrastinator… he doesn’t go ahead and destroy you until the last lap of a race. His last turn in the 400IM was otherworldly, he picked up a whole body length out of nowhere.
  • The elite kids seem to be all about deck changing which seems like a recipe for disaster to me… when Jessica Hardy is deck changing at least 80% of the dudes in attendance are completely unaware of the fact a swim meet is going on… I may have been part of this 80% :)
  • Katajima’s pull downs defy the laws of physics and are totally unreal to watch in person! I’m still trying to figure out how it works.
  • Grevers is about 11 feet tall in real life.
  • When it came to suits, the majority of the girls were in shortjohns… the guys were about 75/25 jammers to briefs.
  • My local college, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, was out in full force and doing an awesome job! Way to go guys!


    behind the scenes with LiveSwim

    start of the men’s 200 yard freestyle

    Jessica Hardy up on the blocks

    Katie Hoff in the red suit talking to her coach

    Phelps in the 400IM

    After the meet we grabbed dinner in Long Beach. The restaurant was pretty empty but Matt Grevers and some of his friends were eating about 2 tables over from us. I wanted to be a geek fan boy and say hi, but after seeing how badly he was hounded by kids for autographs I figured it was best to let him have his evening to himself. We got out of Long Beach around 9 and I didn’t get home until after 1 in the morning! Normally I would have had this up on the blog sooner but between driving, sleep, and power outages I’ve been a little behind! Anyways, I should be back into a pool tonight!

    • January 19, 2010 | 2 Comments »

    2010 1 Hour Postal Swim with Conejo Valley Masters!


    part of the CVMM crew at the end of the swim

    I drove down to Thousand Oaks entirely too early in the morning yesterday to swim the 1 Hour Postal event. I’ve never done a postal before so this was a bit of a learning experience. All told it was a good time and I’m glad my team decided to make a big deal out of this!

    Normally I can’t eat and compete but I figured I had to get something in me before this swim so on top of the Gatorade I usually drink I downed some Banana flavored GU for breakfast. I watched most of the second half of the first heat, everyone did really well! With about 10 minutes left in the first heat I hopped in a little half lane between the wall and the last full sized lane to warm up a little bit. I spent like 3 hours in the car to get there so I was feeling a little stiff!

    In my heat I was placed next to Coach Jon who before we started was trying to convince me that he was way out of shape and wouldn’t lap me repeatedly… as much as I wanted to believe him I know he’s substantially faster than me! I was hoping to keep up with him at least for a while but it never happened. He lapped me about once every 10 minutes or so.

    Once we got about 10-15 minutes deep I got into a pretty good rhythm and kind of drifted off into my own little world. The only thing that wasn’t quite right was the music in my head… the song stuck in my head from the drive down was way to mellow for a race, too bad aquatic MP3 players are a no go for stuff like this! The only time I really snapped out of my inwards focus was when Coach Ahelee would hold up a sign with my distance on it or the time that had elapsed so far. It was nice to have some reference points sprinkled in through the swim!

    I finished with 4275 yards completed which was awesome because my goal was to break 4 grand. I held approximately 1:25′s on average and I was pretty consistent all the way through the swim, no super fast spots or slow spots. Afterwards I was a little sore but not too bad… my quads started locking up on turns but nothing serious.

    If you’re going to do the 1 Hour Swim keep in mind tech suits are legal for this event! I brought mine with me but decided not to wear it. I didn’t want to be in a tech suit for an hour and I didn’t want the tech suit sports bra tan lines either! The only thing technical about my suit yesterday were the sparkles in the fabric :)

    If you want to get in on the 1 Hour Swim you have until the end of the month to get your swim in! You can get more details on the event here.

    Thank you to Nancy, Jeff, Ahelee, and Bonnie for running the show and Holly for being my counter! I had fun! Next year 4500+? Good luck to all my CVMMers that are swimming it next weekend!!!


    early morning at Cal Lutheran


    Me and Jon before the 1 Hour Swim


    me swimming!


    Me and Jon post 1 hour swim… in pain but still smiling


    Jeff, who also happens to be USMS president, is a CVMM coach!

    For more pictures from the swim check out the Rob Aquatics Facebook Fan Page or go to the Conejo Valley Multisport Masters Facebook Group Page!

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    Suit Debacle – FINA Masters Decision Edition

    So I heard the news this morning… FINA has decided that legal suits for Masters swimmers are gonna go back in time with a retroactive decision, because really why make the decision before the due date if you don’t have to? And I mean really isn’t it obvious… the only way to get to the future of the sport is to go back in time a decade or so and try over. Boo.

    So anyways, FINA (finally) decided that in the pool Masters will be held to the same suit standards as the elite crowd. That standard being textile jammers for men and short-johns for women. As things are worded on FINA’s website, there’s no mention of any compromises that USMS asked for like zippers to accommodate older, less mobile swimmers. We get the exact same rules. Personally I don’t like this decision, and I have a gut feeling that bodysuits will make a comeback in a few years and all this banning and posturing will have been a huge waste of time and money.

    There’s one last major decision left in this whole mess and that’s Short Course Yards season. Here in America we don’t care much for the metric system hence SCY season. No one else in world really has much to do with yards so what we do during SCY season has no impact on FINA Masters World Records or World Top Ten Times. USMS has been hanging back waiting for FINA to actually make a decision regarding us… now that it’s finally happened it’s up to USMS to decide when we cut over to the new rules. Personally I’d like to finish 2010′s SCY season with tech suits since 1)it’s already started 2)it doesn’t do any harm to the rest of the world.

    The one bright spot I saw in all of this is that FINA looks like they’re going to continue to allow body suits in open water competition. They’re going to tighten the material rules, but the suit cut is going to remain ok. This makes sense to me because more coverage give more protection from sun, jellyfish, and other things floating in the water… plus there’s no world records in open water because each swim is different each time.

    I’m going to keep my eyes and ears open for anything from USMS on the issue and post it as soon as it happens! So for right now the short version is:

    Body Suits + Meters = Illegal
    Body Suits + Yards = Not Illegal Yet
    Body Suits + Open Water = Legal

    **20JAN10 UPDATE** USMS has decided to keep tech suits legal in Short Course Yards until June 1st, 2010! Read more here

    January 16, 2010 | 7 Comments »

    Doing the 1 Hour Postal This Weekend!

    My swim team in Thousand Oaks is running a couple days of pool time to get the 1 hour postal done. Just found out today that I got myself scheduled in for Sunday morning! I’ve never done a 1 hour postal before but I’ve been doing a lot of distance recently so hopefully I’ll be at least kinda ready.

    Today I swam in Santa Maria at lunch. It was a little chilly from all the wind but all the sunshine balanced it out. There were 4 of us in the water today and I think everybody got their own lane which is always good. We’ve been on a bit of a stroke count kick down there recently. Today it was focused on freestyle. I was pretty consistent (when I remembered to actually count) with around 13-14 strokes per length. The workout felt pretty solid and luckily I didn’t bonk out like I did yesterday!

    Here’s the workout we did:

    200 choice

    Repeat x 4 count strokes and try to hold the same # across all distances
    25 @ :35
    50 @ :55
    75 @ 1:15
    100 @ 1:40

    3 x 200 dolfin kick w/ fins

    Repeat x 4
    100 @ 1:35
    50 @ :45
    50 @ :40

    2600 yards total

    In other news… I’m trying out a new toolbar thingie on the website. I think it’s kinda cool, what do you guys think? I got the idea from Eric at the Kastaway Blog a couple months ago but never got around to installing it until tonight.


    Hot or not?

    January 15, 2010 | 4 Comments »

    Apparently Red Vines and Pretzels Don’t Cut It

    I need nutritional help… my food decision making skills are sub par at best. I generally don’t eat breakfast (which I know is wrong) and today I skipped lunch (which is even worse) because I got distracted at the beach. The ocean was pretty angry today and a lot of people came out to the beach to watch. I hung out on the pier and it was shaking underneath from the force of the waves… pretty cool. There were waves breaking way out past the pier and you could see all kinds of sand in the waves that it was dragging up from the bottom. It doesn’t look as dramatic in the pictures as it was in real life. Only 2 surfers were brave/stupid enough to get in.

    Anyways… back to food… I ended up only eating some red vines and pretzels today. Turns out that’s not enough to fuel a fair sized gentleman all day. It was suggested to me on Facebook that I would have been fine if I added Jolly Ranchers and beer… not sure if that would really work or not :) After work I came home for a while and then made my way to the pool. I totally bonked out half way through my workout. I was all weak and shaky like I literally ran out of gas. Not fun. I’ve been trying to eat a little better but it’s not going so well, I have a lot to learn when it comes to person fuel.

    Here’s what I managed to get done before jumping out…

    200 swim
    200 kick
    200 pull

    10 x 100 free

    1600 long course meters total

    And just for fun… here’s some pics of what distracted me enough to miss lunch!




    January 14, 2010 | 4 Comments »

    Feeling Good Again

    It took me a couple days to get that 10k workout from Saturday out of my system, but I felt really good in the pool today. A lot of the stuff we do in Santa Maria is shorter in distance than what I’ve been doing in SLO, but it’s a lot more intense. I was doing some huffing and puffing at the end of this one today!

    100 @ 1:45
    200 @ 3:20
    400 @ 6:20
    200 @ 3:00
    100 @ 1:25

    4 x 50 fly drill @ 1:00
    4 x 25 fly stroke count @:45 (8)
    100 easy

    4 x 50 @ 1:00 back drill
    4 x 25 back stroke count @ :30 (13-14)
    100 back @ 1:45

    4 x 50 breast drill @ 1:10
    4 x 25 breast stroke count @ :40 (7)
    100 breast @ 2:00

    3 x 100 free IM @ 1:40 descending

    2500 yards total

    Oddly today I had a mild breaststroke epiphany. I’m by no stretch of the imagination a b-stroker… it’s never been my thing. But I’ve been watching some stuff on GoSwim and their iPhone app and did some experimenting with my hands. I’m still not totally sure what exactly I did but it felt fast. I’m trying to speed up throwing my hands forward so I can get more out of the glide from my kick. We’ll see if it pans out… I’m doing the 50 breast in Vegas on the 23rd!

    January 13, 2010 | No Comments »
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