Surprisingly Cold Swim in Laguna Beach

Laguna Beach in the background... great day for a swim!

Every time I come to Orange County I try to figure out a way to come swim with my friend Lynn and the people she swims with out in Laguna Beach… and almost every time I just can’t quite get there to make it happen. Well this weekend I specifically added a day to my trip to make sure I’d be around for a swim. I figure I have hotel reward points to burn, might as well right :)

I got to the beach pretty early and wandered around a little bit soaking in the sights. I ran into a guy that had also swam the Around the Rock Alcatraz swim back in June and we talked for a little while and went to grab some coffee before making the plunge into the ocean. The group that amassed was pretty good sized. Most of them were getting in one last swim before they embarked on 2 Catalina Channel Relays. I need to find my way onto one of those things one of these days… hmmm…

Good luck to all the Catalina Swimmers and crew!!!

Anyways once we got down to the water we were greeted by some frosty water. I would guess it was 58 at best which is just fine for me in Avila Beach, but a little surprising for an Orange County beach 4 hours south of where I work out! The surf was pretty healthy as we got in and I took a little bit of a beating… I’m not used to waves that big. It was good practice for my swim in October though. It has lots of ins and outs in areas that have pretty decent surf.

let's roll!

This group pretty much just gets down to business once they’re in the water and since I was a little slow getting in the main pack of the group was already pretty decently ahead of me. They were aiming for a buoy way down by Main Beach which someone told me is about .8 miles away. I worked on catching up to the group and then worked my way up into the middle of it.

The swim out was really pretty, all kinds of hills and nice houses. There was plenty of motion in the water but it was no where near as rough as my last swim here back in February where me and Lynn were getting tossed all over the place by 4-5 foot swells. I didn’t see any marine life while I was out there but there was a lot of plant life… well and a maxi pad… never seen that just floating in the ocean… ewww… but the water was fairly clear so you could see like 10 feet worth of kelp below you when you swam over it.

At the turn around point I hung out for a while and took pictures and stuff. Most everyone kept going because it was too cold for them to just hang out. When Lynn and one other guy got there we determined we were the last of the swimmers doing the full distance and we made our way back to the Oak Street Beach. Since I didn’t really know where I was going I kept right on the side of Lynn. I like swimming with her, I feel very safe next to her. She’s very in tune with this stretch of ocean (on top of being an awesome channel crossing open water swimmer).

On the way in I started hearing talking over a PA system but I had no idea what it was from. Turned out a surf contest sprung up on the beach we launched from… surprise!

Lynn getting out while a surf heat goes on in the background

I’m really stoked I managed to get in with these guys today. Hopefully I can come back soon (like next week!). Later today I’m off to watch Pan Pacs in Irvine…

August 21, 2010 | 4 Comments »

3 Grand in the Sunshine

Even though I was late getting to the pool for lunch today I still wanted to get in a full 3000 yards. We’ve been having issues with that recently just in time available, speeds of swimmers in the pool, and our tendency to screw around and talk a little too much :) So I came to the pool with a plan and got right to it. I front loaded it with some bigger chunks of freestyle to make sure it got done before we lost our focus.

200/400/600/400/200 swim on 1:30 base/100

10 x 50 kick with fins

7 x 100 IM @ 1:45

3000 yards total

I’m feeling pretty tight after that workout so I guess I put the right amount of effort into it. I need to ratchet these hour long swims up to like 3500 yards or more if I can for the next couple months. I may have to go a little antisocial and swim some of my own workouts and not do what the group is up to since I have a couple monster open water swims en route (10 and 12.6 milers!). It may even be time to try and figure out how to work in some doubles. I’m working long distance with my coach to come up with some LCM workouts for me to do by myself as a supplement to my open water workouts and the SCY stuff I do in Santa Maria.

August 19, 2010 | No Comments »

Seal Stalker City

Check out the creepy seal stalker in the background!

We had a beautiful night for a swim… unfortunately everyone else who lives in the ocean thought so too. There were way more birds fishing than I’d like to see and a healthy scattering of seals out there too, but they weren’t clustered around a bait ball or anything… they were mainly just wandering around at random. Although I was a little unnerved by it all Niel seemed pretty undaunted by it so I followed him. He has way more quality time put into this chunk of ocean so I trust his judgement on these things.

I let them get in first to scare off the animals :)

The plan was to do the normal triangle in the clockwise direction. The end of the buoy line on the left side of the pier is still missing so we swam to about where it should be before making a turn to the top of the pier. While we were waiting at that corner regrouping all kinds of weird stuff was going on. Lots of birds were flying pretty low overhead and quite a few seals were starting to check us out. One was drafting off of our last swimmer to make it to the meet up. Once we were about to get going a fishing boat came on in almost to the buoy line before it turned around and went away. That was totally weird because there’s almost never any boats at all on that side of the pier. We waited for the boat to get a decent distance away before we continued on with out swim.

little bit of texture in the water tonight, not much

The water had a tiny little bit of chop to it tonight and was measured out at about 61. It felt a little colder than that, but it was pretty comfortable for me pretty quickly. My left shoulder is a little angry though. I need to ice it down a bit so it starts to like me again.

drifting away next to the pier

While hanging out at the end of the pier we could really feel the current that was going on today. Normally currents are pretty non-existent at Avila but we were drifting noticeably, luckily it was in the direction that we were going! On the way to the end of the right side of the buoy line we picked up more seal stalkers. I noticed we had 2 flavors of seal. One was the usual jet black seal, the others were smaller and grey with white and black spots on them.

at the pier right before turning back to shore

When we finished up our swim we decided to not swim under the pier to where we started since there were people fishing right there. All told we got in around a mile and it felt ok. My shoulder concerns me a bit but I seem to go through a non-serious shoulder issue on a quarterly basis so I guess I was due.

and our seal friends say goodbye for now

August 18, 2010 | No Comments »

Save 20% on the Distance Swim Challenge with RobAquatics!

it's only 12.6 miles... who else is in :)

In about 2 months I’ll be taking a crack at the longest and gnarliest swim I’ve ever attempted, the Distance Swim Challenge. I’m going to try and knock out 12.6 miles of swimming from Manhattan Beach all the way up to Santa Monica. The idea of this swim is somewhere between crazy and super awesome epic adventure. The second part of that is what drew me to it.

I heard about it a while ago from a Facebook friend and I’ve been bouncing the idea around in my head ever since. I asked another friend about it and instead of making fun of me she decided we both need to do this. So after peer pressuring each other into it a little bit we both finally registered today! What put it over the top is I met one of the guys running the event this weekend and he hooked me up with a 20% discount code for me, my friends, teammates and readers.

So what you need to do is enter the code ROBAQUATICS when you register and they’ll take 20% off of whatever race you decide to do. If you’re not feeling up to a 12.6 mile trip up the coast don’t worry! There’s shorter distances and relays available. You can swim 1.2, 2.4, 4.8 miles, or 12.6 miles as an individual or split up 4.8 or 12.6 miles into a relay. Check out www.distanceswimchallenge.com for more details on the race.

I’m pretty stoked about this challenge. Earlier in the summer when I said it felt like I was training for something and I just didn’t know what it was yet… well I think this is it! That being said… I have a lot of work to do between here and October 16th!

August 17, 2010 | 4 Comments »

School is Back in Session and There is Now Less Pee in the Pool


After a couple months of screaming children, inflatable octopus slides, and crowded lanes the pool down in Santa Maria has reverted to it’s non-summer state of quiet spaciousness. Parking is easier, the locker rooms are less disheveled, and I’m pretty sure the urine content of the pool has dropped by at least 35%. To top off that little bit of good news, it was an absolutely perfect day. Nice and warm with the sun shining… no complaints from me today!

We had 4 of us swimming and most of us were in post race recovery mode. 2 of us had made the trip down to Long Beach for the Naples Island Swim and were still feeling that a little bit and 1 chick did a 50k(!) run over the weekend and was super beat up feeling. We ended up putting together a pretty mellow workout so everyone could get some yardage in a stretch out and feel better kind of way.

250 mixed
5 minutes of weekend race recapping

10 x 50 free @ 1:00

Repeat x 5
25 @ :30
50 @ 1:00
75 @ 1:30
100 @ 2:00

2000 yards total

The intervals were nice and big on purpose so the whole group could stay together and you could make it as hard as you wanted by dialing up the effort on the swims. I aimed for like 70% today. I’m surprisingly sore from this weekend’s swim even though it wasn’t that long. I guess I pushed it pretty good on Sunday.

I set a whole bunch of other swimmerly things in motion today as well. I planned out a big swim weekend in SoCal. Ocean swim with some friends on Saturday morning, a trip to watch the finals of Pan Pacs on Saturday, and a race in the ocean on Sunday up in Port Hueneme. I’m looking forward to all that aquatic excitement!

| 2 Comments »

2010 Naples Island Swim Wrap Up

**Results are now available here

stretching out and warming up for my 3rd go round at the Naples Island Swim

This morning I made my way down to Long Beach to take part in the Naples Island Swim for the 3rd time. This race was my first ever Masters and Open Water event and I’ve really come to enjoy coming back to this race to see where I’m at and how far I’ve come since making my return to swimming. So even though these days the 3 mile swim is more in line with what I’m doing in other events, I chose to race the 1 mile swim as part of my annual how’s-my-swimming check up.

I got down to the beach entirely too early and I think I was the first person there that wasn’t actually working the event. Normally I stay in Long Beach the night before (it’s about 4 hours from my house), but I couldn’t get a room in town because of the Jazz Festival. Instead I split the distance and stayed in Thousand Oaks then drove the rest of the way down in the morning. I got into a drag suit there on the beach and got in the water really early just to get comfortable and swim just a little bit since I hadn’t been able to swim since Wednesday. The water was pretty cold for Southern California, my guess is 62-63ish. With no sunshine overhead it felt pretty chilly but once you got all the way in and floated around for a bit it was nice.

When I came out of the water the beach was starting to fill up a little bit. It was fun to see everybody come out. I haven’t been to an SPMA event since early May because I’ve been traveling and swimming everywhere else so it was great to catch up with all kinds of people. I had a little contingent from my team in attendance as well, along with a guy I swim with in Santa Maria and a lady who swims with me in Avila Beach. Around this time my buddies Chris and Chuck from LiveSwim.net hit the beach as well. They were out to do some livestreaming of the event as a beta experiment. Best I can tell no one has even attempted to livestream an open water race from on a boat so this was a little bit of swimming history in the making! Talking to the guys after the race they learned a whole lot of what it takes to do this kind of event and how to shoot for it, I look forward to seeing more open water livestreams in the near future!

the start of the 1 mile swim... LiveSwim.net is there to capture the action!

After doing a brief video interview with the LiveSwim guys I had to run up the beach a little bit to get to the start of the one mile. I didn’t realize that this year the start was going to be in a different place, I was so busy talking and running around I kind of neglected to look at this year’s course map. So quick protip… always look at the map even if you think you know exactly what’s going to happen at the race!

1 Milers making their way towards the island

Once at the start line I found Julie from my team and lined up with her to my right. She’s a real strong swimmer (first woman out of the water last year!) and I wanted to try and hang with her for as long as I could. When they let us start we all dashed out and I took off way faster than I normally do. Oftentimes in open water races I start with a lighter pace and let other people do their little sprint/thrash for about 200m before they gas out and then swim around. Today I decided that I was either going to be one of them or at least get out in front of them :) On the way around the island to the mouth of the canal I kept Julie pretty close. I’m predominantly a right side breather and all the navigation points are to the left so I navigated off the pack and made sure to look forward on occasion to make sure I didn’t hit a boat or a dock or something. As we got nearer to the canal someone cut me off and separated me from Julie. Through that corner the pack tightened up and I had no where to go for a little bit so I had to just hang on this new person’s feet until there was a little more room to move. In all fairness Julie was probably going to drop me at some point anyways, I was just hoping it would be a little later in the race.

Me and Julie at the end of the race

Inside the canal I got a little more room to breath and I took a line more along the right side of the canal. Even though the left side would have been a tighter line to circumnavigate the canal, the exit is a right hand turn which would give me a little bit of an advantage on the way back to the finish. As I was chugging along through the canal I had a little flotilla of kids on paddleboards around me. I kept hearing yelling from the kids but I knew it wasn’t for me but it was like right at me. Turns out I had one of the younger kids in the race right on my feet. I don’t know if they were savvy enough to be drafting off the big guy in front of them who is about 3x their size, but about 1/2 around this kid pulled up along side me and then took a little bit of a lead. Being passed by a teenage girl wasn’t real high on my list of things to do today, but it’s good to see kids getting a chance to race open water… I never got the chance and I wish I would have been exposed to it as a teenager.

At the end of the canal I was right up against where the turn was and I think I clipped a few people since I had the shorter line out. Once you’ve swam for just a little bit past this point it’s basically wide open back to the beach. I think this is where spending lots of time in the ocean started to come in handy. I could see the white pop up tents on the beach and tried to aim as straight as I could for them. I saw lots of other people who were faster than me zig zagging a little or even stopping to try and sight the beach. Somewhere in here I passed up the kid you passed me in the canal. Being a wily old guy has it’s advantages I guess :)

finishing my race! (photo borrowed from Julie F.)

I tried to pick up the pace a bit on the way in but it wasn’t easy since I had gone out so much harder than I normally do. I swam in until I could touch the bottom with my hands and then jogged in the rest of the way. I have no idea what my time was, but I did win my age group after 2 years of placing 2nd so I was pretty stoked with that!

After my race I got dried off and did a little post race talk on camera with LiveSwim and then got changed into some dry clothes. While we waited for the 3 milers to finish their swims I spent some more time on the beach catching up with people. I’m normally in SoCal like every other week most of the year so it felt weird to have been gone so long. I don’t feel like I got around to seeing everybody I wanted to, but the good news is I’ll probably be down south the next two weekends as well making up for it! Around noon I finally had to split. There was a long drive home in front of me…. plus I was out of quarters for the parking meter!

Random finishers!

All told I had a really good time as always down at the Naples Island Swim. I had a good race, got to see lots of my friends, and finally won the 25-29 age group right before I age up out of it… so next year, 30-34 year olds beware… I’m coming to getcha! :) Also, high five to Merritt and Shore Aquatics for picking up this event this year. We started 2010 with no host for the Naples Island Swim and Merritt and her team stepped up to make sure this swim kept going. I’m highly appreciative of their efforts and hopefully they decide to run the event again next year!

As this week progresses I should have some more footage/coverage of the swim via LiveSwim.net. I’ll post stuff as I get it here and on the RobAquatics Facebook Page!

August 15, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Naples Island Swim This Weekend!!!

This Sunday is the 2010 Naples Island Swim and I would absolutely love it for those of you that can make it out and swim to do so! If you’ve never done an open water swim before this is a great swim to get your feet wet. It’s really the only SoCal swim that’s lake-like making it really beginner accessible. The water is still salty, but it’s totally protected from the real ocean and you’ll be treated to nice calm water. There’s a 1 mile and 3 mile swim available along with a few other shorter options that are mainly in place for the kids.

The Naples Island Swim was my first Masters Swimming event and my first ever open water race. This event is what got me hooked on both and it’s become a personal favorite. This is the second year in a row that RobAquatics is an official sponsor even!

Also as what I’m going to go ahead and call a world’s first… I’ll have my buddies from LiveSwim.net out there livestreaming the event! Have you ever heard of a livestreamed open water swimming event? Me neither. We’re making history people. Me and Chris are still coming up with a plan as to how this will all work, but by Sunday expect to see open water action live on the internet from Long Beach!

If you need more info on the race check out NaplesIslandSwims.com or the event registration page on Active.com

run, don't walk, to the Naples Island Swim!

August 13, 2010 | No Comments »

Lake Lopez Swim Fail

hey look... swimming's prohibited today... weak

So the idea of Lake Lopez as an open water swim spot turned out to be a total bust. I rode out with my friend Dani and we met Jason at the lake only to find out contact with the water was, um, prohibited. That’s a pretty bad feature for a lake. You could still take boats out and stuff but actually floating yourself in the water was a no go. The signs talked about algae blooms, and as we found out first hand by walking down to the water, duck poo was in full effect as well. That lake stunk bad when you got close enough.

Pretty at a distance...

...not so good up close

By the time we gave up on Lopez it was a little to late to sneak in an ocean swim. The drive back to Pismo or Avila would have put us there just in time for dusk which isn’t exactly the best time to be in the ocean. Instead me and Dani grabbed something to drink at Starbucks and went to the beach down in Grover. Just to get our feet wet though… no one got in past their knees. Oh well. Hopefully I can line up some kind of oceanic excursion tomorrow to make up for today’s missed swim.

Jason and Dani all wetsuited up with no where to go in front of lovely duck poo lake

August 12, 2010 | Tags: | 1 Comment »

Cruising Avila with Catalina Crosser Cliff

today's group (minus me)

We had a special guest for tonight’s Avila swim, my buddy Cliff from Colorado was in the water with us! He’s fresh off of a successful Catalina crossing this past Friday that he completed simultaneously with 2 other swimmers. While still in California he was cool enough to drop in and go for a little swim with me and my local open water group.

Cliff off the end of the south end of the buoy line

After catching up a little bit on the beach with Cliff, Niel and some of our other swimmers started to show up. No one had a route in mind so I decided to send us off on a little bit of a sampler course. The plan was to swim the left side of the buoy line (what’s left of it anyways), to the top of the pier, straight across to the Poly pier, back down the the right side of the buoy line towards the main pier and then back to shore. It’s probably about a mile and a half.

We ended up with 5 swimmers tonight and some reasonably warm water… back to 60! I’m really glad that 55 degree water we had the other day made it’s way out of there, it was a bit too cold for August!

proof I was actually there too :)

As is our nature, we regrouped at each corner and on the front end of the swim that was pretty much every couple minutes. The shortened buoy line was finished really quickly and then the shot to the top of the pier wasn’t quite as long as it usually is. Even though I didn’t see any seals from the beach I started to notice a good number of them popping up here and there around us trying to figure out what we were and why we were in the ocean.

The next leg of the swim, from one pier to the other, was our longest uninterrupted stretch. We separated out in to groups on this leg. Me and Cliff pretty much swam stroke for stroke all the way to the pier, Niel and Lynne came in together with a very curious cormorant in tow, and Pete… wait… where the hell is Pete? We looked back in the direction that we had just come from and couldn’t find him. He’s really comfortable in the water so I wasn’t super worried, but I did want to know how he could magically disappear.

Lynne and her new bird friend

In search of Pete

Eventually he was spotted way further up the pier (we were aiming for the middle of a very long pier… he was shooting towards the top). It would have been a little awkward to have everyone hang tight while we waited for him to stop and then turn back towards us so we split the group up. Me and Niel chased him down and pointed him back in the right direction, in the meantime I sent Cliff and Lynne off to finish the swim we had planned out so that they wouldn’t get too cold just hanging out. Plus while we had been hanging out a whole bunch of seals came to investigate us. They were surfacing and diving all around us which sounds cool and magical, but when you think about who eats seals it kind of loses its allure.

On the way back to the buoy line I made sure to keep an eye on Pete and not get too far ahead. I also managed to find some cold water on the way in. There was a pocket that dropped a good 3-4 degrees, but luckily it was short lived. I must have swam over a little reef or something that had a decent upwelling in effect. Midway down the buoy line me, Niel and Pete all regrouped and then finished the prescribed swim. We were greeted on the beach by Cliff and Lynne who had finished a little while before us.

one of our seal friends about to dive

After the swim I got to talk a little more with Cliff about his crossing and thank him for dropping in to swim with us. I always like visitors! Plus he’s my second Catalina Channel crosser to hop in the ocean with me this season. I think my house is turning into the official Catalina Channel cool down spot… if you need a mellow swim and some cold salt water I’m your guy… just sayin’ :)

Tomorrow I’ve got a lake swim in the works so that should be exciting since I’ve never swam in that particular location. The big question for tomorrow is do I double up with a lunchtime swim and an after work open water adventure… we’ll see if I can swing it…

August 11, 2010 | No Comments »

I Brought an IM Suprise to Practice Today

Tuesday/Thursdays are my lunchtime pool days down in Santa Maria. They range anywhere from really hard to super slacker-tastic. Since last Thursday’s workout fell in the latter category I came to the pool today armed with a set that would make it worth the drive down! This was another borrowed beat down from a friend much faster than me and my friends so I had to water down the intervals, but the core of the workout remained.

500 warm up choice

Repeat x 3 with about a minute rest between rounds
4 x 50 IM Order
2 x 100 free
200 IM

2300 yards total

We actually had a pretty decent crowd in the pool today, about 6 by my count, and we got everyone huffing and puffing with all kinds of IM excitement. It seems all I’ve been doing recently is freestyle so it was nice to swim a little bit of everything. Since the spread in speed was pretty wide we set the intervals to be :05ish rest from when the last person hit the wall on the 50′s and about 1:45 on the 100′s. If you were on the faster end it was on you to push it, if you were on the slow end you just had to hang on and make but know you’d always get at least 5 seconds rest. Even though not everyone was looking for an IM adventure today I think everybody liked the workout.

At the end of practice a few of us arranged a little open water swim for this Thursday out at Lake Lopez. I’ve been out to Lake Lopez before but never actually gotten in the water. This should be interesting and I’m stoked to scope out a new open water spot not too far from home.

In other news… my buddy Dave VM who swam the Santa Barbara Channel this weekend from Anacapa to Oxnard posted a slideshow of his pictures of the swim today! Check it out!

You can learn more about swimming the Santa Barbara Channel at the Santa Barbara Channel Swimming Association.

August 10, 2010 | No Comments »
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »