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.
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
First off, thank you to everybody that blogged, tweeted and facebooked about my Open Water Swim Tour! I appreciate the love! Also thank you to everyone that shot me emails and comments during the day, I appreciate it! I’m really stoked about my tour, but there’s a lot of training to be done in the meantime… for speed and aesthetic reasons. Like I told one of my friends, “I need to be a little more svelte looking if I’m going to travel the country half naked drawing attention to myself,” it’s just good business :)
Anyways, I got in a good swim in Santa Maria today, the sun was shining and we had 3 1/2 swimmers in our workout… one dude had to bail early hence the 1/2.
300 choice
Repeat x 2
3 x 100 free @ 1:30
300 kick
3 x 100 IM @ 1:45
300 pull
300 choice cool down
3000 yards total
My freestyle is feeling really good these days but my stroke stuff has been slipping. I’ve been really focused on my freestyling and it hasn’t been so good for my butterfly. I guess my fly is going to be a victim of my open water ambitions this year… I’m still hoping I can shave off a second from last year’s 100 time this year (I swam a :59) just by virtue of my much improved fitness. We’ll see what happens.
I feel like crap today. I’m still hoping it’s just allergies, but I think I have a little head cold… ugh. I hit the pool in Santa Maria today in hopes of burning it out of my head. I felt pretty good while swimming but as soon as I got back in the truck to go back to work I re-stuffed up.
600 reverse IM kick/drill/swim
6 x 100 @ 1:30
Repeat x 3
25 fly @ :30
50 back @ :50
75 (50 brst 25 free) @ 1:20
300 on first pass, 200 on second, 100 on the last
400 choice
2650 yards total
In other, better, news… my buddies from LiveSwim.net were out at the meet this weekend filming. Chris and the guys are still processing video but a lot of it is available online already. They should be all the way done by Wednesday night.
Through most of the winter we’ve had a severe imbalance in the dude to chick ratio at the pool in Santa Maria, heavy on the dudes. I think we’re starting to flip back over to a more even ratio or maybe even skewing slightly more towards the ladies. I don’t mind it either way, I’m just excited when a lot of people show up! I think now that we’re getting closer to March a lot of people are going to start coming out of the woodwork and showing up to practice.
Today’s workout was a decent distance and moderately intense which is leaps and bounds above what I’ve been doing this week. I started out feeling not so great, but about half way in I finally started feeling good again… hopefully I can hang on to that feeling!
400 reverse IM – kick drill kick swim by 25
4 x 100 @ 1:30
300 reverse IM – kick drill swim by 25
4 x 75 @ 1:05
4 x 200 kick w/ fins @ 3:30
8 x 100 odds free @ 1:30, evens free IM @ 1:45 descending
although this looks like a close up of a small planet in a turquoise sky, it's really just my head
Today was one of those days where I just couldn’t find my rhythm… I ground out 2000m but it didn’t feel so hot. I’m glad I got in the pool but it wasn’t a workout to write home about.
In more exciting news… I found a new open water swim that might get added to my summer schedule that intrigues me and scares the hell out of me at the same time. On June 5th there’s a swim from Aquatic Park in San Francisco around Alcatraz and back. I’ve always wanted to do an Alcatraz swim… why not do the hard core version right? If I can do this then it means back in the day I could have broken into and out of one of the most notorious prisons in the world :) I’m still thinking about it since it’s a hard swim and it’s like $385 to register. I’m thinking it might be a good birthday present to myself, I turn 29 on the 4th so I might as well commemorate it with something ridiculous like a 3.25 mile rough water cruise of the San Francisco Bay! If you want more info on the swim you can get it at WaterWorldSwim.com. If you have any personal experience with the swim please share in the comments!
I’m going to spend the rest of my evening soaking in the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. For the most part the Winter Games don’t really push my buttons, but I always liked speed skating. I grew up in Milwaukee and there was an elite speed skating scene there. I always wanted to try it but it never happened… I figure once tech suits are banned from masters completely I can sell my old B70’s to a fat speed skater :) ha! ok… back to the games…
Well it’s finally here! With a whole bunch of help from Steve at Serk the blog has been migrated to a new platform and a new host. A big thank you goes out to him for working with me on this, I highly recommend him! There may be some bugs left over by virtue of the site being between hosts, but all that should clear up shortly! I’m stoked to have it all done… I’ve been very apprehensive about having my blog under the knife, as it were. Hopefully you guys dig the slightly new look and the much improved functionality!
Today I went and burned off some of my nervous energy at the pool in Santa Maria. It was a really nice day out and there were 4 of us in the water doing the workout. It wasn’t a very intense workout, but it was solid and just what I needed.
800 mixer
8 x 100 kick w/ fins @ 2:00
400 pull
8 x 50 odds free, evens stroke descending @ :55
6 x 100 free IM @ 1:45
3000 yards total
Today I tooks some pictures for you! Check it out!
