Swimming at Claiborne

My training partner Dave and I did another short open water swim this morning at Claiborne, Maryland. There's a sleepy village which many years ago used to host a bustling ferry terminus. These days there are more ospreys and crabs than people.

You might be able to see a flag in the middle ground which showed the wind to be 8 or 9 mph. The water had a bit more chop than I would like, but the temperatures were pleasant enough and there is no sign of the sea nettles yet. We did, however, pause to let a very large swimming snapping turtle go on his way. Since it's completely open to the west it can get a lot of wind coming off the bay and a lot of chop, making swimming there a bit of a challenge. Plus it's only deep enough to swim there when the tide is out - otherwise it's only hip height out to a half mile offshore. Today that allowed me to stand up and rest and take a breather whenever I felt like it!

The crescent-shaped bay is just to the south of the "A" on the map below, on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay.

A leisurely 1500 yards

I got back in the pool for laps today, without the kids even, which I've been avoiding since I recognized the poolwater has been giving me severe nasal issues.

I went in the cooler of the two pools at our Y (presumably with less nasty stuff in the water), wore my new Speedo noseclip, and did 1500 yards at a comfortable pace, using open turns, and stopping a few times to adjust the noseclip (ouch!) or goggles or stretch my crampy feet, etc.

Time? About 41 minutes - close to what I've swum in some races.

Sheesh! I must be swimming in circles in races or stopping completely to sight every 6 strokes or something!

Anyway, it's 3 hours post-swim and my nose is running like a faucet. Obviously we have not found the optimal solution yet. I've got a few more ideas yet to try, though.

Nose news

Not much happening lately to report on. Just the regular routine of taking the girls to school each day, working out, picking them up, feeding them, going to sleep, starting over the next day.

On Wednesdays after school we have swim lessons. Yesterday I tried out a new Speedo nose clip during their lesson. Forgot it for one lap, then wore it for the rest of the time I did a short (700 yard) swim. It didn't hurt once I had it adjusted right. Then I had it off while playing in the pool with them for about another half hour after the lesson. I also quickly spritzed some saline in my nose post-swim but not a lot.

Result? My congestion is only about 10% of what it was for normal non-noseclip swims! Hurrah! That's a pretty manageable level that allows me to still breathe through my nose the subsequent night. I can live with that. Let's see what happens on longer swims.

In other unrelated news, if you're interested in some of the blatant cheating that goes on in triathlons these days, you'll be interested in this post. Yes, I believe that drafting on the bike = using fins on the swim. Same-same.

At the pool

Last night I took the girls back to the Y indoor pool for the first of six swimming lessons. They both loved it! They are much fonder of swimming than soccer, that's for certain! Catherine is starting to swim underwater quite well for short distances. Elisabeth still flails around a bit and she's so skinny she sinks easily, but she's learning to paddle with her arms better and control her breath.

After the lesson we met one of the other moms. She struck up a conversation with the girls and Catherine started talking about how Elisabeth goes to speech therapy, and the woman told them about how she goes to physical therapy. She ended up pulling up her pants legs and showing the girls her two prosthetic lower legs and explaining how she got them (apparently some kind of terrible septicemia led to a double amputation). I thought that was really cool that she would "show and tell" all that to the girls, and it made me feel good about fundraising for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. We'll see her again next week.

I got in a quick 600 yards during their lesson and was only halfway congested last night, so there seems to be a length-of-exposure factor in my reaction to the poolwater. I'm waiting on a new shipment of noseplugs to test out to find one that doesn't hurt to wear.

Swimmer's nose

Skip this post if you don't want Too Much Information about my nose, but - I may have the nose issue nearly fixed! I brought 3 things with me to the pool today to test:

• Vaseline
• Plastic swimmer's nose clip
• Bottle of nasal saline

Before swimming I put Vaseline up my nose, which is gross but better than having a 3-day "cold" from nasal irritation.

Then I put on the noseclip just before I started swimming, being sure to wipe off the excess Vaseline off the outside of my nose so it didn't slip around! Well, the nose clip didn't work so well. It hurt and my nose was running out through the clip. More ewwww. So I stuck it out for about five laps and then tried to adjust it and just ended up breaking the nose clip. Oh well, I have another metal one somewhere. I continued swimming without it.

The rest of the swim was pretty normal, I was doing a lot of work on keeping my elbows high and paddling like I'm on a surfboard, and that seemed to help my speed a little.

Then 5 or 10 minutes in the sauna after the swim like always, and then off to the showers.

I hid inside the shower and sprayed the insides of both nostrils with large amounts of saline and got all the Bad Stuff rinsed out.

Now, about 6 hours post-swim, I have some congestion but it's approximately cut in half from what I would usually get. If I can breathe tonight we're approaching a solution. If I can swim routinely without a noseclip, I would definitely prefer that!

---

Update: FAIL. Everything was okay until I went to bed, and then I stopped breathing. Well, at least breathing through my nose. Next up (I'll try one change at a time to see what is actually effective):

• Find the other nose clip for my next swim
• Swim only in the cooler pool
• Get drugs

I thought I had terrible allergies

Every few days I've been having a terrible runny nose and blocked sinuses like the awfulest cold you can imagine that lasted for about two days. I thought it was probably the autumn pollen - ragweed, or that big ornamental grass thing outside my bedroom window, and going away when the weather changed.

Nope.

*lightbulb moment*

I'm actually having a reaction to the chlorine in the swimming pool. Ugh. It's a tissue reaction to the irritation of the chlorine, not an allergic reaction. So my normal seasonal allergy antihistamine didn't help one little bit.

Looks like I'm going to be swimming with a noseclip from here on out unless I'm in open water, and maybe experimenting with fun barrier methods like Vaseline up the nose. I'll have to see if it's a little less bad in the cooler of the two pools at our YMCA. People have also recommended neti pots (ewww) but I think a spray of nasal saline is more or less equivalent. I've also heard Atrovent up the nose does a great job preventing it as well, but I'll wait and see if non-drug approaches work first.

Ugh. What a pain.

I think this might be a great justification to buy an Endless Pool, don't you?

Swimming laps

Just trying to get back in the habit of getting in the pool a couple times per week and pushing myself for a few lengths of the pool. I did some timed 100s (yards) today at the end of my swim just to do some time-checks on some different techniques - adding some more body roll, some more glide, some more shoulder shrug. The only thing I concluded is that smoother is faster. Yeah, I'm a regular Einstein.

100s today in:

• 2:07
• 2:15
• 2:16
• 2:10
• 2:11

Swimming time trial

I finally found my old copy of Swim Workouts for Triathletes that had fallen down behind the other books on the bookshelf. So today I decided to give myself their recommended swimming standardized test: 3 times 300 yards.

I finished them in:

6:39
6:44
6:47

which I thought was pretty decent for me, an average pace of 2:14 per 100 yards. Slightly slower than my fastest wetsuit-aided triathlon swim, but within their standard of no more than 15 seconds spread between the sets.

Then I go back and look at the charts in the book and they all stop at 2:00 per 100 yards at the slow end. How deflating. It's like going to the running charts and having the slowest running pace in their charts at 9:00 min/mile, faster than all but my very fastest standalone miles.

Well, it gives me a benchmark. Guess I've got some work to do this winter.

I got wet today

Meaning I actually got back in the pool and did laps for the first time in a month, in the colder (82*F) of the two indoor pools at our Y.

I still was coughing slightly, so I kept it to only 1500 yards, since I think probably chlorine gas doesn't do one's lungs any favors.

But I was still encouraged to do one set of 500 yards at 10:35. Well, it was with the pull-buoy, but still, that's a pretty decent pace for me. One I'd like to see in one of my races this year with wetsuit helping float my legs into something approaching normal fore-aft balance instead of relying on a piece of styrofoam to do the job.

I got your swim coach right here

Swimplan.com - very cool site I just learned of today that will generate customized swim workouts for you. Looks great, I'm planning on doing one of their workouts tomorrow. It's free to users, for now, although I'm not quite sure how the site is supported other than a few ads.

Yeah, I'll swim tomorrow if I can manage to stumble to the car on these WAY sore legs. 3*15 squats and 3*15 deadlifts (along with everything else) might possibly have been a little too much on the first day back hitting the weights. Ya think!?!?

Getting my swim back

Fortunately my swim stroke doesn't seem to have deteriorated too much with dire neglect over the winter. I was able to get in 1500 yards today which felt reasonably easy, including one 500-yard set in 10:54. Woot, if I could maintain that pace on race day for three times the distance (and have a wetsuit advantage and not have to do a bejillion turns, either, assuming I could stay on course) I could swim a PR 35:45. I'd like that! So far my Olympic triathlon swim PR is 36:51.

I'm hoping that a performance improvement in my bike with new components (augmented by my spiffy new aero helmet) will offset my dire neglect of bike training over the winter, too.

First swim lesson

Catherine had her first swim lesson yesterday. She did GREAT! Right now 7 of the kids just sit in a little line on the pool edge and the instructor has them practice kicking and paying attention and following directions and not crying for Mom, and then takes them out one by one for a little kicking and paddling practice buoyed up by their little styrofoam backpacks. Except for one brave boy who was brave (or foolish) enough to jump off the side of the pool into the deep water and trusted that she would rescue him. I was glad Catherine did not do that. I watched from a distance so as not to distract her, and got in a few laps myself in between watching her.

Then bundled her up afterwards because it was freezing!

It occurs to me in another lesson or two she will have more total swim coaching time than I have.

I also realized after I took this photo that I had broken the YMCA rules by taking photographs inside the locker room. Some male adult member of the club had been regularly photographing several of the much younger male patrons of the club in the men's locker room. I think he's doing hard time for it now. The posted notices remain on our locker room doors that no cameras or recording devices are allowed. Whoops!

Cold water swimming

Nope, I'm not doing it! Nosirree!

I just came across an online brochure published by a local club, the Chesapeake Paddlers Association. It addresses the dangers inherent in the body's responses to immersion in cold water. One part that caught my eye said:

"Exposure of the head and chest to cold water causes sudden increases in heart rate and blood pressure, which may result in cardiac arrest. Uncontrolled rapid breathing (hyperventilation) follows the initial gasping response and may also lead to unconsciousness. The victim must attempt to recover a normal breathing rhythm as rapidly as possible."

Hey, I've experienced that even while swimming in a nice warm wetsuit when starting out in cold water!!

It also states: "Strong swimmers, without thermal protection, have died before swimming 100 yards in cold water."

Yikes! I suppose my decision not to do any more ocean-swim events in cold water without a wetsuit makes perfect sense after all!

Off-season or slack?

Let's start with one of my basic premises: There is no off-season. There are either the regular, normal, routine every-week workouts an athlete completes as part of their regular life, particularly if they want to be successful in upcoming events; or there's slackdom, pure and simple.

But I haven't been in a pool since some time before September 23rd, when I completed my last triathlon and open water swim at Walt Disney World. Which makes it something like almost seven weeks without a swim workout now.

So I guess that makes me a Swim Slacker (tm).

It happened that way because I don't have any kind of a Swim Training Plan in place. I've been trying to hit a minimum distance of 2000 yards per week, usually in one workout, but I'm realizing that in the last couple of months I've neglected that discipline.

So that means it's time to take a hard look at my 2008 event calendar, finalize my events and distances, and work backwards from there to see where I should be in my weekly training volume and intensity.

Because without a plan in place and put to paper, I'm just adrift.

A pedestrian swim

The heat index was cracking 105*F today so my workout consisted of one lap around the track with the girls for their morning constitutional, and then I did my swim in the indoor "cool pool" which felt absolutely perfect compared to the sauna outside.

Did 4 sets of 500 yards broken up by a 200 yards of breaststroke.

• 11:38
• 11:37
• 12:30
• 12:37

That last set is 2:30/100 yards. That's barely faster than I swam at Eagleman Half Ironman - but much slower than I swam at Columbia Olympic distance (34:07 for 1500m/1640 yards). I'm hoping to swim somewhere close to 34 minutes at my two Olympic triathlons in September (Annapolis and Walt Disney World), but if I give up a minute or two it won't surprise me a bit, especially if we can't wear wetsuits!

I think the slowdown that I get in sighting in open water swimming just about breaks even with the slowdown I get from doing open turns in a pool. Maybe I can pick up some speed by drafting! The Annapolis swim should be fun, right at the entrance to Ego Alley and next to the United States Naval Academy. At least we should be able to check out some nice boats while we swim.

Pool fun

Summer is drawing to a close. Our YMCA summer day camp is over, school is quickly approaching. There won't be many more sweet days playing in the outdoor pools this year, since they'll close after Labor Day! We're enjoying them while we can!

Some days it just doesn't work

OK, my viewing public has spoken, so I'll keep posting my artwork up here, such as it is.

Today was not a great day for sketching, at least not for me. Some days it just doesn't work so well. There was no wind in the morning when I dropped the girls at day camp, so I went down to the little roadside pullover to do some practice on skies and water reflections. At first it looked like this, nice and calm and great reflections. (No, this is not the same location as yesterday, although it's fairly similar).

This is the earlier sketch of the scene that I posted, from a slightly different viewpoint a few yards to the right:

But here's the result from today - those reflections were just not working right, and I kept scrubbing things out and trying to layer and re-drawing and just making it all muddy:

And then in a few minutes, the wind came up and the reflections were mostly obliterated, and the sun started hiding behind the clouds. But then the skies were much prettier so I took a few photos of clouds for reference later on some day:

Oh well. Practice, practice, practice until you get it right! They say the thing to do is just keep using paper as if you owned a paper factory. Okay. . . .

I gave up for the day and wiped the pastel dust off my hands and went back to the Y for a swim. My frustration let me swim a little faster than I usually do - first 500 yards was 10:55 (even with a stop to fix my watchband), and another 250 was 5:27. Maybe some day I can work those times down to under a minute per lap routinely.

'nother run done

Another 6 miles in the books, departing from the Y again. I hadn't ever been down these roads before, and there are some gorgeous views that I want to go back to photograph or paint. It was HOT, but a little closer to a tempo run effort, 11:34 min/mile average and 59% of the time above 160 bpm heart rate.

The knees are a bit creaky and painful. Today I wore a knee strap on the left one. I may be increasing my mileage a bit too quickly - 16.4 miles already this week with a long run yet to go this weekend. I'll back off the mileage if they keep complaining.

Then I hit the pool for 1300 leisurely yards, ten minutes in the sauna, and then my "me time" was all gone!

Turtleneck swimsuit

Here's the new suit I just ordered from Speedo. 20% off, coupon code SPEEDO82. Plus a nice new pair of my favorite Speedo Vanquisher goggles, in pretty magenta.

I'm tired of suits that bag out in the chest and create a windsock in the water and slow me down.

I'm sure I'll be MUCH MUCH FASTER in this one. (And I'm sure my figure will look exactly like that in the suit too).

Uh, that, and some fast swim training would help too. . . .

My paces

This is one of those training note-to-self posts. Move along, please.

Training and racing paces at my fifty-year benchmark:

Swimming:
Typical training pace: 11:15 - 12:00 per 500 yards or 2:15 - 2:24 per 100 yards
Best recent race pace: 34:07 for 1500m or 2:04 per 100 yards

Cycling:
Typical training pace: 15.5 - 16.0 mph average for ~30 miles
Best recent race pace: 3:25 for 56 miles or 16.40 mph

Running:
Typical training pace: 11:00 - 11:30 min/mile for 3 to 5 miles
Best recent race pace: 2:19 for 13.1 miles or 10:38 min/mile

The real challenge for me will be to be faster and fitter when I move up into the NEXT age group in five years, compared to now.