Off the Deck

To all swimmers everywhere:

May your pools always be open
May you always find calm open waters under clear skies
May your yardage be ever fun
May your times be fast!

Happy New Year!

Rebecca, the swim evangelist

Thanks to a combination of above 30-degree weather (first time in weeks!) and a holiday week, traffic was horrific at 2 p.m. while I was trying to run some errands. Yet, the road-snarl gave me time to contemplate bumper stickers.

Today’s wool gathering episode was prompted by spotting five — count ‘em! — five swim bumper stickers on the SUV ahead of me at a long light. Rarely do I see swim bumper stickers while out and about. (Well, to be fair, any on cars “beyond the pool parking lot during practice hours.”)

In case you’re wondering, “SUV” should have tipped you off about the driver. The most prominent sticker (both in terms of color and placement on the car) said “Swim Mom” in huge letters. Despite her moments of pride, she must also sort of resent swimming because she has a “I have no life, I have a swimmer” sticker on her car as well.

Then there was a cluster of three circular stickers. Black and white, each had a stylized swimmer demonstrating breaststroke, butterfly and free. This alone had me wondering. Does she have three swimmers, each of whom specialize in one of the three strokes? Or maybe just one child who swims a really misreable lead leg on IM?

Of course, as they tend to do, my thoughts continued to wander. Swimmers seem pretty open about declaring their enthusiasm for their sport via stickers on their car. In fact, I’m sure it’s only the relatively small population of competitve swimmers that holds us back from dominating the sports-bumper-sticker scene.

What sport does rule the bumper sticker realm in Colorado? Triathlete. I think I’ve seen every rendition of a Tri-sticker out there by now. Yes, we have a lot of triathletes in the state, but obviously this group is proud to state their participation via a sticker.

Let me explain further. We probably have just as many cyclists in the state, but I can’t ever recall seeing one cycling sticker out there. Maybe it’s because riding around in those garish singlets is equal to shouting “I AM A CYCLIST!”

Even lower key are the runners in the region. Again, we have many, very serious runners. Particularly because while driving you just see the tip of the iceberg, the road runners, versus all the mountain, trail and ultra-marathon runners (Leadville 100 anyone?). Yet I haven’t seen a running sticker. And I truly believe that runners wear the occasional bright or reflective wear soley to be spotted along side the road.

Hmmm…I’m still not sure about the motivation behind Tri-stickers, but maybe swimmers put them on cars because you don’t have many “drive by swim viewing” opportunities. After all, if the majority of practices and meets occur in indoor facilities, how else can the world know that we are committed to a fabulous sport?

Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist

At least once a week one of my dreams has to do with swimming. Typcially it’s either a jumble of past pools/open water venues, or I’m at a meet of some sort. This makes sense because I spend a lot of time swimming and thinking about swimming.

But when I’m sick and thus “grounded,” I notice that the swim dreams are constant. For example, this past week while out sick with the flu, I dreamt about swimming every night.

I’m not sure what this means. Does my mind/body/spirit miss swimming so much that I’m making up for lost time in my sleep? Do I have a swim additiction that forces my brain to go through the motions even when my body can’t? Is it some sort of “default training” that my body laspes into so I don’t lose technique along with strength and endurance?

Oh well, whatever the case, swimming in my sleep is certainly better than your standard nightmares. I’m curious to see what happens tonight since today will be my first day back in the water after a week off…

Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist

I don’t know why, but sometimes the flu sneaks up on me. After all, as a year-round competitive athlete, aren’t I supposed to be more “in touch” with my body than most?

Maybe it’s because the flu strikes quickly as compared to colds, which usually take days of starter symptoms such as throat tickles, sneezing and feeling “off” before they fully manifest.

Still, thanks to swim feedback, I should have figured it out that I was coming down with the flu last Friday.

Clue #1) I wasn’t in the mood to swim. Absolutely, sometimes I need a day or two off or so, both as a physical and mental break. But mostly I look forward to the swim portion of my days.

Clue #2) I wasn’t hungry after practice. Normally I need food NOW after swimming. To get those calories in I’ll drink a slurpee mix (a combo of ALIVE! and rice protein powder) while showering, snack on fruit during the drive, then eat more of a “meal’ (usually a hard-boiled egg with peppers/rice cheese on a slice of toast or soup and salad) once at home. Yet I didn’t feel the need for ANYTHING after practice. Or even several hours later.

Clue #3) My eyes were burning around dinner time, but I wrote that off as “gee, the chlorine must’ve been bad enough today to set my eyes off hours after practice.”

So really, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised that I woke up with full-blown flu symptoms on Saturday morning.

Oh well, what can you do but live and learn?

Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist

Yes, I’ll admit it. I am slightly geek-ish in that I keep two swim logs: one for practices and one for race results.*

My practice log isn’t anything fancy, just a spiral notebook (well, o.k., it does have sparkly butterflies on the cover, but the inside is just lined paper). In it I record warm up distance/type, the sets I did as well as on what intervals, when I chose stroke during choice sets, practice distance total and how I felt.

I also try to record repeat times, but more often than not I forget the majority of these before I can write them down. And, sometimes I get so caught up in factoring the freakin’ send off time on a set with weird and changing intervals that my brain can’t multi-task to calculate repeat time too. I am certain my retention rate would improve if I did my recording while still in the locker room, but activities like showering, drying off and getting warm, eating and work usually take precedence.

I review my log about once a month or so. Over time, I’ve discovered that this is really helpful because I can start see patterns — what type of training works (or doesn’t!) for me, if I’m progressing (or not!), distance totals per week to ensure I’m not over doing it (or sliding!), find a favorite workout to do when I’m swimming solo, snap myself back to reality (i.e. “your breastsroke is not improving because even though you feel like you are swimming 500 of it per practice, your grand total is really 100″), and more.

I also use it to reassure myself when I return to the water after a break or being sick. Looking back to a previous similar phase, I can gauge about how long it will take me to get back to “regular” intervals and distances.

Absolutely, some days it seems like recording my sets is just one more task on an endless “to-do” list. It’s also painful to record terrible practices (times are way off; I spent more time yakking than swimming; etc.) because somehow writing it down makes it impossible to forget. I push myself to do it though, because ultimately my practice log provides a ton of information. And I bet I haven’t even maximized all its uses yet…

Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist

*Stay tuned for more on my race results log.

One of my goals this winter was to “swim through” more little local meets. My reasoning? 1) I don’t do enough race-pace work. 2) Meets are good opportunities to work on speeding up my sticky-feet starts. 3) Meets are a terrific way to “check in” on condition level as well as identify areas that need more work. 4) Meets are at least a nice mental, if not physical, break from practice.

Two weeks ago, I accomplished the first step to reach this particular seasonal mini-goal — I selected two upcoming meets, one in January and February each.

Then I immediately got stuck on step number two, event selection. Neither meet offers the distance events I prefer (and will swim at States this April). So, what’s a distance swimmer to do?

After much deliberation (Should I swim all the free distances and see it as a broken 650? Do all the 50s just for fun? Try the 200s back/breast since they are my weaker strokes? Swim the 100/200 IMs to prepare for stroke transitions during the 400 at States? And so on…) I’ve decided to sort of split the difference. I’ll work on my weak legs of the 400 IM by swimming the 100s back/breast and do the 200 IM to work on turns.

It’ll seem weird not to swim a big glob of freestyle (and to be honest, this is one reason why I haven’t done a lot of the little indoor short course meets in the past), but my plan is to start tracking my times in the middle IM 100s as I (hopefully!) improve these stroke to drop my overall 400 time.

As for free, I figure we have enough “free days” at practice to adequately train for those distance events. Ditto for the 200 fly — I try to choose it whenever I can on choice sets in practice.

Stay tuned for results over the next two months!

Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist

When I was an age group then scholastic swimmer, the 500 free was the “distance” event for girls. Maybe this was done to cap meet length. For example, our end-of-summer season AAU District meet ran the 400 free, 400 IM and 800 Free relay on the first day. With prelims and finals on the same day, I recall swimming the 400 free final as the sun set; my relay leg close to 9 p.m.

Or, perhaps the whole “girls are delicate — it’s not right for them to exert themselves in distance events” notion was still lingering. After all, my generation was just one removed from “it’s not feminine to compete” thinking.

In any case, it wasn’t until I started swimming masters that I sampled distanceevents: 1500, 1650, 1000, 800 (as well as 5K/10K open water races). And then a funny thing happened — the 500y/400m became a sprint to me.

It all comes down to perspective. To survive and thrive (i.e. have something left to close after 13 100s) in a 1500 you need to pace. But only five 100s? Suddenly it felt ridiculous not to ramp up to speed on that first 100 and then hang onto to that pace.

In other words, sprint. Which to me, is icky. A 25 or 50? Sure, I can attempt an all-out pace. But hanging on for an entire 500? It really hurts. Alas, I have been avoiding the 500y/400m for almost two years now. It has become the new “200 free” for me, the former race I avoided at all costs because I thought I had to sprint the entire time…

Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist

Seriously, I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to figure this out. Fellow swimmers who don’t know me very well must think I am stuck-up. Or spacey.

Really, it’s nothing personal if I don’t wave back, smile at you, or even respond when you say something to me from the water while I’m on deck or during practice or at meets. It’s because I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING. Honestly. My vision is so poor that colors blur at a distance, so you can just forget about me distinguishing actual shapes.

Think about it — swimming is the one time when most blind-as-a-bat people like me are likely to be winging it without corrective gear like contact lenses or glasses. I do have corrective goggles, but I must confess that my eye sight is so bad that they only kind-of-sort let read the workout board and clock. And, I’d feel like an utter dork walking around on deck with them on.

So, I do what most bad-eye-sight people do. I scope out new pools in advance and memorize cues like “the ladies locker room is the second door on the left.” I rely on other senses like “Ken has a really deep voice.” I let teammates know that you probably have to yell my name to get my attention. I hope that things stay mostly the same (i.e. consistent lane spread, people favor one suit, etc.) And, I remain in my happy swim bubble.

Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist

I have no delusions — I am not a sprinter. Never have been, never will be. I simply can not go from zero to one hundred in less than 50 yards.

Being a distance swimmer doesn’t bother me most of the time. Honestly, I really do love long freestyle sets and other endurance training like lifting weights. Open water racing is awesome in my opinion — no walls! The 1,500 free, 200 fly and 400 IM are my favorite events. And, all that extra time in the water means I get to eat more without guilt.

Relay formulation however, is one of the times* my lack of sprinting ability bothers me because unless 6,000 free or 800 IM relays come in vogue, I will never be on an “A” relay. There are just way too many people who throw down faster 50 and 100 splits than me, any stroke, any day, any time.

I still like being on relays though. Foremost, it’s very team-bond-y fun. Second, relays are the only time I am motivated to sprint. Set of 25s? I’ll work it, but I’m not gasping for air on every wall like the sprinters. Time trial 50s in practice? I straggle in last.

But put me on a relay in a meet and I’ll do my best 50 split ever. Part of it is the “no relay is going down on my watch” pressure I place on myself. I suspect the other part is just plain old meet-excitement, which never fails to get me going.

Bottom line? I need to get over the “A” thing. After all, I’d rather be on a relay than not, and it’s good to diversify a bit. Now if I could just think about them enough during practice to motivate me on sprint days…

Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist

*Another time being a distance swimmer bothers me: it’s brutal to come back after being sick and try to race, oh say, a 400 IM.

The holiday party circuit kicks off for me tomorrow night with our annual swim team Christmas gathering.

Year in, year out, the traditional holiday events always prove festive — tree trimming, throwing the decorative lights switch, cookie exchange, etc. But the swim team party never fails to offer an added element of fun — seeing what your teammates, the very ones that you spend almost part of every day with, really look like.

It’s weird when you think about it. We spend maybe only 90 minutes a day at the pool versus all day in the office. Thanks to form-hugging suits and shower/locker room chat though, we see way more of our teammates than our co-workers.

But we don’t often see our fellow swimmers groomed for the “real world.” And what a difference dry hair, makeup and clothes can make! I can’t count the times I’ve needed a few moments to identify a teammate I don’t know so well in public. And this occurs only after an awkward “oh, I thought that might be you, I didn’t recognize you in clothes” exchange (comments that are guaranteed to earn sharp head swivels from every stanger within hearing range.)

Seriously — people look very different sans caps and googles. I for one, always find it amusing to be surprised to see that someone has blonde, or really curly hair. And don’t get me started on how incredibley different some women can look with a full face of makeup!

Hmmm…maybe I’ve been relying too much on identifying swimmers by suit or lane…

Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist