No more drag chute.

For about 2 years worth of lap swimming the goal was just acclimatization so I just wore swim trunks. Yes, they even had a pocket on the back. You could feel it dragging like sticking your hand out the car window on the freeway.

Since I'll be wearing tri-shorts in the event, I wanted to practice in something similar. Jammers are essentially the same, but OK for repeated use in chlorinated pools. Got some. Tried them. Liked 'em fine. Can definitely feel the difference.

Ran and then swam tonight. Did call the gym first to make sure they hadn't had yet another emergency pool closure. The woman who answered actually laughed when I asked. The pool has been closed more than it has been open the last 2 weeks I think.

Another day, another swim.

Managed about 1/3 of the workout breathing on the right. Every breath is an adventure still. Just barely getting enough rotation to that side to be able to get my mouth clear of the water.

The upside of this is that my far from perfect left side technique is feeling more and more comfortable.

Double workout day

Gonna have these a plenty between now and tri day. 400 yard swim isn't really a workout to write home about. I just want to work on daily reinforcement of anything good I've learned.

It was 3 to a lane today because they were giving half the pool for kids swim lessons. (I'm guessing it was the same group that fouled the water yesterday and closed the pool for 18 hours, starting just as I was presenting my ID to go inside.)

I had to spot the guys in my lane a half-length lead or I'd catch them. So apparently I am ranked higher than third worst swimmer in the world at least. It was hard to get in a continuous steady effort. After I got in my distance I put in a few laps trying to breathe on the right side. The "superman" type drill (left arm straight forward, right arm by side, kick only, breathe on right when necessary by rotating) I could not do at all! I could only get my mouth above the water with my arms moving and generating some extra push. So I just did that and managed a length breathing on the right, every other stroke. Progress.

It was so much harder to do than breathing on the left it was comical. I realized that I was actually squinting because I was concentrating so hard, and the squint was making it impossible for the goggles to seal. Something else to look out for later. Keep that face relaxed.

Had a good, low-perceived effort run after I got home from the gym. Fast enough that the dog was heeling well by mile 2, and has been sleeping hard since we got home.

Last night's WOJ shop ride

We've done this route before. Tunnel is probably my favorite way up the hill. Unless someone decides to put in a big acceleration about 4.5 miles into it, spiking my heart rate. Moving speed was 14.2, which probably explains why the stop time was a bit higher than usual.

CO2 inflators

Just did a test to see whether I should carry one or two cylinders.

Each one added about 70 psi to a 700x25c tire. So, one will get you home, but two is what you want if you want to keep riding with normal pace and effort. And you need a gauge or you will be riding with 140 psi in your tire, or you'll be guessing at how much air to let out.

Yikes. In open water I swim in circles. Small ones. Hrm.

Went to the lake today. Figured it would be a good idea to get acclimated. Um, yeah. Good idea that.

It was hot (85) which it will not be on race morning. The sand burned your bare feet. Definitely didn't expect that. Reminded me of family vacations as a kid. The water seemed a bit cold at first but a quick plunge took care of that.

It took like 4 tries to get the goggles to seat properly which I attributed to be a bit more distracted than in the pool where I am somewhat at home now. There are lifeguards there that closely monitor the boundary line where the water gets deep enough that people can't stand on the bottom. The lap swim lane is about 20 yards out past that. When I inquired about the lane they said "overhand stroke or we'll call you back in" which seemed reasonable.

Sighting on the bottom of the lake was pretty useless. I thought I'd be able to get the rope on my left and parallel it but I kept turning into it. My trajectory would bounce off it every 4 or 5 strokes. Definitely need some work on that. Bilateral breathing is probably the best solution as I think the turning is a result of me overdoing something related to breathing.

I was also going too fast, again probably because the visual cues from the pool that let me check my speed are all gone. Maybe in a mass start I can just follow someone's feet. If they know where they are going, that would be nice.

Yikes. I think I can swim.

Did 400 yards at the pool tonight without having to stop to catch my breath at the ends along the way. Didn't think I'd leap straight to full distance from only being able to manage 50 yards a couple of days ago. Got into a good rhythm fairly quickly and got it under control the few times I started to speed up and run short of air.

It was even possible to spare a little focus for thinking about whether I could improve my form a bit here or there. It was nice to get in some success in the pool as tomorrow I'm heading to the lake where they hold the sprint tri to get some exposure to the open water conditions.

It took 10 minutes which is not fast at all, but should be just enough to avoid getting overrun by the next wave. They start the waves 5 minutes apart so it would take a nearly world record effort (~4 minutes) for someone in the next wave to catch a 10 minute slowpoke in the preceding wave.

I still have 4 weeks to improve and maybe if there's a draft effect in the mass start I may even do a respectable time.

Goals remaining:

Do 400 straight sans speeders (fins).
Be able to breathe on the right.

Nice to do but not required:

Be able to switch off sides on 3rd stroke instead of sticking to a side and breathing every 2nd stroke.

So I went on slowtwitch.com and searched on "swim panic"

Spent several evenings reading the threads that turned up as a result of that search. Quite useful. The main things I took away from it were to a) try and breathe out more completely with my face in the water and b) maybe experiment with how I am rotating my body.

Knowing my breathing was not working well, was not timed well, and was not providing me with as much oxygen as I needed was obvious. Having an idea for how to improve that is not hard. Actually putting that into action was iffy though. Perhaps I got lucky though because I stumbled on something that worked well enough for me.

Old:

1. Throw head up to the left while pulling left arm back.
2. Gulp air as left arm comes over.
3. Left hand enters, head faces straight down and locks there.
4. Hold breath (mostly) until blasting it out just prior to step 1.

New:

1. Turn head left and keep chin close to left shoulder and rotate body until mouth comes out of the water by the time left hand is farthest back.
2. Breathe in and recover left arm.
3. Breathe out through nose moderately as right arm pulls back and left arm enters.
4. Pause exhale at mid stroke.
5. Breathe out through nose moderately as left arm pulls. Head begins turning left again.

The big change is almost continuous exhale starting as soon as a new breath was taken in. Also the head is almost constantly in motion. Before I was trying to keep eyes on the bottom of the pool too much.

Right now I'm breathing every stroke, and only on the left. I tried applying what I learned to the right side, but I need to start from scratch there. Just wasn't getting my face out of the water enough.

This is enough that I can swim more than 25 yards at a time now. More practice will help reinforce the good stuff. Once I'm getting enough air and it is fairly automatic I can start working on other technique. Right now it is still iffy enough that if I divide my attention it falls apart really fast.

Tonight's run profile

7 miles

average cadence 83

pace 9:42/mi

climb/decend 660 ft (including one 1/3 mile climb at 10%)

Nothing earth shattering in the above, except that for me 9:40 is a great pace on a hilly trail and my max heart rate on this run was 170. Most of it was in the 160s. Percieved effort was very low. Legs felt like they had good spring in them and were nice and loose. It was definitely cooler out than it has been lately.

Very interesting comparing to other runs of this route in my log book. There were a few other examples I could find of similar (good, for me) times, but they were usually when I was deep into training for a marathon. Even then, although perceived effort was also low then, the measured effort (heart rate) was usually a bit higher on average, and peak was noticeably higher (5-10 bpm).

Panic is bad

Why is it that the more short of breath I get in the pool, the faster I turn over? Thereby working harder and needing to breathe more. Gah. I really need to practice that out of me.

At least I can successfully get my goggles to seal and stay sealed within the first few laps now. Never could do that as a kid and that was a big part of a lifelong aversion to sticking my face in the water.

I may have to head out to the lake at the Shadow Cliffs park this week and swim in it to see what it is like. The pool is extremely chlorinated and the chlorine burn in the nose is definitely one thing that triggers irrational reactions. Maybe the lake will be nicer and an easier place to relax. It'll also be good to not have to turn at a wall every 25 yards.

Worst blog ever, maybe, but not the worst swimmer ever apparently.

Got asked to move out of the slow lane at the Y yesterday and trade places with someone going too slow in the medium lane. I LOLed.

Running lately has been enjoyable in a way that I probably haven't felt in about a year. That's how long it has been since I was deep into the cycle of long run workouts leading up to the 2008 SF Marathon and my knees started to hurt all the time. The reduction in pain was gradual from then until a few months ago. Once I started taking glucosamine and chondroitin supplements the reduction sped up noticeably. Now I can still feel a bit of something in my right knee once in a while. Even discomfort is too strong a word for it. It is so nice to be able to bend my knees any way I want, any time I want, and not wince in pain anymore. Yee haw.

A good descent can do a lot for your average speed on a ride.

Did the same ride today from the Wheels of Justice shop that we did on May 31. Except for a small detour where I got lost. But the overall speed tonight was just over 1mph faster than that ride. So much for riding a "recovery" pace today after the effort yesterday.

Empiricism, I'm for it.

Went out with my friend John today to pre-ride the bike course that is part of the Tri for Fun in Pleasanton, CA. He can usually destroy me on flat terrain, so the plan was for me to lead one lap of the course and push my own air and see how fast I could go. Then he'd go out front and go faster, and I'd try and hang in his draft and see how much effort that would take compared to doing all the work myself. The results were pretty interesting.

Conclusions:

John is much faster than me on flat stuff (but I knew that already).
Drafting is less useful when you have a strong tail wind.
Drafting is immensely useful when you have a strong headwind.
If your Tri allows drafting you are giving up a lot by not doing it.
Pre-riding the course was a very good idea. Vineyard towards Bernal was very challenging. It is slightly uphill into the prevailing wind for a long way then has a short steep hill just long enough to run you down into granny gear.

One thing I would not have guessed after both loops without looking at the data is that my average heart rate would be only 1BPM lower when I was following versus when I was leading. But when you look at the data you can see that for part of the lap I was working harder to hang with him because he was going a lot faster than I could on my own, and the draft was weak. But once we got to where the draft was strong, my effort level dropped substantially. Plus the second lap was about 10% faster with John leading, so going faster but having a slightly lower heart rate at the same time is saying something.

Here's the course. It is mostly flat, with a quick climb where Old Vineyard meets Vineyard just below the park, with a long downhill from there to Bernal. The wind was coming from the top left of the image to the bottom right and was pretty strong. Forecast said 10-20mph.



Here it is in map form, so the point to point timings are more clear.



Here's the point to point comparison. It was hard to pull these from the logbook so there are some obvious rounding errors if you look at the data. Err on the side of John being faster.

start point to right turn at Stanley/Isabel

me 7:04 -- 20.6 mph
john 5:41 -- 24.6 mph


Stanley/Isabel to Isabel/Vineyard

me 4:55 -- 20.7 mph
john 4:46 -- 21.2 mph


Isabel/Vineyard to turnaround

me 3:13 -- 20.4 mph
john 3:04 -- 20.1 mph


turnaround to Isabel/Vineyard

me 3:23 -- 18.5 mph
john 3:13 -- 20.0 mph


Isabel/Vineyard to top of hill on Vineyard

me 7:31 -- 17.5 mph
john 6:25 -- 20.6 mph


top of hill on Vineyard to Vineyard/Bernal

me 2:37 -- 19.5 mph
john 2:40 -- 19.8 mph


Vineyard/Bernal to Bernal/Stanley

me 1:14 -- 19.3 mph
john 1:06 -- 20.7 mph


Bernal/Stanley to finish

me 2:27 -- 20.1 mph
john 2:30 -- 20.9 mph

Total

me 32:44 -- 19.4 mph
john 29.06 -- 21.4 mph




Here's the heart rate chart twice, with my lap highlighted on the first image, John's on the second.





You can clearly see from these that my heart rate was highest (for a while) while trying to stay in John's draft as he hammered it to start his loop. At the end of the loop when we had turned back into a strong headwind it was a lot easier for me and you can see my heart rate is much lower than the same part of the loop where I lead.

Pool success

No more "the goggles, they do nothing!" The new goggles actually worked pretty well. Didn't leak once. Swam about 25 minutes working on my breathing. Still having the occasional problem where I don't start taking a given breath early enough and wind up crossing over with my mouth still open, pulling my head out of the water to avoid inhaling a face full of water, and losing my rhythm for a moment.

Hopefully there will be no more snorkeling in the pool though. I thought swimming at lunch on a weekday would be less crowded than after work (it has been in the past) but it was 3 to a lane for a bit.

So the new goal is to sign up for the August sprint tri, and swim workouts will have the goal of using goggles only and swimming the 400 meter distance with (hopefully) fewer stops each time until I can do it comfortably and continuously.

How long does it take to grow back a big toe nail?

December 13, 2008 (http://fastheartslowfeet.blogspot.com/2008/12/runners-toe.html) to now. The thing is finally full length again. Almost 7 months. Let's see how long I can manage to keep a full set.

If my knees return to normal I may sign up for the Oakland marathon, which is scheduled to be reborn in March 2010.

Another good Wheels of Justice shop ride

Distance: 29.37 miles
Moving time: 2:06:22 (Stopped 03:26)
Average speed: 13.9 mph



Featuring plenty of hills.

Here's a breakdown of where the climbs required some effort, in increasing order.

Zone 2



Zone 3



Zone 4



Here's the heartrate vs cadence vs elevation bit: