Wheels of Justice shop ride, yet again.

WOJ->Tunnel->Skyline->Redwood->Pinehurst->Sheperd's Canyon->WOJ

22.8 miles, 2hrs 4min. Forerunner says 24 minutes of "stopped time" but I think that's a bit much. 13.7 mph moving speed if that is to be believed.

Nice ride. Just cool enough for a long sleeve wool shirt to be about right. Wore my tri-shorts on the bike for the first time. No drama. Still not sure if I am going to do the event in them or just use the Jammers.



Always a fan of a nice satellite image.



Also got in an open water swim before going home and getting ready for the ride. Was a lot more confident today. All this practice is paying off. Was able to do a much better job of resisting the unproductive urge to speed up whenever I start to feel a bit short of air. Swam a lot straighter as a result of being more calm. All good.

Tri shorts, huh?

Hit the closest lake (Lake Temescal) and continued the campaign of desensitization to swimming in murky open water. Managed to swim straight this time if I had a ropeline to follow. Still hook to the left badly if I don't have something nearby to sight.

The pad in the tri shorts was dripping water profusely for like 20 minutes after I got out. This has me wondering if I should do the whole sprint tri in the Jammers instead.

Temescal is even closer to my house than the Y where I normally swim. I will hit it a few more times before the event.

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.