New sandals

A recent Christmas gift was a new pair of sandals for me to wear around the pool, locker room, and shower. I must admit I haven't noticed what other men wear on the pool deck or locker room, but for the last 18 months I've worn a pair of thong sandals I purchased at K-Mart. These sandals, which have the "Olympian" logo on them, have now completely worn out. To write a proper review, I searched the web for sandals made by the Olympian brand and didn't find any such product. This is not too surprising; K-mart and other retailers sometimes make their own product and then pay a brand name manufacturer to slap their brand name on it. The deal lasts for a limited time, and once it expires, it is hard to find evidence that the product was ever made. I've seen this happen with binoculars (random example), and I think this is what happened with these old sandals I have.

The Olympian sandals actually lasted a long time considering the use I gave them. I would wear them 4 times a week as I changed from street clothes into my swimsuit. I'd walk a few steps to the pool deck, take off the sandals, and splash them with chlorinated water every time I'd do a flip turn at the end of a lap. Once done with my workout, I'd put them on, walk a short distance to the locker room showers and wear the sandals in the shower. The sandal's thong (the upper part that wrapped over the top of my foot) is in fine shape, though the original black color has bleached to a splotchy gray. The problem that has developed is the rubber sole has separated in places from the foot pad and now the rubber is breaking off in chunks. I don't imagine all those pool chemicals are good for the adhesive holding the sandals together.

Old Olympian sandals and new Reef sandals.

So now I have a new pair of thong sandals. They are Reef Phantoms; all black. The sole appears to be a layer of foam rather than rubber, and the sole does not curl around the sides of the shoe. This lack of curl may prevent the type of wear I saw with the Olympians. But who knows? I see from the manufacturer's site that the warranty is only 6 months. That's fairly short compared to the 18 months my cheap sandals from K-Mart lasted. The slogan for Reef is "Reef: Ridiculously Comfortable." It's true that these sandals are comfortable, but comfort is a relative term. After all, I'd go barefoot all day long if I thought my feet would stay warm and free of injury. Sandals help a little with the latter but do nothing for the former. I will say that the arch support in the Reef sandals feels really good compared to my old Olympians.

A few questions remain: (1) is there another type of footwear that people wear in the locker room and shower? I think maybe the college swim team that my coach coaches wears nothing at all. I'll have to take a look during the next meet. (2) My Reef sandals came with a variety of little decals. What am I supposed to do with those? I doubt they would stay stuck to my sandals after a few uses. But sure, I'm all for a little splash of color here and there, and I've got this silly consumer-istic desire to show off the brand name products I buy. So I'll stick a decal on my sandals and see what happens.

First ever swim meet

Sunday was a fantastic day. I traveled with friends to a local high school where the Masters Swimming competition was being held. It started at noon but we arrived at 11am so that Dan and I could get some laps in as a warm-up before the races began. I was most uncomfortable doing the circle swimming before the meet. Sharing a swim lane with others adds an extra level of concentration that I'm not used to. Instead of concentrating on good stroke form, pacing, and breathing, I was more worried about hitting the on-coming traffic as well as swimming fast enough to stay ahead of the folks behind me. I found myself scraping past the lane ropes, and when I did my turns I had to be careful not to hit people standing there at the wall. In fact, I don't think I did many turns, and I only did 200 yards for a warm-up. I was fully aware that my teammates would see me swimming for the first time and I wanted to make a good impression. I also didn't want to tire myself out. Two-hundred yards seemed on the low side of reasonable. My coach had suggested I warm up with a 600-yard swim. I was surprised to hear him say that; it seemed a little much.

I was quite relieved when Dan pointed out that the meet officials had opened up a couple lanes for practicing starts. I jumped out of the pool, walked over to one of the lanes, stepped onto the block, delayed for just a second, and jumped in. It was probably one of my best dives to date. Whew! I'm so glad it happened that way because it gave me confidence for the rest of the meet. (In my practices the week before, my diving was pretty lousy). Because it was a "perfect" dive from my perspective, I didn't dare dive again, and instead I grabbed my towel and hung out at the poolside until the meet began and my race was announced.

50-yard Breaststroke

50-yard breaststroke

The pool had 6 lanes and there were more than 60 swimmers signed up for this race. This means the 50-yard breaststroke competition was spilt into 11 different "heats," and placement in a given heat was based on the swimmer's self-reported "seed" times--the expected time it would take to go the 50-yard distance. It's a Masters Swimming Association, so the swimmers come in male and female, all ages and skills levels, and there is even a variety of body shapes. I hate to bring it up because it is not polite, but I'm really surprised that there were some fat swimmers at this meet--maybe 15% of the contestants were visibly overweight. Anyway, I was slated to swim in the 7th heat (7 of 11 means that I was swimming slower than the median, which would be swimmers in the 6th heat). I was in lane 3, though, which means I was expected to have one of the fastest times in the heat. None of this matters because when the swimmers ahead of me in Heat 6 stepped up on the starting blocks, no one was present at Lane 3. The intended swimmer for Heat 6, Lane 3 did not show up. So in that instant I volunteered to swim in Heat 6. I stepped up on the starting block, I got set, and at the blare of the horn I leaped in. I had a good dive and noticed while under the water that the swimmers in the adjacent lanes dove deeper than I did. I don't know what that says about the quality of my dive, but when I surfaced I swam as fast as I could. At the opposite wall I saw that I was well ahead of my competitors, and I rocketed to the finish. I was elated to turn and look at the scoreboard and see that my time was not 0:50 (my seed time), and it wasn't even in the 40s. Instead, I got 0:39.72. I demolished my seed time and beat everyone in my heat...and these were the swimmers of Heat 6 who were supposed to be better than me. It felt so good and I savored that moment so long that Heat 7 almost started with me still in the pool. I was laughing hard and felt fantastic. What a great first race!

50-yard Freestyle

The blur is me at the very start of my dive off the starting block.

I had submitted a seed time of 0:36 for the 50-yard freestyle. This was a compromise between my more typical 40-second performances during practice (without a dive to start and with a non-racing swimsuit) and the 32.7-second and best-ever performance in the pool three days before the swim meet (with a dive and with a racing suit). My result in this competition was 34.15 seconds, and I came in second in my Heat (Heat 7 of 11). Even though I beat my 0:36 seed time and swam my second-fastest performance of my life, I was slightly disappointed. My dive was very shallow and timid, and on the second leg of the race I saw that I was neck-to-neck of two swimmers on my right. I watched as I gained ground and pulled ahead of them, but somehow when I reached the wall I glided in and missed winning my heat. I know that if I had only swam at full speed into the wall that I would have won my Heat. Instead, and for an unknown reason, I slowed down in that last approach. I actually think I thought I had won and was starting to relax before I was done.

One member of my team mentioned that during the race I was swerving left and right with each successive stroke. If I straighten out my stroke, I would be more hydrodynamic and swim faster. This is something I shall work on.

All in all, it was a great day and I look forward with excitement and confidence to the next swim meet. Joining a Masters Swim Team was an excellent idea. I'm so glad I said yes.

Swimming fast in the 50-yard freestyle race

Am I ready for my first swim meet?

There's a lot going on this week and I don't have a lot of time to work on this post. So, in bullet style:

• My first swim meet is Sunday. I joined a Masters Swim Team somewhat late in the season, and now my first competition is right around the corner. I plan to swim in the 50-yard freestyle and 50-yard breaststroke competitions. There are dozens of racers at a Masters meet, and since there are only six lanes in a pool, the racers are organized into groups of six people. These are called "heats," and the people in my heat supposedly have similar swim times. I submitted an estimated swim time ("seed") for the 50-yard freestyle as 36 seconds. This is one second more than the 0:35 seconds my coach recommended, and it is three seconds less than my fastest speed to date. Or at least, it was (see below). I submitted a seed time of 50 seconds for the 50-yard breaststroke and this was complete speculation, as I never timed myself. In the time since I submitted my entry form, I have timed myself and I swam 50-yards of breaststroke in 45 seconds. So it looks like I underestimated my speed. Oh well; my fellow competitors will forgive me...and who knows...maybe some of them submitted inaccurate seeds, too. What is interesting is that my fellow racers will be both men and women aged anywhere from 27 to 66. Yes, you read that right. Somewhere there is a 66 year-old man that can swim faster than me (36 year old). I'm surprised by this, but that's only because I'm new to swimming. It turns out there are lots of senior citizens that are fast and powerful swimmers. They don't have Olympic swim times, but they are fast nevertheless! I hope to be one of those later in my life.
• In the paragraph above I mentioned that I had never swam 50-yards of freestyle faster than 0:36 or even 0:39. Until this week, I was always around 40-45 seconds. To me, that's still fast. But to a college-aged swimmer, that's two times slower than the normal pace. Anyway, those college students are going to see some speed from me very soon, as this week my coach timed my swim at 32.7 seconds. When he told me that, I was delighted. My face probably glowed and I might have even cried if I wasn't so out of breath! It's a great winning feeling to beat your personal best, and not just beat it, but to destroy it. There are two thing that contributed to this fast speed.
• I dove from the starting block. I don't think I did that the last time I timed myself.
• I am the owner of a brand new racing swim suit. Before now, I wore board shorts. I'll have to write an entry about wearing the suit for the first time, and I'll post a picture, too. But I'll save that for another day. It's time to go to the pool and practice for my Sunday meet. 

I joined a Masters Swim Team

I've been swimming regularly for 15 months under the direction of a college swim coach. To be clear, I am well beyond college age, but I wanted a coach to help me on a weekly basis, and he was offering lessons. When I started swimming, I had an aversion to putting my face in the water during the freestyle stroke (aka front crawl). I had to rest every 25 yards. I had never swam breastroke, butterfly, or backstroke. So until now, my coach and I have been working on teaching me the basic strokes, turns, and starts. We've been trouble-shooting placement of arms, the strength of my kicks, my streamlining underwater, the pull of water by my hands, the rotation of the body during freestyle and backstroke, and breathing techniques. But now it appears my coach and I will work on me getting faster. I've joined a Masters Swim Team associated with my local YMCA. This was not my coach's idea. I've been thinking about it for many months and I got close to joining a couple months ago. I asked my coach what he thought and he said "we could work on that." This was a supportive and loving statement, but it lacked enthusiasm. Nevertheless, I joined the team this week because a friend encouraged me to do so.

I went to see my friend swim on Sunday at a competition. He swam well, but that wasn't the real reason I went. I wanted to see how competitive his teammates were and what the attitude of folks was. I can easily envision me being on a swim team and then getting really nervous before a meet. That will probably still happen, but my scouting revealed that the people who compete in these competitions are fairly oblivious to the swimmers in the other lanes. People are simply swimming to better themselves and give advice to others. For example, as my friend was swimming a 400-yard medley, one of his teammates was watching him and said "look, he's not even working hard, he can go faster!" and then she proceeded to take a water bottle and spray him with it during the race as he pushed off the pool wall at the 300-yard mark. It was all a joke, and it shows pretty clearly that the competitors don't take this particularly seriously or else that woman would never have taken the risk of playing around with Dan as he swam in his race. So sure, it looks like I might feel comfortable on a team like that. If I don't like it, feel too nervous, or lack the time to go to competitions, then I can always quit the team without any trouble.

We will compete about once a month at various Ys in the region. Given the travelling involved, it will usually require a whole Sunday to be dedicated to competitive swimming. I will have to miss church, and this is disappointing and a large reason why I still have some reservations about joining the team. Will I be a dedicated member? I don't like joining a team, committee, or service organization without being entirely dedicated to it. Anyway, I won't have to do any extra practicing because I am already swimming 4-5 times a week. How will my weekly swim lessons change with my coach? I suspect he's going to ramp up the effort he requires of me, and I'm afraid of that. It takes a lot of mental energy to push myself into the physical range that is required. I don't like the fatigue that sets in afterward.

Speedo racing swimwear jammer

I will worry about my goggles leaking, as that still happens about once every 4 dives. This probably has more to do with my form as a diver than the fit of the goggles, so I must be patient and hope for the best.

I will need to acquire a racing swimsuit before my first competition on December 5th. I just placed an online order with SpeedoUSA for the suit pictured at right. I hope I like it. It will take some getting used to, particularly how revealing it will be of my male anatomy. But as I've mentioned in a previous post on running shorts, I don't plan to be too self-conscious.

My waist is 33 inches in circumference (used to be 34!), so I ordered a 32-inch and a 34-inch and I'll return the one that doesn't fit. I hate to do an online order when there is a locally-owned swim shop in my town. But the local shop lacks the selection I desired, and more importantly, their hours of operation are sporadic and inconvenient. The flip side of the argument is that if I bought from them, I wouldn't have to go to the trouble of buying two suits and returning one.

I briefly thought about buying a true competition suit (a $120 price tag instead of $38), but what would it get me? The fabric of the competition swimwear is meant to glide through the water even better, but I am unlikely to notice this benefit for two reasons: (1) I'm simply not that fast of a swimmer, and (2) with all the body hair I have, the savings of having a more slippery suit will be negligible. Most of the swimmers I saw at the Master's swim team had very little chest hair, but their legs and arms were unshaven, so I assume they were just naturally this way. I'll be one of the hairier specimens, I guess. But I still look good. Besides, everyone will be looking at my new suit!

Saying goodbye to the old swimsuit



The seam of my old blue swimsuit tore several months ago, back in the summer when I was swimming both in the indoor pool at my workplace and the outdoor pool next to my home. I was using the blue suit in the indoor pool, and I had acquired a new Speedo swim trunk (like this one) for use outdoors. Needless to say, when outdoors at a public pool I wanted to show off my newest suit; the old blue one was clearly out of style. But the blue one had been with me a long time and there was nothing wrong with it other than being old. I wear most articles of clothing until they wear out. But once the blue suit's seam tore, I stopped wearing it and I now wear the Speedo suit exclusively.



The old swimsuit

I did not throw away the old suit right away. I just couldn't. I bought that suit sometime in the late 1990s and I had seldom worn it until I started swimming regularly in the late summer of 2009. The fact that it was 10 years old is a testament to the fact that I was not a swimmer until recently. And now, because of the daily swims I now complete, the suit finally fell apart. This old, torn suit is now a monument to all the accomplishments I've made in the pool over the last year. I have gone from a complete novice that could not swim with his face in the water, and who could not swim more than 25 yards without needing to rest, to someone who today can swim 650 yards non-stop, with flip-turns in between and a dive (of sorts) to start. I can also swim all four strokes, a feat I never dreamed of 15 months ago. Oh yeah, and I've spent around $2000 for weekly lessons...and it has been so, so worth it. In fact, what I've done while wearing that old blue swimsuit is probably worth four times that amount of money to me in the long run, as regular swimming has given me greater self confidence, greater strength (particularly in the deltoids and obliques), considerable gains in cardiovascular endurance, an interest in cross-training sports like running and cycling, and a high metabolism that burns calories faster than I can consume them.  That blue suit means a lot.

I memorialize it here so that now, four months later, I can finally throw it away. Good bye old friend!

Saying goodbye to an old swimsuit

Feeling ho-hum when work responsibilities limit workout time

I just re-read a previous post in this blog and I am so glad that I did. It is my favorite post, and it is written to encourage me to keep pushing harder. I need to push myself harder during my workouts these days. Thinking back to the workouts I've done in the past week, I don't see any glowing moments, no personal bests. I also think how tired and sore I've been after mediocre workouts. I've gone swimming six days in the last seven, so that's very good. But with the exception of my Wednesday swim lesson, my time in the pool has been about 30 minutes per day, and my total yardage has been 1,000 yards per day. It's been around a 1,000 yards since July, so I'd like to increase that now. I think the amount of time I dedicate to my workouts has declined. This is not due to lack of interest (obviously, since I've swam 6 of 7 days), but my time in the office has restricted my free time. I also do a lot of volunteering at my church and while that's a good thing, I'm really tired of it right now!

Looking at my records from 2009 and 2008, I see that November is a month where work responsibilities go up and the number of workouts drops. In 2008, just a few months after starting my workout log, I recorded a 45% drop in gross weight lifted comapred to the month before. This is mostly due to the fewer number of workout days. In 2009, I also recorded a 45% drop in weight lifted compared to the month before. It's amazing how consistent this pattern is. So, I guess there is nothing new here. I just wish it weren't so.

On a brighter note, I did do some treadmill running on Friday. I ran for 29 minutes and covered about 2.6 or 2.7 miles (includes warm-up and cool-down walking). I maintained an average heart rate of 154 bpm. My maximum heart rate was 180 bpm, so this was a good workout for me. My leg muscles were a little sore for the following two days. I'm pleased with this run because I did it. I'm not really a runner...maybe later!

I have avoided weight lifting yesterday and tonight because my pectoralis is very sore from some chores I did on Saturday.

Four things learned at swim practice

I had a very productive swim practice today and I want to write down what I learned so I will remember to work on the things my coach taught me. I started off with a 500-yard warm-up. Then we worked on backstroke and breastroke for a total of 1250 yards.

BACKSTROKE

1. Somehow I lost the body rotation that is desired. I was able to restore it quickly upon my coach's suggestion that I concentrate on making my feet kick toward the pool's side walls rather than toward the pool's floor and ceiling.  And "kick" might be too great of a foot movement here. I think my coach called it a foot paddle.
2. We worked on coordinating arm motions so that the arm extending behind me parallel to the water surface pauses for an instant before I pull it in to my side. At the same time, that my arm is extended behind me, my other arm should be half way through its rotation out of the water in a position perpendicular to the water. A separate instruction was that the speed of the arms when under the water should be slower than the speed of arms out of the water. But I'm not sure yet how to reconcile these instructions. My coach thought I was making progress here, but it never felt right to me. I will practice it tomorrow.
3. My coach reminded me how to do turns when doing backstroke. Basically, when I get to the backstroke warning flag extended over the pool, I am supposed to take another couple strokes, then rotate over and do a freestyle stroke to propel me to the wall. Then I do a flip-turn that ends with me on my back rather than on my belly. I did these turns fairly well, though I did have trouble judging when I should do the various steps.

Overall, I'm actually amazed at how many laps of backstroke I did during my hour-long lesson. I am usually tired out after doing two 50-yard laps, but today I did seven 50-yard laps. My quadriceps were killing me!

BREASTROKE

1. I did a 50-yard lap and then my coach stopped me and tried to teach me how Olympic swimmers push off from the wall. First, I pushed off in a hands-extended streamlined position rather deep under the water. When I lost the momentum of the push-off then I pulled my hands backwards "similar to the pull of the butterfly stroke." Then I was supposed to bring my hands up in front of my chest and start the breastroke kick to get me across the pool. I was able to do the initial push-off really well, as well as the butterfly-like pull, but then I simply couldn't initiate the breastroke after that. I continued with a butterfly stoke instead. I don't know whether it was because my coach mentioned butterfly, or whether my body just felt like doing the butterfly, but my coach and I laughed about how funny the human brain is and how hard it is to change its behavior once it latches on to something it thinks is right. As the hour lesson came to an end, my coach made an observation that may lead to a rapid improvement in this skill. He said that my butterfly pull was pulling me upward to the surface of the water. If I pull myself forward instead of up, I might get the breastroke kick started more easily. We'll see.

Now I've got to wrap this up so I can go lift weights. I've got upright rows on the schedule for tonight!