Today Was a Good Day

I had today off for the holiday so I've been making the most of it. I slept in until around 10:30 (I realize that doesn't sound like making the most of it, but I like to sleep in) and then made may way down to Santa Maria to do some swimming. There were only 2 of us out there today, but the two of us are pretty evenly matched so it made for a good workout.

Here's what we swam:

500 warm up

5 x 100 kick @2:00

100 easy

4 x 100 alt fly/free by 25 @ 1:45
100 easy

4 x 100 alt back/free by 25 @ 1:45
100 easy

4 x 100 alt breast/free by 25 @ 1:45
100 easy

2600 yards total

After my swim me and Heidi went and had lunch by the beach before it's completely overrun with tourists for the 4th of July weekend.


The view from Lunch at Steamers of Pismo

In other new... blueseventy just launched a new open water swimming website that you might want to check out: thewaterisopen.com

An Hour Uninterrupted

I had an excellent swim tonight!!! I'm just happy, it hit the spot. Before I left for Pismo I downloaded some new music onto my iPod and popped it into my H2O Audio Interval. I'm really digging the Interval for solo swims. Anyways... I set up some techno dj type stuff that was upbeat and all the songs blend together. I didn't really notice the time pass because I couldn't tell where the songs started and ended.

I ended up swimming for about an hour with no stops. I would guess it was like 3500 yards-ish. I managed to count up to 150 yards and then promptly lost track. While I was swimming I started day dreaming about open water swimming. There are some swims I really want to do coming up. There are 2 swims in Santa Cruz at the beginning of August, the Naples Island Swim in Long Beach (which I love!)in mid August, and the Big Shoulders 5k in Chicago the weekend before the US Aquatic Sports Convention which is also in Chicago. I'm busy trying to figure out which ones I can get to...

Swim Fin Couture

I found these on Facebook today. Not sure if they are ridiculous or awesome... if nothing else they are the perfect gift for the aquatically inclined girl that has everything :)

If you're absolutely enamored with these you can learn more about them on Manolo's Shoe Blog. The artist that created them is named Lisa Carney. Unfortunately her site doesn't have any fins on it, but she does make some pretty interesting jewelry.

Cruising in Pismo

The first is always the busiest day of my month at work for me. Tonight I just wanted to get out and do an open ended swim. No sets, no intervals, just swimming. I went down to my Pool in Pismo which I haven't been to in a while now. It seems like I've been swimming everywhere but Pismo these days. It's almost time to renew my membership at the club and I checked up on how much it's going to cost me while I was there... it's up to $450 for the year! Yikes! I think I paid like $375ish last year. It must have been a rough year fiscally for the club. Oh well, there isn't another gym in town that I want to belong to so I guess I'm going to have to deal with it.

Anyways... I cruised in the pool for about 25 minutes solid swimming. I feel much better now than when I left the office. Tomorrow is out for a lunchtime swim, but I think I can get back out to the Santa Maria pool on Friday afternoon.

09 USMS LCM Nationals Sign Up Deadline is This Friday! (July 3rd)

I can't make it out to Indy for this meet, but for those of you that can you are running out of time to sign up!!! According to the USMS website you have to have your entry in on July 3rd. No late entries or deck entries are allowed.

You can get meet info here and you can sign up online here

A Slight Change of Plans

Normally I swim in Santa Maria on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I have a meeting on Tuesday and no time on Thursday so I moved one of my swim days to Monday instead. I was a little late getting to the pool because of the school's out parking situation and I missed the warm up.

I swam just over 2700 yards which put me over 20 miles for the month. This is my best month so far in Go The Distance. Next month I want to step it up to 25 miles. By the way if you're haven't checked out the GTD Fitness Logs, you really should.

Here's today's swim:

Repeat x 3
200 kick
3 x 100 drill
4 x 50 descending

12 x 50 w/ fins, 6 dolphins off each wall

50 cool down

2750 yards total

A Perfect Sunday Swim in SLO

Sinsheimer pool in San Luis Obispo was where it's at today! The place was packed this afternoon. It was just one of those days where you can't blame everyone for coming out. It's in the mid 80's, clear skies and bright sunshine.

Unfortunately on Sundays they do a mixed lap swim/rec swim and there was only 5 or 6 lanes for lap swimming. I hung out in the bleachers for a while hoping for a lane to open up but instead they started filling 2 people deep so I figured I needed to pick a lane with someone that was at least swimming not aqua jogging or something like that. During the course of my swim I churned through about 4 different lane mates but they were all cool with splitting the lane so it was never an issue.

I got a workout in my email from Coach Nancy last week that I modified for a solo workout. Her's was like 4500 yards, but I can really only stay focused for 3k by myself. Here's what I ended swimming:

300 swim
200 kick
200 drill (fist/catch up by 50)

3 x 100 descending

3 x 100 fly/free by 25
3 x 100 back/free by 25
3 x 100 breast/free by 25

6 x 50 free alt. easy/fast

3 x 100 kick w/ fins
3 x 100 pull

300 cool down

3000 yards total

It's days like this that make me wish I were independantly wealthy so I could do this every day! Maybe I need to switch my workday to start at like 2PM and get off at 11PM so I can have early afternoons to swim and ride bikes... hmmm

All Signed Up for Santa Barbara LCM Swim Meet

Source: Flickr

The '09 Santa Barbara Masters Reg Richardson Memorial LCM meet is coming up on July 11th and I just finished picking out my events and filling out my entry form. You can get the meet information sheet here and download an SPMA entry form here. Mail in entries need to be post-marked by July 2nd (this coming Thursday). Unfortunately there is no online entry available but you can deck enter if you miss the mail in deadline.

Here's the schedule of events:

Warm-up at 8:00 a.m.
1500 m Freestyle starts at 9:00 a.m.
1. 1500 m Freestyle

Additional warm-up after 1500 m Freestyle

Event #2 starts at 11:00 a.m.
2. 100 m Freestyle
3. 100 m Breaststroke
4. 200 m Individual Medley
5. 50 m Freestyle
6. 200 m Butterfly
7. 50 m Breaststroke
8. 100 m Backstroke
9. 200 m Freestyle
10. 100 m Butterfly
11. 50 m Backstroke
12. 200 m Breaststroke
13. 50 m Butterfly
14. 200 m Backstroke
15. 200 m Freestyle Relay (men, women, or mixed; deck enter)

My coach has been encouraging me to swim some out of the ordinary events for me so I mixed in some events I don't do real often. I'm keeping the 50 free and 50 fly which I almost always do, but I am adding the 200 IM, and the 50 and 100 backstroke. I'm also hoping for a relay at the end.

I'm pretty stoked for this meet for a few reasons... 1 - It's only 90 minutes from my place which is pretty close for a swim meet for me. 2 - It will have been over a month since I've raced anywhere! I'm getting antsy!

I realize for a lot of the rest of you in South Pacific Masters this might be a bit of a drive, but it is your last shot at an LCM meet before our championships in Thousand Oaks on the 24th-26th. The Thousand Oaks meet is both the Regional and Zone Championships btw. Anyways, there are worse places you could be on a Saturday afternoon than a 50m pool right next to the beach in Santa Barbara. Hopefully I see a lot of you there!

My Swim Workout Bag Dissected

So this is what I cart all over the place with me when I go to swim practice. Apparently I am hording goggles, that's not even the whole collection... and I have 3 more pairs en route as we speak. I have problems :) I'll only race in one type of goggles but I try out new ones all the time in workout just because.

So here's what I have in the bag:

1. Speedo Speed Training Fins
2. Nike Pool Buoy
3. H20 Audio Interval (for solo swims only)
4. Swim Cap (to hold down the MP3 player)
5. Gatorade (I have a preference for purple flavored)
6. TYR Socket Rockets, smoked and metallic (for workouts)
7. Mesh blueseventy swim bag (came with my B70 wetsuit)
8. blueseventy Element Goggles (a freebie with my B70 Nero Comp)
9. Speedo Sengar Goggles, smoked and metallic (for racing)
10. Spray-on Sunscreen
11. Lock

So what am I missing? I don't carry paddles on purpose, they don't jive well with my shoulder. Anybody playing with any cool new pool toys that I should check out?

If I Could Swim 3000 Yards for Lunch Every Day I'd Be a Very Happy Boy Indeed

I put in a solid 3000 yards at the pool in Santa Maria this afternoon. I must have done a good job because I'm way more sore than usual after a swim. Our workout group was a little light today, I ended up with my own lane which was nice. There wasn't a prepared workout for us so here's what the group came up with...

500 mixed warm up (free down, choice back)

5 x 100 kick @2:00

5 x 100 IM odd drill, even swim @1:45

4 x 100 breath control (3,5,7,9) @1:30

100 easy

Repeat x 2
3 x 100 free descending @1:30
200 easy

I really wish I could go do this everyday. It would be magical if the high school pool like 2 miles from my office had a masters group, but sneaking off 2 days a week to swim in Santa Maria will have to do. At least the people down there are super cool. And for pretty much the first time I actually have a tan which is exciting for me :)

In other news... TYR is on the verge of some legal action over the way FINA flubbed the whole suit thing. They got shafted in the retest process because they didn't bring their own scientist. So other suits that are incredibly similar got back in while the Titan was left out. Check out the full deal here and a little more here.

In response to all of this Roland Schoeman (South African Olympic swimmer) has started to stir up interest for an International Swimmers Association. Kind of like a lobbying group for swimmers. You can read more about it on Facebook where in just a few days the group has grown to more than 1200 members.

Aquatic Art by Eric Zener

Source: Eric Zener via Booooooom.com

I came across some excellent paintings today by a guy name Eric Zener. I posted a few examples for you all to check out, but there are a lot more on his site that are outstanding. If you see anything you like it looks like it's a contact the artist to see which paintings are available type of thing.

Apparently School is Out for the Summer

I went to Santa Maria to do my lunch time swim today and I was greeted with an odd problem... no parking. This was a first. I went and found a spot on the street for my truck and when I finally got myself to the pool it was loaded with kids. Like hundreds of kids. I'm still trying to not think about what the urine content of the pool is at now...

Anyways, the lap area was adults only and our masters group had 4 of them. There was no workout in place so we made it up on the fly. Here's what my lane did today:

200 swim
200 kick
200 pull

12 x 100 alt free @1:30/choice @1:45
(I swam fly, IM, back, IM, IM, breast)

Repeat x 3
4 x 50 fartlek (fast/slow, slow/fast, slow, fast)

100 cool down

2500 yards total

I got a workout in my email from Coach Nancy at Conejo Simi for me to try out... it's big enough that it might take me a few days! It's about 4700 lcm, yikes. We'll see how that goes!

Go The Distance Now Has Online Fitness Logs!

It's been in the works for a long time, but the Fitness Logs are finally live on the USMS website. The Fitness Logs are available through your MyUSMS profile. If you're not already signed up with MyUSMS I highly suggest you do it.

The cool thing about these fitness logs is that you can track your workouts online now instead of in a spreadsheet that you have to extract data from and send monthly to Mary who runs the program. When we first talked to Mary back in December the program had about 600 participants, now we're up over 900! I'm guessing that she is very excited about this development, I think she just got the first week of each month back.

Tracking your workout via the USMS website is totally easy. First you have to sign into your MyUSMS profile and click the "My Fitness Log" link. This brings you to the calender. On the days that you have recorded a workout you'll see a little icon in the corner of the date. To add a workout, click on a date.



On the next page choose what kind of workout you did, we're sticking with swimming for this example.



On the final screen choose the course you swam, enter the distance, enter the time spent swimming, and you can enter any workout notes that you want in the big box on the bottom. When your done just click the "Add Workout" button and you're good to go.

June 22nd FINA Approved Suit List is Out

Here's the new FINA approved suit list via Swimming World Magazine:

Fina Suit List 22JUN09

You may notice that blueseventy who was suspiciously absent from the first list is back in the mix along with other suits that were shut out from that list. Here's a note I recieved from blueseventy earlier today on the topic:

22 June 2009
blueseventy body suits back in the water
blueseventy’s high-tech swimming body suits are back in the pool after the sport’s governing body, FINA, reversed its decision to ban them on the grounds of possible air trapping.

This decision means that swimmers are free to wear them at the forthcoming World Championships in Rome, and all other competitions, at all levels around the world.

Ceo, Steve Nicholls, commented: “We were confident in the scientific evidence that our suit could not trap air and are grateful for the support of Huub Touissant of the University of Amsterdam in presenting our case to FINA. We felt strongly that we would not need to make any alterations to it and we’re delighted that the right decision has been made without any form of bias.

“The last few weeks have certainly hurt us, with minimal sales in the period of not being on the list. However, we have been continuing with production to ensure availability for when the decision was reversed.

We now look forward to the World Championships, where we will have suits available for any swimmers wanting to try them out. We have been in continuous communication with swimmers throughout this period and this announcement now confirms their suit choice for Rome. They can now continue their preparation without this distraction.

"Prior to the latest announcement by FINA, blueseventy had consulted Lawyers to get an injunction against the decision. On consultation with FINA they encouraged us to instead go through their own review process which we have done." Nicholls added.

“The most important thing is that swimmers now know where they stand and have a choice about what suit they can wear. We will do everything we can to ensure that our suits are available and that all swimmers have access to them from all of our global distributors and subsidiaries.

For those of you like me that are mainly focused on what's going on in the Master's pool, everything remains the same. All suits previously allowed are still fair game. Looks like USMS made the right call and saved their members a lot of grief and money by holding steady while FINA spent months flip flopping. What suits are going to be legal in 2010 is still a mystery, but at least it looks like the suit debacle should mellow out for a few months so we can all get back to focusing on swimming as opposed to swimsuits.

According to Gold Medal Mel B70 is Back!

This was posted just recently to both Twitter and Facebook by Mel Stewart (Gold Medal Mel)...


I'm assuming the RS in question is Roque Santos who works for B70 and is currently an active and VERY fast Masters Swimmer.

I'm looking for more substantial confirmation, but as it stands this is very big news!

If you want to follow Gold Medal Mel on Twitter you can do so here

Lazy Sunday

Well I guess in all honesty the whole weekend was lazy. This weekend Pismo Beach is hosting its annual car show and my pool happens to be at the epicenter of the parking mess. They stopped letting gym members park in the lot back on Thursday! The whole 5 Cities area that I live in is home to maybe 50,000. This event brings an extra 100,000 so you can imagine the mess. As a local I find it best to just pretend Pismo doesn't exist again until the car show is over.

While I wait for everyone to leave town I have had aquatic endeavors on my mind... I bought a new suit and a pile of swedish goggles in various colors from Swim Outlet. I've also been researching stand up paddle boarding (SUP). It's basically riding a giant surf board with a paddle. Supposedly it is an excellent core workout on top of being a lot of fun. I'm thinking about getting out there and renting a board and getting some lessons locally. See if I dig it. I live and work close enough to the beach that I could run down at lunch on the days I'm not swimming and paddle around and surf a few waves for 45 minutes and rush back to work just in time. Anybody have any experience with Stand Up Paddle Boarding? I'm highly curious.

More "Open Water" and Some Pseudo Relays

Today was another lane lineless day in Santa Maria which is fine by me. Our little open water simulation is totally fun. After a 200yd warm up we did 5 laps around the pool (~145m/lap). After that it switched over to a relay type of set. 2 in one lane and 3 in the other, we went IM order out and free back (1st guy fly/free, second guy back/free, etc.). I really liked this because it gave me a chance to do some starts and some short, fast swimming. We cycled through for 10 minutes. I pushed most of my turns pretty hard, it was a lot of fun. Next week workouts should be back to normal, but I'm glad I got to mix in a few out of the ordinary workouts like this!

H2O Audio Interval Round Two

I spent a little more time with my new H2O Audio Interval water proof iPod thingie tonight, and so far so good. My only real gripe with it when I first tried it out was that it kind of drifts on the back of your head when you're swimming. Not in an unusable way but in a slightly irritating way. I think I've found my fix for it though... a basic latex cap.

When you throw a cap over the top of it it's not going to go anywhere. The cap isn't going to exert enough pressure on the buttons to randomly change the song or the volume on you. Plus you can still use all the buttons through the cap.

I would assume this wouldn't necessarily work for everybody. If you have a lot of hair this may be a no go. However if you have short hair, or no hair like me, this is a pretty good way to make the H20 Audio easier to use.



Anyways, back to actual swimming... tonight I did a real free flow kind of workout. I started with about 25 solid minutes of swimming with my music playing. I would have gone even further without stopping but I accidentally swallowed some pool water... gross. My day would have been complete without drinking health club water. After my mini break I did a reverse 400 IM. I followed it up with a sprint 50 fly and then a few hundred more yards of freestyle to cool down. Tomorrow I should be down in Santa Maria for a workout there.

A Hall with a View of the Pool

Source: Patkau Architecture via Design Crisis via FFFFOUND...

I don't think my current home search is going to turn up something this cool, but a boy can dream right? If I end up buying a place without enough yard for a pool I guess I'll just have to find a way to put it on top of the house, why not?

Impromptu Open Water Simulation

It was a gorgeous day out in Santa Maria today and perfect for a lunch time swim. Originally there weren't going to be any masters workouts this week due to something that had to do with the building, but I got an email early saying that if we wanted to swim we could. I really needed this today! I have all kinds of housing drama going on at the moment and I needed sometime in the pool to burn it off.

Anyways, we were faced with a lane line-less 50m pool so we ended up doing something kind of fun and a little out of the ordinary. We swam around the edges of the pool instead of just back and forth. It had a total open water lake swim type of vibe. There was a good breeze running that was pushing some water around. There were 3 of us and everyone swam 2 laps and sat out one. At all times one of us was on deck watching the other 2 swim. I could have done this all day. I mainly swam free but I did sneak in about 50m or fly and 50m of backstroke.

200 warm up

about 10 x 145m open water-esque circles

1620m total