tyler’s take

Yesterday morning I swam my first long course 200m butterfly since the 1980s. In the past 3 years (since my return to swimming) I had swum the race 4 times in short course pools (twice yards and twice meters), but long course is a different animal. Going into this race I was not quite sure what to expect, as all of my (admittedly old) memories of it were mostly memories of pure agony on the last 50 (and primarily the last 25).

I’m not sure if it was my recent 10k swim that made me tougher, or if it was just my using a different race strategy (that being to go out super easy on the first 100), but for the first time in my life I swam a long course 200m fly and it didn’t really hurt at all, and my last 50 was not my slowest. It was almost eerie. Of course, it was not a particularly fast 200 fly either. If you check out those results you’ll find me in 25th place with what is surely the most even splitting of this race in my life: 31, 36, 36, 36.

Going into this weekend I was signed up for 4 events, all 200s: 200 fly (friday), 200 free and 200 back (Saturday), and 200 IM (sunday). I had told myself that even if I made it into finals I was not going to swim any event twice, and of all the events I *certainly* wasn’t going to swim the 200 fly twice. Yet here I was having gone a virtually pain-free swim that was not nearly as fast as I had hoped to go, and I was first alternate, and I was actually thinking about swimming it again if anybody above me scratched. And lo and behold, one person did. So, against all odds I decided to come back in the evening to swim it again to see how fast I could go if I let it hurt a little.

Just before the start of evening finals, there was a very moving tribute to swim coaching legend Richard Quick, who was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor only last November and, after a brief yet valiant struggle, passed away this last Wednesday here in Austin. Coach Quick was most currently the head swimming coach at Auburn (both men and women), and had previously been at the helm of the Stanford Lady Cardinal swimmers (1988-2005), Texas Longhorn Women’s swimming (1982 -1988), and Auburn (1978 - 1982), among others (the articles give more detail).

This past April, Richard became the first recipient of the College Swimming Coaches Association of America Lifetime Achievement award. Last night, the video commemorating this honor was played on the big screen at the swim center, and was followed by a silent moment of remembrance. To all of Richard’s friends and family, my thoughts and prayers are with you.

Once the meet was underway I did not have all that long to wait before my swim. I knew I needed to go out harder, and I did. This time around, my final 50 was my slowest of the swim (so nice to get back to normal), but it was not the slowest of the day (my third 50 from the morning was actually slower!). So I ended up with an almost respectable 2:16.56 and I split it 29, 34, 35, 36: not quite as even splitting as the morning swim, but much faster. So in the end, after not racing a single long course 200m fly in over 20 years I ended up swimming two in one day. And it was worth it.

This morning (Saturday) my races were 200 Freestyle and 200 Backstroke. I swam a really excellent Short Course Yard (SCY) 200 free in California last May, and building on that race I was hoping to break 2:00. Alas, though I split it very well and managed to win my heat, I did not make my goal time, nor did I make finals. After a swimdown and a short rest I raced the 200 back for the first time this year. Last year I went 2:17.2 and I was hoping to be faster this year. Alas, I went 2:19.4. In both swims I think I suffered a bit of the same early pacing problem that I experienced on the prelim 200 fly the day before. I did manage to final in 200 back, and again I’m breaking with my earlier plan and will be swimming it a second time tonight. Hopefully, I’ll be able to fight the typical performance fade that I experience in most multi-day meets, since I still have this race tonight and the 200 IM tomorrow morning. People who like me can feel free to send some good energy my way (I’ll probably need it).

Full meet results are available here.

Come tomorrow morning to the Texas Swim Center around 11:00-ish and watch me swim the Long Course Meter 200 Fly for the first time in about 25 years, and as a bonus stay a little longer and see something genuinely exciting: 5 time Olympian Dara Torres. Dara was swimming during my noon workout today (I coach) and she told me she would swim the 50 Free tomorrow. Cool!

On Monday morning Eddie Reese was asking me how well I was recovering from my most recent postal swim, and he mentioned the result of a study he had seen showing that runners took up to a week to fully replenish their glycogen stores after racing a 10k, regardless of any active remedial therapy they attempted. I told him that I was feeling better, and that it did take about a week to get back to normal. Just as our brief conversation was winding down, and we started walking in opposite directions on the pool deck, the most amazing thing occurred. Eddie stopped, turned back to me and said this:

“Your 10k was the most impressive swim that I’ve seen this summer.”

At dinner that evening, my friend David thoughtfully pointed out, “do you think he was serious? You know, technically summer hasn’t even started yet.” It’s true, when he said that there were still two weeks of spring, and I’m sure that Eddie has a lot of sufficiently more impressive swims yet to see this summer, but personally I’m ok being a little early, and I’m ok being first.

In nearly 20 years of knowing each other, I’ve received a number of observations from Eddie, but this one was by far the most impressive, and the best compliment that Eddie has ever bestowed upon me (or as he might say, the best two). I have to say, I think this may be my first time living in Austin when I wasn’t at all upset that summer came early.

On Saturday morning after swim practice I went to the gym for what will surely be my last core/FIT double for the spring (and likely for the month of June (and looking at how the 4th falls on the calendar, probably most of July too)), and it was also my first since I suckered Jon into going with me back in May; my reward? I’m now sore-to-the-core (well, technically it’s more in the glutes and tri’s) 5 days out from the start of the Senior Circuit swim meet this weekend at UT (where Ande, Todd, and I will be giving some real meaning to the leading adjective in the name). Oh well, since I’m planning a quick 3 day crash taper for this meet the sore thing is probably not going to be too big of a problem.

Every time I can work it into the schedule there always seems to be some element of the FIT class that makes the effort all worthwhile (or that just cracks me up) and this saturday was no exception. Fairly early into it a song with a salsa rhythm entered the mix, and with heavy weights in hand the class instructor encouraged everyone to exercise their obliques by stepping and swinging their hips to the beat, and she demonstrated the technique most impressively. At some point during the exercise she asked anyone in the class who salsa dances to raise a hand, and it seems like quite a few of the ladies did (I didn’t survey any of the dudes). My hand did not go up, primarily because the question was posed in the present tense (truth be told, these days I wouldn’t even know where to go). But pondering it *did* bring back some fond memories.

When I was in my last year of graduate school, and for part of the year afterwards, I shared a condo with my friend Ricardo who was finishing his PhD in exercise physiology at UT. Ricardo was born and raised in Madrid, and having lived most of his life in a foreign land gave him a unique (and typically humorous) perspective on all things american. Living with that guy was such a blast! (and he was an *amazingly* tolerant roommate … when he came back from a few weeks of winter break in spain to discover that I had gutted the kitchen down to concrete slab and wall studs he broke out his recently recharged mediterranean accent to casually ask, “uh, where do we cook now?” and when I excitedly demoed the temporary, yet elegant “new kitchen,” which consisted of an old microwave perched up on a rickety cabinet in the half-bath he said, “Whoa. Is my bread maker here somewhere? (he finds it) Ok, it’s good.” …. ah, Rico we miss you).

One of the many perks of living with Rico was that his graduate lab was equipped with all sorts of interesting things: VO2 monitors, gas chromatographs, large dewars of liquid nitrogen, and a high percentage of friendly, fun and sporty girls. These latter I remember as being very generous dance partners on more than one evening at Miguel’s La Bodega, which was a club on Colorado between 4th and 5th that had at least one or two Salsa and Merengue nights a week (these days I think that Miguel’s is gone, gone, gone). Regrettably, the number of times that I went could be counted on two hands, and so I think I was never in danger of being an expert salsa dancer (so sweetly confirmed for me one evening by an older Latina who did seem very expert!), but I do remember having lots of fun (and, given enough practice, I do tend to improve at almost everything that’s fun).

That was all many, many moons ago now, but the blast from the past in FIT was fun while it lasted. I imagine that I would go salsa dancing again someday, and if it did ever happen I imagine that it would be still be lots of fun (and then if anyone ever asked me about it I might be able to raise my hand). But that would require me finding two long missing somethings: 1) the modern replacement for Miguel’s, 2) a partner who likes to salsa *and* who likes me enough to let me salsa with her. Hmm, seems like I need help with at least one of those … let me see if I can find Rico’s email address, it’s gotta be around here somewhere …

This morning I woke up at 5:30 (which is slightly unusual) and ate an actual breakfast (which, at 5:30 is highly unusual). Had this been a usual Saturday I would have woken up around 7:00 and eaten a banana. Today my early breakfast consisted of a bowl of hot oatmeal topped with a half cup of frozen blueberries and two heaping spoonfuls of yogurt. After breakfast, I filled two water bottles (one with water, and the other with Gatorade), pulled on my Fastskin II legskin, thought about taking two ibuprofen tablets (but having none, took nothing), grabbed my swimbag and headed out the door. When I started my car the digital clock blinked on into its best rendition of 6:12 AM, which was right on schedule.

At some point on the road to the pool I recognized Whitney driving right behind me, and thinking about what a great coach she is made me smile. After all, she wasn’t coming to coach the masters practice this morning. No, she woke up early on a weekend and was driving to the pool just to cheer (and coach) five of her swimmers in a long, long race (and she didn’t really have to come at all). Pondering all this I felt encouraged to remember my other good friends who would also be there to support me during the test that was to come.

As Whitney and I walked into the swim center at 6:23 a number of sights greeted the eyes: Ande in his full-body racing suit doing some kind of pre-race prep behind the blocks (was he brushing his teeth?), Larry (the uncontested long-distance veteran of the group) walking the length of the pool with a small cooler in one hand and wearing a suit that might have been a twin to Ande’s (though a size or two smaller, no doubt), Brian in a jammer looking relaxed (and maybe just a touch bemused?), Ed in a blue legskin similar to mine (looking like he was about to pull a fast one on the rest of us), and Todd and Jon on the steps between the pools chatting, smiling, and generally looking quite contented (was it anything to do with their plan to stay dry (which I later thwarted!) and the comfy chairs they had set up along the wall?).

At 6:29:30 I entered the pool feet first. I was in the wall lane, Ande and Larry were splitting the lane next to me, and Brian and Ed were splitting the next lane over. At precisely 6:30:00 Whitney gave us all the start and we were off. So, is time for me to explain what it was we were doing?

Masters swimming has two main branches of competition: traditional pool meets and “Long Distance” events. The long distance events are further grouped into open water swims and “Postal” pool events. These latter are the most curious: the way it works is that every year a swimmer has a certain time period within which to find a good friend (or hire a lackey), find a right-sized pool, and then swim for a prescribed distance (or time) and have the good friend count every lap and write down every split time. At the end of the time period, every participant sends in their results by mail (hence the “Postal”) and the results are tallied. So it’s a race, of sorts, but an unusual one where each racer is generally racing somewhere else in space, and somewhen else in time.

I’ve been swimming in pool events since I was a kid, but this January marked my very first postal event: the postal hour swim, where everyone swims as far as they can in a 25 yard pool in one hour and which took a lot of convincing on the part of Larry to get me to do officially (since I had already done it unofficially as a workout). By some seeming serendipity (as anyone who has watched me swim over the years knows), I ended up winning my age group and beating my friend Josh Davis in a swimming competition for what is surely the first time in my life (or as Eddie might say, two times).

After winning the hour swim, Larry would periodically remind me that I was currently in the lead for Long Distance All-Star, which after one swim out of ten was a little like saying that you’re in the lead of the Tour-de-France if you win the prologue (true, and cool but …) with the primary difference being that a lot of people seem to be interested in the outcome of the TDF. Still, Larry had a point. If I was ever going to make a run at it, this would likely be the best year. So I dove in after it (so to speak).

The next event after the postal hour was the open water mile, which was my first pure open water race, ever, and in which I made several technical (rookie) mistakes that caused me to suffer greatly for the last 3/4 of the course. Very shortly after finishing, Floswimming caught up with me to figure out what in the world I was doing at an open water race, and the result was this gem of an interview with my brain still somewhat in a state of shock and awe from the pain of the race. Ouch. Technical proficiency really can make a big difference. On the upside, I did end up winning my age group again. Which led to Larry asking me when I was going to do the next race: the postal 10km swim.

The postal 10k swim has two basic requirements: it has to be swum in a 50m pool, and it has to be completed between May 15 and September 15. 10km in a 50m pool is 200 lengths, or 100 down-and-back laps. Honestly, unless you’re an ultra marathon swimmer, it’s kind of a long way to swim at race pace. Speaking of swimming a 10k, I probably should get back to that …

Whitney started us at exactly 6:30 am. Just like I did for my postal hour swim, I started this swim without any warmup. My thinking was that I was about to swim 10,000 meters and that would be enough. On the first length, my initial thought was that I felt really relaxed and smooth in the water, and this was a good thing considering that I had 199 lengths to go. I also was surprised at how far ahead of Ande and Larry I was at the first wall. It almost made me think that I was going too hard, but at the first 100 I saw the clock had me right around 1:12 pace, which was right were I wanted to be, and I still felt smooth, so any worry I had about my pace went away.

Every postal swimmer needs a counter/timer and Todd had volunteered to count for me and for Larry (one person can count for two people). That was a very generous thing on his part, getting up before 6 AM on a Saturday to come sit in a chair for over two hours and watch people go back and forth in a pool, but I wonder if he wasn’t partly motivated by the thought that as a counter he was very unlikely to feel any guilt about not actually swimming the thing. Jon was counting for Ande and he was sitting right next to Todd, and they were both sitting just a few feet from my lane so I could easily see them in and out of the turn at every 100.

Before the start Todd had asked me what pace I wanted to hold, and I had told him 1:15, so I felt pretty good rolling in at 1:12 on the first 100. The thing about almost any swim is that the first 100 is almost always the easiest, so I wonder if Todd thought that I was going to settle into 1:15 after a quick first lap. What happened instead was that I went 1:13 for the second 100, 1:12 for the third, and then I averaged 1:11s for the next 15 100s.

(More to come …)

It took a little longer for our new 200 Medley Record from nationals to be posted because it’s Bailey’s first record and he needed to be verified.

Event 31  Men 35+ 200 Yard Medley Relay
=========================================================
NATL: N 1:35.04  4/25/2004 ROCKY MT
                 J SMITH, H BANK, R SMIT, P SMITH
    Team                         Seed     Finals
=========================================================
  1 TXLA  'A'                  1:35.80  1:34.16N
     1) Blessing, Tyler M36               24.24
     2) Bartee, Todd M39                  50.36 (26.12)
     3) Bailey, Bradley M39             1:13.47 (23.11)
     4) Varozza, Mike M41               1:34.16 (20.69)

And now that’s been done.

Although I had originally planned to be racing this event, today I was just a spectator (for a tiny bit of the olympic and the better part of the ITU races). The ITU race started after all the other races so the course was clear for the elites and pros (and it was also getting hot!). The women started first and I missed watching the swim portion, but apparently Hayley Peirsol put a substantial gap on the field and maintained it through transition and onto the bike. Amy apparently had some technical problems in the swim (goggles?) and ended up in the second chase group (a major bummer for her as the other 2 women in her group did not seem to be doing much of the pulling and she couldn’t seem to drop them). In between Hayley and Amy was a group of 4 or 5 including Tenille Hoogland, a feisty canadian who had stopped in to swim with us on Thursday morning of last week (she swam in the lane with me and Ande and Todd if that tells you anything about her swimming!).

The ITU bike course was slightly shortened from the earlier olympic and sprint course and it was 5 laps instead of 4. The first chase group reeled in Hayley somewhere in lap 2 and 3. At some point on lap 4, Tenille made a really gusty move on the bike and attacked the lead group putting (I think) over a minute gap on them into transition. Unfortunately for Tenille, she was not able to maintain her lead through the run, and either her late solo attack on the bike, or the muggy Texas heat (it was around 87 F (31 C for the rest of the world), put her into some really bad shape. She ended up finishing 7th and spent some time in the medical tent (hopefully she’s feeling much better now).

The men started the swim portion around the time when the women were getting into the run, and the mens field was quite a bit larger than the womens. Around the halfway point in the swim I recognized Mark Van Akkeren, who used to swim with us when he lived in Austin, at the front of the swim pack. Much later and near the back I spotted Brandon, whose race report states that he was not having a stellar open water swim day (hey, I know that feeling!). Fortunately, Brandon was able to pull his race together quite a bit once he got onto the bike.

After the men went under the bridge I walked over to the run course and found Terra waiting to do her best cheering for Tenille, who, as Terra reported, was really struggling. At this point the lead women were already on their final lap of three and as I looked west I could just make out the leader winding her way behind the two bright yellow pacers on bicycles, who appeared to be having to work some just to stay in front of her. She was just flying along, making it look easy even in the heat! This turned out to be Kate McIlroy of New Zealand, who apparently just started racing as an elite triathlete earlier this year(!), having converted from a world-class runner after a series of nagging injuries pushed her training more towards the swim and bike. Her running background was obvious however, for as light and easy as she made it look, she might as well have had springs for feet. She ended up winning the race by a substantial margin, and next behind her was Hayley Peirsol who seemed strong off the bike all the way to the end.

It was some time before Terra and I could see Tenille approaching in 6th place, and she was really having a tough time. Amy was not far behind Tenille, having finally dropped the two gals in her bike pack, and she moved into 6th sometime around the final turn and held that position to the finish, clearly disappointed at how the earlier portion of her race had gone. Terra had left to follow Tenille and pace her all the way home (and I think to make sure she did make it home (Terra is a great person to be able to call a friend)). Tenille finished 7th, and in the same situation I think I probably would not have finished (that girl has heart!).

After watching the women, I walked over and watched the men race a few laps of the bike portion. The lead pack was just three, and Marky V was in it. Brandon was in the second large chase group, which was a ways back, but he looked much better than he had in the swim. At this point it was after 1:00 PM (13:00 for the rest of the world), and I had not eaten anything since my pre-workout banana, so I made my way home, a little more inspired for my return to triathlon than I had been in the morning.

We live inside a dynamic sphere. It’s difficult for many of us to contemplate a brave new world but like it or not some things change. And on a more light-hearted note, some things never change (and someone, somewhere just finds a new way to prove it!).

Ande, David, Max, and Jon broke the published national record in the Men 45+ 200 Yard Medley Relay last saturday. Way to go!

Event 31 Men 45+ 200 Yard Medley Relay
=============================================================
NATL: N 1:39.69 5/22/2005 COLORADO
P SMITH, S WATERBURY, J LILLEY, R ABRAHAMS
Team Seed Finals
=============================================================
1 TXLA ‘A’ 1:39.99 1:38.90N
1) Rasmussen, Anders M45 24.96
2) Guthrie, David M48 51.27 (26.31)
3) Stinchcombe, Maxwell M52 1:15.51 (24.24)
4) Smiley, Jon M47 1:38.90 (23.39)

Those of you who couldn’t make the trip can still experience it in stop motion (be sure to click the picture for the full show):

I survived my first open water swim (and that pretty much sums up the race for me). The results are posted, and the age group results are definitely more flattering (for me) than the overall.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t do this swim quite correctly (several big rookie mistakes). I probably should have warmed up more than I did (about 100), and I probably should not have stood around in 70 degree cold water for the ten minutes prior to the start, and for sure I should not have gone out quite so hard for the first few hundred yards since I pretty much bonked around 350 and then the rest of the pack just swam away and left me to suffer the remaining 1400 yards alone in my agony. You might think I would have gotten a clue that something was amiss when the fastest open water swimmers in the country were drafting off of *me* (no breaks for noobs in a national championship).

So the upshot is that open water swimming is a totally different animal from “closed water” competition. And I should probably train for it if I want to do any more of it. And cold water makes a big, big difference and requires acclimation.