I’m back from Brazil. We (team USA) came in 3rd to Brazil and Canada. The trip was really fun, and I’ll write the details out soon. Right now I’m going back to my bed because some bad water on the ride home has me quite ill.

I’m in Sao Palo, Brazil. We have a 12 hour layover here because the race director didn’t purchase our tickets to Florianopolis until about an hour before I left for the airport. Luckily he also got us a  hotel in Sao Palo for the day so we can run, eat and sleep.

I haven’t been able to swim for two days, so I’m going into withdrawal. Also, after running for about 20 minutes my treadmill broke, forcing me to ride on a stationary bike.

I’m going to nap, eat dinner, run again, and go catch a 10pm flight.

Sao Palo is gigantic. From the air all I could see was a vast expanse of city sprawl.

I’m sitting in the kitchen with my mom talking about how she did my swim workout in her rowing shell the other morning. Unfortunately my mother, having spent thousands of hours in the stands watching swim meets, has never learned to read a swim workout. This made me realize that the typical traithlete may also not know how to read a swim workout, so I’m putting together a tutorial, then to make everyone feel better I’ll tell you what I did this morning and how some swim workouts still confuse the heck out of me.

Reading Swim Sets: a tutorial

A swim workout is pretty simple once you get the hang of it, but since sets are based entirely on distance, and typically involve numerous repeats, the methodology of set giving in the water is somewhat different from biking and running.  Here is a swim set and I’ll walk you through it.

1×500 wu @ 10:00

This means you swim 500 yards to warm up. the 1x means you do only one 500, and the @ 10:00 means that you have 10 minutes to complete the 500 before starting the next item on the set.

10×50 fr (desc 1-5) @ :55

10x : repeat this interval ten times

50: each interval is 50 yards

fr: abreviatin for freestyle aka crawl stroke

(desc 1-5): make each 50 faster than the previous one for the first five, then repeat for numbers 6-10 (so your times might be 50s, 45s, 40s, 35s, 30s, then 48s, 40s, 34s, 29s)

@ :55 means that you start each interval 55 seconds after the previous interval. So if you leave on the 60 (top of the pace clock) you would start number two on the 55, three on the 50, four on the 45, etc.

4x{
2×200 fr 1500m race pace @ 2:45
1×100 IM @ 15-20s rest
}

4x{ this means you repeat the part in {} brackets four times

2×200 fr 1500m race pace @ 2:45

just like the 50′s above. Swim 200 yards at your race pace (may also be written RP). You start the second one 2 minutes 45 seconds after the first one.

1×100 IM @ 15-20s rest 2 minutes 45 seconds after the second 200 you start a 100 yard individual medley. This means you swim 25 fly (FL), 25 back (BK), 25 breast (BR), and 25 free (FR), continuous. After the 100, take 15-20s rest and start over. When I put a rest interval like this into a workout it is usually a range of five seconds so that you can start when the second hand is on a multiple of 5. (i.e. if you come in on the 11 you would start on the 30 rather than the 26 or 31)

12×75 EMF by 25 @ 1:10 (~20s rest)

EMF stands for EZ Moderate Fast.

by 25 the part that changes does so by 25. So each 75 is a 25 ez, 25 moderate and 25 fast. It could also have been by 75, in which case you would have done four rounds of 75 easy 75 moderate 75 fast, all on the same time interval.

wd (warm down)
10×50 asc 1-5 @ 1:00

asc 1-5 means that you start off with a fast 50 and make each one slightly slower until number 5. repeat that for 6-10. This is active recovery, so as you go slower, your attention should shift from speed to technique. Always finish a workout with as close to perfect stroke as you can manage.

Rest Intervals: If I am writing a workout without a specific group in mind (i.e. to post on my blog) I’ll put in rest intervals (i.e. 15-20s rest) rather than sendoffs (i.e. 2:45). When you’re doing a workout that gives rest intervals, it is a good idea to convert to send-offs. That way you are encouraged to keep a consistent pace. With sendoffs you get more rest when you go faster, but if you go too slow you have to get right into the next interval.  Plus, if you’re doing the workout with a group, you can pick a sendoff that works for everyone, and that way you stay together (less passing involved). If you’re with a group that needs a slower sendoff, just go faster to make up for the added rest.

Now, those are the basics. This morning I drove to Issaquah, about 40 minutes from where I live, to swim with the Issaquah Swim Team. The travel is worthwhile because the coach, Kyle Johnson is the best technique coach I’ve ever met. Unfortunately, this morning was coincidentally the first morning in the pools history that the staff failed to show up to open the doors. I ended up driving back to Seattle University to swim with my friend Peter, who also drives the distance for Coach Johnson’s excellent stroke instruction.

Peter spent about 15 minutes preparing me for some of the drills and terms that Kyle has started using in the three years since I was last on his team. Here’s a set we did, but for your sake, I’m not going to explain it:

3x{
2×25 nolms kick @ :30
3×25 Sling Shot 1 (SC +1, 0, -1)@ :30
2×50 Sling Shot 1 (SC 0, -1 by 25) @ :50
1×75 Sling Shot 1 (SC +1, 0, -1 by 25) @ 1:10
Tree Hugger, 10 each arm
2×25 Sling Shot 2 @ :25
1×50 Sling Shot 2/3 by 25 @ :50
1×75 Sling Shot 3 @ 1:15
1×50 Sling Shot 3/4 @ :50
1×215 Sling Shot 4 @ :25
}

I’m still not sure I know what it all means…

Brian Davis and I rode with the First Rate Mortgage cycling team this morning.  Brian has been in Croatia with his wife for a few weeks, and was able to smuggle about 15 pounds of his mother-in-law’s food back into the country by storing it as love handles, back fat, and a recently rounded abdomen.  Needless to say, today’s ride was harder on him than on me.  Even still, I’m going to write a short complaint about the cold weather and how my butt would not forgive me for getting out of bed this morning.

I stayed at Brian’s last night after forcing him and Marijana to cook food that they normally wouldn’t eat for the sake of my picky eating.  We played Monopoly. I love the game, but most people have the same complaint, "That game takes too long." It’s true, and about three hours after it was clear that Marijana was going to win, she finally bankrupted both Brian and myself, and left us to bake banana bread in our misery. Still, I’m just glad we got to play.

This morning we woke up, ate some of the banana bread, then headed off to the group ride. It  was pretty clear by the time we reached the meeting place (6 miles down the trail) that my butt was not going to be happy, and I was already having to listen to Brian complain that his extra weight was causing his seat to hurt in ways in never had. It may have been the 30 degree weather, or it may have been the wet roads, but my guess is our butts were hurting from the butt kicking we both suffered in Monopoly.

Check out the ride stats. It was probably the slowest, shortest ride I’ve ever felt so worn out on. I capped it off with a five mile run with some tempo. This afternoon napped hard, then swam before dinner.

All-in-all, a great training day that makes me feel like I really deserve my day off tomorrow.

This is the forecast for the five days I’ll be in Brazil. I have mixed feelings about rain, but the rain LOVES me. The race is on Sunday. Most of the forecasts I’ve looked at have said T-Storms, which would be bad news, but this one from MSN just says rain. I can live with that.

Thursday

Jan 24
PM Rain

Hi: 77° Lo: 71°

Drizzle. High 77F and low 71F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph.

Friday

Jan 25
Showers

Hi: 74° Lo: 70°

Cloudy with showers. High 74F and low 70F.

Saturday

Jan 26
Rain

Hi: 73° Lo: 71°

Rain. High 73F and low 71F.

Sunday

Jan 27
Rain

Hi: 75° Lo: 71°

Rain. High 75F and low 71F.

Monday

Jan 28
Rain

Hi: 76° Lo: 72°

Mostly cloudy with showers. High 76F and low 72F.

My parents have been out of town this week, which meant I had the house to myself. I was excited for some quiet time and to be able to set my own rules. Instead I had to make sure I was home enough to walk my dog and take care of my kitty, who is recovering from a 105 degree fever that had him pretty much knocked out and looking terrible. Just as I am finally getting back on a regular sleep schedule, my parents decide to take a flight back from Florida that arrives at midnight. The last thing I want to do is stay up until 1am, but I know they would do it for me.

My friend Rory says he only laughs while reading my blog when something goes wrong. Nothing bad has happened lately (hopefully that stays true through my trip to Brazil next week, [knock knock]), but as I was backing up the files on my computer I did find a journal entry (before I blogged I wrote emails to massive lists of friends or typed it into a journal) from my first day in Hawaii, back in August of 2005. It’s amusing.

Day 1

After sleeping on the plane for almost the entire 6 hour journey, I awoke to find that I had Grumpy Old Grunter sitting right behind me. As we landed he grumpily grunted, “move your seat up.” (a nice way to wake up). Then, a woman with her panic stricken granddaughter came pushing up the aisle (as politely as possible). Grumpy Old Grunter stood broadly across the isle. Frantically the woman gasped, “Excuse us, my granddaughter has an emergency.” Another Grunt, then, “Nobody’s moving, we’re all waiting too.” The woman at this point so taken back she has no idea what to say, instead she drives an elbow into his soft abdomen, squeezes by with the young girl clasping her trailing arm for dear life, and finally reaches the bathroom door where the embarrassed child disappeared, until long after we had deplaned.

The Hodel house tour was quick, there isn’t much house here. Seems typical of Hawaii because it’s so nice outside all the time, why would you ever want to be inside? [It should be noted that only a few months later it rained for 40 days straight, at which point I found out why you would stay inside.] The house is right on the water of the north shore, with a rock path down to the beach. Immediately after the tour Uncle Carl and Boomer took me surfing for my first time. I was riding this huge board they called a tanker, but I didn’t know the difference. I rode a couple of waves laying down, then got up on a knee for one, then I stood up. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I was expecting, but I still have no idea how to spot a wave, and how to turn the board in order to ride the wave correctly.

We went for a jog in the area that is used to film the show Lost. It’s much smaller than it looks in the tv show, and I’m surprised they can use such a small place for the entire show. It is pretty cool though; the park that is. There’s an old runway there that is apparently the only place that planes were able to take off during the attack on Pear Harbor. They sent up three planes, which were able to shoot down just ten enemy aircraft (out of hundreds). Apparently the general in charge of the island’s runways thought that parking the planes on the sides of the runways would risk sabotage by people on the ground, so he had them parked in the middle of the runway. The Japanese planes were able to take care of an entire fleet of planes just by shooting down the runway. I bet that general felt like a dumb ass.

I can’t seem to get used to the dark in Seattle. I was fine before I left, but after a month of 11 hour days in Hawaii I’m having a rough time getting my sleep back on schedule. I would have thought the extra dark hours would have me sleeping a ton, but instead I’m finding myself unable to sleep more than five or six hours a night. After a 5am track workout today, I’m hoping I can crash early and sleep a solid ten hours tonight. It’s catchup rest, but I’m going to try to make a habit of it. Better to be over rested than under rested.

I’m getting stoked to start racing again, and it’s a good thing I can get my feet wet (literally)next weekend in Brazil. Check out Loren’s latest post if you want to get psyched up.

Saturday I woke up early to ride with First Rate Mortgage cycling team. It was raining buckets, however, so I bailed and went cross-country skiing with my sister. Now, I’ve been Nordic skiing before, but I normally stick to the trails and groomed locations around the city. I’ve also never been up with Susan (my sister), or her friend Beth, who for the purposes of this blog entry we will call "Beth the Destroyer".

We started off around 8:30 with me running around the house frantically trying to find the last few pieces of equipment that had somehow been lost between my putting them into a box last April and Saturday morning when I opened that now dust covered box. Finally I dumped about three quarts of boiling water into a thermos grabbed a few bags of tea and hopped into the car feeling terrible for holding up my sister and Beth the Destroyer. Even worse, I was making them stop at the nordic center so I could rent some cross country skis.

Fast forward two hours. I finally have skis, and we’re at the trail head. Instead of the typical groomed trails I’m used to we were staring up a snow shoe path with some rugged ski tracks next to it sinking deep into the snow. I fell before we were out of sight from the car

Continue Reading »

In Novermber I stayed with Loren Pokorny in Marin County (north of San Francisco). It was not the first time I stayed with the Pokorny Family, but it was the first time I was able to give a 1:1 swim lesson to Loren.  He has been raving about that one lesson on his blog, and bugging me to get back into giving swim lessons, which I have done very little of since moving to Seattle.

I may start doing private lessons again, but in the mean time I think I should give some pointers to the triathletes out there who just don’t know what to do when they get to the pool. My guess is boredom is a big part of why triathletes struggle with swimming.

Here’s a workout I gave Loren after my stroke lesson. It’s easy to remember, simple to follow, and is less boring than what most people come up with on their own.

25 perfect stroke
50 fast
75 perfect stroke
100 fast
125 perfect stroke
150 fast
150 perfect stroke
125 fast
100 perfect stroke
75 fast
50 perfect stroke
25 fast

20-30 seconds rest after the perfect stroke, 5-10 seconds after the fast (shorter rest forces active recovery).

For the perfect stroke, speed doesn’t matter. Just focus on all the things your stroke coach has taught you. If you don’t have a stroke coach, set up a lesson with me. You want to go slow enough to feel any errors in your stroke and just think about your stroke (high elbows, head in line, kicking, etc.), but without somebody looking at your stroke the "perfect stroke" part is less effective. For the fast part you just want to make it hurt. Try to keep your stroke together, but go as fast as you can. This set will work on endurance, some on speed, but most importantly after each hard interval it will force you to rework your stroke.

I’m on a plane home right now. Uncle Bob asked a good question on the way to the airport this afternoon: "Why do you need to go home?"

The obvious answers seemed to disappear under the weight of implications. School started Monday. I will be arriving home Tuesday night, and begging for forgiveness from my professors. I have stretched my break from the day of my final through the second day of the next quarter, and when I do get back into the classroom it will be like falling onto a treadmill at full speed.

Bob’s implication was that if my priority is racing, then I should be wherever I need to be for that goal to happen. I think Seattle will accommodate my goals, and I don’t think my class schedule will interfere with my training. Still, as it was asked, the question left me gazing out the window at a beautiful Hawaiian day without a good response. I have had such a great time in Hawaii the past month that I really question why I ever moved away.

The moment faded, and I realized all the great things that have resulted from the path I chose (Seattle that is), and I know that I’m on the right track. School is important to me, and it serves the dual purpose of keeping me grounded. Otherwise I would likely find a new home every month. I just love being in new places. Regardless, four weeks have never seemed shorter than those I just spent training in Hawaii. Here are some highlights:

Week 1: I arrived December 11th, and found myself sleeping on a futon on the floor of a waterfront mansion in Kailua. This house is probably worth $10 million, but featured completely empty hallways, bedrooms, cabinets and refrigerators (3 of them). I went on a highly restricted diet, and made it about a week before sleeping on a futon and reading boos on self-awareness and spirituality had me feeling pretty lonely and ready to get started on training. Unfortunately, it also coincided with a staff infection showing up in my foot (beware of thorns on beaches) and a sinus infection from swimming in the the bottom of the bay (I know babies with cleaner bottoms).

Week 2: Still staying in Kailiua with Coach Mike McMahon, I got over my illness and started running, swimming (in clean water) and hanging out with some old friends. I went for an awesome night hike and spent a day on the North Shore with two of my closest friends on the island, Trish and Matt.

Week 3: Mike left, and I moved to Hawaii Kai, which is much closer to Honolulu, and the  home of my friends Chet the Jet and Adam Havrilak, who I spent Christmas breakfast with, sitting on our bikes. From there I visited my family in Haleiwa, went dirt bike  riding with my Uncle, and continued to add bulk miles to my early season run training. By the end of the week I was knocking out long runs and beginning to add in fartleks, hills and some speed. I finished off 2007 feeling great.

Week 4: Happy New Year!! Fireworks,kayaking, sushi, ocean swimming, cycling up ridges, and trips to the beach highlighted the first half of the week. Then I hopped on an inter-island plane and joined up with the Columbia Men’s Swim Team at Hawaii Preparatory Academy on the Big Island. It was three tough days of training, but it’s only a preview of the work to come. Running is finally beginning to feel natural, and a couple 5000+ yard workouts in the pool gave me some confidence that I am not missing much in the way of my swim.

Last night and this morning I said goodbye to my friends, dished out some well deserved thank you’s, and headed for the airport. It was a great trip.