Smoke on Water

From SCAQ Swim Blog an article the LA Times on the new Speedo LZR swim suit. The article gives a good overview of the technology behind the suit. Bottom line, it reduces drag. Over the past several weeks 14 swimming world records have been broken, 13 of them the swimmer was wearing this new suit from Speedo.

As long as Speedo doesn't come out with a suit that has mini rudders or something, I'm all for the new technology. At $550 a pop, though, it may be prohibitive in cost. In a sport where the difference between first and everything else a suit like this could mean the difference. It will be interesting to see how the world governing body for swimming, FINA, defines what a level playing field is as the Summer Olympics approaches.

The Running Free

Running can make you high . Since I just started running, I really can't relate to this. But I usually feel better after working out in general. But I wouldn't call it euphoric.

HIgh on the water

So I ran/jogged/walked a total of about 6miles yesterday. Today was a swimming day. But I was feeling tired from the run still and my knee was hurting a bit. But as I like to say swimming is a fountain of youth and the knee wasn't the problem.

I decided to do a broken 200 set for my main dish today.

200 free 3:12
2 x 100 free (30s rest between) 1:31, 1:35
4 x 50s (15s rest between) :45, :45, :43, :43
8 x 25s (10s rest between) averaged about :20s each

I was beinga bit liberal with rest intervals, but I was tired from the run.

I'm taking a hiatus from flip turns. My back has been finicky and I don;t want to hurt it since I'm doing so much other types for training for the tri. But I'm pretty happy with my times. If I ever muster the discipline to do flip turns again, I think I could cut 1-2 seconds per every length. I was focusing on keeping my hips high in the water as the set progressed. After my debacle last week, I knew I was plowing through the water and my body was sinking. I recalled watching this 800M swim of Kate Zeigler. In the later stages of the race her hips are high and body rolling. I was trying to do the same.

How not to do a swim workout

Had my triathlon training class today - it was as swim workout. In 81 degree water.
The main set was 16 x 100s with 30s rest in between. Do the first 8 take 2min break and start it up again. I did the first 4 or 5 well - between 1:30 and 1:35. Then I started ascending by about 3-5 seconds. My arms felt like lead and my hips were low in the water. The bathwater wasn't helping. Just made me realize my swim conditioning base needs to be worked on still.

Faster, Stronger, Higher

The NYTimes has started a series called Faster, Stronger, Higher highlighting the training techniques of Olympians that can be applied to recreational athletes. The first in the series is an article about Ryan Lochte , a swimmer. (That is just an awesome picture of the proper freestyle arm recovery!) A couple of paragraphs stood out for me:

“The only way to really work on technique is to swim very slowly and really think about every little thing that you’re doing,” he said. “How your body is positioned, what your hips are doing, the positioning of your shoulders and hands and feet.”

I couldn't agree more. Although I think I'm guilty of doing technique drills a bit too fast. If you go too fast, you can't be mindful of what you body is doing in the water.

“I always make sure that he’s very straight and streamlined off the wall,” said Gregg Troy, the head coach of the University of Florida men’s and women’s swim teams in Gainesville, Fla., and Lochte’s personal coach. Lochte, a former Gator, still trains with the team.

So Lochte tries to streamline underwater for at least 15 meters off each flip turn.

“If a swimmer pushes hard off the wall and remains streamlined underwater,” Troy said, “that means you’ll transition into your stroke with much more momentum. It’s almost as if you’re swimming downhill, not uphill. That’s very important.”

So is body position.

“I work a lot on staying high in the water, not fighting the water, moving with the water,” Lochte said.

To that end, he concentrates on keeping his belly above the water during his backstroke and he also frequently practices with a piece of buoyant foam (or pull buoy) between his legs. Using a buoy, Troy said, can be useful for swimmers, because “you start to feel proper body positioning, then you replicate that” without the buoy.

When I was younger my streamlines off the wall were much tighter. Its definitely something I need to work on because when you push off the wall you are going as fast as you can with the least amount of effort. Good streamlines maximize this distance and with my my 6'7'' body I think I can go easily 10 yards off the wall.

Perhaps the single biggest change in Lochte’s swimming routine from days past is the amount of pure kicking he does, sometimes with fins (his are standard, long fins) or a kickboard, sometimes without.

“Kicking stabilizes the body,” Troy said. “You achieve correct body position far more with the legs than the arms.”

Leg muscles require far more oxygen than the arms do, he added, so the legs “must be fit” or a swimmer risks early exhaustion.

“The amount of kicking that most elite swimmers do in practice has gone up at least 20 percent in the past few years,” Troy said.

He said that coaches used to have athletes kicking less because “it takes more time in the practices to kick than to swim,” so you get “less overall swimming volume.” But most of them have come to realize that less volume with more kicking produces world records.

I am not a good kicker at all. I don't even have a 6 beat kick. Most of the time I'm not thinking about my lower body when I swim freestyle. If I want to become faster,
this is one area I really need to focus on.

Swimming drill

Via SCAQ blog .

Tournament time

My Arizona Wildcats made the NCAA tournament for the 24th consecutive year. Its been a rough year in Tucson. Lute Olson took a leave of absence, injuries to key players, and a less than stellar finish to the season winning only 4 out of the last 12 games. But the tournament committee takes strength of schedule seriously, and Arizona's was ranked number 1 or 2 for a majority of the season. Still, it would have been nice if they had a better Pac10 campaign. Its not fun watching UCLA and Stanford surge ahead (and Arizona State is up and coming, too)

And in all reality, Arizona hasn't done much since 2005 in which they lost to the Illini. (That game still burns) And even if Lute is coming back, at 74, its hard to imagine him coaching for much longer. I barely knew what basketball was when the tournament streak started and in my freshman year at UA the Cats made an improbable run to the national championship. Looking back now, I realize how lucky I was to be a student then when it happened. March was always my favorite month because spring break would coincide with the start of the tournament, the days would be getting longer,and the desert would be in bloom. Now my itinerant ways have taken me to places where spring doesn't arrive till May. But it was a point of pride that I knew the Wildcats would be in the tournament. I hope they make a run, upset some teams, and make it to the Sweet 16 in Phoenix where the Wildcat Nation can cheer them on closer to home. And lets hope on making it 25 years next spring!

Bear Down, Arizona

The loon back in saloon

A friend of mine will be moving to Tennessee. Lets hope this law doesn't get passed.

And I'm back

One of my fans was wondering where my blog went. Well I deleted it on accident. But I'm back.

The other night I was watching TV and all of a sudden I heard this lovely sitar music for a commercial. I recognized the song from Anoushka Shankar's latest CD (with Karsh Kale). Its one of my favorite CDs. Here is the TV ad: