And don’t bother cooling down, either

October 15, 2009 at 8:50 pm | In News, OW Training | 1 Comment
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First we pointed out you have more to fear from Bambi than Bruce.*   Now, another misconception put to rest, courtesy of the New York Times.  To wit, a cool down is apparently worthless.  Or at any rate, there’s no evidence it does you any good.

…the cool-down is enshrined in training lore. It’s in physiology textbooks, personal trainers often insist on it, fitness magazines tell you that you must do it — and some exercise equipment at gyms automatically includes it. You punch in the time you want to work out on the machine and when your time is up, the machine automatically reduces the workload and continues for five minutes so you can cool down.

The problem, says Hirofumi Tanaka, an exercise physiologist at the University of Texas, Austin, is that there is pretty much no science behind the cool-down advice.

(* The mechanical shark used in the film [Jaws] was nicknamed “Bruce” by its handlers, and the “full body” version tours around museums, while “Bruce II” resides at the Universal Theme Parks and “bites at” tourists on the tour ride.  From IMDB.com)

An interview with Steven Munatones

October 13, 2009 at 8:46 am | In Interviews, OW Training | Leave a Comment

Today we are thrilled to have a conversation with Steven Munatones, who may know more about OW swimming, swims, history, training, competitors, and techniques than any other human on the planet.  He is the man behind 10KSwimmer, the encyclopaedic must-read blog for anyone interested in OW swimming.  We don’t know how he manages to be everywhere at once in the world of OW swimming, but we are thankful he does.

Read on for our interview with Steven Munatones, with a few special tips for newer competitive OW swimmers at the bottom.

Continue reading An interview with Steven Munatones…

Slideshow from the NYC Pro Swim

September 9, 2009 at 12:32 pm | In OW Training, Video | Leave a Comment
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We don’t normally focus much here on the pro OW swimmers, but here’s a great slide show from last week’s FINA 10K Pro Swim in NYC that really captures the swimmers mixing it up in what looks like some pretty choppy water.

And speaking of the swim, kudos to 15-year-old Eva Fabian from New Hampshire, who finished a very close second in the women’s race. According to a recent feature on Fabian from SwimNetwork.com, Eva spends a lot of her training time in a 25 meter pool, so there’s some ingenuity in prepping her for open water events.  The article quotes her coach describing some of her workouts:

a weekly set close to the distance she is competing in, for example 50 x 100 for a 5K or 100 x 100 for a 10K, we also do pace-line swimming with long repeats between 1,000 – 2,000 yards.  We team Eva up with 2-4 other swimmers and they all take turns leading the pack for 50, 100 or 200 yards.  They swim on each other’s toes, helping simulate the real-world race conditions at the world championships.  The swimmers exchange leads so they get used to the surges and drafting that are so important in open water racing.”

“Eva also does some great POW [Pool Open Water] workouts where all the lane lines are removed and she races her teammates around the pool….  It teaches positioning and helps develop the ability to have fast turns in crowded conditions which are so important for open water success.”

What it takes to win: a Chris Greene update

September 7, 2009 at 8:53 am | In Chris Greene Lake Cable Swim, OW Training, Open Water Races | Leave a Comment

This year 19-year-old Abby Nunn won both the 1- and 2-mile events at the Chris Greene Lake cable swim.  According to Lane 9 News, “Nunn, a 2008 graduate of Deep Run High School, trains under Coaches Geoff Brown and Brent St. Pierre and has been practicing seven times per week, averaging 8,000 yards per practice.”

That’s 56,000 yards a week, right?  Back in May, I was feeling pretty happy with myself for doing 70,000 yards for the month.

Post workout recovery? Reach for your bowl & spoon.

May 15, 2009 at 8:40 am | In Caroline, OW Training, Video | Leave a Comment

Notwithstanding that the FDA has recently chided General Mills for overstating the potential health benefits of your daily bowl of Cheerios, a new study says that a bowl of milk and whole grain cereal offers the same post-workout recovery benefits as fancy-pants sports drinks.

“Our goal was to compare whole grain cereal plus milk—which are ordinary foods—and sports drinks, after moderate exercise,” said [ exercise physiologist Lynn Kammer of the University of Texas at Austin].   “We wanted to understand their relative effects on glycogen repletion and muscle protein synthesis for the average individual. We found that glycogen repletion, or the replenishment of immediate muscle fuel, was just as good after whole grain cereal consumption and that some aspects of protein synthesis were actually better”.

“Cereal and non-fat milk are a less expensive option than sports drinks. The milk provides a source of easily digestible and high quality protein, which can promote protein synthesis and training adaptations, making this an attractive recovery option for those who refuel at home.”

Sing it, everyone!

May 12, 2009 at 2:51 pm | In Caroline, OW Training | 1 Comment
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Marcia Cleveland, English Channel swimmer, author of Dover Solo, and now a 45-year-old mother of 2, recently wrote for USMS about her current training schedule:

In the swimming part of my busy, busy life, this is an “off” year for me, meaning no major marathon swims planned such as the English Channel, Catalina Channel, the Chicago Shoreline Swim or others you may check out at my website, www.DoverSolo.com. I focus on shorter races, ranging in distance from 1 to 5 miles, and maintain my fitness by swimming three to four times a week (for a total of about 15,000 yards), a little running, lots of stretching, some dryland work and taking care of and goofing off with my family. When it’s an “on” year, my weekly swimming yardage is about 30,000 to 35,000 yards plus all of the above.

The article includes some tips and tricks for open water swimming, and Cleveland’s interesting admission (for a succesful Channel swimmer):  “I have spent a great deal of time freaking out in open water…”

Swim with your eyes closed

April 18, 2009 at 4:27 pm | In Allison, OW Training | Leave a Comment

This morning, I did a short (hour-long) swim. In preparation for my first dip in the James (probably tomorrow), I did two things: I swam with my eyes closed, and I set the water in the shower as cold as possible. The last time I got in open water was probably last July :( before my eardrum got smashed by a swimmer who stopped in the middle of the James at a Richmond Tri Club group swim, putting me out of the water for the rest of the OW season last September in the James. Needless to say, I’m itching to get in the open water!

I would highly recommend practicing with your eyes closed to anyone training for an OW race, unless the race is in the clear waters of the Caribbean, or elsewhere similar. In the past, I’ve not sighted enough, which has taken me off course at times. (Forgive me, I only started in 2006, and didn’t really get into it until 2007.)  In open water, the only real consequence of this is having to swim more to get to the finish (which is obviously less efficient), but in the pool, you have a very narrow window before your arm hugs the lane line and you end up with red scrapes  up your arm, or you hit the wall and smash a body part essential to swimming.

I closed my eyes, and only allowed myself to open them when I was breathing or sighting. I found that I sighted a lot more than when I swam in OW, and oddly, my stroke was a bit different — longer, more gliding than my typical pool swimming. I wasn’t doing this for time, so I can’t yet compare it to, say, a 100 free or 500 free at my normal pace. The exercise put me in the OW mindset, and I definitely think the longer stroke was more efficient for a distance OW race…and I felt calmer as I was swimming this way.  I swam this way for just 300 yards, as I’m swimming Zones next weekend and needed to practice some other things, like the back-to-breast turn.

I should also note that I didn’t do flip turns. When I reached the wall, I thrusted my body in the other direction and began the next lap. Of course, you would not want to do this in a pool meet, but the advantage in training is that you’ll be taking a few more strokes per lap, essentially swimming more yardage, which hurts no one. You also aren’t giving your arms a “break” as you normally do during he flip turn, which more closely simulates swimming in open water.

As for the cold shower, I’m not sure exactly how cold the water was, but I hyperventilated a little. Cold showers are not fun. But if the water’s 65 or below on race day, I think cold-water acclimation is a necessary evil in the training process.

speed + distance = holy grail, part II

March 4, 2009 at 4:32 pm | In Caroline, OW Training | Leave a Comment

Today’s distance swim was an experiment – long sets versus short sets.

I knocked off 7000 yards (OK, 6900–I miscounted one 2000 set), and for comparison’s sake I did the first 4000 in 2 sets of 2000 (or, if one cares to quibble, a 2000 and a 1900), then I did a single set of 1000 and then 4 sets of 500.

As is always the case on these longer swims, by the end my arms felt as though they’d been carved (and none too expertly) from hunks of wood, and around yard 4000 I started developing a deep, irrational, blood-sugar-deficit inspired hatred of the guy in the lane next to me for generating too much turbulence,

but…

it is also true that I was able to maintain my goal pace to the end by breaking the final 3000 into smaller sets, and this despite the fact that my shoulders and arms were still feeling the effects of major shovel work in the wake of this week’s freak March snowstorm (these days, any snowstorm in Richmond is freakish) and yesterday’s speed work.

In the continued spirit of scientific investigation, for my next distance swim, I’ll see if I can maintain a slightly faster pace over the distance if I break the whole thing up into 500s.  Because the ultimate goal is to train at faster than goal race pace so that when you get to the race, your goal pace feels doable without those breaks in between.  Right?

distance + speed = holy grail

March 4, 2009 at 10:20 am | In Caroline, Chesapeake Bay Swim, OW Training | Leave a Comment
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As noted here before, I’m a newcomer to the world of competitive swimming. I entered my first swim race (open water–I have yet to compete in a pool) shortly after my 45th birthday.  On the one hand, this means that I don’t have the benefit of years of swim conditioning and competition behind me.  On the other hand, I don’t have to reflect back wistfully on lost glory and those good old days when I could really put up the times.  Instead, I can see a steady, if gradual, improvement in my swim pace since I began real training less than 2 years ago.  I swim three days a week, by myself (a master’s team would be nice, but none of the local ones fit my schedule AND location together), so fortunately I’m capable of a fairly high level of self-inflicted suffering.

However, without the benefit of coaching, I’ve struggled with the question of how to get faster while training for distance, since both last year and this year I have had the Bay Swim’s 4.4 miles looming in my future.  That’s a lot of 100 repeats.

So here’s a post from Alex Kostich at active.com that answers just that questions:  How to Boost Your Swim Speed Over the Long Haul.  For my own purposes, I put aside the laughable notion, as suggested within the article, that I could manage even a single 100 at a 1:09 pace, and simply translated the numbers towards my own goals (which include, as I believe I’ve mentioned previously, a sub-25-minute pool 1650).

“This workout is a basic yardage-covering workout, with an emphasis on repeating 100 yards at a consistently faster time than one normally swims in automatic mode. It covers distance without sacrificing quality, and the repetitive nature of the main set provides ample opportunity to swim fast and maintain race pace.”

Here’s another good article, from SwimCity.com, with a lot of good suggestions for training for speed over distance.  OK, and it does all seem to come down to lots of shorter repeats.

“Rely more on repeats of 200 meters and less. It’s one of the best ways to train effectively for longer races. Because you can hold a much faster average pace for, say, 15 x 100-meter repeats than for a straight 1500 meters, you train your muscles and energy systems to do what it takes to move your body at faster speeds for that distance. You also get less fatigued than if you tried to swim the same pace in longer repeats, helping you maintain consistency in your training. Finally, it’s much easier to maintain good Stroke Length (and train efficiency into your muscle memory) on shorter repeats.”

OK, so that means that for today’s distance-day swim (goal: 6750 yards) I’d have to swim… 34 X 200.  That’s a lotta repeats.  Um, I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Grant Hackett technique

January 9, 2009 at 9:54 pm | In Caroline, OW Training, Video | Leave a Comment
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Here’s a good video for studying freestyle technique.  Yes, it’s in the pool, but Hackett ain’t no slouch in open water.

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