As I have mentioned previously, my weakness in triathlon is swimming (areas of weakness include: swim strength, swim skill and emotional maturity). In every race, I wait for the swim to be over in order to truly begin my race. Often I am physically depleted and disappointed by my time as I start the bike portion of the race.
This last year, the final insult was when a woman in our Master's Swimming program told me in no uncertain terms that I did not belong in their lane (the slowest lane at Master's). Okay, she is a bit crazy but to be called out publicly was hard. I decided right then and there that the best revenge was to learn to swim well.
Enter Louisa who was willing to Coach me once and sometimes twice a week on swimming skills. The lessons were harder than my workouts! There was no talking, no bonding, no understanding my feelings but just work, work, work! (I did once take a lesson with someone who spent all of the time demonstrating on dry land and doing all the touchy feely stuff. I think in one hour I swim 300 yards. By the end of the hour I was cold and shriveled). Louisa is an excellent teacher and I know I tested the boundaries of her patience with my slow development. At one point, I would not have been surprised to see her on the side of the pool with a whiskey and cigarette yelling at me to stop dropping my damn arm.
About the same time I started working with Louisa, I signed up to work with Gordo. The first few months, I couldn't even finish his workouts. Some of them were so hard that I couldn't comprehend finishing them without drowning. By the middle of the summer, I did start finishing his workouts and hitting my time goals. After I finished racing for the season, Gordo made it very clear that to start reaching my goals, we had to first fix my swimming. Each layer of triathlon is dependent upon the previous layer. The foundation of all of it is the swim. Essentially there were gaping holes in my foundation!
So fast forward to late November. Gordo and some of the athletes on his team decide to have a swim competition which they called Virtual Swim Camp or for twitter followers #swimgame. I accidentally found the upcoming camp on the forum and decided that it was exactly what I needed.
The breakdown for the 14 day camp:
*The goal of camp was to get some consistent long swims done. Points were received for anything from the minimum swim of 2000m up to 4000m swims. This turned out to be a great cap for people.
*Extra points were achieved for consistency in swimming.
*Extra points were achieved by completing 8 different Gordo assigned workouts.
My goals for camp:
*50,0000 meters of swimming
*Swim every day
The results:
*52,000 meters of swimming
*Swam 13 days (no pools open on Thanksgiving day!)
*Added a half hour of running or cycling almost every day
The postcards:
*Sometimes the Y pool has orbs of hair floating in the abyss that vaguely resemble tribbles (a gift for my geek friends).
*If you leave your swim bag in your car outside over night, your suit will in fact freeze into a block of ice.
*I spent the first 4 days of camp nauseated and not sleeping well. I soon realized that you can burn a lot of calories swimming. Eat more and feel better! Since the Y pool is pretty warm, I also added 20 ounces of water consumption in each workout.
*One day camp was not virtual because Louisa came back to town. As a fellow camper, she joined me in the pool. In the time it took me to complete my 4k swim, she finished 6k. Really.
*I started to think of my 1k warmup as a jog around the block.
*My lats hurt pretty much every day.
*I finally was able to swim a whole workout with my paddles, pull buoy and band.
*My obliques hurt pretty much every day.
*I was at the Y pool so much (1.5 hours per day), that the life guard asked me to keep an eye on things while he grabbed a soda.
*Doc Counsilman's widow asked me if I swam in college. Uh no, I replied, and I am paying for it every time I swim.
*Swimming would be conducive to pondering the Universe if it wasn't for the damn counting.
*After 13 days in the pool, your skin begins to slough off in large sheets.
*About the 10th day of camp my internal furnace started to burn hot! I felt like a nuclear reactor. I was definitely getting cooked!
*When your loved one snuggles in and says you smell like chlorine, you are officially a swimmer.
Was it worth it? Yes! I finished the camp tied for 3rd place (2 pts...one swim!!!!!!) behind the winner (out of 31 people). Okay, here is the disclaimer; I would guess I was the weakest swimmer in the camp and I only did well because I played the game exactly the way it was designed. Most everyone else is faster (much faster) and would have huge swim distance days despite the fact that you received no additional points for any swim over 4k. I decided to just kept swimming every day and checking off my 4k per day.
More importantly, I decided on a whim yesterday to return to Master's to see how I was developing. I put on my Big Girl Panties and jumped in a faster lane. I found out pretty quickly that I had knocked 45 seconds off my 200 time and 25 seconds off my 100 time. I was only lapped once and it is pretty clear that my time loss occurs on the wall. My flip turns are poor and my streamlining off the wall is non-existent.
The next step in my swim development is maintaining the distance emphasis as I get ready for IM Wisconsin. Two swims per week are now 4k and 5k. The hardest part is that if you add up the time required to swim (including commute to the pool) and starting strength training twice per week, something has to give. At this point, it looks like it will be my running with a potential reduction to 5 days of running per week. Now that Louisa is teaching elsewhere, it is time to start lessons with her boyfriend. I am hoping we can add flip turns to the mix!
Gordo mentioned Advanced Swim Camp in February. Ugh. We all get what we deserve.
Run, Bike, Swim, Live, Laugh, Love
