At my usual swimming spot, I’m almost always the fastest person in the water, and I’m not even a speedy swimmer. Lots of aquasizers and aquajoggers. It is hard to push yourself when you are doing solo workouts and you don’t have a carrot (or bubbles) in front of you to chase. Because of that (and not giving an honest effort effort and addressing the swim as my biggest weakness) my swim times for the last few years have hit a major plateau. No more.

I officially joined Cambridge Masters for the winter and I’m FAR from the fastest person in the new pool. Outside of one year on HS swim team, I’ve never really been a swimmer. Going back to something after almost 10 years out is definitely a little scary, but going outside of your comfort zone is how you grow, right? And this time I’m not using it as an excuse to hang out with cute athletic high school girls in bathing suits all winter.  It is all business.

Now I’m not even the fastest person in my slowpoke lane. I love it. Plenty of bubbles to chase to and keep me swimming till my arms fall off!

I’ve even convinced a new local Team Rev3 recruit, Julia, to join with me this winter. She is wicked fast and I have no business being in the same lane as her, but knowing she’ll be waiting for me to pick her up when my alarm goes off at 4:45 am is good motivation to get up and moving. We’ve even got some sweet custom Rev3 suits on order! Can’t wait to rock them this winter.

Today was an annual NYE 100×100 fundraiser. I was relegated to the “slow kids pool” way on the other end, but had a great session. With only a few weeks of serious swimming under my belt after a long break from Sept-December, I had no business doing all 100. I gracefully bowed out after 25, but was really happy that I kept to 1:45 intervals and managed a solid :10 rest between. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. And I do.

Onward and upward! There are more bubbles out there to chase!

Question- Anyone have any good swimming/shoulder stretches? With all the time pushing myself in the pool (more than I have in a really long time), I want to make sure to keep my shoulders happy. They are definitely feeling it the most.

Giving back? I think I did pretty well. I loaned out my old trainer to a friend training for Rev3 Cedar Point, volunteered at Quassy and another local sprint. Gotta think of some more creative ways to give back for next season.

Nationals? Done. I went, had a blast and improved my olympic-distance PR by about 15 minutes! It was a lot of fun, and I hope to make it back. The one thing that I didn’t like was the whole qualifying process. The qualifying criteria was fair, but it was just a big psychology change for me to be competing against the top guys in my age group instead of just myself and the clock.

I’m very competitive, but I’ve never cared about what anyone else in my age group was doing while I raced. I rarely ever looked down at people’s calves to see if they were in my AG. I just stuck to my own race and tried to meet or beat the standards that I set or myself. My competition used to be all internal. This year, it was all about competing with other M25-29ers. I wasn’t used to it at all. I ended up turning into “that guy” walking around transition before a tiny local sprint, nervously stalking the competition. Even at a tiny local sprint triathlon. Not awesome.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, just different. And I wasn’t used to it at all. If I continue down the route of being more competitive within my age group, I’ve gotta get my head straight so I don’t let that get away from me and ruin my chances before the gun even goes off.

Other accomplishments this year?  I trained hard enough to be FAST on the bike and had a ton of fun.

I got a sweet new wetsuit that I lovelovelove. Plus it makes my ass look hot.

I went swimming outside a lot, made stupid faces underwater in front of my camera, and found a secret outdoor pool.

I did post-race cool downs in the ocean.

Oh, and I got to interview Natalie Coughlin.

I think I’ll chalk up the 2011 season as a win. Now I need to sit down and do some serious goal setting for 2012.

What are your big goals for next year?

I used to be a naturalist. The only only thing I wanted to hear during the swimbikerun was the sound of my foot fall, the wind, my breath, shifting gears and bubbles passing by my head. But then I started doing a lot of long runs on my own and bike interval sessions on the trainer. My own mental focus has its limits and I can only push myself so hard without some tunes blasting in each ear.

Try doing hill repeats with Metallica or Rage Against The Machine and NOT push yourself hard enough to make yourself puke. Seriously. Try it. The easiest way to get your heart rate higher than you thought it could go. (Okay, and maybe there are a few Britney Spears songs on my playlist too..)

Coming off of Ironman training last year and focusing on Olympic distance racing this year has brought lower overall volume, but MUCH higher intensity. And with that has come a LOT more training with music. Adding music to to running and bike trainer workouts is easy, but the swim takes some special equipment.

Recently, I got hooked up with a waterproof iPod Shuffle case from H20Audio – the Interval.

The Low Down: 

The Interval is a waterproof case and connected ear buds for  the 4th generation iPod shuffle. You put the shuffle inside the case, plug it in, attach it to your goggles, stuff the earbuds inside the side of your head and get your swim on. You can pick one up for $99. The Good: 

My first major surprise was how good the sound quality was once I pushed off the wall for the first time with it on. Other than the added noise from bubbles floating past my head, the music was really clear.

Other than that, it was really easy to hook up to my iPod and connect to my goggles and get to swimming. The buttons on the back are also really easy to navigate to adjust in between sets.

An added benefit is that you have an easy out if someone tries to invite themselves into your lane while you are mid-set. Just keep on swimming and finish your work. “Oh I’m sorry. You wanted to circle swim? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you. Sure. NOW you can join in.”

What I’d Like: 

My one issue was having to fiddle with the earbuds. I got a whole mess of different sized earbuds to experiment with, but never quite found the perfect fit. Even a really solid fit in the beginning of a workout tended to fade as water slowly pulled on it and out of my ear.

What I found after some research is that they stay in MUCH better if you use a swim cap and keep it over the earbuds. The one improvement that I think could be made is if instead of rubber earbud covers, if they were made out of that expandable spongey material that ear plugs are made out of. That way they’d stay in your ears and keep you rocking your whole workout without the need for adjustment.

Overall:

I was pretty impressed with the Interval. The seal was solid and I never worried about my iPod getting wet. And it hasn’t. At $100, it isn’t cheap, especially considering that you need an iPod shuffle too (and only the 4th generation fits). But if you are doing a lot of swim volume and want to make sure you aren’t just doing mile after mile of gliding and are actually pushing yourself HARD for the whole workout, it is well worth it.

Since my plans is to make improving my swim priority number one this offseason, I’ll be getting a lot of use out of them.

Disclaimer: H20 Audio sent me the Interval for review but did not contribute to the content of this post. 

This is the race that I built my whole season around and picked my rache schedule just so I could qualify and earn my entry. All that work paid off and my work with Coach Hirsch has me feeling strong. Needless to say I’m VERY excited to race and VERY ready to taper.

I just got a new aero helmet that I can’t wait to rock this weekend too! I love it.

Last weekend I had two more days of hard workouts before starting my taper. It was raining so I took my 2 hour bike onto the trainer. Once I warmed up, no matter how hard I pushed I couldn’t get my HR above 135 or the life of me. It was just stalled. That is completely not normal for me. I don’t think that has EVER happened to me before. Or at least I’ve never noticed it before.  I cut the workout short and focused on stretching, massage, some time in my Recovery Pump boots and some good nutrition. I immediately booked a massage with Soar Body to get my muscles rubbed down and refreshed.

I talked to Coach and he said that my decision to back off was a smart one. My body was cooked and that is why my HR wouldn’t rise. Looks like my taper is starting early this time around!

Now I’ve got some easy swimbikerun sessions to keep the muscles fresh and loose, but I also need to make sure I don’t go stir crazy.

I felt a little scratch in my throat and started freaking out that I was getting a cold. I’m also relentlessly checking the Burlington weather forecast for this weekend. What looked like it could have been a really wet race, looks like it might be pretty sunny. Still, it is one more thing that I can stress out about forever, but don’t have any control over. I’ve gotta focus on preparing and not waste any mental energy on all that other crap.

So time to go have some under water fun! I can ALWAYS have fun taking stupid pictures of myself in the pool.

The rest of my To-Dos this week include cleaning my bike, degrease and lube my chain, eat healthy and get LOTS of sleep.

See you in Burlington!

I headed out to the middle of Walden for a while to escape the crowds. I brought along my camera (tucked away Bree Wee-style) and had some fun splashing around all by myself and chasing fish for a while.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hopefully you have some nice weather wherever you are, you get out for some nice swimbikerun and enjoy some post-workout burgers, beers and fireworks with friends and family.

To celebrate, here is my latest mankini design.

Now I’m off to watch the Tour de France, jump into Walden for a swim and head out to spend the day with the (soon to be) in-laws.

Unlike my neighborhood pool and walden pond (where I do 99% of my swim workouts) it was not completely crowded with other swimmers. I enjoy not feeling like I am playing Russian roulette when I choose what lane to swim in.

“Should I choose the wide lane at the end with the old lady doing elementary back stroke, or the middle lane with five other swimmers circling? And only one of them is swimming with their face in the water?”

Either way I’m going to get punched in the face or kicked in the gonads with an errant breast stroke kick.

But at my new secret pool, there were only two other swimmers in the pool for the whole hour, and there were no lane lines either! But do you want to know my favorite part? It isn’t covered! Open air pools are hard to come by in New England. It is a mix of my favorite things about pool swimming and open water swimming mixed together.

I brought my paddles and swam till my shoulders fell off, then kicked off the wall on my back so I could watch the birds and planes fly  through the clouds overhead. Then I strapped on the paddles and did it all over again.

Since it is my secret, you only get to see the view from the bottom of the pool.  Shhhh! I’m not telling where it is! I wouldn’t mind seeing some friendly faces, there, but I also wouldn’t mind if it stays a little known swimming spot for the rest of the summer.

My second favorite is this panorama shot from the age grouper swim start. Click through to see the big version.

(click the pic to see the full version)

And lastly, I sliced up some clips from the camera that I had mounted to my aerobars. Rather than show the whole video (which is a MEGA big HD file) I just threw together some of my favorite parts of the course. It just happens to be that they are almost all speedy descents. It looks like I edited parts to fast forward through them, but it is all in real time. A few of the shots are of me hitting +46 mph. I even passed the USAT official on the motorcycle a few times.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enjoy!

Chasing fishies.

See?! I told you it made me happy.

I have been consistently coughing up a few pounds of snot for the last six days and was a no show on the start line yesterday. Even while medicated, I know that the race would have been a complete disaster and would have been really disappointed in my performance, so it wasn’t too much of an emotional hit. I do really wish that I was at least well enough to have gone to cheer on my friends that were out racing, but that didn’t make sense either.

As the gun went off, I was sitting at the clinic getting advice on what meds to take to keep myself from drowning in boogers. I did at least get a little smile when the nurse practitioner was impressed my my low resting heart rate…

I tried working out a few times too, but it just made me feel lightheaded and a lot worse.

At day six, there still aren’t any signs of improvement, but I have picked out a new replacement race to try and snatch up my AG Nationals slot.

Let’s just hope I can kick this thing before the next starting gun goes off.

I am going to try running and biking again with the new meds and am hoping for better better results. I am already starting to get twitchy from the lack of exercise.

“Jamie, how come you are so fast in the water, shave your legs during triathlon season, but still rock the beard? What gives.”

While shaved legs and a full beard may seem counterproductive, I promise that there is method to my madness. The truth is that I’ve been a part of top secret hydrodynamics research at MIT that started after Faris Al-Sultan won the Ironman World Championship in 2005. The research specifically focused on the impact of male facial hair on water resistance and swimming speed.

The research set to prove the hypothesis that well groomed face fuzz acts like dimples on a golf ball to reduce drag and create lift, raising the swimmer higher in the water. Over the last few years I have spent countless hours in the pool, attached to highly tuned sensors, analyzed with high speed cameras and trimmed my beard to various lengths and patterns designed to improve hydrodynamic efficiency.

The results of the research have been nothing short of amazing. Because facial hair impacts water as it first crosses the body (with the exception of your arms and hands) whether it is shaven or not impacts drag much more than if your legs are shaved or not.

What was most surprising was that facial hair length (longer than  .5cm) didn’t show any statistically significant impact on drag. With facial hair, athletes in the study were able to swim 2-5 seconds faster per 100 meters.

Water flow analysis identified that the vertical growth pattern in facial hair actually directs the flow of water into one clean stream beneath the body rather than disturb it and create turbulence and additional drag. Compared to a clean shaven face, the same water stream  would head directly past the eye and ear line and go crashing into the athletes shoulder.

So there you have it. The riddle of the swimmer’s beard is solved by science. The full study will appear in a future issue of the Journal of Athletic Physics in case you want to weed through all the data yourself.

Oh, and it definitely gives you extra style points on the podium. Chicks dig facial hair.

And the TYR Hurricane 5 performed like a rock start. It fits me SO much better than my old wetsuit that I bought when I was about 15-20 pounds heavier and is super comfortable. I lubed up my neck, calfs, forearms and lats with some Tri Slide and off I went into the water. I had forgotten how great it feels to be sitting up on top of the water and zooming along effortlessly.

Want to share a lane with me? Jump in. I’ve got plenty of room and promise to be a good lane buddy. I can’t make any promises about the fish or the snapping turtles though.

Good thing the water is warming up, because I just looked at my race schedule and I’ve got my first race next week. Yikes! I hope I’m ready. There is only one way to find out…