tyler's take

This morning I woke up at 5:30 (which is slightly unusual) and ate an actual breakfast (which, at 5:30 is highly unusual). Had this been a usual Saturday I would have woken up around 7:00 and eaten a banana. Today my early breakfast consisted of a bowl of hot oatmeal topped with a half cup of frozen blueberries and two heaping spoonfuls of yogurt. After breakfast, I filled two water bottles (one with water, and the other with Gatorade), pulled on my Fastskin II legskin, thought about taking two ibuprofen tablets (but having none, took nothing), grabbed my swimbag and headed out the door. When I started my car the digital clock blinked on into its best rendition of 6:12 AM, which was right on schedule.

At some point on the road to the pool I recognized Whitney driving right behind me, and thinking about what a great coach she is made me smile. After all, she wasn’t coming to coach the masters practice this morning. No, she woke up early on a weekend and was driving to the pool just to cheer (and coach) five of her swimmers in a long, long race (and she didn’t really have to come at all). Pondering all this I felt encouraged to remember my other good friends who would also be there to support me during the test that was to come.

As Whitney and I walked into the swim center at 6:23 a number of sights greeted the eyes: Ande in his full-body racing suit doing some kind of pre-race prep behind the blocks (was he brushing his teeth?), Larry (the uncontested long-distance veteran of the group) walking the length of the pool with a small cooler in one hand and wearing a suit that might have been a twin to Ande’s (though a size or two smaller, no doubt), Brian in a jammer looking relaxed (and maybe just a touch bemused?), Ed in a blue legskin similar to mine (looking like he was about to pull a fast one on the rest of us), and Todd and Jon on the steps between the pools chatting, smiling, and generally looking quite contented (was it anything to do with their plan to stay dry (which I later thwarted!) and the comfy chairs they had set up along the wall?).

At 6:29:30 I entered the pool feet first. I was in the wall lane, Ande and Larry were splitting the lane next to me, and Brian and Ed were splitting the next lane over. At precisely 6:30:00 Whitney gave us all the start and we were off. So, is time for me to explain what it was we were doing?

Masters swimming has two main branches of competition: traditional pool meets and “Long Distance” events. The long distance events are further grouped into open water swims and “Postal” pool events. These latter are the most curious: the way it works is that every year a swimmer has a certain time period within which to find a good friend (or hire a lackey), find a right-sized pool, and then swim for a prescribed distance (or time) and have the good friend count every lap and write down every split time. At the end of the time period, every participant sends in their results by mail (hence the “Postal”) and the results are tallied. So it’s a race, of sorts, but an unusual one where each racer is generally racing somewhere else in space, and somewhen else in time.

I’ve been swimming in pool events since I was a kid, but this January marked my very first postal event: the postal hour swim, where everyone swims as far as they can in a 25 yard pool in one hour and which took a lot of convincing on the part of Larry to get me to do officially (since I had already done it unofficially as a workout). By some seeming serendipity (as anyone who has watched me swim over the years knows), I ended up winning my age group and beating my friend Josh Davis in a swimming competition for what is surely the first time in my life (or as Eddie might say, two times).

After winning the hour swim, Larry would periodically remind me that I was currently in the lead for Long Distance All-Star, which after one swim out of ten was a little like saying that you’re in the lead of the Tour-de-France if you win the prologue (true, and cool but …) with the primary difference being that a lot of people seem to be interested in the outcome of the TDF. Still, Larry had a point. If I was ever going to make a run at it, this would likely be the best year. So I dove in after it (so to speak).

The next event after the postal hour was the open water mile, which was my first pure open water race, ever, and in which I made several technical (rookie) mistakes that caused me to suffer greatly for the last 3/4 of the course. Very shortly after finishing, Floswimming caught up with me to figure out what in the world I was doing at an open water race, and the result was this gem of an interview with my brain still somewhat in a state of shock and awe from the pain of the race. Ouch. Technical proficiency really can make a big difference. On the upside, I did end up winning my age group again. Which led to Larry asking me when I was going to do the next race: the postal 10km swim.

The postal 10k swim has two basic requirements: it has to be swum in a 50m pool, and it has to be completed between May 15 and September 15. 10km in a 50m pool is 200 lengths, or 100 down-and-back laps. Honestly, unless you’re an ultra marathon swimmer, it’s kind of a long way to swim at race pace. Speaking of swimming a 10k, I probably should get back to that …

Whitney started us at exactly 6:30 am. Just like I did for my postal hour swim, I started this swim without any warmup. My thinking was that I was about to swim 10,000 meters and that would be enough. On the first length, my initial thought was that I felt really relaxed and smooth in the water, and this was a good thing considering that I had 199 lengths to go. I also was surprised at how far ahead of Ande and Larry I was at the first wall. It almost made me think that I was going too hard, but at the first 100 I saw the clock had me right around 1:12 pace, which was right were I wanted to be, and I still felt smooth, so any worry I had about my pace went away.

Every postal swimmer needs a counter/timer and Todd had volunteered to count for me and for Larry (one person can count for two people). That was a very generous thing on his part, getting up before 6 AM on a Saturday to come sit in a chair for over two hours and watch people go back and forth in a pool, but I wonder if he wasn’t partly motivated by the thought that as a counter he was very unlikely to feel any guilt about not actually swimming the thing. Jon was counting for Ande and he was sitting right next to Todd, and they were both sitting just a few feet from my lane so I could easily see them in and out of the turn at every 100.

Before the start Todd had asked me what pace I wanted to hold, and I had told him 1:15, so I felt pretty good rolling in at 1:12 on the first 100. The thing about almost any swim is that the first 100 is almost always the easiest, so I wonder if Todd thought that I was going to settle into 1:15 after a quick first lap. What happened instead was that I went 1:13 for the second 100, 1:12 for the third, and then I averaged 1:11s for the next 15 100s.

(More to come …)

It took a little longer for our new 200 Medley Record from nationals to be posted because it’s Bailey’s first record and he needed to be verified.

Event 31  Men 35+ 200 Yard Medley Relay
=========================================================
NATL: N 1:35.04  4/25/2004 ROCKY MT
                 J SMITH, H BANK, R SMIT, P SMITH
    Team                         Seed     Finals
=========================================================
  1 TXLA  'A'                  1:35.80  1:34.16N
     1) Blessing, Tyler M36               24.24
     2) Bartee, Todd M39                  50.36 (26.12)
     3) Bailey, Bradley M39             1:13.47 (23.11)
     4) Varozza, Mike M41               1:34.16 (20.69)

And now that’s been done.

Although I had originally planned to be racing this event, today I was just a spectator (for a tiny bit of the olympic and the better part of the ITU races). The ITU race started after all the other races so the course was clear for the elites and pros (and it was also getting hot!). The women started first and I missed watching the swim portion, but apparently Hayley Peirsol put a substantial gap on the field and maintained it through transition and onto the bike. Amy apparently had some technical problems in the swim (goggles?) and ended up in the second chase group (a major bummer for her as the other 2 women in her group did not seem to be doing much of the pulling and she couldn’t seem to drop them). In between Hayley and Amy was a group of 4 or 5 including Tenille Hoogland, a feisty canadian who had stopped in to swim with us on Thursday morning of last week (she swam in the lane with me and Ande and Todd if that tells you anything about her swimming!).

The ITU bike course was slightly shortened from the earlier olympic and sprint course and it was 5 laps instead of 4. The first chase group reeled in Hayley somewhere in lap 2 and 3. At some point on lap 4, Tenille made a really gusty move on the bike and attacked the lead group putting (I think) over a minute gap on them into transition. Unfortunately for Tenille, she was not able to maintain her lead through the run, and either her late solo attack on the bike, or the muggy Texas heat (it was around 87 F (31 C for the rest of the world), put her into some really bad shape. She ended up finishing 7th and spent some time in the medical tent (hopefully she’s feeling much better now).

The men started the swim portion around the time when the women were getting into the run, and the mens field was quite a bit larger than the womens. Around the halfway point in the swim I recognized Mark Van Akkeren, who used to swim with us when he lived in Austin, at the front of the swim pack. Much later and near the back I spotted Brandon, whose race report states that he was not having a stellar open water swim day (hey, I know that feeling!). Fortunately, Brandon was able to pull his race together quite a bit once he got onto the bike.

After the men went under the bridge I walked over to the run course and found Terra waiting to do her best cheering for Tenille, who, as Terra reported, was really struggling. At this point the lead women were already on their final lap of three and as I looked west I could just make out the leader winding her way behind the two bright yellow pacers on bicycles, who appeared to be having to work some just to stay in front of her. She was just flying along, making it look easy even in the heat! This turned out to be Kate McIlroy of New Zealand, who apparently just started racing as an elite triathlete earlier this year(!), having converted from a world-class runner after a series of nagging injuries pushed her training more towards the swim and bike. Her running background was obvious however, for as light and easy as she made it look, she might as well have had springs for feet. She ended up winning the race by a substantial margin, and next behind her was Hayley Peirsol who seemed strong off the bike all the way to the end.

It was some time before Terra and I could see Tenille approaching in 6th place, and she was really having a tough time. Amy was not far behind Tenille, having finally dropped the two gals in her bike pack, and she moved into 6th sometime around the final turn and held that position to the finish, clearly disappointed at how the earlier portion of her race had gone. Terra had left to follow Tenille and pace her all the way home (and I think to make sure she did make it home (Terra is a great person to be able to call a friend)). Tenille finished 7th, and in the same situation I think I probably would not have finished (that girl has heart!).

After watching the women, I walked over and watched the men race a few laps of the bike portion. The lead pack was just three, and Marky V was in it. Brandon was in the second large chase group, which was a ways back, but he looked much better than he had in the swim. At this point it was after 1:00 PM (13:00 for the rest of the world), and I had not eaten anything since my pre-workout banana, so I made my way home, a little more inspired for my return to triathlon than I had been in the morning.

We live inside a dynamic sphere. It’s difficult for many of us to contemplate a brave new world but like it or not some things change. And on a more light-hearted note, some things never change (and someone, somewhere just finds a new way to prove it!).

Ande, David, Max, and Jon broke the published national record in the Men 45+ 200 Yard Medley Relay last saturday. Way to go!

Event 31 Men 45+ 200 Yard Medley Relay
=============================================================
NATL: N 1:39.69 5/22/2005 COLORADO
P SMITH, S WATERBURY, J LILLEY, R ABRAHAMS
Team Seed Finals
=============================================================
1 TXLA 'A' 1:39.99 1:38.90N
1) Rasmussen, Anders M45 24.96
2) Guthrie, David M48 51.27 (26.31)
3) Stinchcombe, Maxwell M52 1:15.51 (24.24)
4) Smiley, Jon M47 1:38.90 (23.39)

Those of you who couldn’t make the trip can still experience it in stop motion (be sure to click the picture for the full show):

I survived my first open water swim (and that pretty much sums up the race for me). The results are posted, and the age group results are definitely more flattering (for me) than the overall.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t do this swim quite correctly (several big rookie mistakes). I probably should have warmed up more than I did (about 100), and I probably should not have stood around in 70 degree cold water for the ten minutes prior to the start, and for sure I should not have gone out quite so hard for the first few hundred yards since I pretty much bonked around 350 and then the rest of the pack just swam away and left me to suffer the remaining 1400 yards alone in my agony. You might think I would have gotten a clue that something was amiss when the fastest open water swimmers in the country were drafting off of *me* (no breaks for noobs in a national championship).

So the upshot is that open water swimming is a totally different animal from “closed water” competition. And I should probably train for it if I want to do any more of it. And cold water makes a big, big difference and requires acclimation.

Well the short course 2009 nationals is history. Overall it was a fairly good meet, though not everything went exactly according to plan. This meet marked the largest out-of-state travel team for Longhorn Aquatics since I’ve been going to meets like this; the first one (that I attended) started out with pretty much just me and one other person from our team so the trend is going in the right direction (the more the merrier!).

Now I’m about to get in the car and drive to my last swimming race of the season, and ironically it’s also a first race for me. It’s the open water mile national championship, being held in Lake Millerton, which is about 15 to 20 miles north of the pool (and about 120 miles or so from where I am right now). This race is my first pure open water swimming race ever … hopefully the water is warmer than 65 °F.

Results will follow (assuming I survive).

Well, perhaps we made up for missing out on the Friday relays: on Saturday TXLA set the new national record for the mens 200 Medley relay in both the 35+ *and* 45+ age groups. Nice going gentlemen (or as Ande would say, “way to go Dudes!!!”).

Lots of other great swimming too! Check out the previous posts for links to results (it’s time for breakfast and off to the pool for the last day).

… don’t forget to think about your mother today.

For everyone else, continue normal life (and think about mom frequently).