In a delightful break from photography and business, we've had a great time swimming this week.

 

I'm just so jazzed about swimming right now. I've changed my freestyle stroke a bit. My front "catch" is much better and more aggressive. I can feel it in my lat muscles with every stroke. I'm also working on pointing my toes more in the kick. That adds some propulsive power to the kick and a side benefit is a surprising improvement in managing overall drag. The more streamlined you make your body, via technique, the faster you can go with the same amount of effort you were using to swim slower. It really works. Finally, I'm working on relaxing more in the water which helps with breath control. If your brain is constantly reactive about performance anxiety it interferes with deep, rhythmic breathing. That can slow you down. 

That was actually a simple fix. I'd gotten into the habit of having a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, before swim practice. A nice jolt of caffeine. And a direct way to also raise up any anxieties you may have floating around in your brain. I didn't want to give up the warm, welcoming cup of coffee before swimming so I switched to decaf. Just for pre-practice The difference was immediately noticeable and now, after four weeks of hewing to the new routine it has become habit. A good habit. But after practice...real coffee rules!

My final swim altering improvement is currently paying dividends and I can only imagine that a few months from now I'll be faster in the water than I am now. I cut off my intake of any alcohol. But I'm not dogmatic and rigid about it. I'll have a glass of Champagne at a wedding. I'll share a glass of red wine with my hosts when we're invited over for dinner. And, if someone gifts me a bottle of Screaming Eagle Cab I'll be happy to open it up and share it with a friend or two who can really appreciate it. 

But alcohol does impair the building of muscle and 68 year old people really need to be aware of that. Not to mention that steady (not excessive) alcohol consumption contributes a 1% increase to the likelihood of developing dementia. And I'd certainly like to improve my odds against in that arena. 

So, better technique through repetitive practice, focusing on better streamlining, relaxing more, a better scheduling of caffeine intake (someone suggested giving up coffee altogether so I took their contact info off my computer...) for more relaxed swimming, and a cessation of habitual alcohol consumption for better muscle tone and a clearer brain. And yes. I'm swimming with more endurance.

How's it all working out? We'll see at the next big master's swim meet. 

What's my morning swim like? I get up at 7 am and walk into the locker room at the pool at around 7:50. Change into swim gear, put DermaSwim Pro (a barrier lotion) on any skin that's predisposed to get a chlorine rash, grab my swim fins, a swim cap, hand paddles and a pull buoy from my bag. Make sure my favorite goggles are on my head and then trudge the 50 yards up to the pool. 

The workout is segmented into lanes by ability and speed. Lane one is the slowest lane. Lane seven is the fastest lane. I usually swim with my friends, Jane and Sheila in lane five. We've "owned" that lane for a number of years now. When a workout is crowded we welcome more people into the lane but it's usually the three of us circle swimming. 

The coach on deck writes each segment of the workout on a white board. The first segment is a warm-up. Our interpretation of the warm-up set is variable. If it's late in the week and we're sore from hard, previous workouts we might be less diligent about doing the sets exactly as written. When Sheila first tackles the warm up she swims down freestyle and back doing backstroke. It's a nice balance. 

A typical warm-up is between a thousand and twelve hundred yards. A  warm-up set might look like this: 

300 swim, 300 kick, 300 pull, 400 IM, doing a modified individual medley which might be 50 butterfly, 50 free, 50 backstroke, 50 free, 50 breaststroke, 50 free. 100 free. 

Then we're ready for the main sets. We alternate who will go first, second and third in the lane depending on each person's strengths and weaknesses. Both Jane and Sheila are faster kickers than I am so if a set has lot of kick in it I'll probably (likely) go third. If the set has a lot of pulling with hand paddles I might go first. The order doesn't really matter as we go five or ten seconds apart and we all go on the same total interval. An example would be a set of 100 yard swims on 1:30. The first person leaves at the top of the pace clock, the second person on the :05, the third person on the :10. Each person gets the full 1:30 to swim the distance and get a few seconds rest before starting again. So every minute and thirty seconds we start the next one, and the next one, and the next one. 

The longest set of one hundreds we've done, that I can remember, was 60 X 100 yards on 1:40 in celebration of Bruce's 60th birthday. So, that's 6,000 yards nearly straight through. A few second rest between each 100.  And even 1:40 is a good pace, considering the sheer number of repeats. 

Our main swim in a typical workout might consist of three different sets of distances and goal times. If I feel that I've pushed myself too fast on a challenging set I might sit out a 50 to catch my breath and bring down my pulse rate while my lane mates (who are much younger) continue. Best not to cross any red lines.... I'd hate to have my head explode.

Most of us have been swimming since the age group days and an alarmingly large number have been swimming competitively since the ages of five or six. Just about everyone swam competitively in high school and maybe 30-40% of the people in a given workout swam for their college or university. These folks have discipline that is hard to explain to people who spend a lot of time watching TV. 

Most of the swimmers in our program go five or six days a week and it's typical for them to have a second sport which they also participate in. One of our lead swimmers, who just turned 60, bikes about ten miles to the pool for the early workout at 7, changes clothes quickly afterwards and bikes over to a different facility to play Pickle Ball for a while and then rides to work. He also runs, competes in triathlons and for a time held the world's masters record for the 55-60 year age group for the 200 meter, long course backstroke. Yes, he works full time --- as the CEO of a new, healthy food company. He and his wife are raising three kids. Discipline. Focus. Good Habits.

My lane swam well today. We had fun. We kidded around. We laughed. We swam hard. 

Why bother? Energy begets energy. There's a nice social component and a large number of people I consider actual friends are people I've met at swim workouts.  Research is now showing rigorous exercise is the prime determinant of a long and healthy lifespan. More so than just about any other factor. Or combination of factors. We also look as good as we feel. And that's gotta count for something...

Okay. Got the swim and the blog done, now it's time to grab a camera and take a long walk.