SBR Utopia ~~~~ Permanently OPEN!! (Page 88)

Just doing my bit to maintain the stereotypes.  

I would have actually guessed a little closer, but that's probably the longer race focus. Less experience at swim race intensity. Off the blocks and being in a swim meet matters. I've surprised myself there on the short ones.

One of our backstroke guys went without a cap at the last meet. Last time he went with one, but had some trouble with water coming over his face. We figured it was due to the cap as he normally goes without in training. The hair keeps it out normally. 59 and a full head of hair, so he kind of likes it. He's obsessed with backstroke though, opting to do the entire 400 free as backstroke. He usually has a 3:1 pattern of free to backstroke in the mile as well. Think he went 1:1 in the LCM meet, totally befuddling out backstroke sprinter when he looked over the splits.

I'm pretty sure I had a few more seconds in me, but I had a few things working against me.  First, I suck at block starts!  I only manage to keep my goggles on about 50% of the time....and also tend to go too deep.  All of this will get better with practice, of course.  Second, I was so excited that I kept my goggles on my face that I basically sprinted 25m and ended up limping in the last 50m or so.  Better pacing would have resulted in a better time.  Live and learn

Also, I agree with you, Ben -- there's something about a race that gives you a little extra.  My (stretch) goal is to be able to qualify for USMS Nationals in the 100m and 200m free distances.

That would be a nice goal with short course being down in Texas (San Antonio) for the spring. I don't think the qualifying times are out of reach, but would depend on how much time you'd want to dedicate to swimming. Wish I knew better, but don't think it would have to be swim team crazy volumes. I've done the 100 you need (almost from the wall too) and should have been able to do the 200.

And unfortunately for me, while I did get something extra for the races, everyone else seemed to get more! I'm going with me being able to call it up more often in practice. It didn't take too long to figure out the dive angle. A few dives after a few separate practices and things were good. I was actually scraping the bottom (literally) the first couple times. The goggles was going a couple notches tighter on the band and also ducking my head much farther than I had ever thought to. Essentially going in blind once off the blocks. I may have actually saved a little much early on with the pacing, getting used to the hurt of the really short events.

Hehe. Nice going Chris! It can be hard to know for sure about some events when going through the difficulties you did.

Unfortunately USMS Nationals are the same weekend as Galveston 70.3 and I had already registered for the 70.3.  So I'd be doing swim meets just for fun and to see if I could do it.  I'm also currently on a run focus, so not willing to swim more than 3x a week.  Maybe I'll do a swim focus some year, but run is my weakness and bike is my favorite, so you know how that goes!

Interesting thoughts. What would you think of a triple Oly vs IM for it? Considering the ITU alignment with that thought.

Ah! That would make it difficult!

In the spirit of complaining about winter....I don't know how you guys with real winters do it.  I actually bailed on my run last night because it was dark, cold (50F), windy, and drizzling.  It's not bailing if you're just switching "off" days, right?

Yes, that's the rationalization to use.

~38F, overcast, had just finished raining and a 16 mph NW wind I was running into for the way home. This is still shorts weather.

ETA: When there is rain involved it is quite a bit harder to deal with as the amount of heat the water draws away is rather substantial. Cold & rain is much worse until temps drop down much lower with drier or even with some snow out. The risk of hypothermia is much greater with the way water can draw heat so quickly.

I'm struggling with the sympathy.    Sounds like our weather for the last 2 weeks.

I got a good chuckle out of 50F + winter in the same sentence...

If it makes you feel any better, it was 46F and I swam in an outdoor pool this morning....Friday morning is slated to be in the upper 30's and I'll be swimming in the outdoor pool again.

We spent the whole summer (from May through September) never seeing below 78F....if you ask me to pick between running in 95F versus 45F, I'm inclined to pick the 95F even though I know I'd be faster at 45F!  Also, there's a LOT to be said about it being drizzly, windy, and dark....that would feel cold to me at 75F, but I'd be fine to run at 45F if it were sunny.  Whole lotta screwed up mental-ness going on in my brain :P

This past Sunday we had a cold front roll through.  Completely overcast all day and temps got down into mid 60's!  Of course it then warmed up to around 75.  :\

What was the water temp?

Too hot for really hard efforts, but pretty comfortable for being in the water in cold ambient temperatures.

In contrast, on Monday, the water temp was nearly 90F.  I almost quit during the warm-up....I proceeded to miss all of my intervals and could only tolerate a low volume swim.  Thankfully it seemed to be back under control today.

90 degrees is disgusting!  Our pool is usually 80-82 and it's too warm at times.

I've never trained in an outdoor pool when it's that cool outside, must make for a mad dash to get dried off when you get out!

I have a interesting (and scary) bike workout on tap for tomorrow.  I predict suffering, starting out way too hard and dying badly.

10:00 easy
5x30s hard, 30s <220W
5:00 easy
10x15s all out, 45s <200W
5:00 easy
10x10s all out, 50s <200W
5:00 easy

C'mon...add it all up and it's only like 6.5 minutes of hard riding and 36 minutes of easy riding.  

Hasn't your coach ever heard of the off season?   sheesh!