Category: swim

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Gear Corner: Swimming With Music Part 2

Last Tuesday, I found myself swimming to music.  I have very little idea what parts of my overall digital music collection are on my old iPod Nano, but as the music played, there were a couple of things I noticed while in the water:

  • I found myself doing a better ‘twist’ in the water, the hip rotation gave me a little more power in my stroke.  At least, that’s how it felt.
  • ‘Feeling’ the music occasionally put a little extra power into my pull, but even more on the follow-through of the stroke (just before my hand would exit the water).
  • These actions did have a negative effect on my body positioning, as my upper body would seem to bend off the axis of the direction of travel; I was ‘worming’ a little in the water with the trunk of my body.


I pulled some stats of my pool swims from the Garmin Connect website

Time Distance (m) Average Pace Total Strokes Average Strokes per Length Average SWOLF
36:50 1500 2:22/100m 751 13 48
57:20 2250 2:09/100m 1115 12 45
26:52 1125 2:28/100m 612 14 51
32:52 1300 2:14/100m 652 13 46



The top row represents the ‘musical swim’.  It looks like it’s not as good as my previous swim based on average number of strokes per length or the ‘Swim Golf’/SWOLF score*.

*”Your SWOLF score is the time in seconds plus the strokes it takes you to complete one pool length. For example 30 seconds plus 25 strokes equals a SWOLF score of 55.”

The comparisons are imperfect at best, since some of those lengths were done with pull-buoys, hand-paddles, or both.   What I would really need is an apples to apples comparison – maybe do a 400m-500m set with and without music and make sure that the interval is separate and identifiable compared to my drill sets or other exercises.

What about the music itself? Is there any science behind this idea?  I Googled ‘Ideal Swim Cadence’ and most websites weren’t willing to stick their necks out with any numbers… except this one.

“The ideal swim cadence is very dependent upon your height and swim speed. Typically, at a pace of 1:50 per 100 yards, an athlete will take between 55 and 65 strokes per minute. At 1:20 pace, we are looking at about 65 to 80 strokes per minute. In each of these, taller athletes should fall at the lower end of these ranges.”

The stroke count is based on the number of times my left arm (where I wear my Garmin 910XT) goes around; we can assume my right arm does an equal number of strokes.  So I looked up the Tempo in BPM (beats per minute) on SongBPM.com.  I hope I either do a left or right on every beat, or simply the left (i.e. both arms go around the stroke cycle between beats).  So I put in columns for not only the tempo, but half the tempo.

Title Artist BPM (according to SongBPM.com) BPM/2
Anything ‘Cept the Truth Eagles of Death Metal 126 63
Hey Boy Hey Girl Chemical Brothers 127 64
I Want You Back Jackson 5 ?81-104? ?
Jackson Lucinda Williams 76 –
Still Remains Stone Temple Pilots 132 66
Alright Hear This Beastie Boys 102 51
New Years Day U2 134 67
Plush Stone Temple Pilots 72 –
Hypnotize System of a Down 77 –
North and South of the River U2 103 52
Stand By Me Ben E. King ?116-123? ?


I highlit the songs that ‘felt’ the best as I was swimming.  The 1:50 per 100 yards pace comes out to 2:00 per 100 meters, so I’m a little slower than that, but I think you can link that cadence to about 63-77 strokes per minute.








Obviously the whole notion is a little ‘out there’ and at the least bears further experimentation before drawing conclusions, but I still thought it was interesting.  I can’t wait till I can find time for a longer pool workout (or two) to play with it a little.

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Gear Corner: Swimming With Music Part 1

Some facts:

  1. I enjoy swimming.  Really I do, I like being in the water and the way it feels, sounds and looks.
  2. I get bored easily.
  3. Swim training (when it’s not open water) involves a lot of back and forth laps in the pool.  That can get boring, even for people like me.
  4. I’m a tech-geek, and I probably wouldn’t get up to half the exercise and training that I do without toys to play with.
With that in mind, it’s easy to see why I’d invest in devices like those from H2O Audio.  I started way back buying one of their earlier editions for the 2nd generation iPod.
Exhibit A: The Accused
My first problem was having the wrong generation iPod Nano… I had a Black 1st edition which I lost after putting it in a jacket pocket in the spring, then not using the jacket again for an entire season.  I bought a 2nd generation one and was off into the water.  The problem with this ‘Waterproof’ Case was that it relied on a rubber gasket to maintain the seal, and this gasket was not fastened to the case with any kind of adhesive; it was up to the user to make sure there would be a seal every time you put the iPod into the case.  You can guess what happened…

Exhibit B: The Victim
Now normally, when burned by a poor quality product, I simply turn my back and walk away, but I guess my gear-head self wouldn’t give up on the concept when I saw later generations of the products.

I got what is now branded as the Amphibx Armband.  What I liked about this piece was that different size devices could be fit into it; they kept in simple and it was easy and flexible to be able to connect the speaker/headphone jack.
Once the original iPod Nano had been recovered (it’s probably gone through at least another two cycles of long-term loss and recovery), it had been eclipsed by other devices as a prime music device.  So it was a great candidate to be potentially sacrificed to the Water Gods in another experiment.  No issues, the armband hasn’t leaked yet.

The problems weren’t over yet though.  I still had the first generation earphones.  These things looked like the speakers from a telephone, only somewhat miniaturized.   They were hard to fit into my ears, and got uncomfortable after a while, but even worse, they’d let plenty water get between them and my ear canal.
My hands are pretty average size, so you get an idea of how big the speaker is…

So I would typically start playing music at a given volume, then start swimming.  As water got in my ear, the volume would seem to go down to the point where I couldn’t really hear the music (I would have thought I’d hear the music better due to water being a denser medium than air, but I’m telling you what I experienced).  I’d turn up the volume to compensate, but the second the water cleared (if I took my head out of the water for sighting, or to take a break or anything), the music would be deafening.  



Someone told me there was a newer better model out so finally this year, I got a pair from Amazon*.  The Surge Sportwraps seem to be marketed for Boardsports more than swimming (probably because the band around the back doesn’t play well with a swim cap), but I like that they hug the head; it’s what I look for in running earphones too.

On my last Trifecta Tuesday, I went for a swim.  I was a little tired from a 16km run plus the Kyle’s Krusade Virtual Race 5k (PR!), so I decided I simply wanted to crank out 1.5km in the pool without drill sets or anything complicated.  The perfect setting for the new kit.

Though I ended up stopping a few times in the first few hundred meters to adjust the phones in my ears and make the Sportwrap play nice with my goggles and swim cap, I can tell you the audio experience was better than ever before and the volume stayed at a fairly even level so I was able to enjoy music throughout the swim.  I’ll revisit what effects that had on my swim experience in Part 2 of this series.

*H2O Audio has been re-branded to X-1 Audio with some new (yet again) product lines.  There still seems to be a Canadian Retailer using the H2O Audio Brand though.
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Half Marathon Training Week Recap: New Distances

Looking back at the week in training that was:

  • Saturday was the long run, in some very warm weather for the season.  To avoid mud, I stuck to side-walks so my joints and Achilles tendons took more than the usual amount of pounding, I’d have to say.  I was conservative on the way out, and more aggressive on the way back.  Going slow feels weird because I have a time goal in mind for the race, but I think the structure might be paying off…  14.3km done.
  • We were out late seeing the movie Les Miserables, and Shark Boy didn’t get to bed on time either, so Crossfit on Sunday was sacrificed.  Taking a rest day was probably smart.
  • Monday continued to be mild, but I figured it would be dry enough to run on trails.  Almost right, my shoes got wet (though my Salomon XR Missions have done some good water protection for my feet this season) and at least once I had to wipe a big, heavy clump of mud off the soles.  I hit the prescribed mileage, and the pace was slow as recommended (6:34min/kim)… at least on average.  I think I did some walk breaks and speed bursts to keep that average pace.
  • Tuesday was meant to be a Trifecta Tuesday with an early morning swim, plus strength and 1 more activity that I hadn’t decided on (maybe Yoga), but when I got to the gym, I found the pool crowded, and I had forgotten a towel; I went home and had breakfast with the family instead.  I managed to make it to the Etobicoke Olympium at lunch.  The Olympic (50m) pool had been cut in half for lane swimming, but though there were a lot of people there too, the lane etiquette was roundly observed, and it was no problem getting a good workout in.  In fact, I did my longest pool workout swim with 2.3km including drills, 4x75m intervals, 4x200m and another 4x75m.
  • Wednesday was my favourite run of the week.  The trails were dry and the sun was out.  I managed a 6:04min/km pace, and I began to see how a 2 hour half-marathon might be possible.
  • On Thursday, I did a Cross-training session in a group exercise class.  PB Freakin Fit is run by Personal Best (who manages our corporate gym) and is structured much like a Crossfit Workout of the Day (WOD).  Due to the equipment available and the space used, a lot of modifications need to be made.  This workout was a warm-up of jumping jacks, skipping, jogging on the spot, then a countdown: run across the room and back then do 10 push-ups, repeat with 9, 8, 7 push-ups right down to 1.  The first main set was 5 rounds for time (RFT): 20 Frog Jump Squats, 10 Renegade Rows with Mountain Climber, and 20 Hindu Pushups.  The second set involved AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) in 10 minutes of 20 ski-jumps, 10 burpees with dumbbell shoulder press, and 20 wide-stance prisoner squats. I can still feel the effects as I write this on Sunday.
  • Friday was a tempo run on the treadmill; new distance (2 miles/3.2 km) at a speed of 6.8mph with a 1 mile warm-up and cool down
    • I took a rest day on Saturday, and on Sunday, in spite of freezing temperatures and 48 km/h winds, I got a new distance of 16km or 10 miles.  That’s more than I’ve run in one sitting in at least 3 years.



I took a weigh-in toward the end of the week: 200lbs. Not great progress but heading in the right direction…


This was a week of new frontiers of distance, and I love seeing and feeling the progress.

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Trifecta Tuesdays!

I like Tuesdays.  They’re not Monday, so they don’t have that back-to-work sting, and yet you’re not far enough into the week to realize how far behind you might be at work.  Due to our circumstances vis-a-vis daycare and babysitting help from visitors, it’s a good chance for me to get out of the house early for some extra exercise…

And thus Trifecta Tuesday was born.


My basic premise for Trifecta Tuesday is to get 3 different forms of exercise done in one day.  I’m a triathlete… I like threes… three is a magic number after all!

Some examples so far:

  1. Dec 4th.  I hit the pool in the morning for a workout, then at lunch I had the two-fer workout that I have dubbed ‘Rowga’.  Swimming, Rowing Machine, Yoga.
  2. Dec 11th.  Another morning Swim.  Then the 3-2-1 workout: 3 cardio sessions, 2 whole-body strength circuits, 1 session of ab/core work; 10 minutes each for a (theoretical 60 minute workout).  I ended up short on time and skipping the explicit core work, but since I used the Spartacus circuit and the Matrix circuit for strength, my core was adequately addressed.  The cardio sessions were Rowing (again), Spinning, and a combination of skipping rope and the heavy bag.  I lost count somewhere in there, but it’s more than 3!
  3. Dec 18th.  Hey! That’s today!  I’m swamped with year-end stuff at work, so getting 3 activities in would take not only creativity, but… creativity in the interpretation.  I wanted to try a new elliptical trainer that has lateral motion (spoiler alert: upcoming post!) for warm-up, and use the treadmill for a post-workout cardio burn, but others like to use that elliptical/cross-trainer, so I opted for a rowing warm-up.  My weight/strength session had the upper body push (chest), legs, upper body pull (back) structure, but I focused more on tradtional moves with heavier weights like a barbell bench press.  I ended up snagging the lateral ellipitical/cross-trainer for my post-workout cardio burn.

Stay tuned every tuesday for tweets with the hashtag #TrifectaTuesday.  You do follow me on twitter, don’t you?  See if you can get your own 3 activities for your own Trifecta Tuesday!
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The Father’s Day Weekend

I just wanted to touch on what a fantastic weekend I had.  Training was a big part of that, but let me take care of some interesting incidentals.

While my wife took Shark Boy out kayaking, I walked around with the Lightning Kid dipping our feet into the water, when all of a sudden what should I see?  This:

Godzilla?

The most huge snapping turtle you would dare imagine! It swam away from us and spent the afternoon poking its head out from under the dock.  Later that day, I got to do an open water swim, but believe you me, I gave that section of the dock a wide berth when getting into the water (I later read that snapping turtles are generally docile in the water, the snapping occurs when they’re confronted on land.  At any rate, he was gone by Sunday).

Here’s the swim (take my word for it, it was all in the water!):

I hadn’t done any training in about a month at least, and my technique was garbage.  Yet somehow I managed the second best time I’ve ever done at the distance of 1500m (a pace of around 2:20/100m).  How is this possible?  The only explanation I can come up with is my new TYR Hurricane Wetsuit that I won last year.  Even though I know I’m under-trained for the Muskoka 5150, this gives me a lot of confidence.

For Sunday, I was hoping to get a good training ride in.  Rain was threatening the whole day, but when opportunity knocked (a.k.a Shark Boy took a nap), I was out the door.  Then I had to come back because I forgot the key to unlock my bike from the bike rack.  Oops.

I selected a route that would take me along Highway 35 between Dwight and Dorset.  Here I found my fitness and endurance lacking.  I couldn’t believe how low my average speed was, but I did note that I got faster after the turn around; I had been climbing overall, and the downhills obviously added to the average speed.  In fact, it occured to me at the turn-around that I hadn’t paired my new Garmin with the bike’s cadence and speed sensors.  That data was missing but they paired with the watch fairly quickly and seamlessly (more review material coming soon).


Besides just getting out there and riding, it also gave me a chance to scout out and plan new riding routes.  The old road (South Portage – which has traditionally been part of the Muskoka triathlon) seems to have a lot of construction and unpaved patches.  I know what I’m going to do next time.

I didn’t quite manage a 40km ride like I would have liked, but it was enough to build from.  Next time will be better.  Also, since the day didn’t quite have enough activity (and because I was jealous of my wife), I took Shark Boy out in the kayak on Sunday.

It was a lot of fun, and I hope to make a tradition of it every time we’re up North.  It might even be good training for the Logs, Rocks and Steel if I get to do it.

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Gear Corner: Forerunner 910XT Part 1 (Swim)


After losing my Forerunner 305, I was this close to buying a Bluetooth capable HR strap and using my Blackberry for tracking permanently, but darn it if those Garmin people didn’t hook me back in with the Forerunner 910XT.  After previous models that were called ‘waterproof’ (which in GPS language means “can get drops of water on it” unlike watch language where it means “submersible”), this one can really be used for swimming.  It is in fact, useful as a swim computer.

Once I got to the pool, the first thing I did was turn the watch on, and turn of the GPS.  They’ve made the menus more accessible than previously in my opinion, and GPS has its own menu so I can turn it off for indoor use quickly.  Then, I had to switch modes to ‘Swim’ (from ‘Run’) if I recall; this was found under the Training menu, rather than Settings where I expected it, but I still found that an improvement – it keeps any one menu from getting too dense with choices.  I programmed in a 25m pool, and started swimming.


I was a little pressed for time and stressed besides that, so I opted for a straight swim of 750m.  By the time I had done 100m, I checked the distance tracker and it reported only 50m and I was thinking:”This will never work.”  Still, by the time as I finished up my 30th length, sure enough, the readout showed 750m.


I was really interested to see what the data would show when I synched it, which it does wirelessly through a USB device the size of a thumb drive that you stick into your computer’s port.  The sync happens automatically when you turn the watch back on near the computer, but the small delay before it happens always makes me wonder if I’m doing it right before I notice the transfer has started.  The plugin software doesn’t have much in the way of dialog windows to let you know what’s happening.

Let me preface by saying I have no idea what happened toward the end there.  I do, however, love how it recorded my number of strokes for each length.  I always thought strokes should be counted with both arms but mechanically, it makes more sense for the watch to sense each time my left arm goes around.  The numbers add up, since I’d put my 25m stroke count around 25-26 (counting both left and right), and this workout shows an average of 13 (counting only the left).  It also shows my pace per 100m throughout the workout; might be very interesting during more structured workouts.


The last graph is about efficiency; there’s a metric called SWOLF which wasn’t easy to find the definition for (Google let me down for specifics), but ultimately, the connect.garmin.com websites help buttons defined it as stroke count+time to complete 25m.  I’m really interested in this one, as every time I’ve tried to reduced the number of strokes, I’ve used more power on each stroke to absolutely no effect; though I’m probably completing the 25m in less time.  Playing with SWOLF will let me optimize my swim for energy spent and how fast I can complete the distance.


So far so good for the Garmin Forerunner 910XT.  I should mention that the HR monitor (while waterproof) does not work in the water, which is a shame.  Though meaningful benchmarks for what heart-rate should be while swimming are hard to come by due to the difference the water pressure and cooling make on your cardiovascular system, I wouldn’t mind being able to compare workouts as the season progresses and knowing how my perceived exertion on a workout maps to the relative heart-rate actually produced.


I’ll be reviewing the 910XT’s features for biking and running in future posts.  Stay tuned!  Feel free to take a better look at the data by clicking the image below.

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Monday Swim

Though my training plan is not yet solidified (I need to do a little more research and work), I know I’ll need a base phase to prepare my body; up till now workouts have been not totally infrequent, but not regular enough for real training.  I need to get up to 6 days a week of workouts.  The weekend was a little tough on my knees, so I opted for a swim on Monday which is in keeping with what I had planned for that Monday (and most Mondays going forward).

I didn’t feel like following a prescribed program or doing much drill work, so here’s how it turned out.

  • Warm-up: 300m
  • 1st Drill: 2x 100m with a pull-buoy.  I held the pull-buoy between my shins on the first set, since I believe it’s there to teach me to use my core to stay level in the water, and carrying it higher simply makes it do the work for me.  It was a little hard (like holding a plank for 2 minutes) so I brought it closer to my knees on the second set.
  • 2nd Drill: 2x150m with hand-paddle gloves.  I was testing out my shoulders here since a little impingement issue flared up last week.  I honestly meant to do 2x100m, and accidentally kept going on the first set, so why not do 2x150m?
  • Main set: a pyramid with increasing intensity:
    • 100m in 2:07
    • 100m in 1:59
    • 100m in 1:52
    • 100m in 1:57
    • 100m in 2:17
  • Cool down: 100m breast-stroke and 100m back-crawl.
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LinkoRama

Just checking in with a few interesting links I found over the week.

Caitlin over at Healthy Tipping Point is doing a series for people looking into triathlon.  Where I did a single post in a similar vein, a whole series is that more comprehensive and awesome.  No wonder that blog is so popular.

Meanwhile, Meghann at Meals and Miles drew my attention to an awesome relay that goes from Miami to Key West; a beautiful and fun part of the world to understate things.  It looks logistically difficult to put together, and that’s before you consider the mayhem and TSA blues it would take to get me and my family to Florida.  Still, maybe it’s one for the the Race Bucket List.

Finally, this guy had to go and ruin everything I thought I was doing right in my swim training.  I’ll probably mix in his advice with what I was already doing for some Frankenstein hybrid; that’s how I roll.

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Back to the Pool Part 3: Shark Fin!

Today’s pool workout:

I did 250m of warm-up, then moved into 3 sets of 100m going from easy to medium to hard pace with 30 seconds to a minute between sets.

I completed the first set in 2:15, forgot to time the second set, and finished the third set in 1:52.

Then I moved on to the technical kicking drills.  I did 6x50m of the side kick drill (described in the link).  It’s lucky I found another description of the technique as I had been putting one arm ‘in front’ of my body as in, in front of my chest last time, rather than ‘in front’ as in, the direction of travel.  If you ever find swim training advice, make sure instructions are given relative to the pool, water or your direction of travel.  Swimming is a three-dimensional exercise – ‘up’, ‘down’ and ‘in front’ don’t mean much without a frame of reference.

Doing the sets 50m at a time rather than 25m at a time was taxing on the breathing, but I liked that: I noticed that my stroke count went down most likely due to taking breaths less frequently (every 4th left-right stroke pair rather than every 3rd), so training my lungs to get by with fewer breaths might pay off.

From there I did 12×25 of the ‘Shark Fin’ drill (also described in the link).  As I brought my hand up to the goggle line (it felt more like a military salute than a shark fin, to be honest), I found myself sinking well below the surface like my friend the whale shark over here.  I think that might be the point: your body should stay near the surface even as your arm moves up and out of the water for your next ‘catch’.  If your stroke causes you to bob up and down in the water, it’s not efficient.

The kicking drills took up a lot of time, so that I only got 850m worth of swimming in the 45 minutes I could afford on the workout.  Still, one of the things I’m discovering is that they give a great core burn, especially the obliques.  I’m all for strengthening my core, which not only makes my swim more efficient/powerful but should help stave off the injuries, be they triathlon or fatherhood related.
 

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Back to the Pool Part 2

I finally made it back to the pool today.  The last Back to the Pool post should have made it clear that my swim workouts are not entirely unstructured, just mostly so.  I picked up some kicking drills from an online source, and I figured that when I get too frustrated by the fast lane not being fast enough or too many collisions or whatever, I could move over to the medium lane and do those drills.

It turns out, December 28th is a good day to go for a swim workout, as the lanes were a lot less busy.  I warmed up with 10×25; and for once I remembered to take it easy on the warm up so I could keep my technique clean and have plenty of gas for the main set.

I decided on a little experiment before moving to the kick drills.  I did two sets of 100m (4x25m):

  • On the first set, I simply timed the 100m swim.  I came in at 1:46 which sounded good, but comparing it to race paces of over 2 minutes doesn’t make a lot of sense, since I’m going a lot longer in those cases.  Still, I wanted it for reference.
  • The next set, I counted the number of strokes it took me to complete one length, and averaged out over 4 lengths (stroke count is considered an important measure of your efficiency in the water).  It came out to 24 strokes to complete 25m which surprised me; I’d never had a stroke count less than 25 before.  

Due to the lack of traffic and according to the average pace in the lane, I was able to do my kick drills (12x25m) in the fast lane.  Doing drills like this was a little tedious at first, but once I felt I was getting the hang of it, the lengths started ticking off faster, it seemed.

I re-did the two sets of 100m coming in with a time of 1:42 and a stroke count of 23.  That looks like improvement , though it’s not entirely conclusive since I ended up really sprinting the last timed length to pass a swimmer and avoid a traffic jam in the middle of the pool.

 I’m encouraged by the potential of technical drills, especially ones based around my kick.  From what I’ve read, off-season is ideal for technical work, since the cold weather takes time away from doing more serious distance/volume (even in pool swimming, as the winter drive to/from the pool eats up more time than it would).  I’m also hoping that any improvements in kick strength/power/efficiency pay dividends into my cycling and running due to stronger legs and core.