Swimming!

A bunch of us had a swimming lesson last Sunday, and it was fun.

The "airport" drill, passing over each other at different levels

Nottawasaga Bay

Nottawasaga-Bay-50, originally uploaded by monado.

One of our entertainments on holiday was to spend a few hours at the beach of Nottawasaga Bay at Blue Mountains. While the older and younger generations did a long swim, the middle generation created an Om symbol out of sand.

We left before heat and humidity built up to destructive storms, including a downburst of wind.

Swimming in Lake Simcoe

I have some amateur movies of LotStreeetWiz swimming in Lake Simcoe (at Sibbald Point) under a relatively heavy swell, And a couple of very short videos of me. In the first one I got water up my nose on the first plunge and stopped. On the second one I again stopped too soon. But I got to see how funny I look, curving my hands and placing them in the water. LotStreeetWiz gave me a new, WATERPROOF camera for my birthday!

The waves were a couple of feet high. The wind was blowing waves in onto the beach at an angle. He wore his De Soto wetsuit and beach shoes. We swam downwind at first in a marked area and beyond (because the marked area was only about 4′ deep). It was OK just bobbing around but trying to make headway was another story. We swam with the waves parallel to the beach. The substantial surge may have made LotStreeetWiz a bit dizzy, although he didn’t mention it. I know I had to swim carefully so as not to get tossed around and dizzy. We swam past one of those rock “docks” that protect the beach in their lee and in the relatively sheltered water made a couple of movies of each other swimming.

In the deeper water, too deep for waterfowl or mink to forage, the rocks are covered with sharp little zebra mussels. The first thing I did was scrape my ankle on a stone or a shell. I had to sit on the rocks to film because otherwise I was bobbing up and down as much as LotStreeetWiz. Actually, the first thing I did was step on a stone walking into the water. I scorned to use my beach shoes because it was a sandy beach & paid for it right away.

We also tried swimming out towards the buoys that marked the end of the “no boats” zone hoping that the waves were only high because of the beach. While they were slightly less abrupt, they were still high in deeper water. I suspect that the wind had been blowing all day and building up the waves all across the lake. The height of waves depends on the wind strength, the length of time the wind has been blowing, and the distance across the water that the wind has to work with (the “reach”).

It was a bit scary trying to swim upwind and up-wave, back around the rock outcropping. The waves kept trying to push us back onto the rocks and their impersonal strength is intimidating. I switched to breaststroke and went under a lot of the waves. I wish LotStreeetWiz had a secondary stroke for such occasions. We could have played in the shallows more, but we were both getting tired and the waves were getting stronger. It wasn’t quite as much fun as I’d hoped but we got wet and tried it. I wish it weren’t quite so long a drive because waves like that would certainly be good practice for open-water swimming if we were mentally prepared for them.

Next time: swim up-current and upwind first, then down when we’re more tired.

First open-water swim of the year: Friday, June 26

Coach Kelvin’s triathletes met at Cherry Beach on Lake Ontario for some long-distance open-water swim training. The lifeguards were on duty in spite of the city workers’ strike, because they work for the police “marine” (lacustrine) unit.

Monday  should have been the first swim of the year but I was daunted at the thought of swimming in skin and don’t like struggling into my wet suit. I shouldn’t have worried: the water was fine or so I was told. Where we swim is sheltered from the cold current along the north shore of Lake Ontario by the Leslie Street Spit, so it warms up nicely during the day.

It was fine again on Friday (21C): cold at first touch, but then refreshing with layers of warm and and streams of cold water in the lake. Just above the bottom, several feet down, the water was turbid from the rain that fell on Thursday, and the rest of the water was faintly cloudy.

I felt confident in my ability to sight on landmarks and swim in a reasonably straight line this year. So I spent most of the time acclimatizing myself to the whole open-water experience. I need distance practice more than anything. Second, I need to get used to floating in swells. Some long, gentle swells rolled in from time to time, generated by passing boats.   When I’m just floating or doing a backstroke, it’s easy to get a little motion-sick.

I mostly swam back and forth along the buoys that mark our 500m courses. I got in about 1900m: breast stroke to warm up, freestyle practice, breast stroke and side stroke to recover, more freestyle. Early on I tried to corner a couple of swans against the shore so that I could look at their paddling feet; but I couldn’t get close enough and the water was still too turbid for a clear view at a distance. So I let them go. I took lots of breaks because I am out of shape and much slower than the average swimmer. After swimming for quite a while in beach shoes I left them on the lifeguards’ dock. Just about the time I felt I’d had enough, the training session was over.

But not all days will be fine, so I need to order a wetsuit that fits.

I’ve decided not to worry about the E. coli count unless it’s astronomical. If the count is over 100 per 100ml, parents will keep their children on the beach and let them play in the wet sand where the count is hundreds of thousands.

Daily water sampling is not taking place because of the city workers’ strike.

First kids’ tri of the year

We’re back from a very brief trip to Lindsay for AthleticKid to swim/bike/run a kids’ triathlon. This is her first one of the season.

She put in a respectable time and moved up three places from her performance last year — in her estimate, measured from last place.

Swimming with triathletes, May 29

Swim workout in 25-yard pool, overseen by Coach Kelvin:

• warm-up, 150 yd.
  • freestyle, 50
  • breast-stroke, 50
  • kicking with flutterboard 50
• freestyle (50 slow, 50 medium, 50 fast) = 150 x 5 = 750
• cool-down: freestyle, easy 50 yd.

Total: 950 yd. or 805 metres.

Worked on: deep breathing, continuous swimming, double-leg push-off.

Swim practice, May 25

We went to the John Innes Community Centre and practised swimming for Coach Kelvin.

Swim workout in 25-yd. pool:

• freestyle, easy, 100 yd.
• push off wall at turns, 8 yd. x 10 = 80
• freestyle, with pushoff, 100 yd.
• freestyle, with pushoff, 100 yd. x 10 =1000, concentrating on:
  1. kicking
  2. release of stroke to push back, not up
  3. pushing stroke backwards, slicing towards body
  4. catching stroke and pulling
  5. stable head position
  6. turning head for breathing
  7. head position for breathing
  8. arm extension & recovery while breathing
  9. arm recovery with high elbow and relaxed wrist
  10. hand position and firmness for entry

Total: 1280 yd. or 1150m.

High elbow, relaxed wrist:

Swim practice, May 24

Swim workout in 25-yard pool with LotStreetWiz & AthleticKid, overseen by Coach Kelvin, 1 hour:

• warm-up: (50 yd. breaststroke, 50 yd. freestyle) x 4 = 400 yd.
• 5-position sculling, 50 yd.
• breast-stroke kick, with flutterboard, 50 x 2 = 100
• breast-stroke arms only, with pull-buoy, 50 x 2 = 100
• breast-stroke, 50 x 2 = 100
• freestyle, 50 x 2 = 100
• back-stroke, 50 x 2 = 100
• freestyle, 100

Total 1050 yards or 945 metres.

Today’s improvement: working on a more fluid breaststroke and rising out of the water more.

Swim practice, May 11

Coached workout at 7 a.m. in 25-yard pool with Coach Kelvin:

• warm-up: 50 yd. breast stroke, 50 freestyle, 50 breaststroke = 150
• 75 yd. x 3 (slow, medium, fast) +25 yd. slow = 250
• stroke improvement, freestyle
  • with paddles & pull-buoy, 50 x 6 = 300
  • with pull-buoy, 50 x 6 = 300
  • with no equipment, 50 x 6 = 300
  • easy, focusing on technique, 200
  • with paddles, focusing on technique, 200
• speed training:
  • freestyle, half slow, half fast 25 x 4 = 100
• freestyle, easy, 100

Total: 1900 yards

The stroke improvement helped me because I thought I was doing all those little things already, but I wasn’t.

Swimming with triathletes, May 8

Swim workout in 25-yard pool, overseen by Coach Kelvin:

• warm-up:  50 yd. breaststroke, 50 yd. freestyle = 100
• freestyle, 150 yd., then 150, then 100, then 50 =  450
• 50 yd. “kicking 101″ + 150 yd. freestyle = 200
• 50 yd. freestyle + 50 yd. “kicking 101″ + 100 yd. freestyle = 200
• 100 yd. freestyle + 50 yd. “kicking 101″ + 50 yd. freestyle = 200
• cool-down:  50 yd. freestyle  + 50 yd. breaststroke = 100

Total: 1250 yd. or 1125 metres.

Today’s improvement: a more fluid style in the breaststroke.