I've got a LOT to be thankful for!

This is going to be a pretty reflective/sappyish post, so if that doesn't do it for you, just keep on moving along...  ;-)

You know, sometimes you look back on your life and pick out the really bright spots.  I do it once in a blue moon, and today was one of those days, first time in ages.  Some of those bright spots for me have been single events, like when I got The Ring, or when I graduated from El Cid.  Others are periods in my life, like pretty much the entire four years of high school for me, or knob and senior years at El Cid.

I'm in one of those periods right now.  When I moved up here last year, I was miserable.  I hated how expensive it was, I hated losing all my Charleston friends, I hated the commute into work each day, I hated not being in Charleston, I hated being the youngest in the office by a long shot, etc.  I still hate how expensive it is and am not the biggest fan of the commute, but everything else is pretty peachy keen!

1) I've made a fantastic new group of friends!  Over the past year, I've made a number of friends, almost exclusively from swimming/coaching.  And on top of that wide circle of good friends (well, it's a "wide" circle of friends for me), I've made three great best friends--Dan, Katie, and Kyra.  We've had great times together in and out of the pool, whether it was at Nationals last spring, or joining together for an insanely over the top dinner party, or going to a concert, or hitting up the bar scene around town, or any of numerous other activities we've done.  I tried to think about what life'd be like right now if they weren't in it and frankly depressed myself just thinking about that.  They, and all the others, have really brightened up my life, and I'm truly thankful for them!

2) As you can *probably* tell by now, I rediscovered my love of the water.  Swimming, coaching, absolutely love 'em both!  It gives me an outlet away from the general humdrummery of the office and really gives me something to do that I truly enjoy.  I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it for a long time--if I could quit my day job and be able to support myself at or close to my current pay level on a coaching salary, I'd do it in the blink of an eye.  On deck or in the water, I would love to spend the greater portion of my day there rather than in the office.  Kids and adults, love 'em both.

3) How far I've evolved as a person from the skinny little knob at El Cid in 2005.  I'm guessing it had something, ok, a lot, to do with being homeschooled since second grade, but I wasn't the most social person coming out of high school.  I was downright awkward around girls (not sure if that was from the home schooling or from being raised so closely with my three older sisters and not being able to relate to non-sibling females) and was rather introverted around guys outside of my close circle of friends.  Over the course of the four years at that great hell hole in Charleston, I really started to open up.  I still wasn't entirely comfortable around women, but I wasn't even close to as spastic as I'd been back in the day.  Over the last few years, and especially since I joined Alexandria Masters, I've finally broken those last barriers.  I've gone from being a fairly extreme introvert to having a friend say she thinks I'm an extrovert.  From being really, really not a fan of parties or big group gatherings, I'm now the one who organizes us going to see a concert or going out to bars every now and then.  Two of my best friends are women, and it hasn't fazed me in the slightest.  I don't even have the lingering awkwardness around them that I had the last few years in Charleston post-El Cid.  I don't think it's exactly a ringing endorsement that it took me 25 years to finally blossom, but hey, I'll take it!  I'm completely comfortable hanging out with Katie or Kyra, even just one on one, and the bar scene/concerts/group gatherings don't even make me blink an eye.  If someone had told me I'd be like this seven years ago, I'd have laughed them out of the room.  Even just a year and a half ago, I was still a loner at heart and was perfectly comfortable staying in in the evenings and on the weekend and not going out to meet people or hang out with friends.  Now, while it is nice to have me-time every now and then, I need that people interaction on a regular basis.  Sure, a good deal of that need for interaction comes from spending so much time with little kids while I'm coaching them and needing to have an adult conversation, but still. 

To put it simply, I love my friends.  I love my jobs (well, coaching is substantially closer to the "love" end of the scale than my day job is, but I don't dislike my day job).  I love being in the water again.  I love being a social being.  All in all, I love my life right now and wouldn't trade it for anything!

First local meet of the season!!

Yesterday we had the first local meet of the season, the Sprint Classic at George Mason University!  We had a stellar turnout from the team with 15+ folks coming out to swim, with this being the first Masters meet for many of them!

I swam a total of 9 events: 50 fly, 100 back, 50 free, 100 IM, 50 back, then the 25 fly, 25 back, 25 breast, and 25 free.

50 fly: I hadn't felt good at all in the water during warmup (back and shoulders were really tight and still didn't loosen up with about a 900).  Stretched for a good 15 minutes before swimming the 50, but that didn't help much.  Still was really tight and couldn't shake it out.  On top of that, once I dove in, I couldn't establish the body rhythm I needed, so I stayed pretty darn flat on the water.  Consequently, my arms dragged through the water pretty badly during the first few strokes off both the start and the turn.  Sigh.  Even with how unsatisfying the swim was, I went a 26.49, which is only about half a second off my PR that I set at Nats in the spring.  With the increase in speed and conditioning over the course of the season, I should be able to drop down to about a 25.50 in the 50.  On an even better note, I whomped the tar outta my time at the same meet last year, which was a 29.30!  :-)

100 back: This was the event I'd gone to the meet to swim.  Everything else was extraneous--I just wanted to have a good swim in this to make all the back technique training I've done since June worth it.  And I got my wish!  I had a great start and probably the best all around backstroke race I've had in years, with a few minor exceptions.  At around the flags going into the last turn, I started to choke on water.  Normally by that point in a race, I'm *this* close to oxygen deprivation, so when I had three breaths in a row that were blocked by water, I started to panic a bit.  Ended up doing a super long turn as I hacked out the water in my throat and mouth, but it wasn't the worst turn I've ever had.  Couldn't feel my legs on the last 25, so I wasn't sure if I was even still kicking.  From watching the video, it turns out I was kicking, so +1 for me!  I split a 30.07 and 32.66 for a 1:02.73.  Over the last two meets, I've dropped almost four seconds from my best time last season!  I'm quite confident that I'll be under a minute by the end of the season.  As it stands, I only have to drop a bit less than a second to make the 2013 Nats cut!  As a side note, I'd gone a 1:11.57 at the same meet in 2011, so I'm extremely pleased with that progress!

50 free:  Ooh boy, this was a rather embarrassing swim!  It was pretty much right after the 100 back, so I only had enough time to warm down a 150 before heading back behind the blocks to stretch out before swimming again.  By the time I climbed up on the blocks, my heart rate still hadn't fully subsided from the 100 back and I was still breathing somewhat heavily.  I had zero energy on this race--couldn't get my turnover tempo up and just couldn't squeeze out any speed.  On the plus side, my kick was a lot better than I expected, although that isn't saying much!  I went a 26.26, which is a full 1.4 seconds off my 50 time leading off our 200 free relay at Nats.  I was aiming for a low/mid 25, but hey, after that 100 back, I guess I should be happy that I broke a 27!  :-D

100 IM: I was pretty darn tired at this point.  This one was the next event immediately after the 50, so I only had time for about a 250 warmdown in between the two.  I was dragging and just didn't have much gas in the tank.  I decided not to blow out and attempt a PR, but just focus on making it through the race without drowning and also pull off the crossover back-breast turn I've been practicing for the past few weeks.  Well, I succeeded on both fronts, although I did a reaalllllllly long back-breast turn.  Nailed the crossover itself, though!  I went a 1:03.82, about 2 seconds off my best from Nats.  That being said, I split a 28.94 and a 34.88.  The first 50 was about 1.3 seconds off my Nats split, while the second 50 was only about .7 off--I attribute it to the crossover turn and my breast being slightly less sucky than it was in the spring.  And to make it even better, I'd gone a 1:10.21 at the same meet in 2011!  I'll take it!

50 back: Ugh.  I didn't have anything left in the tank for this one.  On top of that, I went really deep off both the start and turn and had major problems getting up to the surface.  Not cool.  I went a 29.48, which is about half a second off my Nats time.  Still, I went a 31.71 at this meet last year, so I can't really complain too much!

I swam all four 25s and had a blast with them, too.  Didn't set any sort of speed records by any means, but posted decent times that were all pretty significant improvements over last year's times.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how this meet turned out!  Even though I wasn't super happy with any of my swims besides the 100 back, I'm still in a much, much better position at this point in the season than I was at this time last year!

Heavy competition promoting has paid off in spades!

All last short course season, I watched as at meet after meet, we'd send the same 2-3 folks, while other teams that were our size or smaller would regularly send 10+ swimmers to the meets without fail.  Even at Zones in April, we had to struggle to make sure we could put together a relay, and that was a local meet.  For a team with a total of 150+ swimmers, that's a downright pitiful competition rate!

At Nationals and for a few weeks afterward, I communicated with a swimmer on one of the much more competition prone teams in the area, trying to figure out what they were doing that we weren't.  Short answer, they were doing a LOT that we weren't!  They had a group that was focused on competing, did lots of stuff together to build camaraderie, and a bunch of other stuff along those lines.

Probably the biggest issue we faced is that meets weren't publicized...at all.  About 75% of the local meets last season were posted on team website's calendar, but they weren't announced.  If you never looked at the calendar, the only way you'd hear about meets would likely be by word of mouth.  The handful of us who were blatantly focused on competition all were in the know, but we did a pretty terrible job about spreading the news to everyone else.

Over the course of the summer, we started to broaden the path of our word of mouth meet announcements, but didn't really start hitting it hard till the short course season started in September.  The head coach has sent several meet announcement emails out and I've made competition a key part of my coaching philosophy.

Every week, I send out an email to my evening swimmers letting them know the themes of the next week's practices, upcoming team social events, and upcoming meets.  I also started a coaching specific blog (if you're remotely interested in reading it--it's kinda dry, since I target it towards my swimmers, not the general public--you can check it out here), in which I've added a calendar that has all the upcoming local meets on a rolling month-month and a half basis.  And I REALLY plug these meets both in the weekly email and when I talk about them at practice!  In addition, I've told my swimmers that I'm training them for competition, whether or not they'll ever actually compete.  As far as I'm concerned, none of them are training just for fitness.  We do extremely competition specific training, lots of IM work, lots of technique work, and plenty of other stuff that would be completely unnecessary for folks who're swimming just for fitness.  I'd say 50% of my swimmers probably are swimming just for fitness, but they're getting trained for competition.  Sure, they grumble when I'm having them do a long, hard IM set, but even if they don't compete, it's beefing up their general fitness!  I don't know what the other coaches are doing, but I'd imagine they aren't staying mum on the whole competition thing.

...All of that leads up to this weekend, the first local meet of the short course season.  The first meet of the season was actually a few weeks ago, but this is the first one that's within the DC area.  I've been plugging the crap out of the meet for about a month and a half, both as a coach and to my fellow swimmers on Saturdays.

Last year we had 3 swimmers at the meet, including me.  There were a total of 163 swimmers representing 49 teams.  This year there are 200 swimmers representing 39 teams.  We've got 19 of those swimmers!  That was far more than my wildest expectations--I would have been happy if we'd gotten 7 or 8 swimmers signed up!  Of our 19 swimmers, 11 of them are evening swimmers (counting me).  I'm absolutely floored by the registration take up we've gotten for this meet!  Who knows if we'll be able to sustain this type of participation rate for the whole season, but holy cow, this is a hell of a way to open the competition season with a bang!

Team practice meet this morning!

In lieu of the regular Saturday morning practice, we held a practice meet instead.  Lots of folks on the team have never done a swim meet before, or haven't done one since they were a teenager.  This was an attempt to familiarize them with the meet process and hopefully drum up their interest in competing in real meets with the team.

In terms of that aspect of the whole shindig, I think it worked very well!  I spoke to a handful of the meet newbies afterwards, and they all said they were interested in doing meets now.  +1 for us!

In terms of my performance (I swam the 50 fly, 100 free, and 50 free), I only swam fair to middling overall.  Had some of the best competition that I've had at any Masters meet, since all the fast guys were there and swam--swam against one of them in the 50 fly, and then swam against two of them in the 100, then all three of 'em in the 50 free.

I didn't have high hopes for my times going into the meet, though.  My upper back and shoulders have been ridiculously tight and sore for who knows what reason since Wednesday night.  On top of that, the pool we swim at has moronic blocks--they've got the slatted surface, but the slats run vertically, rather than horizontally, so there's no purchase for your feet.  I can't even count how many times I've flubbed my starts off those blocks in practice.  With all that in mind, though, here's how I did.

50 fly:  I had a rather ginger start, since my back foot had slipped on both of my starts in warmup.  Not much speed or power off the block, but once I entered the water I actually felt really good.  I felt a bit flat in the water, but everything felt like it was clicking...until the turn.  I completely misjudged the wall and went to dive forward at the end of my last stroke into wall...only to realize that I was nearly a full stroke out from where I thought I was.  As a result, I ended up doing 4 kicks to get myself to the wall.  The second 25 felt great, though.  If I heard the timer right, and if she actually got the time right (they used stopwatches, and several times people got were very iffy), I went a 26.48.  With the wussy start and abominable turn, that's a heck of a good time!  I went a 25.90 at Nats, and that was when I was tapered and all trained up for the 50.  Not to mention that I was shaved and had no major problems with the race.  If I did in fact go a 26.48 (the fast guy next to me was told he went a 25.8, which makes my time sound about right in comparison), that means I can probably cut off at least a second from that this season.  Without the start/turn trouble, I probably could have kept pace with the other guy and hit my Nats time!  I might need to update my 25.50 goal time for the season...

100 free: Okay, this one wasn't that hot.  Since we were cramming 7 events into 40 minutes, there was very little time between swims.  I didn't get a chance to swim down more than a 100 after the 50 fly and my upper back had really tightened up.  I had another wussy start but then took it out pretty well.  Unfortunately, I started to fade a bit on the third 25 and ran out of gas halfway back on the last 25.  Still, I went a 58.5 (again, if the timer is to be trusted), which is what I went at the meet a few weeks ago, when my performance all around felt better.  My 55.0 goal time for the season should definitely be in reach.

50 free: Blegh.  I don't think it was a bad swim, all things considered, but I just couldn't everything put together.  Had probably my best start of the three, but it felt like I was stuck in second gear and couldn't shift.  I went a 26.5...a shade slower than my 50 fly, even with that swim's turn problems!

Best part about coaching!

(This is my second post today, unrelated to the first one)

At this point, I've been coaching for Potomac Marlins and Alexandria Masters for a month.  I've gotten into the swing of things and have come to know almost all of my adult swimmers and a good number of my little kiddos.  I'm coaching several groups:

• Monday evening: One of my three Masters practices.  With the exception of random swimmers from the morning practices, I know all of the swimmers.
• Tuesday afternoon: My Tuesday/Thursday kiddo group (Mini Marlins, the second practice group up the group hierarchy).  I know all of them.
• Tuesday evening: My second Masters practice.  Most of the swimmers are regular Monday/Thursday swimmers, too, but some I only see on Tuesday nights.  Again, I know all the regulars.
• Thursday afternoon: My second Mini Marlins practice, same group as on Tuesday.
• Thursday evening: The last of my Masters practices.  Normally it's the same group as on Monday, with a few other people thrown in.  I know all the regulars.
• Friday afternoon: My age group practice (fourth practice group up the group hierarchy).  I've only coached them once so far, so I don't really know them yet.
• Sunday afternoon, session 1: Sunday Mini Marlins group--this is a largish group, around 18 kids, and I'm struggling with their names.  Only know about 2/5 of the group by name, but know 'em all by sight.
• Sunday afternoon, session 2: Sunday Stroke School group (introductory group, the first on the group hierarchy list)--this is a large group, around 22 kids, and I'm doing even worse with names than with the Mini Marlin group before them.  I know about 3/4 by sight, but only about 1/3 by name.  Sigh.
• Sunday evening: Just picked this one up this past Sunday, but it's two of the area summer league teams that have a weekly winter swim session.  Don't know which kids I'll be coaching on a regular basis.

With all this coaching, I've got some favorite swimmers from each group.  One of the little girls from my Tuesday/Thursday Mini Marlins group, Hannah, is probably my all around favorite kid.  Cute little pint sized kiddo who is invariably polite.  "Hi Coach Tim!  How are you?"  "I'm doing great, Miss Hannah, how are you?"  "I'm doing well, thank you."  And then after practice, after I've told her she did a good job (what I tell all of the kis): "Thank you for practice, Coach Tim."  Cracks me up every time.  She's also at the top of the group, as far as ability goes, and pays the closest attention to what I say in practice.  Scratch that, she's the only one who gets stuff on the first try, without me having to repeat what we're doing two...three...four times.  As far as I can tell, she's legal in all four strokes.  I'm actually kinda bummed about that, since it most likely means that I'll have to move her up to the next group in a month or two, which would mean that I wouldn't coach her anymore.  Sigh.  On a side note, she's the one who said I was her favorite teacher when I asked the kids how school was going a few weeks ago.  Anyhoo, she's usually very attentive to what drill I'm showing them how to do and tries to do everything properly.  Not that she actually does everything properly, but she's 7, so 'tis to be expected.

That all leads into the main point of this post.  The best part about coaching, in my opinion, is seeing my swimmers actively work on something I'm trying to teach them.  Whether that's Hannah struggling mightily to master the dive (we've worked on it as a group for three practices now, often with quite hilarious results across the board--it's rather hard to stay *professional* when these kids dives make me laugh out loud pretty much at every attempt) or one of my adult swimmers finally fixing a head positioning problem I've been working on with them for a few weeks, or something else along those lines.

There are a number of my adult swimmers that I've been working with more than the rest, as they've either actively sought out my feedback or have proven to be extra receptive to my suggestions.  Three of them have names that start with an A, so I'm calling 'em A1, A2, and A3.

• A1 is a guy who only started swimming in the last 6-9 months, I believe.  If I remember our conversation from a few weeks back, I think he said he decided back in the spring that he wanted to train for a triathlon, so he started running and swimming then.  He's lost way more weight than I have in that time frame, so I give him huge props for that.  As a self taught swimmer, he's made vast strides since he started on the team.  Over the past few weeks, I've worked with him in a butterfly and a flipturn clinic.  Flipturns are still problematic, but he's now legal in butterfly.  He won't be swimming any butterfly at any meets, but to see that level of improvement after just a 45 minute clinic on butterfly is immensely gratifying as a coach!
• A2 is an older lady who had shoulder surgery a while back and has been gingerly getting back into swimming.  Since we do a LOT of IM work in my practices, we've had several conversations about how she could alter her stroke so that she could swim butterfly.  We've also had some fairly in depth conversations about freestyle technique, specifically about how changing her pull technique could reduce the strain on her recovering shoulder.  Seeing that level of interest from one of my swimmers is awesome!  Quite a few of my swimmers are extremely set in their ways in regards to technique, so to see someone like her who's been swimming for who knows how long be open to changing technique based on my feedback is a heck of a job satisfaction boost!
• A3 is a few years older than me, but hadn't swum since high school up until a month ago.  And when she swam in highschool, she said the coach never really gave any sort of correction or feedback--I'm guessing she swam for one of those teams that was all yardage and no technique.  Anyways, she's been very receptive to my feedback at practice and I've worked on her technique with her for 15 minutes outside of practice.  I really appreciate the effort and interest she's putting into this, and she seems to be even more appreciative of the attention I'm giving her, which is just awesome!
• K is one of my good friends on the team and is my main freestyle competition during practice, since Dan and Katie are out of my league.  Anyhoo, I've mentioned some body positioning tips to her and she's been working on them--I noticed last night that the issue in question last night was looking a whole lot better than it had a few weeks ago when I first mentioned it to her.  Fantastico!
• J is new to swimming, as far as I can tell.  She can swim free and back, and can swim the other two strokes rudimentarily.  She participated in the fly and flipturn clinics that A1 also participated in and I've seen a lot of improvement since I started coaching her in September.  She's got a long way to go like A1, but I've been very impressed with the amount of improvement I've seen thus far.

I've got plenty of other swimmers who've been taking what I say to heart, but this group of swimmers really make me happy to be a coach!  It's just very cool to see someone I've worked with make such strides in their swimming technique, and really makes me glad that I'm their coach!

Comparison from this time last season to now--feeling great!

This is the first of two posts I'm putting up today (the other is mostly unrelated).

Overall, I'm feeling great in the water, almost as good as I was in the buildup during the last few weeks before Nationals in April!  My fly isn't back to where it was then, but that's perfectly understandable since I was doing a LOT of fly then and haven't been doing all that much lately.

Weight: This time last season, I was pushing 215.  When I weighed myself Monday morning, I was 182.8.  I hit 179 at the peak of my training in April, and given that I haven't been training near as hard as that for quite some time now, I'm quite happy with it!  Of course, this is with my sometimes spastic scale, so I don't know how accurate it actually is, but relatively speaking I seem to be close to what I was at my best in the spring.

Water feel: I was still really pretty cruddy in the water last October.  I felt like a bloated whale and was swimming two lanes down from where I swim now.  I was having to push to hold 1:30 for multiple 100s free, and now I can hold 1:20s ad infinitum without breaking a sweat at all.  Back then I constantly had to fight the water, and now I feel like I'm just sliding through it.  I think it's a combination of me being substantially smaller than I was then and me now being in much better shape.  Whatever it is, it's great to go from feeling very out of place in the water to being back to feeling like it's where I belong!

Butterfly: No comparison at all!  Last October, I was struggling to make it through a 50 fly without my arms falling off.  My speed was abominable and my endurance was right around 0.  Fast forward to today, and while my endurance isn't at its April heights, 50s are no problem.  I currently have to push for a 100, but only start to feel it at the last 25.  The next month or so should help out with that.  Again, my speed has improved a ridiculous amount.  It hurt...a LOT...to try and break :40 in my 50 fly in practice last year, and now I can routinely break :35 without really pushing, and can hit a :29 or :30 at a sprint from a push.  Night and day difference!

Backstroke: Even more of an improvement than in fly!  I remember not being able to crack a 1:30 in the 100 back during a main set without sprinting last October, and now I can cruise to a 1:20-1:25 without breaking much of a sweat.  Pushing hard, I can hit around a 1:12 or so.  Still plenty of room for improvement, but I'm doing so much better than I was a year ago!

Breaststroke: My breast felt shitty last October, but to be honest, it's felt that way ever since I stopped being a breaststroker 13 or 14 years ago.  It still doesn't feel great, but the Rebecca Soni-esque pull that Katie introduced me to over the summer has made it feel a lot better than the craptastic stroke it had been.  I'll swim some breast events at one of the meets in the next month or so, just to see where I'm at.

Freestyle: Soooo much improvement!  As I mentioned before, I had to push myself to make consecutive 100s on 1:30.  Now I can hold 1:20 with no real expenditure of effort and can do at least a few consecutive 200s on 2:30 without having to kill myself.  For a single 100 from a push, I can hit around 1:10 without having to sprint, although I have to push hard.  In the spring I hit a couple 1:05s at a sprint from a push in the middle of practice (they were on 2:00, so I got lots of time to recover between them).  Haven't tried that yet this season, but I'd imagine I'm right there timewise.

Overall, I feel much more natural in the water.  Oh, sure, I still have to try hard to swim fast, but being in the water feels more like a natural state for me than it did a year ago.  Can't complain!

First short course meet of the season!

Today was the first meet of the short course season and I had a total blast!  There were five of us at the meet, which is quite a sizable crew for us (sadly that is indeed a large number from our team, but I'm hoping to greatly expand that this season!).

Today, in order, I swam the 200 back, 50 free on the 200 free relay, 100 fly, 100 back, 50 fly on the 200 medley relay, and the 100 free.  It was my first time swimming either backstroke event since February or March, and the first time swimming them after some serious technique work over the last few months--to be fair, I did swim them over the summer, but that was long course, which as far as I'm concerned, doesn't count.  It was my first time swimming the 100 fly since April, but I haven't trained for it at all since then.  And for the 100 free, that was my first time swimming it in a meet since 2004 or 2005, and I've done zero training for that event.  I've done a bit of free training (aimed at the 200) over the past few weeks, but I don't have an aerobic base for it at all.  I'm in the same boat for the 100 fly.

200 back: I was quite nervous about this one.  The last time I swam it, I really wasn't feeling well and ended up not pleased at all with how I swam it at the meet back in February.  On the other hand, I had a markedly higher aerobic base at the time than I do now.  Anyhoo, I had a fairly good start and the first 50 felt great.  Second 50 felt good, too.  For some unbeknownst reason, my brain then told me that I'd die if I held at that pace, so I tried to take it down a notch on the third 50.  And then I promptly realized, going into the final 50, that I wasn't in fact going to die, so I picked it up on the last two laps.  Oops.  From the watch, my splits were a 32.43, 36.39, 37.42, and 36.63.  The clock time was a 2:22.93, which is a Masters PR and about 2 seconds faster than February!  Watching the video, I realized my turns are freakishly slow.  That is, the turn speed going into the wall is slow; coming off the wall I'm fine.  So, with faster turns, proper pacing, and the aerobic base I'll have later in the season, I am pretty confident that I'll be able to take that 2:22 down to below a 2:15 pretty easily.  The Nationals cut is a 2:12.94, which should be achievable by March or so.  While I've got loooooots of work to do on the 200 back over the course of the season, all things considered, this was a hell of a start!

200 free relay: I haven't worked on my sprint free at all since...ever...so I wasn't too worried about the relay.  On top of that, we were racing against one other relay...which was a 65+ women's relay.  And on top of THAT, our relay was not a legal relay, as the other guy on the relay is an unattached swimmer.  Over the summer, I dabbled a bit with trying my hand at galloping.  It's a freestyle technique where both strokes are out of sync and do not follow the same technique.  I haven't touched it since then, but since this was just a fun relay for us, I decided to give it a shot in this race.  Didn't turn out too shabbily, and I went a 26.40 per my watch.  If I'd really sprinted, probably would have been somewhere in the 25s.

100 fly: Ow!  This was right after the 200 free relay.  There was supposed to be a 400 medley relay, then one heat of the 100 fly before mine.  Well, there was no 400 medley relay.  As a result, I had enough time to take my goggles off, walk partway back to my bag, then turn around to head back to the blocks.  I wasn't mentally or physically ready for the race, and it showed.  I originally did not plan to go super fast (relatively speaking) on this one, just wanted to see where I was in my training, and see how much time I need to drop over the course of the season.  While my overall pace was slow, I was fine for the first 50...then started feeling the burn from the 50 free and the inherent nature of the 100 fly at about the 65 yard mark.  My watch splits were 30.29 and 35.99 for a clock time of 1:06.44.  Lots of room for improvement.  Without that 50 free right before, I most likely would have been well under 1:05.  Oh well.

100 back: Yes!  I had a lot of fun with this one and beat the #1 seed!  I had the second overall seed going into the event, with the girl in the lane next to me seeded 2 seconds faster than me.  I had decent turns (well, better than the ones in the 200 back) and good arm speed, but I burned out at the 75 from just overall tiredness.  If this race had been earlier, I might have been able to eke out another second or so, but I will definitely take it!  Per my watch, my splits were 30.94 and 33.70 for a 1:04.64, a full 2 seconds faster than my best from last season, giving me a new Masters PR!  The Nats cut is a 1:01.71, which I feel is definitely within reach, maybe even within just a couple of months.  Just speeding up my turns would probably cut off a second, then being fresh and rested would take care of another second or so, and then the rest will come from technique and aerobic improvements.

200 medley relay: I was starting to really feel it in my legs by this point.  I swam the fly leg of the relay and had a decent swim.  I split a 27.47 per the watch, but if we hadn't been swimming against invisible opponents, I probably could have split a 26 something.  Oh well, it was a fun relay!

100 free: My legs were gone and I was overall pretty pooped at this point.  I hadn't swum the 100 free since 2004 or 2005, so my original goal was to break a 58.  By this point in the meet, feeling as I was, I lowered the bar on that goal and changed it to breaking a minute.  My free actually looks surprisingly competent.  Definitely nothing spectacular by any means, but much stronger than I thought while swimming it.  Watch got my splits at 27.47 and 30.92 for a clock time of 58.56.  I'll definitely take it!  On the downside, it looks like I'm still crossing over with my right arm on the pull, although it doesn't appear to cross over as much as it used to.

Cars, cars, everywhere, and not a car to call my own

(Forewarning: this is a long post about cars, nothing about me getting back in shape or anything of the sort)

Since Ivan the Terrible (my former car, the Kia Sorento) went into the shop, never to emerge again, I've been renting cars.  Turns out that by sharing my sister's car for part of the week and renting for a four day weekend, I can always have a car available...and pay about $150 a month less than I was paying on my lease.  Go figure.

Anyhoo, I'm now saving up to buy another car.  I plan to save up for the next six months or so, until I have at least $7,000 on hand for a down payment.  Whatever car I get, I won't finance more than $25,000.  If I find a car that would require more than a $7,000 down payment to get under that $25,000 mark, then I'll either pick another car or keep saving.  I've got several key requirements for the vehicle (in no particular order):

1. It has to be large enough to carry four adults comfortably.  With carpooling to Masters meets, a small car is a no-go.  It also needs to have a decent sized trunk/cargo area.  4 seater convertibles with tiny trunks are out. ;-)
2. With me driving more due to coaching, I'm mandating that I get an all wheel drive car--if I'll potentially be carrying passengers in inclement weather, I feel much more comfortable with all wheel drive.  I carried passengers in my front wheel drive Avalon in inclement weather while in college, and that was not a reassuring feeling at all.
3. It needs to be at least entry level luxury.  I like luxury cars and there are plenty of used ones in my price range, so this shouldn't be hard.
4. The car needs to average at least 20 combined mpg.  Fuel economy isn't as big a deal as it was when I lived in Charleston, since even with all my coaching now, I still drove more back then.  In addition, said coaching job will give me a fairly significant income boost per month, so a higher gas bill per month will be more than covered by the increased income.
5. The car needs to have at least average reliability.  It doesn't necessarily need to be something with rock solid reliability (but hey, I wouldn't complain if it was), but I need a car that isn't in the shop every other week.  That being said, if it's of average reliability or better, I don't really mind too much if it's a more expensive car to repair.  That coaching income will help out quite a bit on that front.
6. The car needs a good sound system.  It doesn't need to be a top of the market sound system, but it needs to sound good.  I always listen to music when I'm in the car, so I won't settle for a substandard sound system.  The better the sound system, the happier I am.
7. The controls need to be relatively straightforward.
8. The car needs to be at least moderately fun to drive.

Let me back track a bit.  My dream car is the Audi Q5 3.0 TDI, which doesn't come out till next fall, I believe.  Ideally, I'd get it no earlier than the second model year, giving Audi time to work out any initial kinks.  That would put me at the fall of 2014 or later.  When I leased the Sorento back in the spring, I got a three year lease with the assumption that when it was up in spring of 2015, I'd go ahead and buy the Q5 at that time.  Now that I don't have a car anymore, I need something to tide me over till 2014/2015.

I made some key mistakes when I got the Sorento.

1. In my drive to get a car with at least a 3 year factory warranty (to cover the length of the lease, anything beyond that was just gravy), I didn't look at any used cars. As a result, I paid a large chunk of change for a new one when I could have gotten more for my money by getting a used vehicle that still had a warranty.
2. Coming from the Toyota Avalon I'd had for four years, I was adamant that I wanted an SUV. I didn't look at a single sedan. After having driven a number of rental sedans over the last month and a half or so, I really don't mind them. I could've gotten a nicer new sedan for less money.
3. I didn't check my credit report scores from all three bureaus before going in to sign the lease. Experian and Transunion showed a peachy keen credit score. However, the dealer pulled my credit score from Equifax. That bureau claimed that I was seriously delinquent on my student loans (which I'm not), so Kia totally bent me over on the lease details.  I was paying a 15 something percent interest rate, and it didn't even cross my mind to challenge them on it.  On a side note, I'm still having problems with Equifax.

I started looking at cars online a couple of weeks ago, but didn't narrow down my search until a few days ago.  I really enjoyed having an SUV, so first I decided to look at SUVs on the market.  There are a number of Q5s on the market in my price range, so that is a very distinct possibility.  My other option is to go for a sedan (trucks and vans are out of the question).  If I go the sedan route, I'm leaning rather strongly towards a relatively late model year luxury sedan.  As far as sedans go, I'd want at least a midsize, if not a full size sedan.  I don't get claustrophobic, per se, but I can't shake the feeling of driving a clown car when I drive a compact or intermediate sedan.  With all that in mind, here are all the SUVs and sedans that started out on my research list (all used, preferably no more than 5 years old, with at least one year of the factory warranty still left):

• Audi Q5
• Audi A6 (sedan or wagon)
• Audi A8
• BMW 5 series (sedan or wagon)
• BMW 7 series
• Infiniti M
• Mercedes E class (sedan or wagon)
• Mercedes S class
• Mercedes GLK
• Lexus GS
• Lexus LS

Since I created that list, I've done research into the various models.

• Lexus is out.  While they are ridiculously comfortable, they are generally just as wallowy as the Avalon  I had.  There are plenty of used GS and LS models in my price range, but it comes down to that wallowy ride.  I test drove a 2009 LS for fun back in 2009 and noted that at the time.  Besides that, I thought the LS was awesome, though.
• The BMW 5 series is out.  I ended up test driving a 2011 5 series sedan this past Saturday and was entirely less than impressed.  The interior was quite nice (besides the seats being vinyl rather than leather), but the controls were quite confusing and it had terrible throttle response--I'd push the gas pedal down, it'd delay for a good second, and then would jerk forward.  On top of that, the shifter and control stalks on the steering wheel column ticked me off.  The driving experience wasn't all that impressive, either.
• The BMW 7 series is probably out.  Looking at the JD Power reliability ratings, some years are better than others, but reliability as a whole is generally pretty shoddy.  Besides, it has the same shifter, controls, and control stalks as the 5 series.  Ixnay on atthay.
• I haven't done much research into the Infiniti M yet.  All I know is that JD Power rates some model years quite poorly.
• The Mercedes E class is probably out.  I haven't test driven one yet, but I'm not a huge fan of Mercedes' control schemes, and don't like that they have the nav display so low down on the dashboard.  Reliability is also a mixed bag.
• Same thing with the GLK.  I did take one for a test drive back in the spring, and thought it wasn't bad, but the interior was rather austere.  Quite luxurious, just austere.
• Same with the Mercedes S class--haven't test driven it, but reliability is a mixed bag and not a huge fan of the controls.  My other concern is that I'm not particularly keen on the exterior of the vehicle.  Whenever I look at one, I just get a sense of general snootiness.
• The Audi Q5 is always an option.  I've test driven a Q5 several times and still have it at the top of my list.  As far as SUVs go, it's definitely the one I'd get.
• I haven't test driven the Audi A6 yet.  I intended to do it last weekend, but that didn't happen.  Hopefully this weekend.  Anyways, on paper it looks quite good, and the 2007 model year has great reliability according to JD Power.  Without having driven it, I see one huge flaw.  There is only one usable cup holder in the front.  There is a second one under the arm rest, but if you use it you can't use  the arm rest, and vice versa.  Really?  When I test drive it, I'll play around with it to see just how bad that is.
• I test drove the Audi A8 this past Saturday and was very impressed.  The one I drove was a 2009 fully loaded regular wheelbase model (sport package, ventilated/massaging front seats, extra leather package, Alcantara package, B&O sound system).  The seats were ridiculously comfortable, the controls were intuitive enough for me, and the test drive was quite satisfying.  The quattro handling is a lot of fun (the salesman had me take the curvy off ramp from the highway without braking, and it felt like it was glued to the road, with no body roll) and the car has plenty of oomph, while delivering a quiet and compliant ride.  The car had the B&O audio option, which is insane.  New, it's a $6,300 option, and I can see why.  By far the best speakers I've heard in any car (the Q5 also has a B&O option, but it is a substantially lower tier model than the one in the A8, but even the Q5's B&O speakers are great).  I haven't seen any long term reliability data, but the A8s in my price range (2007-some 2009 models) all are rated pretty well for initial reliability.  On top of all that, I think it's a dang good looking car.  The BMWs are too flashy, the Mercedes seem too snooty, but the Audis are understated.

So, for now, I'm leaning towards the Q5 if I go the SUV route, and the A8 if I go back to a sedan.  I really, really liked the A8 when I test drove it.  Here's how the Q5 and the A8 rate on my eight criteria on a 1-10 scale:

Criteria	2007-2009 Audi A8	2009-2011 Audi Q5
Ability to carry 4 passengers And their cargo	10 8	8 10
All wheel drive	10	10
Luxury level	10	7
Fuel economy	7	7
Reliability	7	7
Sound system	8 (base) 10 (B&O option)	7 (base) 9 (B&O option)
Controls usability/simplicity	8	8
Fun to drive	8	8
Total	76 (78 with B&O)	72 (75 with B&O)

For now I'm setting my sights on either of these two for the next six months as I save money for a down payment, although I'm leaning just a shade more towards the A8 than the Q5 at the moment.  In the spring, as I start searching in earnest, I'll revisit this list and see if I've changed my opinion of any of the cars.

EDIT: Corrected some typos and updated the grading chart for the two Audis.

First SCY practice since May!

Well, to be fair, it was a solo practice--this is the team's last week of outdoor practices, but they're at my least favorite of the outdoor pools, so I'm electing to swim on my own instead.  Let's see, swimming outdoors, in a less than awesome pool, with run down lane ropes?  Or swim indoors in a nice pool with good lane ropes and consistent lighting?  That's a no brainer for me!

Have I mentioned how much I prefer indoor swimming to outdoor swimming?

Anyhoo, I had a nice 5100 yard practice planned out.  It was a practice I pulled from the Stroke/IM coach on the USMS forums.  There are several coaches who post practices on the forum year round, and I've pulled some of their practices for my non-team swims.  I only managed to get through a 3150 of this one today (I posted the reason as to why I didn't swim the whole thing on facebook), but I noticed three big things:

1. After having done some free work with Katie in a lesson and having been spending a fair amount of time swimming/pulling free with paddles, I *think* my right arm pull is starting to improve.  I found out during my freestyle lesson with Katie that when I catch with my right hand, instead of catching with my hand flat in the water, it's actually turned inwards a bit.  So then when I try to pull straight back, while I am pulling straight back from where my hand is facing, it's not facing the wall behind me.  It's facing the wall off to the left and behind me, so when I pull straight back, I'm pulling across my body.  Not as much as I used to in high school, but still pulling across.  Blast it.  Anyways, I've been working on proper hand position at the catch and pulling wider, as well as working with paddles.  Sans paddles today, it felt like I was pulling more at the correct angle.  I'll have to have Katie or one of the other coaches verify it, but it felt a lot better.  On the flip side...now my left arm pull feels out of whack.  I don't know if it's because my balance in the water has changed or if I somehow screwed up that pull.  Again, I'll have to have one of the coaches take a look.
2. With all that focus on hand placement and proper pulling, my freestyle is rather slow right now.  I'd say a good deal of that is due to my not training at all for freestyle this summer, and my lower aerobic base compared to the spring (I was doing 6-9 practices a week then, compared to the 3-4 I've been doing this summer).  Part of my practice was 8 x 100 free (3 on 1:25, 3 on 1:20, 2 on 1:15), twice through, with some other stuff in between.  I had to push to make the 1:15s, and the 1:20s weren't a cake walk, although I made them without breaking a sweat.  I'm pretty confident that I'll get back into the swing of things pretty quickly and make the 1:15s be pretty easy not too long into the season.
3. I was flat out surprised with my backstroke speed!  I haven't been focused on my backstroke times in practice all summer, and wasn't at all impressed with my times at the Hains Point LCM meet in July.  I'm much more attuned to SCY, though, as everything else seems all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.  Back in the spring, as I was deep in the training before Nats, back when I wasn't doing much backstroke training at all, I was hard pressed to break a :35 in a 50 back from a push.  At an all out sprint, I hit :34 once that I can remember.  Today, one of my sets was 12 x 50 backstroke from a push on :45.  I held :40s for the first 10 without breaking a sweat.  On the last two, I bumped it up to about 85% effort and did :36 on both.  At a full sprint, I'm positive I would've easily been under a :34!  And this is with me only having really trained technique all summer, not having built up much of an aerobic base!  I'm super pumped about that!  With a good hard month and a half of training before the first important meet of the season (last weekend of October, the first local SCY meet), I should be able to break both my 50 and 100 back marks I set in the spring.  With a full season of training, I should be able to make great strides towards reaching my old backstroke times!  I'm almost beyond excited now!

We start up indoors next week, so I'm super excited to hit the water at ramming speed!

Oh, and in a side reference to #3: Don't blink.

Summer's almost over!

With the summer, and the summer season, almost over, time to look at what lies ahead for the rest of the year.

• The summer swim season ends on Labor Day, then we switch to the fall season on 9/10.  I can't wait!  I have a heck of a time swimming backstroke when it's dark out, especially since the pools I've been swimming at don't all have flags.  In addition, I'm also having issues figuring out what paces I am/should be swimming in 25m pools.  Switching indoors gives a better practice schedule, consistent lighting, flags, and the 25y pool mainstay.  That last one, in and of itself, is probably the biggest selling point for me to increase my practice regimen once we move indoors, with the lighting and flags being tied for a very close second!
• While the summer season ends on 9/3, there's one last meet of the season on 9/9 in Baltimore.  NBAC Masters is hosting the meet, and I'm looking forward to hopefully making up for my poor performance at the meet in July.  I'm swimming the 50, 100 back, and 100 breast (we're limited to only 3 individual events).  The latter is a completely irrelevant event, as I haven't trained for it at all.  I can't even remember the last time I swam a straight 100 breast in practice, and haven't swum it at a meet since 2004, I think.  Since long course is more or less irrelevant to me (while I'll swim at LCM meets, I only care about SCY meets, or at least I do at this time), I figure I might as well add in an irrelevant event.  By the end of the short course season in May, I intend to swim every event (except the mile) at least once, so this knocks one of the less than thrilling events off the list! :-)
• The first short course meet is 9/29 in Richmond.  I think I'll be doing the three backstroke events and maybe an IM or some free.  I'm not starting to train for fly again until practices pick up again on 9/10, so I doubt I'll be ready for the 100 or 200 fly by then.  Since I've been working on back all summer, I think I should be good for those three, and since the IMs and free are pretty low on my priority list, it doesn't matter to me if I'm not trained up for them as much as I could be.
• The first meet of the season that really matters to me is here in town at George Mason on 10/28.  As of now, I'm planning on doing the 50/100 back and 50/100 fly, plus all four 25s.  I might throw in the 100 IM for fun, but I've got two months to decide on that one, so I'm in no rush.
• After that, there's a scattering of meets from November-April.  If all goes well, I should be able to compete in 8-10 meets this season before Zones and Nationals, one or two meets a month from November on.  Last season there were 11 meets I could have gone to, I believe.  I won't be able to go to every meet there is, but I should be able to hit up a good number of them.
• The majority of those meets are SCY meets, but if this season follows last season, then there will be two SCM meets, one in December and the other in March.
• Finally, Zones at some point in April, most likely, then Nationals in Indy at IUPUI in May!

I've been doing 3-4 practices  week pretty much all summer since I've been more in maintenance mode than true training mode, but starting 9/10, I'm switching back to competition training mode.  My tentative training schedule will be MWF mornings from 5:00-6:00, MTTh evenings from 7:30-8:30, and Saturday mornings from 8:00-9:00.  I had a pretty spotty Monday morning attendance record last season, so I might switch that to either T or Th morning instead.  Once I get back in the swing of things and can consistently make that practice regimen, I might add in one more morning practice and some practice time on my own.  I'll be coaching Potomac Marlins (provided the currently ongoing background checks come back clean) TTh 4:45-5:45, so there shouldn't be any conflict between my swimming and my coaching.  Either way, I'm aiming for a base of 7 team practices a week, expandable up to 11 team/solo practices if I have the time.

Presuming that I'm able to latch onto this training regimen and get back to true competition shape, I've got my sights set on five team records (25-29 AG) by the end of the season in May:

• 200 SCY back.  I'll get it by default.
• 100 SCM back.  I'll get it by default.  I'm planning to swim this one at both SCM meets this season.
• 200 SCM back.  Like the 100, I'll get it by default, and plan to swim it at both SCM meets.
• 100 SCM IM.  I've already got the record, just want to improve it.
• 200 SCM free.  I don't know where my 200 free stands right now (haven't swum it since 2005), but this should be within reach.  I don't think I've ever swum the 200 free SCM.  At this point, I'd say this one is going to be a stretch to get, but I'll try for it.  I won't start training for this one till after the new year.  Haven't decided if I'll swim this at both SCM meets or if I'll only swim it at the later meet.  The current record is a 2:14.02, which converts to around a 2:00 SCY.  I was always godawful at swimming the 200 free in highschool, and despite being able to go a 52.8 in my 100 free, I never broke ~1:57 in the 200.  I never trained specifically for the 200 in highschool; I want to train specifically for it this time so that I hopefully don't recreate that debacle of terrible 200 swims.

With all that in mind, here's how I'm going to focus my training once we get back inside on the 10th:

• Butterfly!  This summer, I've only focused on limited maintenance for fly, no training to improve it.  As a result, I'm entering this short course season light years ahead of where my fly was at this time last year, but not quite at the level I was at Nats.  I'm kicking off the season training specifically for the 200 fly.  By doing that, I'll indirectly be training for the 100, too.  Fly will be my main focal point for at least the first three months of the season.  Pretty much butterfly boot camp.
• Backstroke.  I've been training it all summer, so now I'll just step up the training.  Like with fly, it will be a main focal point for at least the first three months of the season, and I'll be training specifically for the 200 back with its ancillary benefits.  Once I'm satisfied with my progress in fly and back, I'll ease back a bit on those two strokes and start to incorporate other stuff, too.
• Freestyle. I might start training this in December, but will definitely start training it by January.  Like with fly and back, I'll be training for the 200.
• Sprints.  Through the end of the year, I'm planning to train mainly for the 200s.  That will also help my 100s, but won't help so much with my 50s.  Around December I'll start to incorporate sprint training for fly, back, and free.  For the remainder of the season, I'll try to split my training as approximately 60% 200 work, 40% sprint work.  The 200 training will obviously improve my 200 fly/back/free and will also increase my endurance on the 100s.  The sprint training will obviously improve my 50s, but will also help increase my speed on the 100s.

I am sooooooo looking forward to starting off the season on 9/10 with a bang!!  :-D

Short stories, novellas, novels, and phone books, oh my!

I love to write.

That shouldn't come as a surpise to anyone who knows me well or has been following either of my blogs.  Politics, over analyzing swimming, triathlons, philosophy, theology, morality, I like writing it all.  My passion, however, is in writing fiction.  More specifically, writing fantasy and sci fi.  I've been an extremely voracious reader ever since I was in kindergarten.  Heck, I read Les Miserables when I was 8.  At this point, I've read thousands of books, spanning the genres of horror, sci fi, fantasy, thrillers, crime, Westerns, drama, historical fiction, and pretty much every other genre of fiction you can think of.  Yep, even tried reading a romance novel about 5 years ago.  Only made it about 20 pages in, but still, I did try reading it.

The writing bug bit me when I was 10, after I'd devoured pretty much every book my parents had in our house (and with the four of us kids having pretty big reading appetites, we had a LOT of books) and many of the books at the local library.  It was an unwittingly hilariously bad short Western called Mueller's Folly.  I mean, it was downright awful.  More in a Plan 9 From Outer Space way than a Gigli way, but awful nonetheless.  Over the next ten years, story ideas started percolating in my head in glorious Technicolor and full surround sound.  In my head, civilizations rose and fell, space empires thrived and collapsed into dust, men fought against fuzzy giants, a race of leopard-people aliens appeared in NYC, ancient Druids fought the Romans, men walked among and fought alongside the gods, and a single teenager began a dynasty that stretched over four thousand years and thirty planets.  None of 'em survived the transition from brain to paper.  By my count, over those ten years, I tried to write nine novels and two short stories, all failures.  I just didn't have the life experience to write, much less the writing experience.  What I was able to write was either laughably childish, had logical holes large enough to drive a dump truck through, or just flat out didn't work at all.

In early 2007, I finally finished another story, a short story set in space.  It was marginally sub par at best.  Not so bad that it was good like Mueller's Folly, just pretty bad.  Bad plot, cruddy characters, and too much time spent on the setting of the story rather than the story itself.  Still, it marked the first time I'd finished something in ten years.  However, I was pretty disheartened by the cruddy finished product, so I swore off writing for a while.

That break lasted until last summer.  Over the rest of 2007-2009, I started writing more and more in school (I was a triple major, all liberal arts, so I had a LOT of writing to do for school) and greatly improved my general writing ability.  The highest praise I received was the fall semester of my senior year, in the senior capstone history course--my thesis was an analysis of a pivotal WWII battle in the Pacific, and the professor (my mentor, and I'd had him for 9 classes at that point) told the entire class, and wrote it on my paper, that "this guy can WRITE!!"  That's when I discovered that while my ideas had been waaaaay ahead of my writing ability earlier in life, I might have finally evened out the race.  Still, I waited another two years before trying to write again.  Over the last year, year and a half, I've had a bunch of story ideas swirling around in my head and revisited some of my failed story ideas.  Most of the old ideas don't hold any interest for me anymore, but I've currently got seven stories (each either a standalone novel or the start of a series) simmering in the cauldron that is my brain, including a revisitation of the 4000 year epic I mentioned earlier, which was my very first full story idea from 15 years ago.  Last summer, I decided to start putting one down on paper.

I wrote a rough draft of the prologue for the story, but wasn't super happy with the direction of the story itself.  Since then, I've played around with the story idea and have revised it significantly.  I haven't rewritten the prologue or started on the main story yet, but I'm pretty happy with the overall story idea.  Provided I actually make it though this first novel, the story is tentatively planned to be a trilogy, although it might be better suited to a quadrilogy--I'll just have to see how it goes, as I have a definite start and end point and most of the major in-between points mapped out, but prefer to let the rest of the details write themselves.  I'm planning on picking it up again in September.  About a month or so ago, I got the idea for a series of short stories...from a dream.  Seriously, 95% of the material in the first short story in the series is verbatim from a dream I had.  Yep, I have some really wackadoo dreams.  I've got almost the entire first story mapped out, just haven't put it down on paper yet.  I figure once I actually do that, since I've already seen (dreamed) the IMAX version of the story and have it on my mental DVR, I can pound it out in a couple of days.  I'm planning to write the first draft of it in the next few weeks before I revisit the novel.

That puts me working on one open ended series of short stories (I have the ideas for four additonal short stories percolating and see no upper limit on them, although I do have the end point of the series mapped out) and one full length trilogy/quadrilogy.  For future works, I've got that 4000 year epic I mentioned earlier waiting in the wings--I'm actually surprised by it, since it was the very first full length story idea I had when I was 10, after I wrote Mueller's Folly, but wasn't able to flesh out the idea, much less even come close to being able to actually write it, till now.  It's a pretty open ended series, and could go anywhere from a trilogy to 25+ books, depending on where my writing takes me...provided I get around to actually writing this beast.  I've got one other firm series idea floating around and one potential series--haven't thought about the latter one enough to determine if it's viable enough to write.  On top of those three future possibilities, I've got a handful of other ephemeral ideas that will need plenty more thinking before I can determine if they're suitable to write or not.  All my story ideas right now are in the sci fi and fantasy genres, though the four millenia epic includes a fair dose of historical fiction, too (starts in the 1500s and goes on from there).

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So, with all the writing I'm hoping to do in the forseeable future starting in a few weeks, anyone want to be a beta reader?  A beta's job is to read my drafts and final edits of chapters and completed stories and critique them.  That covers everything from grammatical issues to plot holes to inconsistencies, and everything in between.  I asked on facebook a few weeks ago and got two volunteers, but I'd love more, since having multiple people looking at my stuff will only make the finished product better!

First technique lesson - fly and breast!

This week I started what I hope is a long series of technique focused lessons with Katie.  Tuesday evening before practice, we spent half an hour analyzing my butterfly and breaststroke, figuring out what is wrong with them.  On the fly side of things, we just identified what was wrong, but didn't do anything to fix it during the lesson--we both need to go and read up on it before making any changes, since I haven't a clue how to fix the problems, and she's not a flyer.  Breast, on the other hand, we started working on immediately.

Katie took a number of videos during the lesson so I could see what she's talking about.  On a side note, this is sooooooo much more helpful than having a coach just yell at me to change something, since a lot of this stuff looks worse than it feels for me.  Anyhoo, here are the videos and my analysis of 'em.

25 fly, every other breathing pattern

This first video is me swimming a 25 fly breathing every other stroke.  I wasn't swimming at race pace, so my technique might be slightly different at speed.  Hmm, I'll have to have Katie film it at both speeds next time so I can compare.  Anyways, there are three things of note in the video.

1) My kick tempo changes from breath strokes to no-breath strokes.  On no-breath strokes, the kick follows my body motion and snaps at the right spots.  On breath strokes, however, the kick timing changes.  This was a revelation to me.  I've never consciously thought about my kick on fly, since it is just an extension of my body motion.  I was surprised when Katie pointed out that the tempo changes from stroke to stroke.  At this point, I'm not even sure how I'd go about fixing the issue so that I have a constant kick tempo.  

2) I've got a different head/upper body position at full extension on breath strokes than I do on no-breath strokes.  This was something I was aware of, but wasn't aware of just how different the positions are.  When I don't breathe, my chest and head press down with just the right motion and depth for my stroke.  When I do breathe, however, the pressing down motion is jerkier and I don't push down as far.  

3) I *think* I press my head and chest down too early.  For the past 8 months or so since I started swimming more fly, my upper arms have pushed a lot of water on the recovery of the pull.  Part of it is because I naturally ride lower in the water (while I've got a fair amount of padding, I'm pretty heavy for my height and a good amount of it is muscle; while I'm naturally bouyant in the water when just floating or treading water, I've always ridden low in the water while swimming, even back on Tritons when I was ~50 pounds lighter and had 4% body fat) and my shoulders aren't flexible enough for me to rotate them far enough back to swing my arms higher out of the water.  The other part, and this is where Katie and I are just guessing, since we couldn't devote much time to playing around with it, is that we think I might be pressing my chest/head down too early in the stroke.  I start pushing down when my arms are approximately directly out to the sides.  By pushing down too early, and with the aforementioned limited range of motion in my shoulders, I might be pushing my upper body, and thus my upper arms, down while the arms still have 50% of their range of motion to go through.  That would explain why my upper arms are dragging through the water while my lower arms are doing just fine.  We're not sure if I actually am pushing my head/chest down too early in fact, or if it's just a shoulder mobility/rotation issue.  We'll look at it more in depth in future lessons.

Fly, breathing every stroke

Here I breathe every stroke.  You can definitely see the difference in the kick tempo from stroke to stroke.  The big kick at the end is the same, but the other kick (it appears that I have a two beat kick) is stilted and looks pretty weak.  In addition, it's pretty clear that I'm not pressing my chest/head near as far down on these strokes.  Again, my arms are pushing the water.  All that being said, as a whole, I don't think it looks terrible when I breathe every stroke.  I'll probably never have a "pretty" fly, but it's functional and works for the most part.

Fly, no breathing

This time, no breaths.  Marked difference in kick tempo from the previous video.  Still dragging those arms.  I think my overall body motion looks better in this video, but still have the aforementioned issues.  Sigh.  If I could figure out what I need to do to fix the arm dragging, I have a feeling that would probably mitigate the other issues.  Lots of work to do on my butterfly over the next few months...

Breast, normal pull

This is my breaststroke with my normal pull.  As far as I can remember, I've never really changed my breast technique over the years like I've changed my technique in the other strokes.  So, to the best of my knowledge, I've been swimming more or less this exact stroke for ~15 years (the only change I've made in recent years is trying to get my hands to pop out of the water on the recovery).  Two main things of note in this video:

1) My kick is out of sync with my pull.  It's not in this video, but Katie had me do the accordian drill (hands linked together and you swim breast pulling your hands in and pushing them out in time with your kick), and I only had one stroke in the entire 25 where the pull and kick were actually in sync.  Other than that one drill, we didn't work any on my kick timing.  On the plus side, my kick isn't terribly weak, which means it is actually much better than I thought going into this lesson! :-D

2) Since the video is taken from the side, rather than head-on, you can't really see it, but when I push my hands forward, they create a wall of water that I then have to push my upper body through.  Not exactly the most efficient way to swim breaststroke.  I have a pretty powerful pull, but it's just so inefficient (heck, that describes my entire breaststroke) that I squander most of that power on just trying to overcome said inefficiencies rather than moving forward.  Anyhoo, my pull action involves sweeping my hands out and under  my shoulders, bringing my hands nearly together under my chest, then pushing them forward, breaching the water in the process.  It's the push and pop of my hands that creates the wall of water.

Breast, new pull

Kinda hard to see in this video, what with the side shot and all, but Katie had me pretty drastically change my pull.  Didn't work on my kick, so that's still screwed up, but the pull is quite a bit different.  She had me attempt to do the Rebecca Soni pull.  For those who aren't familiar with her pull, it doesn't follow the normal breaststroke pull pattern.  The pull I described in the previous video is the normal pull that every coach I've had has had me do (not that I do it as well as they've taught me...).  Soni's pull, on the other hand, is more of a scull than a full pull.  She sweeps her hands out as I do, but the turns it into an inward scull in front of her shoulders instead of pulling them back underneath her shoulders.  From there, she doesn't bring her hands together under her chest, but shoots them forward from in front of her shoulders, narrowing the gap between them as she extends.  That's what she does.  I'm not quite at the Soni level yet.  I don't have the scull down yet, but I was able to grasp shooting my hands forward from my shoulders rather than the center of my chest pretty quickly.  From the side, it's hard to see, but while the pop of my hands still produces a wall of water, that wall of water is off to the sides of my chest, so I'm not pushing my entire upper body through the wall.  I feel terribly uncoordinated swimming with this pull, since it goes against everything I've done for the last 15 years in the pool, but even though I've got a long way to go to even come close to perfecting it, it does feel faster and more efficient!

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Looks like the next lesson is going to be next week, Tuesday or Thursday.  This first lesson was phenomenal (especially with the addition of the camcorder, hands down the most useful swimming related item I've bought) and I can't wait to see what we'll work on next time!