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!

First triathlon!!!

I competed in my first triathlon yesterday, the Culpeper Sprint Triathlon in Culpeper, VA!!

There was a group of six of us from the swim team who competed.  I was the only tri-virgin of the group, and I think I did surprisingly well, all things considered!  The triathlon was a 750m swim, followed by a 16 mile ride, then a 5k run.

First up was the swim.  The water was quite warm, 86 degrees, and was murky to the point where you couldn't see past your arms.  The course was a triangle, with the start and end portion of the race at one of the points on the triangle.  There were around 75 folks in my wave (I was in the first wave, the Under 39 Men wave).  The wave kicked off with the normal piranha feeding frenzy, and I put up a pretty strong pace for the first 200 meters or so to separate myself from the pack.  After that I settled into a slightly slower pace and just cruised through the next 500 meters or so.  I'd estimate I was swimming at around a 1:20 pace.  I swam faster for the last 75 meters or so into the finish.  My swim time was 11:50, so I'm thinking the swim course was closer to 850m than 750m.  My swim time was the 7th fastest overall and 6th fastest in my wave for the men.

Once out of the water, I headed into the transition area.  For both the bike and run transition areas, I wasn't worried about speed, just about getting in and getting out with everything in order.  In order, I took off the cap and goggles as I was running in, put my helmet on once I got to the bike, then put on my socks and bike shoes and headed out with the bike.  My transition time was 1:49, which gave me the 86th fastest transition time for the men.  Now that I've gotten actual transitions under my belt, next time I'll focus on speed.  Many thanks to Simon L. for walking me through the transitions a couple weeks ago!!

Next up was the bike.  Coming out of the transition area, we immediately ran up a hill to where the bike course started.  Once we ran up the grassy slope to the road, we were off.  Due to me not having a bike at the moment, I borrowed my sister's bike.  And it's too small for me.  And the saddle lowered as the ride went on.  And its gearing felt different from the other bikes I've ridden.  Sigh.  It took me about 5 minutes to get used to the odd position on the bike, and an additional 5 minutes after that to finally adjust to the seemingly different gearing.  After the rough first 10 minutes, though, I had settled in.  By my count, I passed 3 people on the bike and had 21 pass me, which was actually way less than I thought would pass me.  There was a group of three guys ahead of me that I kept pace with--over the 16ish mile ride (the gps on my phone clocked it at ~16.7 miles), I kept the guy at the back of the group between 30-200 feet ahead of me until the last 1/4 mile or so, when they pulled ahead.  Overall, it was a great ride.  Mostly overcast, upper 70s, and pretty scenery.  Plugging the numbers in, I averaged 17.9 mph on the ride with a time of 55:55, giving me the 70th fastest bike time for the men.

Coming off the bike, we had to run down the hill with our bikes back towards the transition area.  On my third step on the grass going downhill, my left ankle twisted and immediately started hurting.  I limped my way into the transition area and stretched it out in there.  Also had some leg cramps, so stretched them out, too.  Pretty slow transition, as I took off the helmet, put the race belt on, then swapped my bike shoes for running shoes, and stretched out.  I had a 2:04 for the transition, which was the 180th fastest for the men.

The last portion of the race was the run.  My right calf and quad were cramping for the first mile or so, and my left ankle was pretty much on fire.  I basically hobbled the entire "run."  For the 5k, my time was 31:18, which comes out to a 10:04 pace per mile.  Not exactly setting any speed records.  On good running days, I've been able to hit sub-8:00 per mile paces for 5-10 mile runs, so I know I could've knocked off 6-7 minutes off that run sans ankle issues.  Oh well.  My run time was "fast" enough to put me 154th in the men's rankings.

Final time was 1:42.54, which put me 6th in my age group and 76th overall for the men.  Given the issues I had with the bike and the abysmal run, I'm extremely happy with that time!  I had a total blast, and really look forward to my next tri, which looks to be in October, unless there's another sprint between now and then!

Outlook for the rest of the summer and upcoming short course season

We've got a bit over a month left in the summer season, with the switch to the indoor fall/spring season occuring at some point in September.  With that in mind, I've started mapping out my training plan and goals for the rest of the summer and short course season.

• For the rest of the summer season, I'm pretty much just going to stay in maintenance mode, aiming for 4-5 practices a week.  No high intensity or high yardage training, just continuing to work on my back technique and maintaining my current proficiency in the other strokes.  The next meet isn't till late October, so I won't start training for it until we head indoors in September.
• Starting next week, I'm going to do one or two lessons a week with Katie, one of the coaches on the team.  For the remainder of the summer season, provided her schedule cooperates (she coaches an age group team, too), I'll do half an hour sessions with her before the Tuesday and Thursday evening practices.  The intent is to really work on my technique, since there's a rather limited amount of time that the coaches can spend with an individual swimmer during the practices.  I haven't decided what specific things we'll work on, just that we'll work on technique in general.  Provided her schedule allows it, I'd like to continue the lessons through the fall/spring season, although not necessarily twice a week at that point.  We'll be practicing at pools with blocks, flags (not all of our summer pools have 'em), and all that stuff, so the lessons could even expand to race specific stuff.  In addition, I've started sending some of my swim videos to a friend of mine, Will B.  A few years older than me, we swam together for a few years in Louisville, and his younger brother is one of my best friends.  Anyways, he was a backstroker and is now the head coach at Darton.  He's been a lot of help the past couple weeks and has given me some great advice and tips for backstroke.  I'll continue to shoot him videos and questions as my training progresses.  With his technical expertise (albeit just communicated via email, rather than in person) and Katie's lessons, I think I'll make vast strides in my technique and strokes over the coming year.
• Starting in September when we move inside, I'm going to start training for the 200 fly and 200 back.  I fully intend to swim both of those at Spring Nationals in Indy next May, so I'm going to train for them for the whole season.  The endurance I'll build training for those two will also help for the 100 fly and 100 back, but I'll also need to throw speed training in for the latter two.  I'm thinking that if my technique is sufficiently improved by that point, then I could use my half hour lessons with Katie to work on speed/endurance training to supplement the team practices and my solo practices.  That's a long way from now, though, so I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.  My goal for Zones and Nats next spring is to be able to swim my choices of the 50/100/200 fly and back and the 200/400 IM and post good times in whichever events I choose.  To this point, I'm only satisfied with my 50 and 100 fly times, so that's a lot of training I've gotta do between now and April.
• The practice schedule hasn't been posted for the indoor season yet, but I assume it'll be similar to last year, with morning practices offered from 5:00-7:00am MWF (one hour long practices, just two sessions), 6:00-7:00am TTh, Saturday 8:00-9:00am, and evening practices offered 7:30-8:30pm MTTh.  Unfortunately, this past season, there was no rhyme or reason as to the practice plans--they used to follow a schedule such as "Tuesday evenings are sprint practices, Wednesday mornings are IM," or something along those lines.  The season started out that way, but then it ended up that each practice didn't seem to be coordinated with any of the others, so you might have three practices in a row that were distance free, or two IM practices back to back, that sort of thing.  Therefore, I'm looking at the team practices as just a way to get some yardage in, not as my main way of getting in specific training.  I'll swim solo to get in my specific training.  With that in mind, I'm thinking something like MWF (or maybe TWTh) mornings, MTTh evenings, and Saturday mornings with the team for general yardage.  On top of that, I'm planning an hour long solo practice on MTh evenings before the team practice and a 90 minute solo practice Wednesday evenings.  I might also do a solo kick practice once a week, but I haven't made up my mind about that yet.  During the three solo practices, I'll focus on alternating between high intensity, high speed, and stroke workouts.  The USMS forum has a set of coaches that post practices online for the various disciplines, so I'll use their practices for my solo practices.  High intensity practices.  High yardage practices.  Stroke practices.  There are some awesome looking practices in there!  I did a handful of them (mostly the sprint practices) in the months leading up to Nats in April, but didn't do them regularly.  This time around I intend to utilize them to supplement the team practices, to fill out the gaps in that training.
• Weights and dryland!  I've been sadly remiss with these two, so I'm starting to incorporate the two of them next week, starting with a month or so of dryland before I tack on weights.

With just the training I did from last August through March, I made vast improvements in my butterfly and I have also made some good improvements in backstroke since March.  And I did all that without really doing stroke training or any true speed/yardage training, and no weights or dryland.  With all that stuff added in the mix for the upcoming season, along with the lessons with Katie and help from Will, I predict that my meet performances will blow this past season's out of the water.

Since I'm seriously stepping up my game this time around, I've decided to update my goal times for the remainder of this year and next year that I set in April before Nats.  Where I've changed my goal times, the original goal times are in parentheses.  The times for next year, unfortunately, are not my goal times for Nats in Indy.  They're just my goal times for the calendar year.

Event	2012	2013
50 fly	25.5 (25.8)	24.5
100 fly	57.1 (57.1)	55.0
200 fly	2:16.0 (2:18.0)	2:07.0 (2:05.0, a typo)
50 back	27.5 (28.0)	26.5
100 back	1:01.0 (1:02.0)	57.0
200 back	2:15.0 (2:18.0)	2:08.0 (2:10.0)
100 IM	1:00.0 (1:01.0)	58.0
200 IM	2:15.0 (2:15.0)	2:08.0
400 IM	5:00.0 (5:00.0)	4:45.0 (4:40.0, a typo)
50 free	24.5 (25.0)	23.9
100 free	55.0 (55.5)	53.8
200 free	2:02.0 (2:05.0)	1:58.0

With a full 3+ months of hard training under my belt this fall, I'm pretty confident with my 2012 time projections.  At least, I'm pretty confident with my fly and back projections.  The 200 IM looks to be achievable by then, too, but I'm not sure about the 100 or 400 (don't even know if I'll swim the latter till next year, so it's iffy).  If I swim the free events, they should also be feasible, but like the 400 IM, I might not swim them till next year, since I'm training specifically for fly and back, and those events take precedence over free/IM events at all meets.

I'm seriously pumped for the upcoming season!  I've always like swimming indoors more than outdoors, and the thought of swimming in a facility that actually has all the accoutrements of a regular pool (good lane ropes, blocks, flags, sufficient lighting, good walls) is so much more enticing to me than most of the outdoor pools we swim at.  In addition, with the help of Will and Katie, I'm starting to have more hope in my swimming improving.  And plus, the Olympics are a hell of a motivator!

Can't wait for the start of the season!

EDIT: I've got a competition partner (not really sure what to call her) for backstroke!  One of my friends, Jayme V., swims for one of the other teams in the area, and swims at most of the local meets as well.  She's a backstroker, and we're approximately in the same time bracket (although she's faster right now), so she's who I'm gunning for in back at every meet we're both at! If she's swimming at the sprint meet in October, the first meet of the season, my goal is to beat her in whichever backstroke events she's swimming.  :-D