Summer is here

Well hello there stranger. I am writing this on my phone as we're always on the go go go. As evidenced by my lack of updates around here. Let's see what had been going on.

Time to dive into summer

Junior Awesome is nearly done (is done) with kindergarten.  He has been doing well. Apparently we need to work on his reading ability. In Spanish.

We went to a build a rocket class with the Town of Cary. That was fun.

Bri did an Ironman in Texas. She did good. That was fun.

The teachers demanded better pay so we went fishing. That was fun!

I did a couple sprint triathlons. I got 2nd at one and 3rd at the other. That was fun. 

My training bounces around in the 7 to 11 hour range. That would be a good name for a store. That pun was fun.

Junior did a kids racing series again. He did good. That was fun.

                                                                     Total false start on orange-y here |

We went to the beach to run a mini training camp in April. Bri and the gang trained and I played with junior. We did good. That was fun.

Summer is here. I am done doing longer hot and humid races. I really cannot breathe and start to die. I'll do the 2 local events that have 10 mile bikes and 2 mile runs.  Saving the longer stuff for the fall.

Righto. That's it. Holler.

2018 Umstead Marathon race report

Hello internet friends! How are you? I am good, thanks for asking. Yes, of course I some money for you. Do you take checks wired through Nigeria?

The Umstead marathon is a doozy. It's not an ultra which is more of a doozier, but it's pretty tough.

My goal was to beat my 2016 time, which I thought for most of the training was 3:53. A couple days before the race I looked up the results and saw I actually ran a 3:48.  Whoops. I adjusted my sneakers a little bit and tried to stay focused. Could I do it? Would I do it? The tension was palpable. You could cut it with a banana.

The weather was perfect, in the 40s and 50s, and the crowd was only missing 3 of the 200 enrollees. They got a quiet boo for not showing up. We started. We ran. A couple buddies I had influenced into running took off immediately.  I followed my plan. My plan was to not hurt and stay relaxed as long as possible. We ran the trails. We came out of the trails. I passed a couple people. A couple people passed me.

Then it was high five time.

I felt pretty good and kept it rolling through the miles. There is a nasty downhill uphill section from mile 22 to 24 that I stayed even on despite the discomfort.

I finished, in a 'race' to the finish with a 50 year old. He beat me. Then some youngster sprinted by as well. But my time was 3:45.45. Yay for me! 

In training I only did a couple 20 milers at an easy pace, but having run several marathons and knowing that the final miles hurt whether you run, walk, or crawl, I pushed through and held steady.

This weekend I will trot at a medium pace in the Tobacco Road half-marathon, having never done it before. I feel reasonably well recovered from the marathon but not full force 100%.  Then a few sprints:

Sampson County Super sprint
White Lake sprint
TBD through summer

I'll finish with the B2B (NC 70.3) half.  Biking has definitely been in the backseat.

I'd post more about the family and Bri's excellent Ironman training, but I don't want to right now.

Article: How to improve your swim

There are just a handful of tenets you need to subscribe to in order to improve your swim.  Swimming well is enormously dependent on technique. Survival swimming is a different story. You've already realized that survival swimming is not the greatest way to get through a triathlon or open water swimming competition. So what do you do next?

You can watch lots of videos on Youtube. There are a number of pretty good explanatory drill videos and even a handful of longer discussions.

You can join a local US Masters Swimming team. These teams usually have all level of abilities, and coaches on deck to run the workout and provide you with technique feedback. A lot of newer swimmers are intimidated by these groups. You have nothing to fear. Every person in the group was once someone who did not know the difference between early vertical forearm and Splashy McSplashyface.

You can have a couple individual lessons with a technique coach. This is a good investment of time and energy to quickly identify the key issues you need to work on.

You also need to get in the water! Without practice, you'll just be a video watching- and article reading expert. When you do get to the pool, your practice needs to reflect your level of ability. 

Swimmers at the beginner level may swim 2-3 times per week. Pure competitive swimmers train more in the range of 5-9 times per week.  Most adults are not professional swimmers who can get to the pool every day, and sometimes twice a day.  So, you need to figure out how much time you can devote to your swim, in tandem with whatever other goals you may have like triathlon training, strength training, and so on. 

I usually recommend 3 swim sessions per week to maintain the balance of time and life demands. Athletes competing in long distance marathon swims or with high-achieving goals in US Masters meets should swim more often.

Beginners: You should focus the bulk of your practice on improving technique with swimming drills. There are a bunch of drills out there, but for beginners you need to focus on the essential basics. Body position, comfortable breathing, and forward reach/extension. A practice like this can and should consist of lots of 50 yard repetitions of drills, a few 50s of kicking (fins if necessary), and just a bit of steady endurance swimming towards the end of the session. Essentially your drills training to endurance swimming ratio should tilt towards 75% / 25%.

Intermediates: As your mastery of the basics improves, you can graduate to more advanced drills. You should also start spending a larger percentage of your practice on improving strength and endurance. As an intermediate swimmer, your practice should be about 30% technique specific focus, and 70% 'just swimming'. That is a qualified 'just swimming' as you should continue to swim with good technique during these warm ups and main sets.

Advanced: Once you've conquered the key techniques involved with swimming, you can spend less time actively doing drills, and more time training speed, strength, and endurance. The key here is that advanced swimmers have ingrained patterns that continually reinforce good technique habits. An advanced swimmer should have a level of awareness of technique at all times during a workout. The ratio here for drills to training is closer to 10% / 90%.

All swimmers should break workouts into separate sets. I know some newer swimmers like to jump in and just swim laps. This is exercise and technically is training, but it is training without purpose. An occasional steady endurance swim is appropriate when training for longer swim races, but should be in the 1 time per 2-3 weeks when approaching your key event.

Workout structure for beginners

Warm up 200-300 yards, break as need be

Drills 8-12 x 50s working on specific technique issues

Kick 2-4 x 50s

Main set: swim 4-8 x 100s steady

Workout structure for intermediates

Warm up 300-500 yards, mix it up with optional non-free stroke, break as need be

Drills 6-8 x 50s for specific technique issues

Kick 4-6 x 50s or mix within the main set

Main sets: Between 800 to 1,500 yards with various effort levels

Cool down: 50-100 easy

Workout structure for advanced

Warm up 500-800 yards, mix it up as above

Drill/kick mix 8 x 50 or so

Main sets: 1,500-2,500 yards with various effort levels, can include sprints, equipment, hard kicking, and so on

Cool down: 100-200 easy

In general, main sets are broken up swims: 100s to 500s for endurance, 50s to 200s for mod-hard/tempo efforts, and 25s and 50s for sprints. 

You can read more about swim training on the general internet, and we have a few articles archived on the One Step Beyond article page.

Marty Gaal, CSCS, is a USA Triathlon coach. He started swimming at age 10 and went on to compete in college and open water competitions. Marty is the head coach for One Step Beyond.

Happy New Year!

So many new and exciting ideas to share with you since we last spoke!  For real! I'm just kidding! It's just more of the same!

We have been doing lots of fun things with Junior.  He turned six. We had a fun party at a local park.

The three amigos reunited

We went to Orlando and got to visit with my sister and her family, and Bri's Mom, two sisters and their kids.  That was good fun.  Disney World and the Seaworld Water Park were involved.

 Check out the muscle car

 Dumbo generation Z photo

Good fun at Aquatica (Seaworld)

 Fireworks artsy angle

 Thunder Mountain!

He can read a little bit en Espanol. Better than his English.  He is doing well in kindergarten. It is a Spanish immersion program.  I visit him for lunch every few weeks.  He likes to add an extra -ed to the end of past tense verbs.  For example, "I closed-ed the door."  He is a good kid and we have a lot of fun together.

We had Christmas. It was very Christmas-sy. We had family in town.  We celebrated gift giving and egg nog ing.

 The family Christmas meta-photo

Christmas weaponry

Our elf is into rappeling and other feats of strength

The Me paragraph
I am pseudo-training for the Umstead Marathon.  The plan is to work up to a couple 18-20 milers in the 2 weeks before. I have a loose goal of matching or beating my 3:54 or whatever I ran from a couple of years ago.  I have not been riding much.  That is fine. I have been swimming more. That is fine. I will ride more when Bri is riding less. I signed up for Ironman North Carolina 70.3 at the end of the season. I, I I. Me, me, me. I have read a few Star Wars books in recent months and really enjoyed the new movie. I don't care if they had unexplained new powers. Waaah.

We have done several hikes, some solo and some with buddies. Having Umstead State park and Crabtree county park just down the street is fantastic.

 

 How the master hikes

 Loblolly stream crossing

On the eve of Junior's bday, we visited the Mellow Mushroom, where the little rascal began his journey into the world.  Re: Labor began here.

 Six years later!

We got together with some good buddies for a New Year Kid Friendly celebration.

 Family

 

 Da boys and da dabs

Da ladies

We recently hit up a birthday party.  Junior figured out how to roller skate. He only wiped out about 15 x.

Word up

We also just have some random good fun.

 At the Jordan Lake Brewing Co for a random evening out

Getting in some sledding

 
Bri is training hard core for Ironman Texas at the end of April. She has a good group of buddies in for the distance. They're doing well.

Here is a random battle scene.

 Massive casualties on both sides

The OSB clinic schedule for 2018 is:

February 24 - 3 hour running form clinic
March 17 - 4 hour beginner/intermediate swim clinic
April 14 - 3 hour open water swim clinic
May 19 - 3 hour open water swim clinic
July 07 - 3 hour open water swim clinic @ Harris Lake
August 11 - 3 hour open water swim clinic
September 22 - 3 hour open water swim clinic
October 20 - 6 hour Powerstroke freestyle swimming technique clinic

You can read all the details and sign up on the OSB camps and clinics page here.

See you again in a few weeks!