Woohoo - Open Water Swimming Rocks

Well, I finally did it.  After a very lackadaisical summer, where I amassed just 4 training swims across three months, I decided to book a slot on the final Great Swim of the year, in the London Docklands.  I refused to be the guy that buys a wetsuit and never uses it! I hate pool swimming...I haven't worked out how to enjoy it, I find it repetitive and mundane.  However I needed to find out if the outdoor element, the exciting, unknown, freedom of launching into a large body of water and crossing it unaided, would be enough to get me back in the pool.

So, last weekend I lined up at the start of the mile full of nervous excitement.  I entered the water, swam 200m and then hit the 'first wind' wall.  I pushed through, swam a bit of breaststroke, then settled into an easy rhythm and sailed round the course with an even mixture of breast and freestyle.

The last 400m was tough, but I picked someone alongside me to race and managed to beat her across the finish line...motivation can come from anywhere!! I wonder if, had she known she was in a race against me, she would have pulled away, but it got me over the line regardless..

What a feeling! Exhilarating to have finished, and in a solid time of 34 minutes! Much faster than the 40 minutes that I was targeting...I couldn't have done it without my number one fan who pushed me round the course:

So, am I hooked? Maybe, I definitely want to do another one.  And what's getting me to the pool lately is our upcoming holiday to the Cinque Terre, where swimming between the villages sounds a equally exciting as walking the lovers walk! And I want to feel that fantastic feeling again, of finishing something that I'd set out to do..and next time I want to do it properly, following a training plan and targeting solid times and longer distances.

Watch this space!

Race Distance, Done and Dusted

Stoked to declare that two weeks out from my first race I have swum my race distance in one go!! It took just under 20 minutes to swim 1km, which is the time I'm targeting for my race two weeks from now.  4 months ago I could barely swim 200m without falling apart at the end of the pool.  Now I can churn through 2.5-3kms without too much concern, and feel great at the end of the swim!  I might even say that I enjoy it...;)

Pre-Race Routine:
Before rugby I used to have a huge feed 4 hrs in advance, then have a can of creamed rice shortly before the game.  I'm thinking I'll skip the huge feed but maybe see if creamed rice works for swimming as well as it does for rugby.  Anyone got any tips on pre-swim food?

Re training before the race, I'm going to keep on with my current routine, which is about 8kms a week over 3-4 swims.  I'll take a day or two off before the swim to make sure I'm fresh.

Any feedback would be welcome!

Wish me luck!

The PoolMate is Awesome!

Being a 'Finance Guy' I do love a good spreadsheet...so when I bought my Poolmate swimming watch I couldn't help but come up with a few graphs and trackers to monitor my performance.  Here's a graph of the last 7 Swim's I've done:

The key metrics I'm looking to improve are my efficiency (the red line), and my distance per swim (the green column) relative to the total time it takes me to swim it (blue line).  I'm pretty stoked with the general trend here, with greater distances being covered in less time with more efficiency.

There are a few short pre-work swims there which stick out as outliers, but over the coming three weeks I'll be trying to have all swims around the 2.5k mark.

I'd definitely recommend getting one of these watches if you're training.  The Poolmate pro is about £60 and is well worth it for the motivation it gives you!

First Race:
My first race is two weeks from this Sunday in Poole.  My new 2XU wetsuit arrived last week so I'm going to head to one of the larger lido's in London this week to test it out.  I need to get used to swimming without walls, which I'm thinking I'll enjoy as I'll be able to get into a rhythm.

Wish me luck!!

Time to get real

Today I will swim 3ks and I'm not getting out of the pool until I've done it.  While that might seem like a small distance to many of you, to me that is 50% longer than the longest swim I've ever done.  I know I can do it, I just had to write it here so that it happens.

Wish me luck.

Lungs or Legs?

A good friend of mine used to ask me when we were running whether it was my "Lungs or Legs" that were hurting the most...in other words, what is your limiting factor?  At the moment it is lungs because I'm struggling to get my breathing right.  I noticed that I blow air out only on my 2nd and 3rd strokes after each breath, meaning that I still have air to blow out when I go to take another breath...however when I blow air out on all three strokes it causes me to speed up my stroke so that I can get to the next breath quicker. This increases my stroke count and decreases efficiency...I need to get this sorted!

I've had my second swimming lesson which, other than highlighting the above, gave me a fair bit of comfort that I'm moving in the right direction.  I uploaded a video to youtube of my technique:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSGjxs7ojmk

Check it out and feel free to give me some tips (best to turn the sound off to avoid the background noise).

Race day is approaching, with just 6 weeks to go I'm still only swimming 2 kms per swim and sets of just 300-400m.  I need to step that up in the coming weeks.  

I also trialed a Swimovate watch the other day which gives you information about your swim efficiency etc.  I'm swimming around the 42 mark...30ish is good club level and 20ish is Olympic so I'm on the threshold of becoming a decent swimmer...a lot of work to come though!

First Race Booked!!

First Race Booked! Woohooo...

Just booked my first Open Water Swim OWS for the season so I thought I'd drop a blog update as well.  The swim is down in Poole on the south coast of England and I've entered the 1km race.  

http://swimseries.humanrace.co.uk/events/spring

My goal is to get used to swimming in a crowd over a distance that I think I'll be able to handle reasonably easily.  I'm really looking forward to it!

Lessons

I've been having swimming lessons with Immerse http://www.immerse.co.uk/.  My instructor Janine is a very cool South African and she has already improved my stroke efficiency by 10%.  I'm feeling much better in the water and looking forward to the progress I'll make over my remaining 5 lessons.  I'm going to get a video made at my next lesson so I'll post that in the hope of receiving some constructive feedback.

Also, check out these videos on youtube..they're pretty good!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCgrpsOnjnIJFIou8lQjFDlLzuEiexdBz&feature=edit_ok

Is Swimming Fun??

Is swimming endless lengths in the water fun? ... not really, not compared to playing basketball or football or hitting the gym with friends even.  But the carrot on the end of the stick is the hope that I'll get good enough to swim one of these meaningful OWS events towards the end of this summer.  I saw an interesting one today on the net, where you swim from the mainland to the Isle of Wight...how awesome would that be to get out of the water at the Island and look across the channel to the mainland thinking 'I've just swum that'.  I'm not going to enter this one just yet, but if I progress through these other swims well enough I think I might give it a crack! 

http://aspire.org.uk/solent-swim.aspx

Fundraising

As always, I'm going to plug my fundraising page...I'd like someone else to get something out of this challenge as well as myself!!

https://www.justgiving.com/Matt-Chrisp

Week One = PB's!!

Firstly just wanted to say thanks for all the support I've received from you all! The feedback's been great...along with a few "hope you don't drown's".  I've had a few swims this week and I'm happy with my progress.  I spoke with Nick who completed an IronMan last year...he said a fellow competitor had his teeth knocked out by another guy's heel when they dived in to start the swim.  The guy swam, ran and cycled through the pain and completed the IronMan.  Pretty motivating stuff!

Swim Update:
Well, Week One was always going to deliver a PB...kind of like how the first edition of an Olympic Sport yields new Olympic Records right up until a medal is won.  Here are my swims for the week:

Too many breaks and not enough swimming is killing my distance covered and time per 100m.  I'll focus on improving that this week.  I'm going to arrange lessons this week too and hopefully get the first one for next weekend.  I also found this great website called swimplan which gives you up to five free swim workouts a day over a trial period.

http://swimplan.com/

Engaging News!
Finally, we had some very exciting news this week.  Paul and Katrina are engaged! Paul was one of my Groomsmen and Katrina was one of Gisele's Bridesmaids at our wedding, so we're very excited to have two of our very good friends getting married!

Prostate Cancer Foundation
As always, I'm swimming this race for the Prostrate Cancer Foundation instead of growing a moustache this November...last year my moustache thoroughly earned the official designation of 'Lame' given by the MoVember Club.   This year I wanted to do something epic, and I knew my moustache would not deliver! Feel free to show your support here:

http://www.justgiving.com/Matt-Chrisp

Cheers!