What is post-exercise fatigue?

Posted on May 11, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

Edit: For all those of you who got this by email, WordPress just completely dropped all the formatting, for no reason I can understand, (but it happens occasionally), and you got a giant wall of text. Sorry!

It’s with trepidation I approach this subject. I don’t have the medical background that seems essential in trying to understand all of it so bear with me and any potential mistakes I’ve made.

Years ago I discovered the best questions were the dumbest questions, the ones where you are almost embarrassed to ask, but when you do, you discover more than you hoped to find.

After the two recent posts on the value of long swims and the post swim fatigue caused, I asked myself just what was the fatigue we all experience for a week or longer after long training swims (six hours and greater). It was such an obvious question I felt stupid by framing it to myself. What I found, in as far as I can tell, is that this is an area that is still very much being researched and not all the factors are known. Quoting this abstract on physical fatigue, “physical exercise affects the biochemical equilibrium within the exercising muscle cells. Among others, inorganic phosphate, protons, lactate and free Mg2+ [magnesium] accumulate within these cells. They directly affect the mechanical machinery of the muscle cell”.

As you will see, we could consider this one side of fatigue, that of muscles and the causes of muscle fatigue.

We know that endurance exercise requires energy and for distance swimmers this means first using the glycogen stored in muscles, blood and liver, and after that’s consumed, later switching to ketosis and starting to use fat stores. So there is an initial fatigue or tiredness caused partly by energy depletion. But 24 hours later, the body’s glycogen stores are pretty much replenished (but not entirely, depending on food type High Glycemic Index food replenished stores faster, type of sugar has an effect also, maybe even that the Golden Window oft referred to, isn’t relevant, and various other factors).

We also know, I think, that carb-loading works, and various strategies for carb-loading are better than others. On long swims, depending on effort, type of sessions and previous training, we may experience muscle soreness. Generally, if you are trained enough, this isn’t too common a problem and muscle soreness is a sure obvious sign of over-work. Part of the fatigue and recovery process is for muscles which have been worked to the point of breakdown to recover and the micro lesions get repaired. This is how muscles get bigger and/or stronger. When the exertion is enough, this may result in DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness, that can last for a few days. DOMS is a whole subject onto itself, and it’s not what we’re concerned about here, but similar long-lasting effects without the soreness.

Muscle work is done by a process called the Excitation–contraction coupling mechanism, whereby an electrical discharge at the muscle initiates chemical events at the cell surface, releasing intracellular calcium, which causes calcium sensitive proteins to contract using ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate, produced from glycogen or fat) ultimately causing muscle action. Lower ATP is part of the post-swim energy depletion mentioned above. However for long-term fatigue, the problem is not a lack of phosphate, but an impairment of the excitation–contraction mechanism, and possible other causes. This article, which is based on some actual studies such as this and this, says that part of tiredness, the inability of the person to make the muscles work to what they had previously, is actually also related to changes in the brain and communication between the muscle itself and the intra-cortical area of the brain. It seems like, (if I am reading it all correctly), there is a negative feedback loop operating between the two, with responses from the muscles during a tiring activity signalling the cortex to reduce the force (contraction) that can be applied. That mean it’s not just the muscle’s inability to function but that there is a central nervous system (CNS) fatigue also (whereas the muscular aspect is metabolic fatigue) and it seems that the CNS fatigue is the one that takes longer to recover from, that makes us feel low after long swims. On one study I read, (I seem to have lost the link for that one), it was found that immediately after stopping due to perceived exhaustion (on a cycling stress test), the muscles were still capable of exerting three times the work necessary for the test.

As this study says, “Fatigue from SDE [Short Duration Exercise] may arise primarily from metabolic mechanisms, whereas fatigue from LDE [Long Duration Exercise] involves an additional slowly recovering nonmetabolic mechanism that may arise from impaired activation, beyond the cell membrane, at the level of excitation contraction coupling”. Symptoms of CNS fatigue include lack of motivation, poor mood, impaired cognitive ability and incorrect perceptions of exertion levels – where we think we’re exercising/swimming harder than we actually are. Sound familiar? The body needs rest and we need to avoid injuring ourselves. Fatigue cold (and has been) even described as a brain-derived emotion that regulates the exercise behavior to ensure the protection of whole body homeostasis. If we didn’t have fatigue feedback, we’d overuse muscles and probably injure ourselves but at the same time, endurance performance itself is limited by perception of effort as the primary reason for stopping. (More to come on this in another post,as so often happens when I start one of these science-based posts). Possible causes of fatigue, long-term and short-term:

DOMS
CNS fatigue (neurotransmission problems)
Insufficient hydration
Low insulin
Increased ammonia in blood
Disturbed hormone and electrolyte levels
Other nutritional (vitamin or trace element) deficiency
Low glycogen
Tryptophan depletion

This isn’t a comprehensive list, just what I’ve come across. I had to stop at some point. I’ve found some impossible to understand (for me) speculation about potential mitochondria damage, and I’m sure there are other possibilities that are completely mainstream. This is all very well and interesting, you probably won’tsay, but what does it mean in terms of recovery? How can we shorten recovery or do it better or differently. Is there anything that helps? I think we’ll stop here, more study is called for, maybe we’ll return to this at some point. There are no smilies in scientific papers.

Post swim nutrition – the Golden Window (loneswimmer.com)

Swimming through it – the value of long swims – addendum

Posted on May 3, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

Something was niggling at the back of my mind last week when I wrote the article on the utility of doing longs swims, and what I’ve learned from them. I felt I’d forgotten something but couldn’t place it.

A question this week prompted me exactly what it was. Amongst the reasons for doing long swims is to get used to knowing how you feel after said long swims, and to understand and improve your recovery process.

After I wrote the article I happened to be checking something else in my swim diary/log, (which now has about five years of detail) and I noticed that almost exactly two years previously on the same weekend, 30th April, 2010, the Magnificent Seven did our toughest ever training session. It was to be a 30k in the pool followed by a trip to the sea for a swim. We completed about 28 kilometres in nine hours (including breaks) before The Boss left us off the hook, finishing strongly with 400 I.M. and at least as I recall, Liam, Eddie and myself ending with butterfly. My training dairy notes show I felt “strong and good”. And then we all decamped to Liam’s House at Ballycroneen for a sea swim taking about an hour to get dressed and get there.

For the Aspirants complaining of the cold this year … the water that day in 2010 was 7.5° Celsius with onshore wind and overhead waves, and we’d come from the warm pool in Source. We changed in Liam’s garage and walked down wearing coats and I was quickly in the water, no point hanging around, having looked carefully at the breakers and headed straight for a Wave Channel I could see at the west end of the short beach. Eilís was watching on the beach, unusual for her to go near the coast.

I swam through the inside channel gap and duck-dived the outside waves and very quickly I was out back, beyond the breaking waves. By this stage I realised no-one had followed me. I played around body-surfing in the waves for a few minutes and headed back in. A couple of the guys were in shallow water, the rest were out, and everyone was shouting or giving out to me, all having thought I’d been lost at sea!

Ever since, Eilís has been suffering a type of cognitive dissonance, on the one hand knowing I understand waves and tides very well and on the other, thinking I can’t be trusted around the water. Attempts to explain were ignored; that this was completely normal for my usual training since after all I had no-one to train with, that I made a point of understanding what I doing, and that getting through waves is easy if you understand the principles and that I had been a surfer for years, all were wasted. And the fact that there were six other extremely strong and experienced swimmers present that day was also lost on her. Ever since it’s been the day Donal could have drowned.

But I digress, as usual.

The cold swim that day helped to loosen tight muscles but recovery from the long swim was slow over the next week. I wrote sometime back in 2010 that local Sandycove English Channel Soloist Danny Coholane had identified that every hour training over eight hours added another week to recovery, and we were all agreed on this (having previously swum six, seven and eight-hour training swims).

Swims of five to seven hours took about five days to a week to fully recover. The two training swims of eight hours that year took almost two weeks to recover.

So what do I mean by recovery? As I described in an email during the period there’s a feeling of having little energy or ooomph when you are swimming. Times drop away, swims become much more physically and mentally challenging, you feel like you have nothing in the tank. It varies of course for everyone, but I generally feel okay for a couple of days afterwards and the slump comes for or five days after the swim.

One thing I noticed this year is that extending the time above six hours to eight hours was no longer accompanied by an extra week increase in recovery, the slump lasted about the same time.

So feeling this slump is not the direct value of the long swims, but a side effect. The actual value is in knowing that this feeling is normal, and that you are also Training To Recover. Too many people don’t seem to consider this aspect. Why go so far into your reserves for a Channel or other swim that you are done with swimming for months or up to a year afterwards?

Related articles

Swimming through it – the value of long pool sessions (loneswimmer.com)

24 miles in 24 hours (loneswimmer.com)

Two distance swimmers meet on St. Patrick’s Street in Cork …

Posted on April 30, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

Swimmer 1: Well, how’s the training going?

Swimmer 2: Meh. Ok, I guess. Getting sick of it.

Swimmer 1: I know. Week after week of the bloody chlorine box.

Swimmer 2: How’s the shoulders?

Swimmer 1: I’ve got some twinges but they’re holding up. Had pain in the good one a couple of weeks ago, got a bit worried but seems ok again. You?

Swimmer 2: Yeah, the same. Dodgy shoulder is … dodgy, but holding. I’m on massages every two weeks to keep ‘em going. Fell like I’m losing my speed though.

Swimmer 1: All those bloody 400s, I know what you mean. It’s like crawling through the water by now.

Swimmer 2: I just want to go, you know? I just want to get on with it. It’s one thing while you are building up, it’s another thing staying there. I can smell the chlorine off myself before I open my eyes in the morning.

Swimmer 1: How are you doing versus the target?

Swimmer 2: I’m a bit off. Not far enough to worry, I hope. I got sick in …

Swimmer 1: … February?

Swimmer 2: Just about, end of January. Chest infection. Didn’t swim for six days, got a bit panicked. Bloody antibiotics left me feeling knackered. You?

Swimmer 1: Middle of Feb. ‘Flu. Missed a week, felt crap for another week.

Swimmer 2: How are the rest of ‘em?

Swimmer 1: Good. Not all training in Source, but everyone has been showing up for the monthly meetings. You know what they’re like.

Swimmer 2: I loved the meetings. Despite seeing the month’s plan, I always felt more energised afterwards, good to sit and talk shite with the gang. Though I made a knob of myself at least one.

Swimmer 1: Nothing new there I guess?

Swimmer 2: No, I have a knack for it. Are you holding weight?

Swimmer 1: Just about, I’m eating like food is going out of fashion. Started on the ice-cream before bed.

Swimmer 2: Danny Walsh once said to me he was on his home for dinner, and he had to stop for dinner, on the way home.

Swimmer 1: Sounds about right. Weather sucks. We get a good week, get all excited, and forget we’re living in Ireland.

Swimmer 2: I’m looking forward as always to getting away from the pool. Ned’s 3/5/9 list starting filling up early. Then the weather went back to normal.

Swimmer 1: How’s herself?

Swimmer 2: Pain in the arse, you know how she is. She has a thing for repeats at the moment. Endless 100s and 50s. She made me do 200 50s one day! I thought I’d go insane. And no toys allowed. Haven’t used a paddle or pull-buoy in weeks.

Swimmer 1: I meant your wife.

Swimming through it – the value of long pool sessions

Posted on April 28, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

It’s over two years since The Magnificent Seven did our first 8 hour pool swim. It seems longer. Early in 2010 Coach Eilís started adding regular big long pool sessions for Aspirants and The Magnificent Seven were the first test pilots. That year we did, I think, five pool sessions of at least six hours.

By now I’ve done at least twelve pool sessions of six plus hours, maybe more. (How did that happen)?

The most recent swims have been with Gábor, the Flying Hun, and there hasn’t been anything specific worth writing about and guest-starring many of the usual suspects, Lisa, Eddie, Rob, Karen, Ciarán, and some of this year’s Aspirants, Padraic, Carmel, Catherine. On this swim Lisa was in the next lane having started an hour before us, starting a 15k swim herself, having swum 17k …THE PREVIOUS DAY!

All six-hour swims are difficult for varying degrees and often, or even usually, for different reasons. You may be more tired starting, you may have been ill recently, you may develop shoulder pain or stomach or even leg cramps, or like a few weeks ago, you may spend two hours in hell chasing Eddie Irwin who is holding 1:30 intervals per hundred easily. The point being that these swims are never easy. They are just varying degrees of tough and each usually teaches one something.

The most recent 20k with Gábor solidified many of the lessons.

Neither of us wanted to do a speed set so I took a set from marathon swimmer Mark Robson that he had posted on marathonswimmers.org Animal Set thread and adapted it. The Animal Set thread is both a great resource for finding new ideas for long punishing swims and for feeling small because no matter what you’ve done there are probably other sets in there that you’ll find horrifying.

Mark posted up 1 x 1000, 10 x 400, 2 x 2000, 10 x 400, 1 x 1000 for 14k. I’ve used this set before as a good base that’s flexible and easy to change and adapt.

This time I changed it to:

2 x 1500
10 x 400 on 6:45
2 x 2000 as 1st paddles & 2nd pull
500 b/c
10 x 400
2 x 1000 as 1st 1k paddles & pull, 2nd 1k swim
4 x 500
500 b/c, making up a 20k session

Plenty of rest on the 400s but still making good use of time by doing 8k as 400, and a few long sets.

Things were mixed early on. Swimming was fine but I was cursed by a host of minor issues. On the first 1500, my nose clip kept slipping off, I was obviously having a greasy-nose day. My Oceanswims.com Fully Sick googles, which are now my firm favourites (and not available anywhere in Europe ) have been solid for 6 months started leaking and I couldn’t get them cleared no matter what I did and ended up switching back what now seems like huge Aquaspheres. I got cramps in my foot on the first 2k set (after 7k), something that hasn’t happened six months so I obviously wasn’t drinking enough, then I started to get hints of stomach cramps. All minor, but cumulatively throwing me off and taking away that sense of easy swimming that should have been prevalent early on.

While the times on the 400s were fine, doing an easy 6:45 to give us plenty of rest each rep, they weren’t exactly fun and I’m didn’t know why, since repeat 400s are bread-and-butter in my training. The first difficulty really hit on the 2k with paddles, with developing foot cramps, and then my left shoulder started really hurting. This shoulder is my good one, as almost all distance swimmers have a shoulder more prone to injury, and it’s a problem that’s only arisen this year, when my good (left) shoulder started hurting from paddle work, so I’ve reduced power paddle work by about 75% from my normal. (I used to like paddles). Pull sets are fine with me, as I don’t have a big kick so I am less affected. After finishing the first 500 back stroke, we were at 11.5 kilometres done. Three and half hours in. And that was the easy part.

The slump nearly always hits me at this point. Back to another 10x 400s and by this time the pool got very busy, with people coming and going into the lane for about an hour, Lisa being pushed into joining us, all different speeds, etc. It was probably a good thing because it helped to distract us as Gábor and I were taking turns leading out. Talking afterwards we both hit the real slump at the same time, at 11.5k and both of us struggled for the same duration of over an hour. Despite feeling worse the second 400s went quicker. At the end of the 400s we were at 15.5k and started the 1k pull and paddles, which we cruised through. Starting the next 1k straight, we were both still moaning. Gábor said he was going to take it easy. I zoned out for the first couple of lengths, and was slipping back when I noticed Gábor dolphin-kicking off the wall. Did I imagine it? At the next turn he did it again…

We were back. That kilometer was a race, ending with a sprint finish (him, by half a body), going into the repeat 400s, ending again with a sprint (him by a finger, each time I couldn’t make an attempt to pass until the last length and I was coming back from behind and he’s usually faster than me so that was ok). But that’s not the relevant point. What was relevant was the gradual recovery, so when we decided to up the gears again, the bodies responded. By we were both sore and tired. (Sore shoulders are a rarity, especially when you are swimming all the time).

All this is by way of explanation and scene-setting and context.

I’m trying to analyse this swim, and the other long swims I’ve done and extract some useful lessons on the value such sessions.

All long pool swims are difficult. The reasons change.
Feeding during pool sessions may not be completely applicable to open water.
But you will get better figuring out when you will run out of energy and what that feels like.
Long pool sessions can be used to figure out some other stuff like preferred analgesic/cramp intervention.
The session structure is less important than just putting in effort and time swimming and hitting that wall.
The post-slump improvement is gradual as your body adapts to ketosis and you don’t get a sudden sense of feeling better.
The glycosis to ketosis transition can vary by person and time and swim.
Post-swim recovery, immediately after the swim, and over the subsequent days, are important parts of long swims and the more long swims you do, the quicker and better you get at recovery.
The most important lesson: You can swim through it. Whatever it is. This is what makes a distance swimmer. Everything is secondary.

I hope for a future guest post on this subject and I can think of NO-ONE better qualified than Lisa to write it. Let’s everyone ask her nicely.

100 x 100 x 100 (loneswimmer.com)
Anatomy of an 8 hour pool swim (loneswimmer.com)
Just another 6 hour pool swim (loneswimmer.com)
A long pool swim in numbers (loneswimmer.com)
Asthma and marathon swimming – Part 1 (loneswimmer.com)
Asthma and marathon swimming – Part 2 (loneswimmer.com)
Guest post. Jennifer Lane’s 12 hour overnight swim report: Hydro Nervosis (loneswimmer.com)

Guest post. Jennifer Lane’s 12 hour overnight swim report: Hydro Nervosis

Posted on April 23, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

Jennifer is one of the 2012 Sandycove Channel Aspirants. This year’s Aspirants recently took to the water of the Source pool under the direction of Cork English Channel supercoach Eilís Burns for an overnight swim as part of this year’s training and Jen provides us with a fantastic and honest swim report.

There is often some bravado associated with Channel swimming, it is in fact often necessary, but I have always felt it is vitally important that we swimmers be completely honest about the difficulties of training, lack of sleep, weight, food, the exhaustion, the relentless mileage and grind of a training schedule and frequently training and swimming on day when you are mentally or physically ill-prepared. Profuse thanks are therefore due Jen for her super and honest report. You can follow Jen on her blog. And I both wish her the best and am fully confident of her ability to triumph in the English Channel.

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Hydro Nervosis

That was my mother’s astute diagnosis of the evening’s symptoms when I described them a few days later. Hydro Nervosis. It did seem to fit – I had finally developed the long anticipated allergic reaction to pool swimming. We were talking about my disaster at Eilís Burns’ all-night-torture-and-head-wreck-athon, as I affectionately referred to it. Not its official title, it was more like Endurance swim in aid of the Moses Foundation. However, being my selfish self, I didn’t consider its (hugely successful) charity aspect until well after the final curtain.

By the way, hello, I’m a 31-year-old from Cork and I’m hoping to get away with swimming the English Channel this summer. My training regime began with Eilís seven months ago and I’ve gone through a meltdown or two since then, one of which I’m going to talk about here. However I have to say I’ve found her training though on the surface insurmountable, with the right attitude doable and my technique and stamina have improved hugely because of it. I just wanted to put that out there before I start this tale of woe.

The horrible torture fest was scheduled for Friday the 9^th March in Source Leisure Centre, and was organised by Cork’s own Iron Lady, Eilís Burns. Swimming would begin at 10 pm and continue through the night until 6 am. Distance wise I knew I’d be okay, but I was utterly clueless how to prepare for this overnight thing. Everyone kept warning me about the hour between 3-4 am, when everything is suddenly a lot tougher than it was moments before. Whatever, I didn’t really buy this. Eilís’ instructions were: train as normal, go to work as normal, don’t try and sleep beforehand, arrive tired. Oh, and her training group had to stick it out for 6 hours, then we were “free to leave”. (Hah! She knew damn well peer pressure would make us stick it out til the sweet and sour end). Again I ignored the advice - I took it easy all week, left work early that day and napped beforehand. I felt as ready as ever but nervous as hell. Besides the advice, I wasn’t really sure what it would be like. I’d heard rumours that the session would be sets of 100 metres over and over and over… how monotonous, how long, how awful!…I was just praying that wasn’t true.

It was true. Lanes were allotted times to complete the 100s…2 mins, 1.50 , 1.40 and lanes for those insane enough to jump out onto turbo-trainers after an hour, or run around the dark car park like escaped inmates howling at the moon….but I’ll leave that for another guest blog, I can’t even contemplate it.

Right so we’ll set the scene…the charities have given their talks on how great we are to be doing this. Jennifer, standing poolside in her togs, per usual before any gala, race, interview, social interaction even, is starting to get that tightness in her chest, heart inflated to twice its size, pumping self-doubt and adrenaline into her fingers and teeth clamping dread down hard onto her already lacerated tongue. How did I get into this situation? The talking is done and Eilís is telling us to get into our lane-of-choice. I have selected the 1.50 lane as it’s a speed I’m confident I can maintain for 8 hours. But by the time I’ve organised my drink bottles, etc., I notice that the same decision has been made by small crowd of others as well, with only 3 people setting off in the 1.40 lane. Eilís tells me I’d never handle the pace. I get in.

There I was, swimming with the top guns in speed, albeit at the very back, and actually kind of, I’m afraid to say it even now since I know how this pans out but, enjoying the pace. My fellow Channel Aspirant Rob Bohane is in front of me, which is reassuring…not that he’s not Speedy Gonzales himself, but I’ve swum with him before so it’s not totally unknown. Time flies and I gradually move up the ranks with people falling back for a few laps. However, my nerve-anaconda gradually tightens my chest and though I normally have no issue with peeing in the pool, find myself unable, despite the usual build up of downstairs pressure. This becomes quite uncomfortable to swim with yet all I can think about is how I’m going to have to give up soon (my problems, besides anxiety snakes and interior plumbing, were all mental. Fitness and stamina wise, I had 12 years of Eilís experience in Cork Masters and knew I was fine, what was my problem?)

Finally we reached the 10 km mark circa 1 am. Everyone stopped to take a break, refuel, chill out, but not me. I worried if I stopped that would be it, so on I swam, keeping to the times. I didn’t really think about taking a break, I just wanted to zone out and try to relieve the tension in my chest. And my bladder. But could do neither.

About an hour and a half later we were well into the second lot of 100s and I was up near the front. Carol (Cashell), resident speedster, suggested I lead out for 10. I took off at her signal and apparently upped the ante big time. A few pointed out that I was swimming too fast but it fell on deaf ear plugs. I was way too hyped up and thought swimming faster might ease my anxiety. When my ten 100s were done and the next person took off, it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t eaten anything, or peed, for nearly 5 hours. It was sometime after 2 am and I was not feeling too hot. I figured it would be a good idea to eat some blueberries that were soggifying in a nearby container. Bad idea.

Suddenly the act of swimming was making me feel ill. A couple of laps later that horrible sickly stomach feeling that I know from solid Friday- night experience (different circumstances) that there was a time limit before everything within a mile radius would be covered in puke. Exit stage left to the bathroom. I’ll save you the details but the result was like a gory scene from the Ribena Chainsaw Massacre. I decided to take a break, maybe eat something starchy like a bagel and try to goddamn pee.

Five minutes later I felt back to normal and ready to swim! Back into the 1:40 lane and belting away, when halfway down the pool I wanted to belch forth with more gusto than before. I got out and repeated the events of Act One. I felt better. I got back into the pool, energised and ready to roll. Start to swim, repeat (literally). I recycled this ritual a few times, wanting to get back to swimming but being stopped by my body reacting this way. Eventually I gave up by moving into the 1.50 lane at about 4 am. Again, as soon as I’d start crawling along (at the back) I’d start to retch. I’d stop and feel better but very queasy. Luckily there was a 15 minute break around 4.30 that saved my ass. It allowed me to calm down and get a grip. Eilís announced that the swim would end at 5.30 so we’d only one hour to go. Never had an hour seemed so long! I cannot even tell you what set we did or what stroke it was. I remember trying backcrawl and breaststroke at different stages to see if that would help but it was worse. Anytime I moved I wanted to vomit. Eventually Lisa Cummins produced some Gaviscon and although this made my stomach feel better, the urge to purge was right there waiting to return with a hearty slap on the back if I so much as floated. It just became a battle of will to force myself to swim and not get sick. I think I burned a hole in my throat. I would have gladly signed up for a unanaesthetised gastric bypass just to make that pukey feeling cease! Absolute nightmare.

Minutes plodded along on club feet. It seemed to be 20 past 5 for an eternity. But finally, joy of joys it was over! People clapping and clambering towards the Jacuzzi and the free food (which I noticed only now for the first time). Sweet thoughts of clean sheets and a warm bed at home… I had made it! It was over!…when I got the feeling of two pairs of eyes looking at me. Who was left behind only Lisa Cummins and Carmel Collins, two girls who this endurance crap for breakfast. I knew what they were going to say before they said it. If this night taught me anything at all it’s that I have a serious ego that needs serious deflating. First I jump in and try and play with the big kids. Now I’m left with an out after the most grueling torture of my swimming life to date, so just because these two nuts want to tough it out til the fat lady sings it doesn’t mean I have to!

We took it handy doing a mix of slow back crawl and breaststroke. I tried swallowing slowly and watching the dawn gently creep into the room. To be honest, this part was ok cause I swam very slowly and stopped a lot. I can’t remember finishing officially, just being in the shower and wishing I was in bed. I felt utterly beaten and dejected. Everyone was delighted they got through, I was miserable I’d messed it up so royally.

So that was it. My mom (who’s a nurse incidentally) tells me my hydro nervosis would have dissipated if I’d just eaten a banana. After I’d hung up the phone I was wondering if she was making up the term or just being a crazily optimistic mom. When I entered it into Google I got ‘Did you mean hydro nephrosis?’, which upon further clicking I find out it’s an early stage of renal failure due to a back up of urine or lack of magnesium (hence the prescribed banana).How scary! Was my body was trying to stop me swimming because I was damaging my kidneys? I don’t really think so, but I do think I need to chill out about the whole endurance/long distance thing. I swam through hours of nerves, stomach retching and an overloaded bladder for I don’t know how long and nearly ended up hurting myself, for what? My ego? My nerves? I know I was a misery guts for quite a while after the swim and thanks to everyone who gave me perspective. I mean, overnight endurance swim? Really not so bad if you just take a chill pill. And a banana.

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Pressure to Achieve, Sandycove Swimmers Achievements, loneswimmer.com

24 hour swim, loneswimmer.com

Just another 6 hour pool swim. loneswimmer.com

Anatomy of an 8 hour pool swim, loneswimmer.com

100 x 100 x 100, loneswimmer.com

Theraband work for shoulder strengthening

Posted on April 3, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

I’ve been picking up pain in my left shoulder for the past couple of weeks again, so I’ve just started doing a little Theraband work, good old swimmer’s shoulder.

Therabands are just large elastic (latex) bands, categorised according to resistance/strength, which can be used to isolate and work specific muscles. The colour indicates the amount of resistance. Their great advantages over using dumbbells or free weights are the muscle isolation ability and not least their portability and vast flexibility in isolating muscles.

I’m just using a medium green band and I’m concentrating on shoulder adduction (inward), abduction (outward), internal and external rotation and rotator cuff. Door handles make great anchor points when needed, and many exercises don’t need any anchor.

Here are some examples of great swimming specific Theraband exercises. One of the great things is you will see the muscles being worked and may find a more suitable way of doing these for yourself.

Rotator cuff strengthening:

External rotation (also for rotator cuff strengthening).

Internal rotation:

Shoulder adduction. You can also reverse the direction of this (abduction) by using a door handle, and going diagonally up and out.

Shoulder abduction.

Triceps stretch (the latter half of the front crawl pull is a triceps extension). Another variation of this is put the lower had as high up the centre of your back as possible and extend the overhead arm.

Shoulder dislocation, one of my favourite exercises, when I remember to do it. I used to do this one with a rolled up towel also.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Annb0cpxwzM]

Related articles:

Shoulders, the swimmer’s bane. (loneswimmer.com)

Stretching for swimming. (loneswimmer.com)

FLOW: the ideal swimming state

Posted on March 22, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

Every swimmer knows how the actual act of swimming can be both rewarding and frustrating. I can’t speak how it is for everyone else, but for me most of the time it’s somewhere in the middle, (like most of life). Sometimes the frustration is horrible, getting in the pool unconcerned but then the water feels like it is fighting me on every movement, my (already average) times are down, and I wonder what the hell I am doing wrong.

And then there are other days, days which are rarer. But from conversations with other swimmers, most recognise this state. The rare day is the day when you are completely in tune with yourself and the water and moving through the medium in a different fashion. It’s not specifically about speed, but as swimmers that’s how the feeling often manifests itself. I was reminded of this when I read a Tweet from Evan Morrison recently:

“50×200 SCY in <2.5 hrs this AM. Unexpectedly firing on all cylinders. Frankly, one of the best workouts of my life. We live for such days.”

Now you may know Evan is a ridiculously fast open water and Channel swimmer and Ederle Swim record holder, so don’t get hung up on the fact that most of us will never reach his times. Before Evan responds that he is not that fast, he has done 25k as 250 x 100, all off 1:30. No, the point is how even a swimmer like Evan also experiences this state. (Even Evan has a nice ring, doesn’t it?)

We can mostly remember those days for quite a while. A while back, I was doing repeat 200s when I realised I was doing my repeats 10 seconds faster than normal, and yet it was effortless. There really is no better word. It’s not that I was setting speed records, but I was in a different mental place to normal, which manifested itself as a different physical sensation. I wasn’t even sure when it started, and my first thoughts were that I had been reading the lap clock wrong. I recall an unusual sensation of calmness. I saw the times, was curious, but utterly relaxed, and I didn’t get excited but just stayed calm, without trying too hard. And I held the times. I’ve had good days since then, but not quite as good as that.

In 1990, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience was published by psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, a study identifying a positive state of happiness that arose from the pursuit of expertise. He defines it as: a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity. In the article, he identifies the following factors as accompanying an experience of flow.

Concentrating, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness. Action with awareness fades into action alone.
Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
A lack of awareness of bodily needs (to the extent that one can reach a point of great hunger or fatigue without realizing it)
Absorption into the activity, narrowing of the focus of awareness down to the activity itself, action awareness merging. Action with awareness fades into action alone.

The author says that not all these factors need to be concurrent for flow to be experienced, but I think, on those rare swimming days, those days that you literally couldn’t pay for, you probably are exhibiting most if not all of the list. In tune, in the groove, flyin’, all are terms we have for the sensation. According to Csíkszentmihályi, Flow state arises as a function of expertise and difficulty, which is ideal for swimmers, who spend years of complete concentration and dedication trying to make minute improvements, (to an extent that non-swimmers don’t realise). When the task is difficult and expertise is brought to bear on it, the flow state can result. Both must match for Flow to result. Now if only the flow state was more readily or regularly accessible. But even if it’s not, the sweet transcendent and rare taste of it, is something that keeps us swimming and pursuing other complex tasks. It’s one of the ineffable rewards of swimming.

Two days ago, I FLOWed. It was good.

Introducing interval training to your swimming

Posted on February 1, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

First, Happy Imbolc, the Celtic first day of spring, more commonly known as St. Brigit’s Day and also known as Candlemas.

Pool and marathon swimmers use intervals to train. One of the regular misconceptions we come across is the belief that our training involves lots of slogging up and down the pool whereas we train the same as normal pool swimmers using intervals as the basis for everything.

So, how do you work out your intervals? well, one way is experience, I know the times to within seconds that I want to hit depending on what I want heart rate or perceived effort I want to exert and recall I posted a chart of heart rate last year. But in the absence of that experience, you can use an interval calculation chart.

But first we need to go back a bit. USMS posted a nice fitness pace chart, useful for calculating estimated times from a 100 metre (or yard) time to help establish pace from a known short distance time.

I’ll loosely define Cruise Speed as the speed you can maintain, with a few seconds left over at the end of each repetition.

On the first table, say your 100m Cruise Speed is 1:45. You will have 5 to 15 secs left over. If you have more than 15 secs your cruise speed is probably 1:40 or 1:35. If you have less than 5 secs left over, your cruise speed is 1:50.

Look at the 1:45 row. So for 200 metres, your pace means you should finish within 3:30. For 400m, it 7:00…and so on. A 1:45 swimmer should be able to do 3,425 metres in an hour, cruising.

(This table does not tell you what your time is, you should determine that yourself.)

USMS Fitness Pace Chart

But for actual interval training you need a bit more. A couple of years back I took an older interval chart and put all the times into a spreadsheet to make it more usable, it’s below.

Measure your Personal Best for a distance (e.g. 100m) and let’s say it is 1:45. Look at this figure in the leftmost column. Now look along the row to the right. This means that your 85% (Moderate) repeat is 2:08 to 2:15. which should include a few seconds rest before the next repetition (100m).

Put this together with the heart rate Zone training chart and you have the basis for building swim sets according to requirement, whether speed, endurance or weight reduction.

Edit: I should make clear, this is an introduction to interval. Therw is more the subject than this, particularly session planning.

Achievement unlocked: 100 x 100 x 100

Posted on January 18, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

100 x 100 is probably the most famous of all distance swimming sessions. Metres of course, for my measurementally-challenged American friends. Systéme Internationale anyone?Ten fingers, ten toes, ten ….

Anyway the elegant variation is 100 x 100 x 100, that is, one hundred metres, one hundred times, each time on one hundred seconds, i.e. starting each one hundred every one minute and forty seconds. So you finish before the one hundred seconds to get a quick rest.

100 x 100 x 100

Looks beautiful, doesn’t it? And intriguing if you haven’t done it. Elegant, like a great mathematical formula:

f=ma

Recently Mark Robson, Evan Morrison and Steve Munatones have all discussed it.

I’d never done it. (Sharp intake of breath). Solo, that is, without someone to share the workload with. I have done it with others. I’d done 100 x 100 by myself (though not in two years). I’ve done 10 x 1500. It was in fact a bit of a bugbear for me. It’s not that big a deal doing it with others who are around the same pace as me, (Rob, Danny, Ciaran, Jen, Lisa etc).

No, it was that final 100 that bothered me, the one minute forty, repeating and repeating. The first time I read about it was my second year swimming, about five years ago. (Remember, I’m not at this swimming lark a long time). It seemed immense and, for me, impossible. Now, it wasn’t that I thought about it much. I moved on.

Over the past few years, when I start back pool training from the sea every autumn, I discover all the long sea swims have taken what speed I have away. I’m swimming repeat 100s usually on 1:45. Within a few weeks, as I feel the fitness return, I’ll start doing mixed 100s: 4 x100 on 1:45, 4 x100 on 1:40, 4 x 100 on 1:35, that type of thing.

Then I’ll start doing 10x on 1:40 maybe once a week as part of a main set. The first few of times are a good personal speed and fitness test. It takes six to eight week before repeat 20x 100s on 1:40 feel ok. After that I look for the point where I might feel like cracking, where I am not making the interval. Last week I did 50 x 100s one day as main-set and it was grand. And some of you were talking about it. So I took it back out of its box and decided I’d do it on Week Three of my four-week training cycle, Week Three being the most difficult or longest week.

The whole thing was grand though if you were to use only one word to describe it would of course have to be relentless (I might use “relentless” next time I change the site tag line). Not without difficulties of course. After a very short 400m warmup, I easily cruised through the first thirty, without about eight or nine seconds interval. Then I noticed in the fourth set that my interval dropped slightly. I hit 50x though still holding a five second rest. At that point I had a four-minute toilet and drink stop and half a 650 ml bottle of Maxim. I didn’t want to run out of energy half way through hour three. I was drinking half a bottle of water every 10x also. The sixth 10x weren’t great, a bit too variable. I was aiming for 70x. If I could get to there, it would be downhill and beyond the maximum number of 100s on 100 previously done.

By 70x the intervals were down to three seconds. That is not a sustainable interval if you have to work very hard to make it, but I was okay and not having to kill it to make the interval.

Some of the time loss was losing concentration, when you start to make more stroke errors, in my case these tend to be dropping my elbows, and dropping my left hand instead of holding the extension prior to the catch, and moving my head too much out of breakout.

The eight set was a bit of mix, I made everything but the times wobbled up and down a bit in the first half, but came good before the end.The ninth set brought the worry of cramps at the bottom of my calves from all the tumble-turn push-offs with not a lot of rest. I swam one hundred with toes clenched, slowing me down, to offset incipient cramp, and stopped for a quick drink on another for the same reason. At 90x I knew there’s be no trouble, I could keep powering on, intervals had returned to 5 seconds. Then on the ninety sixth, I started to feel again that I was going to cramp, but made it with one second to spare as a consequence. On 97, someone stepped into the end of the lane, I had to swerve, and when I tumble-turned he was still there and I had to go deep and wobbly. One second left again. Of course I blasted hard through the final 100. 200 metres of backstroke and all done.

Felt absolutely fine. Quick way to a 10k. Not one you want to do a lot though. Good fitness test also. I did however feel more tired the day after.

Now it should be very clear to swimmers that at I am not fast. The top world FINA swimmers are doing 10k in just over two hours, not in three hours. But I was delighted, it was a goal I hadn’t previously reached, though in fairness, I also hadn’t seriously attempted it, and it was less than I imagined it to be, the challenge being as always, mental, keeping the concentration to hold the stroke.

Amazing for me to think that for Jen Schumacher, Evan and others, this is probably an easy interval for them as it is for Ned, Owen, etc. Those guys are amazing. A 1:20 repeat is an aerobic set for Chloe Sutton …

Edit: I forgot to mention again, my primary purpose in writing up something like this, is to demystify them and take the ego out of it.

HOWTO: Important factors in marathon swim feeding (loneswimmer.com)
Introducing interval training to your swimming (loneswimmer.com)
100 x 100 x 100 (loneswimmer.com)
Anatomy of an 8 hour pool swim (loneswimmer.com)
Just another 6 hour pool swim (loneswimmer.com)
A long pool swim in numbers (loneswimmer.com)

It’s a drag! The Bucket

Posted on January 13, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

Other people talk about bucket lists, I’ll just talk about the bucket.

It can be any bucket, but once you’ve used one, it becomes The Bucket, your own personal torture instrument.

Mine is that 2.5 litre plastic DIY paint kettle from a hardware store, cost about €5. It has a long string tied to the handle and I attach it the label of my togs (swimsuit) with a simple d-clip. Note, the string needs to stretch further than your feet.

I usually swim a continuous 1500m towing it, which takes 10 minutes longer than usual to complete. That’s a pretty drastic time impact. Follow that with 500 or a thousand metres of pull buoy and paddles, then some paddle work and some kicking and you’ve hit a lot of muscles fairly hard with a low total distance.

Lisa told me recently that she was disappointed in me. Shock! I’d disappointed my swimming hero … by voluntarily swimming with the bucket.

I only use it about once a month, partly because of that time impact, partly because I leave it at home and forget and because yes, it is such a pain.

As far as reason? You have to work hard to pull it obviously. But also I find it very useful for training for rough water. Because of the drag, your body is dragged slightly downwards. To overcome this, you must concentrate on pushing your chest down into the water to get more streamlined and horizontal. With all the extra drag, you think more about your catch and anchoring your hands in the water to pull yourself forward. Every time you tumble turn, you have to be careful to go under it, you have a second of release before you hit the extension of the string and the bucket grabs the water, and you seem to stop.

Not something you want to do regularly, but worth trying if you never have. I guess if you are female and want to use one without having a handy waistband to attach to, a simple webbing belt would work fine to attach to.

Review: A big bag of paddles (loneswimmer.com)

File> Insert> New worksheet> Name : 2012

Posted on January 2, 2012 by LoneSwimmer

There’s a somewhat bitter-sweet aspect to closing last year’s training log. All that swimming and the relevant bytes are now consigned to the position of worksheet from ago. All the locations, times, distances, temperatures, races and screw-ups are past data, now part of a trend. Even last Saturday’s sea swim, the last swim of 2011, feels different, like someone else did it.

I do actually operate two different annual cycles, from January to January for yearly tracking, and from September to September for training purposes. Because, you know, I wouldn’t be happy if it wasn’t complicated. The current spreadsheet holds 4 years, I must bring in the earlier ones. I ‘m pretty sure I said that to myself last year also.

The past two years I didn’t get my first swim onto the books until the 4th January, 7500 metres, this year I started earlier (today, Jan 2nd) but it’s 7300 metres, I hadn’t looked at last year’s numbers before I swam, otherwise I’d have done a few hundred more to race myself, always the best race. Last year the mainset was 500 x 10. Today it was 56 x 100. In fact, even with all this data, I rarely look back. The important thing for me is, if I do want to, I have a record.

The significant things I do however look back occasionally at are: When did I get sick? What was the equivalent weekly mileage? Monthly mileage? What was the equivalent sea temperature? Weight? Maybe some session ideas. When should I schedule a long swim?

The yearly total is good, but really there are probably only two days in the year that I think about it: when I pass my annual one million metres target, and the day I open the new sheet.

I’ve entered my day’s data now. The new spreadsheet name is Donal’s_Swimming_Log_Jan_02_2012.xls. I’ve backed the past invaluable data up to both Dropbox and UbuntuOne, I won’t rely on any single hard drive to keep it. I really need to back up my swimming photos and videos again, at 40gb I can’t use an online destination.

Looking forward into the year and all those empty cells looks like another huge mountain to climb. Some of those cells will be tough to fill. Some will give me great pleasure to enter, and I might add some colour to the font. Anything over 20,000 metres gets a nice bold red. Swims in Dover get and the Sandycove Distance Week get blue. Ah, simple pleasures for a simple-ton.

Beyond that, I love having the data.

It feels like something I’m building, building, building, just me and my arms, metre by metre, and I don’t know what the final shape of that thing, or even what it is, will be. But I sure love building it.

A long training swim in numbers

Posted on December 22, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

Location: Kilkenny Watershed, low chlorine pool.

Start time: 9:37 a.m.

Pool length: 25m

Cost: €5

Current pool depth of adjustable floor: 2.01 metres

Time to finish first 3k: 53 mins

Worst period: 4th hour

Duration sun actually shone through cloud: <1 minute

Distance: 20,500

Of which front crawl: 18000

With paddles: 6000

Backstroke: 1000

Kick: 1500

Tumbleturns: 670

Number of lengths: 820

Number of times swimming into wall: 2

Longest break: 5 mins

Number of people who shared the lane with me over the entire swim: 0

Time the pool was empty except me and one lifeguard; 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Estimated total stoppage time including intervals: 30 mins

Full Pool evening lights switched on at: 3.50 p.m.

Sunset 16:17 P.M.

Different lifeguards on duty during swim: 3

Finish time: 16:35 p.m.

Elapsed time: Six hours fifty-eight minutes

Time during which nothing interesting happened: Six hours fifty-eight minutes

Estimated actual swim time: Six hours thirty minutes

Average speed: ≈ 3200 metres per hour

Stroke efficiency deterioration ≈ 20%**

Food consumed: One clementine. 500 ml Swimmer’s Smoothie. 2 packets of maltodextrin Go-Sport. 1.5 scoop of Perpetuum

Liquid consumed: ≈ 3 litres

Liquid urinated: at least 4 litres

Calories consumed according to Swimovate watch: ≈ 5,500

Toby’s level of interest: none

"I don't care"

** Calculated by increase in average stoke count per length over 25 metres of 4 strokes.

Just another six hour pool swim (loneswimmer.com)
Asthma and marathon swimming – Part 1 (loneswimmer.com)

Come with me on this cold water swim

Posted on December 19, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

2:25 p.m. I’m just in home within the last few minutes. It’s one hour and 13 minutes since I got out of the water at the Guillamene.

8 a.m. I weigh 75.5 kg. I have dropped 2.5 kg since I resumed pool training seven weeks ago. I forgot to check my pulse after I woke, (yet again). Last time I checked about a week ago, it was 53 BPM. It’s Day 6 of my week, tomorrow is the rest day. I was more tired this week than I expected and not swimming well.

9 a.m. It’s the weekend so I allow myself a coffee and continuing read One Hell Of a Gamble, the inside story of the Cuban missile crisis that is based on US and Russian official documents.

10 a.m. I have fried rashers, black pudding, cherry tomatoes and mushrooms on wholemeal toast for breakfast, along with another coffee. I heard yesterday on the radio about a bacon jam that I’d love to try.

20,000 years ago. Ireland is covered in ice sheet.

November 2011: Ireland has its mildest November in 150 years.

10.45 a.m. Put a towel in the swim box in the car, make a flask of hot chocolate, put the dogs in the car. Make sure I have my camera as always.

Two weeks ago: Winter arrived. The average daily temperature is about 4 degrees Celsius.

December Sunlight

11.45 a.m. Get to the Guillamene car park. The car thermometer says the air temperature is 6 degrees Celsius (43 F.). There’s only one other car present and no people around. Let the dogs play around for a while and take some photos. The sky is cloudless and a watery blue. There is a bitter north-westerly wind. My hands are already cold, as I am not wearing gloves.

12:10 to 12:08 p.m. Dogs back in the car, I head down to the platform. Two of the Newtown & Guillamene Swimming Club Polar Bears have arrived at the same time and we chat while changing. I check the water temperature with my infrared thermometer but it’s sill reading incorrectly. It’s certainly not the 12C it reads. It’s been inaccurate for weeks despite opening it up and drying out the electronics. Time for a new one.

16,000 years ago: The ice sheets retreat and Ireland start to recover. The ice scoured the land and the clearing of the flora and fauna means Ireland will have a very low species biodiversity in the future. The eliminated weight of the glaciers means Ireland will gradually rebound from the sea, even as the sea-levels rise. Ireland becomes separated from Great Britain and the Continental land bridge. The thermohaline circulation system and the Gulf Stream will dictate Ireland’s year’s weather pattern.

12:09 p.m. I’d forgotten my main togs, and only had a horrible pair of Slazenger backup togs, they are too narrow at the waist and quite thong-like, and the string had slipped back into the waist holes and I only realised this after getting ready. I wasted two minutes trying to extract it while I got colder. By the time I was ready to swim the other two guys had already finished their three-minute dips and were back out. I wore two silicon caps, ear plugs, and greased under my arms and behind my neck, an area that recently has again started to chaff more. The concrete was very cold, I put on my deck sandals for the 10 metre water to the steps.

12:20 p.m. With the sun in the sky, although cold, it’s easier to get in the water. Having left the sandals at the top of the steps, I walked down to the water and stood waist deep. The water was fairly flat, but there is a low amplitude but long period groundswell coming in, which meant the waves will not break high but would be powerful. I splashed water on my face, gave my ear plugs a final push in and dove in.

12:20 to 12:22 p.m. The water was cold of course but I didn’t experience the cold associated with 5 Celsius degree water, and I’ve been doing this for a while. I took the first two minutes to adjust easily while I swam out of the tiny cove but my breathing was fine and there wasn’t much cold shock. After two minutes I could start to really compare to my last swim seven days ago.

12:22 p.m. The water was colder than last week. I was feeling the wind on my shoulders and upper back, but the sky was clear and the water was calm. Off to the pier. Concentrating on the technique I’d been doing (re-doing) for the past seven weeks.

12:40 p.m. Approaching the pier, I decided to go past the harbour entrance, down another 100 metres then turn.

12:42 p.m. I turned back into the swell. Sun was directly ahead.

12:52 p.m. At thirty minutes I started to feel the soles of my feet cold and sore. Unusual.

12:55 p.m. I realised I would be back before 45 mins had elapsed so as I passed the Colomene rocks, I angled outwards in order to add a few minutes.

13:02 p.m. A few hundred metres to go, the steps and metal railings caught and reflected the sun as I angled in. My hands were starting to claw. I opened it up and sprinted in, switching to mainly right side breathing.

13:07 p.m. I had difficulty getting out even though the water was calm because the long period swell power pushed me past railing for a few seconds and I had to make a second pass to grab on. Very unusual.

13:07:30 p.m. Holding the railing I moved up the steps. The wind was really cold blowing across my wet skin. A silhouette was talking down to me from in front of the low sun. I awkwardly removed my ear plugs to hear what they were saying as I put my sandals on and walked immediate to my box. Something about “how long was I in”? I gave a swimmer’s answer, in distance terms, and got it completely wrong. The two important things were the difficulty I had in moving my jaws and the simple mistake I make, which I then corrected. My feet were really really painful from the cold and from the upturned plastic knobs in my sandals. I need new cheap flat, easy to slip on sandals for winter, I reminded myself. Again. Nuala Muir-Cochrane has suggested Crocs, but can my image stand the damage?

13:08 to 13:12 p.m. Standing on a cheap €2 rubber car mat, I tried to get dressed as quickly as possible.

This is the most critical time, I was now racing Afterdrop, when the cold blood in my periphery moves back into my core and I get very cold. It would take 10 minutes or so for this to take full effect.

It was very cold on my hands, head and legs and feet. I gave my hair a peremptory single towel run , same for my torso, and pulled on a merino wool t-shirt. I was still half damp, but since it’s Merino, the damp didn’t matter. Next were two merino wool long-sleeved base layers, medium wool weight. Then was a jumper (Irish name for sweater). Next was my English Channel woolly hat. I was alone by now on the platform. My co-ordination is not the Mae West. My top clothes were not put on smoothly and were bunched. I rubbed my legs with the towel, took off my togs, realised that even thought there was no one around I better drape a towel around me. I would never have done this if I was warmer. I got my underwear on, and dried my legs a bit better, but with no vigourous rubbing. With difficulty, I pulled a pair of merino wool long-johns on (thanks Aldi). Then pants. I couldn’t close any buttons except at the waist as my dexterity was poor, but I learned long ago to wear a belt. I pulled on a coat and then turned to the final but most difficult task of getting my socks and Dr. Marten’s boots on. My feet were more painful, and I had difficulty opening up the laces more to get my feet in but finally did. I didn’t even bother trying the tie up the laces. As I finally pulled on gloves, one of the gents came back down, he was keeping an eye on me, and told me that Polar Bear Joe had been down for a swim and already left while I was in, and had measured the water at 43.5 Fahrenheit, (under 6.4 Celsius). All the older members think in Fahrenheit, I think in Celsius. We agreed that seemed maybe a degree low and I know Joe’s measurements were previously about a degree Fahrenheit lower than mine, so the temperature was probably between 7 C and 7.5 C, definitely colder than last weekend.

It’s now 15:15: Thirty-five minutes since I started writing this, just over two hours since I emerged. I feel fine, I am still wearing everything except coat, hat and gloves. I realise I forgot to turn on the heating so the house is cold. My hands are fine but the back of them feel very cold as I press them against my face.

13:32 p.m. I got back to the car and opened the Keypod, and put my stuff inside. I didn’t let the dogs out. I sat into the car and the Afterdrop was coming on hard. I poured a cup of hot chocolate outside the car in case the shakes caused me to spill it inside. I left it on the dash for a minute. I turned on the engine, and switched the heating to max. I should really have gone for a walk for a better warm up, but the cold wind and Afterdrop made me decide to do other than the best thing. I started to hunch over without thinking about it and started to drink the hot chocolate, only able to hold the cup in both hands to calm the shaking.

13:42 p.m. Since I’d driven down, the car heated up quickly. Thirty five minutes after I’d emerged from the water, the shakes passed and I was able to drive safely. I drank two cups of hot chocolate. Their benefit was twofold. The volume and heat difference of a hot drink make little difference to heating up a body, the thermodynamic equation is too unmatched, because the volume of the human body is too great beside a cup of hot chocolate. But there are benefits: First, psychological; drinking something hot just makes you feel better. Second, it defers the raging Zombie-like hunger I would otherwise encounter on the way home, when I would have to pull over and scour the car for anything to eat.

13:47p.m. I arrived at Tesco Supermarket, but after five minutes I decided I didn’t need anything urgently, and it was cold, though I knew it really wasn’t and I also knew I needed to buy something for dinner. I went back to the car and headed home.

14:01 p.m. Almost an hour out, as I passed the Waterford & Suir Heritage small-gauge steam railway, I saw they were opened for a holiday Santa run and I realised my jaws were starting to relax, without having previously noticed how tightly clamped they were.

14:12 p.m. I was about five of minutes from home, and I realised that my jaws didn’t actually relax previously but they were now. At the same time I became aware I am sitting on two lump of cold meat, as my arse-cheeks were the slowest to recover.

15:35 p.m. I am out of the water slightly over two and a half hours as I finish this up. Time for a warm shower and ready to be productive again. I wanted to write this while it was fresh.

December

Despite all the times I’ve done this, I made small simple mistakes; I forgot my preferred swim togs, I didn’t check the backup pair was ready before I got undressed, I wore boots instead of shoes, (more difficult to put on when you have lost dexterity). None of them had a huge effect.

I could have swum further, but we always can in these conditions, that is the danger of cold and hypothermia, it lures you into a sense of calm. Swimming five minutes further wouldn’t have had much effect but I think ten minutes would have made a significant difference.

On this weekend last year, the temperature was 4.8 degrees Celsius and I swam for 14 minutes. At equivalent temperatures to now last winter, I was swimming half the time I am this year, between 20 to 25 minutes whereas I am still swimming around 50 minutes. Though I could easily have gone further last year, I didn’t have the drive to do so that I have this year.

Every year there are improvements. We can all get better.

Anyway, I hope there’s something of interest here. I wanted to try to take you inside my head for a normal December swim.

The effects of a long swim on the human body

Posted on December 16, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

It’s long time since I wrote about Third Spacing of Fluids, the increase of fluids in intercellular spaces that occurs when a person is swimming for a long time, and causes all marathon swimmers to swell and literally bloat.

I though it might be best to show the effects more clearly.

The first video is a commercial my sister, a noted Film and TV producer made using me as the swimmer one typical day driving down to, and then swimming at Sandycove… Notice I look particularly slim, tanned and healthy from my open water swimming life, full of life and raring to go (and some might say, handsome, though that’s not for me to comment). Notice the grace and elegance and indeed, presence and sense of belonging in the water that I embody. Though I do note that my stroke technique was a bit off that day.

Next is a video taken after this year’s of Rob Bohane and I at this year’s Sandycove Distance Week six-hour swim, in 12 to 13 degrees Celsius water . Look at the profound effects. Our body are much enlarged. Swim, goggle and cap lines have created deep creases in the skin, sand and kelp have accumulated on the lanolin, we’re both somewhat clumsy once on land, and we’re quite a peculiar colour, the whole body enlarged. Rob’s demeanour has changed from his normal sunny self to a grumpy disposition and we’re certainly not looking our best, though Rob is looking even worse than me.

Introducing a precise open water swimming temperature scale

Posted on December 12, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

Next year’s Cork Distance Week will have a record number of attendees, many from outside Ireland. Some will be coming nervous or terrified about the potential temperatures especially if they heard any of 2011′s details.

They need a scale of reference for that fear and we need a common terminology!

Steve Munatones on Daily News of Open Water Swimming had a great post recently on the temperatures at which people consider water cold.

I hope he won’t mind me showing the poll results here:

I remember Finbarr once saying to me that; “10ºC is the point at which you can start to do some proper distance”.

{Fin, I need either a blog or picture from you for the constant references. Either one of you in your UCC Pirate Polo Speedos or one of you swimming directly over some poor unsuspecting swimmer going round a buoy would be the most appropriate.}

I hope Jack Bright might have some input into this also.

I think it would be fair to say that many, if not most (but not all), of the (serious) Irish and British swimmers would fall into the 7% category, it’s getting cold under 10° C.

So here’s my purely personal swimmer’s temperature scale:

Over 18°C (65°F): This temperature is entirely theoretical and only happens on TV and in the movies. The only conclusion I can come to about the 32% who said this is cold are that they are someone’s imaginary friends. Or foetuses.

16°C to 18°C (61 to 64°F): This is paradise. This is the temperature range at which Irish and British swimmers bring soap into the sea. The most common exclamation heard at this stage is “it’s a bath”!!! Sunburn is common. Swimmers float on their backs and laugh and play gaily like children. They wear shorts and t-shirts after finally emerging. They actually feel a bit guilty about swimming in such warm water. Exposures times are above 40 hours.

14°C to 16°C (57° to 61°F): Aaahhh, summer. All is well with the world, the sea and the swimmers. Exposure times are at least 20 to 40 hours. Sandycove Swimmers will swim 6 hour to 16 hour qualification swims, some just for the hell of it and because others are doing it. Lisa Cummins will see no need to get out of the water at all and will just sleep while floating, to get a head start on the next day’s training.

13°C (55° to 56°F): Grand. You can do a 6 hour swim, and have a bit of fun. Daily long distance training is fine. Barbecues in Sandycove. The first Irish teenagers start to appear.

12°C (53/54°F): Well manageable. You can still do a 6 hour swim, it’ll hurt but it’s possible. Otherwise it’s fine for regular 2 to 4 hour swims. This the temperature of the North Channel.

11°C (51/52°F): Ah well (with a shrug). Distance training is well underway. Ned, Rob, Ciarán, Danny C., Imelda, Eddie, Jen & myself, at least, have all recorded 6 hour qualification swims at this temperature. Lisa did 9 hours at this temperature. Swimmers chuckle and murmur quietly amongst themselves when they hear tourists running screaming in agony from the water, throwing children out of the way…

10°C (50°F): Usually known as “It’s Still Ok”. The key temperature. This is the one hour point, where one hour swims become a regular event. We start wearing hats after swims.

9°C (48/49°F): “A Bit Nippy”. No point trying to do more than an hour, it can be done, but you won’t gain much from it unless you are contemplating the Mouth of Hell swim. Christmas Day swim range. Someone might remember to bring a flask of tea. No milk for me, thanks.

8°C (46/48°F): The precise technical term is ”Chilly”. Sub one-hour swims. Weather plays a huge role. Gloves after swims. Sandycove Swimmers scoff at the notion they might be hypothermic.

7°C (44/45°F): ”Cold”. Yes, it exists. It’s here. The front door to Cold-Town is 7.9°C.

6°C (42/43°F): “Damn, that hurts”. You baby.

5°C (40/41°F): “Holy F*ck!” That’s a technical term. Swimmers like to remind people this is the same temperature as the inside of a cold domestic fridge. Don’t worry if you can’t remember actually swimming, getting out of the water or trying to talk. Memory loss is a fun game for all the family.

Under 5°C (Under 40 °F). This is only for bragging rights.There are no adequate words for this. In fact speech is impossible. It’s completely acceptable to measure exposure times in multiples of half minutes and temperatures in one-tenths of a degree. This is hard-core. When you’ve done this, you can tell others to “Bite me, (’cause I won’t feel it)”. (4.8°C is mine). Carl Reynolds starts to get a bit nervous. Lisa tries to remember her suntan lotion.

Ned Denison during the winter

2.5°C to 5°C. South London Swimming Club and British Cold Water Swimming Championships live here. If you are enjoying this, please seek immediate psychological help. Lisa might zip up her hoodie.

1.5°C to 2.5°C: Lynn Coxian temperatures. You are officially a loon.

0°C to 1.5°C: Aka ”Lewis Pughian” temperatures. Long duration nerve damage, probably death for the rest of us. Lisa** considers putting on shoes instead of sandals. But probably she won’t.

*Grand is a purely Irish use that ranges from; “don’t mind me, I’ll be over here slowly bleeding to death, don’t put yourself out … Son“, to “ok” and “the best“, indicated entirely by context and tone.

** Lisa Cummins, for the win.

Looking forward to your opinions.

Swimming with The Second Law of Thermodynamics (loneswimmer.com)
Extreme Cold Adaptation in Humans (loneswimmer.com)
What temperature of water is too cold to swim in (redux)? (loneswimmer.com)
Is the water too cold to swim?

Review: Biofreeze Gel

Posted on December 9, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

Hurley and sliotar

I’ve mentioned before that regular icing is a great way to address the knots and aches that build up in a swimmer’s body when they are doing regular hard training. For myself these start to occur once I start to regularly go to 25,000 metres a week and over.

I’ve also mentioned the tennis ball and tights method, which I occasionally find invaluable for working on inaccessible knots in my back. Someone me told a lacrosse ball works even better, but lacrosse isn’t played Ireland and an Irish hurling ball (sliotar) with its raised ridges is hardly useful.

As swimmers also know the third and most essential step of massage is essential for ongoing maintenance of muscles and to avoid injury. When I started regular massages some years back, my masseuse, Vinny Power, occasionally applied Biofreeze gel at the end of a massage, usually where a particular difficulty arose in my deltoids or neck and I was still sore.

In Ireland you grew up with Deep Heat wintergreen lotion, applied for every ache and the lingering and overpowering smell of it was a giveaway for field athletes and seemingly beloved of older folks.

But we now know that cold is far better for muscular aches by reducing inflammation and may help reduce lactic acid.

Biofreeze is a mix of volatiles that when applied evaporate quickly and the area gets cold.

It works very well for aching arms after a long swim.

It need to be used with a small amount of care. If used for more than about five or six days continuously you might develop a rash, but the products warns against continued use. It is also useful if you don’t want to be applying direct ice late at night in mid-winter! I find the cold sensation lasts for about twenty minutes from a small amount.

I’ve also found that if applied directly after a pool swim, the residual chlorine on the skin, even after a shower, makes the cold sensation even more intense and possibly very unpleasant for some people. Eddie Irwin, Sandycove swimmer and English Channel and Manhattan soloist, and also a pharmacist, said it shouldn’t be used DURING a swim, because it will cause the muscles to tighten too much.

It’s not cheap in Ireland if you buy from a Pharmacy or Supermarket, where it is an off-the-shelf product and the containers are very small.

However I have found the larger 16oz pump container, about half a litre, for better value in eBay, and the last time I ran out, I bought directly from Vinny since he gets it at trade prices so I recommend pursuing this idea with your physio/masseuse. A 16 oz container will probably last years.

Magic Cups

Stretching for swimming

Posted on November 30, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

Swimmers train a lot. A lot of time is spent in the water. One consequence is tight muscles. Another problem for some is insufficient flexibility for swimming, like ankles and legs.

Apart from the essentials of regular massage, and probably direct icing, stretching becomes necessary if not essential. Each of us will probably have some problem that is particular to us, and we all also have common problems.

This is not about Warm-Up stretching, which is a different subject.

My favourite (i.e. only) stretching book is Michael J. Alter’s Sport Stretch. The book includes over 300 stretches and separates them both by body part, and by sport, so you can cross reference. Within each sport he then gives the best exercises for each requirement, making cross referencing very easy, including stretches for swimming.

The stretches themselves are simple line drawings, which is good, because it simplifies everything.

The areas I have to concentrate on are:

Neck
Lower back (not a swimming issue)
Shoulders
Arms

Neck stretches are pretty simple.

First are neck rolls which just mean rolling the head around through a full circle, both clockwise and anti-clockwise, working on range of motion, (ROM), simple but effective.

Along with those, because I occasionally get neck ROM problems, I’ll also just turn my head as far as I can to left and right and hold it for 20 to 12 seconds. You can also use your hands to put (constant, not sudden) pressure on your head to turn, but never hold a stretch if you feel pain and stretching should only be done to UNINJURED muscles (unless advised otherwise by a professional).

For lower back issues, I use a simple a Seal Stretch

or a Seal Press which is similar but the arms are used to gently raise the upper body.

For shoulders:

The parallel Shoulder arm stretch is very popular with swimmers for working the Deltoids;

The towel stretch is very good but I can’t find a video for it: Hold a pole, rope or towel stretched behind your back, parallel to the ground, with your thumbs facing out and your palm facing forward. Then slowly raise your arms over your head and return.

Another favourite is simple with one arm by my side, to press the palm of the other into a wall or door frame and lean into it, which works the pectoral muscles.

There is also external shoulder rotation, an overlooked area for swimmers.

One of my favourite stretches is the wrist, arm and shoulder stretch, below.

This is by no means a comprehensive guide, just my favourite stretches, when I remember to do them… In fact below is a 10 minutes swimmer’s stretching routine in one video. Here’s a nice downloadable PDF of swimmer’s stretches.

You need to find what works for you, and what your issues that need addressing are.

Just another six hour pool swim

Posted on November 28, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

I remember my first six-hour pool. It was done with the Magnificent Seven in Source Swimming Pool in Cork in January of 2009. I’d done a couple of four-hour swims by myself, just swimming pyramids. I’d also done one five-hour by myself the previous year (pool).

But the first six-hour pool swim with the group was a big deal. I barely swam the day before, something like two kilometres, resting up. I carb-loaded the night before, didn’t sleep particularly well and had to leave early in the morning to get to Cork. I brought lots of food and liquid. The food included smoothie, fruit, sandwiches (I’m from Tipperary remember ). I’d had a very large breakfast before the hour and a half drive. We stopped to eat halfway through the swim, which was a mixture of sets from Eilís. It all went fine. More and longer swims were to follow.

Two years later, I’ve done plenty of six-hour swims, both sea and pool. Last week I did another six-hour pool swim, my first since returning to pool training four weeks ago and it was odd mix of experience and a cavalier attitude. I trained the night before, a standard set of just over 5k and was tired in the morning. I gave very little significant thought to the swim, I’d just been jealous the week before when I joined Lisa and Karen McAvoy at the end of their 20k swim. I wanted to look and feel wrecked again.

How perverse is the marathon swimmer’s mind?

I had a bowl of porridge and a small smoothie and mug of coffee for breakfast and left for the Kilkenny Watershed pool.

I brought one small “fun-sized” banana, and another small smoothie, about 250ml. I had a couple of old sachets of Go Sport carbs (146 kcal per sachet) because I was out of Maxim. The Go Sport was only a year and a half past it’s Use-By date… I also had some Hammer Perpeteum that we don’t see here in Ireland, which Alan Clack left behind him after the Cork Distance Week. During the swim I ate the smoothie and the banana, and used one bottle of half-concentrate Hammer, and used one and a half bottles of the sachets during the second half.

My attitude was even; “I’ll do 4 hours, see how it goes”. That was it. No thinking about it, no nervousness, hell, not even much preparation. I even forgot to bring any painkillers.

The first hour was easy, sharing the lane with two other people, included a 1500 with paddles, and I finished 3k at 50 minutes. I had the lane to myself for the next three hours as I worked through the long set mix, which included a lot of 400s and 75′s particularly, with a lot of paddle and pull work. I’d had a flare-up of an old lower back problem on Monday and it returned during the third hour, which was when I realised I didn’t have any painkillers but it never got bad enough that I wasn’t able to continue, I just had to do occasional stretches. (The normal solution for this back problem for me is a massage).

At the end of the fourth hour, I was feeling it but saw no reason not to do a five-hour. And then there wasn’t much point in not continuing to six hours. At six hours, I decided I’d really only been swimming for about five hours forty minutes or so (a guess), due to refilling bottles, toilet stops, a lane change etc, and I might as well do another thousand metres, exactly as that logo on the right indicates.

I finished at six hours and twenty minutes, and when I did the check I had done 17,800k. Nothing of note happened. I was tired and happy but could have kept going. Because I was on my tod (i.e. by myself), I was able to stay more focused on keeping my stroke form. I was doing 5 x100s in the second-last 500 and it was really striking that though I felt the stroke was still pretty good by the end, my time per average hundred had dropped by about 10 seconds due to muscle tiredness and shortening. I was sluggish the next day but the local pool was closed for maintenance anyway, and I was still slow two days later though i did a full 5k set. By three days later in the sea I felt back to normal.

Next day I realised I had passed through the yearly one million metres target that day also. Good day.

Guest post. Jennifer Lane’s 12 hour overnight swim report: Hydro Nervosis (loneswimmer.com)
100 x 100 x 100 (loneswimmer.com)
Anatomy of an 8 hour pool swim (loneswimmer.com)
A long pool swim in numbers (loneswimmer.com)

Review Open Water Swimming Goggles

Posted on November 24, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

Some things are so important, yet so mundane.

Wherever you gather a few swimmers together, you can be certain the subject of goggles will arise. And pool swimmers and open water swimmers often differ quite widely.

In pool swimming people often go for smaller goggles, either Swedish or goggles based on the Swedish design. For those who don’t know, Swedish goggles are the cheapest goggles you can find. They are made by a Swedish company called Malmsten and often sold under other labels such as Speedo, as Swedish Style Goggles.

Image via Wikipedia

They have no frills, just plain plastic with string as a nose guard, no rubber gasket or seal, usually no anti-fog. Some people literally can’t wear them. They can take days to get the fit right, with people going so far as to file down edges to get the fit correct. They are light and low profile. For those who can wear Swedish goggles, they swear there is nothing better and they never come off and are the most personalised goggles possible.

However … as said above, some people can’t wear them or get them to fit correctly. They are not really designed to wear for extended periods of time like a marathon swim. And the lack of anti-fog is a problem. The growth in triathlons worldwide meant that pretty quickly there was growing demand for goggles for open water. Goggles that would stand up to rough water, be anti-fog, be easy to fit and comfortable for long periods of time and yet still be 100% watertight. Ease of adjustment is often a consideration.

In my first year I went through <a lot> of goggles trying to find the right ones. I actually gave them all away last year to my local pool Sean Kelly Sports Centre to use for school kids who came in having forgot their goggles. There were twelve pairs if I recall, all practically unused. (The first thing that happened was two of the staff took some for themselves and their kids, but SKSC is a different and longer and more depressing story!)

And then I finally found Aqua Sphere Kaimans. Mainly because a lot of the other guys started using them.

Three pairs of Kaiman Goggles

These were designed specifically for open water. They have good visibility, anti-fog, secure no leak, and most importantly, I can wear them for ever with no problems whether swimming the Channel, or doing a 24 hour pool swim.

I have bought one pair of the mirrored ones, which had no anti-fog on them and were useless. I’ve used clear, dark and amber ones though. They come in different frame colours and different sizes, Junior, Lady, Regular and Small Face. They are also very easy to either loosen or tighten. I prefer clear frames with amber or blue lenses for open water and clear or amber lenses for the pool. There was one problem with the some of the straps splitting at the back in the same place after six months, but I complained to Aqua Sphere and got a bag of straps in return.

Where Kaiman straps always split

I get about 9 months to a year from a pair of heavy use. I’m good at remembering to rinse after the pool, but not after the sea, so they tend to grow a mold line inside the lenses.

Inside the skanky goggles

Recently I got a pair of Aqua Sphere Kayenne, which are slightly more expensive and are the top level Aqua Sphere goggles. The frame is lower profile, the visibility is still excellent. I’ve only used them in the pool so far. The box is better and the living plastic hinge should last longer that the Kaiman box before I have to duct-tape the halves together. I wore them for six hours yesterday and can report they are just as good. I’m struggling to understand, other than styling and box, why they are €4 more expensive.

I know some of the guys like Karen Throsby use Blue Seventy Vision goggles, also designed for open water, and swear by those also, but I haven’t tried them, since Aqua Sphere work so well, I see no point in changing anymore.

Asthma and marathon swimming – Part 1

Posted on November 21, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

This post and the subsequent Part Two post should not be construed as medical advice.

This is another example of how I deal with something related to swimming, in which I have made mistakes and learned and adapted and which may be instructive or useful as advice or warning. Throughout the two articles I will reference my G.P. (M.D.) who has a key part in the discussion.

You know the disclaimer of “seek medical advice” and how it can be annoying? It’s still valid, but at least you have some context here. It is also probable that what I write here, relating to my current stable situation is possible or even likely to change in the future, and that I will have to adapt again.

I have asthma. Like quite a lot of swimmers.

In my case the two are not causally linked, because I developed it as Adult-Onset asthma, during my competitive cycling years. There is a feeling amongst cyclists, at least in Ireland, that those two sports are also linked, possibly due to what seems to be a high rate of chest infections developed by cyclists, which we, regardless of any scientific evidence put down to constant exposure to cold and damp conditions, along with crud and literally crap thrown up off the roads. It’s completely common for cyclists here to cycle wet roads with cow dung spraying up from cars and trucks.

Asthma tends to divide into childhood and adult-onset. Childhood asthma often clears in the late teenage years whereas adult-onset asthma rarely clears. Asthma is a shut-down of the bronchials in the lungs, usually due to mucus, stopping your ability to inhale sufficient oxygen.

It actually took a couple of years to diagnose as asthma, during which time I suffered some really bad asthma attacks. Some attacks early on were so severe I was unable to climb a simple flight of stairs. I discovered personal triggers in smoking, house dust, some chemicals. Nothing unusual. Other people react to animal hairs (I don’t, luckily given the three doglets and cat), pollen

(And as you can imagine, smoker’s claims they are now being discriminated against hold little validity for me).

Once I was diagnosed, I made a few decisions. I would try to control it via exercise. I would not take the daily steroid Preventer, due to a dislike of the idea of taking daily medication.

I had by them stopped competitive cycling and without racing I lost my interest in the long training hours. Within a year I was no longing cycling, so I took up running, which I also needed to address the damage done to my knees during my cycling years.

I would get a few bad asthma attacks a year, using my reliever and get through them. I would get a chest infection of two, which would clear and an asthma attack would follow.
Asthma attacks are pretty nasty. You never have enough air, you feel like you are slowly drowning, (and as swimmers that is a sensation we all think about, and is not an ideal description), and you would give anything for one clear lungful of air. I used to have to try to sleep sitting up a few nights a year.

As I figured out triggers and reacted more quickly, things improved very gradually. Attacks became more rare and less severe.

By then I was swimming regularly. This whole process was over ten years since the first symptoms, through diagnosis. I didn’t think about a link between swimming and asthma. I was in the sea for months during the summer, mainly the pool during the winter.

In 2009 winter Channel training, I started to get more asthma attacks. They would manifest by a gradual feeling of wanting to clear my throat by coughing. This would usually not occur until a few thousand metres into a session and gradually get worse, until I could no longer swim. The Ventolin reliever had no effect and I used 100 to 200μg. The next day I might be fine or I might get another attack. This continued for about a month on and off and I was really getting worried, I couldn’t predict attacks and they continued to occur.

One thing I realised, about which I could do nothing, was that the previous summer I had swam much more in the pool and less in the sea, not taking my usual extended break from the pool.

I had finally started using the daily steroid Preventer (Becotide, 250μg of beclometasone dipropionate), for the first time ever. There was a slight but not sufficient improvement. By February, I was looking at not being able to train at all or attempt the Channel.

I was visiting my GP regularly.

I was worried about having developed Exercise Induced Asthma, from the constant pool and chlorine exposure, but my GP said this was highly unlikely as Exercise Induced Asthma usually occurred within the first 10 to 15 minutes of exercise. (My GP was very interested and supportive of my swimming by the way).

A typical inhaler, of Serevent (salmeterol)

Image via Wikipedia

After three or four visits, antibiotics and decongestants, we changed the Daily Preventer to Serevent, 25μg salmeterol, which is a beta-agonist like beclometasone, but as I understood it, combined a stronger steroid with a bronchial vaso-dilator, and the salmeterol lasting longer than beclometasone, and used for more chronic asthma. It took about two weeks to take effect but it worked. At the same time I started using two puffs standard Ventolin (100μg salbutamol) about an hour before training.

The combined result was a success and normal training resumed. I was still on my training target, because any day that I could train, I made every effort to make up for the missing hours or metres, but it was a very, very tough six-week or so period.

Now that I’m back pool training, I find myself remembering this and trying (and so far regularly failing) to remember to take my reliever (now Salamol, still 100μg of salbutamol but CFC-free) before pool training. In the next part I’ll write a bit more about the practical effects and control in my training and life.

Part Two.

The Swimming Smoothie – food for swimmers

Posted on November 16, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

Two years ago I was struggling with eating porridge every morning. I’d never liked it, and while I can force myself to eat it, I always have and will hate it, I think the only time I’ve enjoyed it in the middle of the night of the 24 hour swim.

One solution was a homemade Solo bar (bad name). Which was very useful for a travelling breakfast or high carb snack, and has some real advantages, high carbs since it’s also made from oats and protein. With honey as a binder.

But I played around some more and hit on the Swimming Smoothie. I’ve actually been eating this for about two years, and completely forgot to mention it.

With this I can make a really quick and tasty breakfast or snack, high calories, but also with slow release complex carbs and protein.

Apple juice
Low fat natural yoghurt
Small banana
Berries including blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries (frozen work fine).
Half mug of porridge flakes (oats). That’s about the amount you’d use to make a bowl of porridge.
Depending on mood, requirement and what’s in the fridge, I might add pineapple, or full cream if I have it. But I don’t want it to be all fructose.

Apple juice is chosen because it has lower G.I, (slower release and effect on insulin) and higher fibre BUT it has higher fructose than glucose and tastes sweet. Orange juice is less sweet but using fructose gives it all a sweet taste, but any fructose has a lower G.I. than sucrose, even though it tastes sweeter, and is good for avoiding insulin spikes.

A large banana tends to make it too stodgy. Berries make it very red, but seem to work very well (for some of us, Liam swears by blueberries) in training, higher in antioxidants, lower in fructose. The yoghurt adds protein, you could milk instead or frozen yoghurt for this also but it is natural yoghurt, not any old sugary flavoured yoghurt. I was swimming with Lisa and Karen McEvoy yesterday, and Karen makes it with milk. I haven’t tried nuts because I not sure they’ll work in this, being hard, but you could try pine nuts, for protein, since they are small.

It’s possible, and might even be necessary, for you to tinker with this, especially if you have any Irritable Bowel Syndrome caused by fruit, or fructose mal-absorption problems.

A liquid is required so it’s easy to drink, so you can play with that aspect. The fruit chosen should have the fructose balanced with glucose, meaning ripe bananas, berries, pineapple, kiwi, orange, grapefruit, lemon, lime, plum.

Fruits generally to be avoided include apple, pear and melon, so you can see I’ve broken one rule there.

Remember this started as, and still is primarily, a morning meal, specifically to fuel my swimming, and I’ve been happy with the use and results, but I also use it before later swims, and indeed had a large one before my English Channel.

You could add protein and/or Maxim also, I’ve never felt the need.

500ml of this Smoothie will give me plenty of energy for hours. I’ve often made it for lunch on the go, and it works great to have as breakfast in the car. It’s flexible both in making and consumption.

It doesn’t however last long so you have to make it fresh. It’ll start to ferment within a few hours because of the fructose, so if you want to have it for later, you’ll have to keep it chilled.

Post swim nutrition – the Golden Window (loneswimmer.com)

Total Immersion in marathon swimming

Posted on October 20, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

I mentioned T.I. in an email to a well-known record-setting swimmer and we thought I might write a post on it. When someone who has set a new record thinks it’s a good subject, you write!

Many of you will be aware that Total Immersion, (T.I.) is a method of teaching swimming developed by Terry Laughlin, which focuses on long strokes and gliding through the water. Swim like a fish, is the motto of T.I..

When I’ve occasionally helped swimmers, especially triathletes, I’ve used some drills that apparently have come from T.I.. T.I. is particularly popular amongst triathletes worldwide, because of its focus on energy efficiency and gliding, so triathletes can use T.I. to finish the swim leg having expended as little energy as possible to be more ready for the cycling leg (triathlons are rarely won or lost on the swimming leg). (T.I. got some extra attention last year in a TED video by Tim Ferriss.)

With triathletes especially it’s best to reduce the flailing, to try to get them conscious of gliding through the water and of relaxing, rather than fighting the water. Pretty much what all swimmers learn, but in a more compressed time.

But one consequence of T.I. is a reduced stroke count, which is imparted, it seems to me, as the most desired result, at least this is how those people I’ve met who have learned T.I. impart it to me. Having read some of Terry’s many thoughts on T.I. and this subject, it seems that he himself is not as rigid as many of the people who go through T.I. training here seem to be, when he himself advocates having a quiver of responses ready for varying open water conditions, something I’ve said myself previously about for example, breathing patterns.

It should be remembered as very important that many or most triathlons (all here in Ireland and the UK) require the triathletes to wear a wetsuit. Indeed Alan Smith, Waterford local multiple Ironman triathlete and Channel Aspirant told how just a couple of weeks before his Channel attempt he was forced to take the black and wear a wetsuit for a paltry short swim of about 1k because the rules required them.

Some months back I discovered (too late) that one EC Aspirant, whom I was occasionally advising through email, was actually using T.I., as the athlete had come from a triathlon background. With very little time left I had to stress they dump the T.I. approach immediately.

Why? Simply, it would not keep them warm in the Channel. Let me give an example, again I think I this mentioned it before.

Guillamene steps from the rocks below

Some months ago I was walking down the steps at the Guillamene, when I saw someone coming in from the Pier, rare enough. And I immediately noticed they had a very low stroke count, so low that I stopped to count (which I’ve never done before). I can’t remember exactly, but I think it was in the 40s. I was concerned for whomever it was, because a stroke rate that low, unless they were a large person with lots of experience, was looking at getting cold very quickly. And it turned out to be a friend, whom had been advised to reduce their stroke count to extend the glide on the extension. Someone experienced who never previously got cold, got really cold that day and it was a warmish summer day (by Irish standards). it was incorrect advice from someone who didn’t know, whose open water experience came from a book. It wasn’t exactly T.I. but quite similar.

At the weekend, indeed I was talking to the swimmer who had given that advice, who was wearing a wetsuit, and in winter pool training was focusing exclusively, as I expected, on stroke count reduction by increasing distance per stroke.

Oh, I just remembered, Penny Palfrey, probably the best (non-FINA) marathon swimmer in the world right now, apparently has a stroke rate of 80.

Triathletes using T.I. have a wetsuit to cushion this effect of slower stroke rate to keep them warm. Removing a wetsuit and keeping a low stroke count is a recipe for hypothermia in cold water. More than anything else in cold water you must be able to maintain a steady consistent stroke rate. A 10% variation in a marathon swimmer is a big variation. Most of us won’t vary by more than about 5%. I’ll use again the example of my E.C. I was 70 strokes per minute almost every measurement , never dropped below 68, never went higher than 74. An old S.I. article on Doc Counsilman’s EC solo in 1979 (from Evan) mentioned his metronomic pace of about 64 (same for example as Ned). Gábor stayed at 68 if I remember correctly, after he settled down after the first two hours (he was up toward 80 at the start, excitement and the effects of tapering priming him for a nervous muscular explosive start).

I don’t actually have a problem with T.I., it has its uses, I like what I’ve seen of the drills and some of its ideas, and when I read it, I also like Terry Laughlin’s own blog and his thoughts on the mindfulness of swimming, something I think any distance swimmer can appreciate. I like his meditative frame of mind and consideration of swimming, after all many times myself I’ve compared the purity of night swimming in particular to meditation or how we operate mentally on long swims, something I have a post planned on again.

After years of open water, I know my stroke is 70 +- 4 spm. Anytime I check it in the water, it’s 68 to 72, unlikely to outside that unless I am increasing speed or slowing down. I can just feel the rate by now. This is a vital skill and very different from pool swimming. I know people who have come from a competitive pool background and never once thought about stroke rate. Your SPM might be 58 or 64 or whatever, it’s your stroke rate, the one that works for you as a consequence of your fitness and size and training and background. I’ve noticed bigger people tend toward lower stroke rates but I don’t think that’s a rule or anything.

T.I. might teach you to monitor your stroke rate very closely, but it won’t teach you to increase it to keep your internal heat production high enough. Maybe it’s fine in warm water, but at any water temperature lower than about 28 degrees, you are losing heat. You must combat this by internal thermogenesis.

By the way, in winter pool training, (oh, I’m later going back to it this year than ever before, I’m still in the sea), I do actually work on DPS, distance per stroke.

I’m personally wary of any absolutes when those absolutes are just opinions, like one particular swimming style. That’ll come as no surprise to long-term readers here.

Separate from the heat retention aspects, what I find myself is that there are consequences to my stroke that come from open water swimming. If you watch most OW swimmers, you will see that they have a high hand recovery, quite different to pool swimmers, which comes about as a consequence having to lift the hand higher to avoid it crashing into chop. It’s a rare day in the sea that you can have a high elbow recovery. This is sure to also reduce your rotation, which in turn increases your stroke rate. Then there is the effect of sighting, where you have to lift your head, like you never would in the pool, which again, will change your body position and therefore stroke mechanics. At least that’s how it seems to me.

Maybe it’s different in warm water, (apparently there are places in the world with warm water, it’s been reported), where you don’t have to worry about cold. But remember, at any temperature below about 24° Celsius, eventually, you will become hypothermic. For those of us for whom 24° C is much warmer than we ever get, we tend to forget this.

But in cold water you must swim to keep yourself warm, because you are literally swimming for your life.

Returning to Swimming

Posted on May 9, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

I recently came across this fantastic and simple chart that an experienced swimmer wrote about returning to swimming after a few year’s hiatus.

As swimmers we actually often forget or don’t realise how fit we are, or at least how well adjusted we are to the requirements of regular swimming.

This simple chart explains better than anything I have ever seen. Thanks to Mister Siren for this.

As one commenter in the original location said:

“to think there was a time when I couldn’t understand how swimming made people tired…”

24 miles in 24 hours swim

Posted on May 4, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

Lisa Cummins, Danny Walsh, and myself tackled the 24 miles in 24 hours swim challenge this weekend past, as I briefly mentioned last week.

Mark Robson alerted us to this UK charity swim back in January/February. I thought it sounded like fun and asked a few of my regular swim friends and the rest of the Magnificent Seven if anyone was interested for the past weekend.

We finally had the short list of four.

I had chosen Kilkenny’s Watershed pool back in February and the manager Aoife Mullins was immediately receptive and positive. The Watershed is only open about two years and is a beautiful FINA approved 25m pool (and fantastic sports centre) which has UV water processing.

We met at 9am on Saturday. Aoife had given us use of a First Aid room off the deck for the day and allocated a lane for the four of us (on their busiest day of the week) and we had discussed chlorine levels and water temperature previously. Aoife had posters up around and one staff member (Robin) had (unknown to us) even been on the local radio with our names and the challenge.

The use of the First Aid room was fantastic, given the huge amount of food and gear we all had.
People used to club and pool swimmers are always shocked when they see the amount of stuff required for a really long swim. We had circulated a list amongst us based on the experience of all the long pool swims the Magnificent Seven especially did last year and all our Channel swims, so everyone was well prepared, as you saw from my preparation list last week. We were able to get away from the deck and eat in peace. We also all made a point a showering off the chlorine after every session.

The pool was a lovely 29 C and the chlorine level was between 0.8 down to 0.2 overnight! (In relation to other pools, some older municipal pools might get as high as 2.5 to 3.0.)

We started at 10 am, sharing a lane for the day. After a couple of hours we noticed that Aoife had even arranged to give us a lane that was about a foot wider than the others. We had enough space that we only had one hand-clash in the entire 24 hours and that was my fault. The first few miles, despite trying to take it slow, went off at around 25 to 26 mins so we consciously dropped it a little bit to reserve energy.

Through the day Lisa and I also made a point of using a Asthma Inhaler (Ventolin Reliever, 100mg). In fact I really overused, just in case.

The day passed easily and by 7.30 pm the pool closed and we had the place to ourselves. I remember the early third mile as feeling great, as did number six.

Aoife put some music on the public system for us. Over the next few hours we discovered it was mistakenly playing a short playlist, so we heard the same few songs at the end of each hour and we all have some songs that we now particularly hate as they would be playing just before we got back into swim and would run around our heads for a mile.

The individual miles were all obviously different for everyone with us all peaking and dropping at different times. Lisa & I got shoulder twinges early on, and we were both concerned we were seeing flareups of our respective Channel injuries and took some prophylactic painkillers. But these aches abated and didn’t return for either of us. Danny (aka “hard as nails“) got a bad stitch somewhere around the eight hour mark which caused sickness and caused him to struggle intermittently from then on, though he never gave up completely.

The 12th hour saw us still feeling good, tweets and texts were exchanged occasionally with Mark in the Guildford Lido where the UK swim was progressing, with them having a cold open air night though these messages dropped on both sides as we all got tired.

We had moved our stuff to poolside at 7pm, and we were getting fed up with even the wide range of food and liquid we’d brought. After the public left we were able to spread out, each taking a lane.

I alternated between water and my homemade isotonic mix each hour, with a couple of cups of soup in the afternoon, and two cups of coffee during the night.

At around midnight or 1am, Robin arrived with freshly made porridge for us, a fantastic treat, and I can say, given how much of the stuff I’ve forced down unwillingly, the first time in my life I’ve enjoyed it and I had the single greatest jelly baby I’ve ever eaten at about 2 or 3am.

I remember mile 14 as being particularly good, as Marie and I cruised stroke for stroke very comfortably, yet mile 15 I found difficult and I started to glide like it was 1944 and I was invading Normandy, holding seven to nine metre glides of the wall for about 1000 metres until I realised it was making my neck sore and I had to revert to a normal glide.

Mile 16 was ok and I recall writing a future article for here in my head. Mile 17 was tough and mile 18 was my worst, with my times dropping to 30 mins for both 17 and 18, 18 was a real struggle as I felt strong nausea throughout and I had to concentrate strongly.

By this stage my throat and tongue were getting sore. To mile 19 I gave a theme, (relentless). On mile 20, I decided to forego my noseclip for the mile so change to my seas breathing pattern but I went back to it for afterwards. At some point in there, one mile went so well and I was so in the zone, that I forgot to stop and the girls, who were for that mile relying on me for the count, were not best pleased.

As I said each us had their own battles at our own times. The small hours were long, with tiredness and contracted muscles playing their roles. Though the rest times didn’t shrink nevertheless we felt like we had much less. Get out and shuffle to the showers. Back to deck for slowly consumed food and drink. Back to the toilet. Back to more vaseline or channel grease and putting the gear back on and to stare at the lane before getting in. Seemed like mere minutes. Pro-tip: always leaves your swim gear int he same spot so you don’t waste time looking for it.

My stroke count dropped from the initial 18 to about 20 by mile 14, reclaiming two strokes per minute on the kilometre where I was really gliding and I dropped further to 21/22 for the final hours. It’s funny how once you lose those four strokes per minutes, it’s hard to figure out where they were, because your muscles have shortened with use and you can’t extend/contract as you did previously.

But the bad phase passed, thanks possibly to a strategic Ponstan pain killer and some extra stretching and use of my tennis ball on shoulder and arm muscles.

It was all fine from there on for me, as I started to drop times on each subsequent mile again. Just minutes after the mile start at 5am we started to see the first hint of false dawn and by the time we’d finished that mile there was light through the windows. At 7.30 the Kilkenny B squad arrived for training and we were compressed back into one lane, making the second last and penultimate miles a real exercise in frustration as our mismatched speeds became more difficult. We started out last mile at 9am and were done by 9.30am, Lisa & I finishing 2 lengths apart (I had early on decided to do 25 miles to go to 40k).

Following last year’s habit set by Liam, Eddie and myself in our nine hour pool swim, butterfly finish for me FTW.

We’d done it and were feeling tired but good.

Everyone did well. Danny battled with illness, never giving up.

The standout, unsurprisingly, and she’ll of course not want me to say this, was Lisa who did it WITH NO TRAINING, displaying her phenomenal mental strength yet again! It was a privilege to swim to them all.
The after effects are ok. I have a sore ankle from all the tumble turns, Lisa & I both had sore throats. But a couple of days is all that is required for recuperation, (I did an easy 2k yesterday morning and it was fine).

Thanks once again to Aoife Mullins and all the staff of The Watershed who were so accommodating.

As long distance swimmers we are often seen as the freaks and outsiders of swimming and the best we often hope for is tolerance but this was not the case in Kilkenny where we were welcomed with open arms.

I hope I might run it again next year, when I will have more of you fighting for places, as I believe there is no better pool in the country to host it (including UL & the NAC). Start emailing me now for places! Well done to the large group in the UK who also finished, it was nice to know we weren’t the only idiots swimming early Sunday morning.

Donal, Marie, Aoife, Lisa, Danny

Talking to Clare later she asked me the most interesting question: “how would you rank it compared to the Channel, if you were to place the Channel as a 10″?

So, I have both a Channel double relay (25 hours, also overnight) and the solo, and Gábor’s solo to compare, I thought it was a really interesting question. I said 5 to 6 to her.

First point it that’s allocating a 10 to the Channel I know, not those who had different Channel swims. I think with even a few days I’d say no more than a 5, but you have to go with initial impressions on these things. It’s a tough challenge, but it’s nowhere near in the same category.

No cold. No tides. No horizon. No tides. No wind. No currents. No jellyfish. No tides. No diesel fumes. No vomiting. No unknown finish time or distance. The psychological difficulty is nowhere near similar. Did I mention the tides?

One small sign of swimmer’s spring

Posted on April 29, 2011 by LoneSwimmer

Swimmer’s Twitter accounts, which have often laid dormant during the winter, start to come alive again.

I’ll irregularly updating progress tomorrow as we hopefully go through the day on my Twitter account and maybe a post or two here from my phone. I mean, how rare is it for a swimmer to be able to update on their own swim?

Best of luck to Mark Robson who is starting tonight in Guildford in the UK, but with an almost 300 mile drive first! And Fergal Galvin who is also taking part in a 24 hour team head to head relay in the NAC.

LoneSwimmer

Who Dares Swims …

Category Archives: Training

What is post-exercise fatigue?

Swimming through it – the value of long swims – addendum

Two distance swimmers meet on St. Patrick’s Street in Cork …

Swimming through it – the value of long pool sessions

Guest post. Jennifer Lane’s 12 hour overnight swim report: Hydro Nervosis

Theraband work for shoulder strengthening

FLOW: the ideal swimming state

Introducing interval training to your swimming

Achievement unlocked: 100 x 100 x 100

It’s a drag! The Bucket

File> Insert> New worksheet> Name : 2012

A long training swim in numbers

Come with me on this cold water swim

The effects of a long swim on the human body

Introducing a precise open water swimming temperature scale

Review: Biofreeze Gel

Stretching for swimming

Just another six hour pool swim

Review Open Water Swimming Goggles

Asthma and marathon swimming – Part 1

The Swimming Smoothie – food for swimmers

Total Immersion in marathon swimming

Returning to Swimming

24 miles in 24 hours swim

One small sign of swimmer’s spring

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