Category Archives: Swimming

A Tough Day

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Jeff Mather


I have never wanted to quit a race so much in my life, and I wasn’t even a mile into the half-marathon segment of today’s Patriot Half 70.3 triathlon. My swim was really good—my best at this distance that wasn’t aided by a current—and I was really strong on the bike. So what was going on? Why was “DNF” crossing my mind after having what would have been a kick-ass aquabike?

After a few races where I wondered after finishing if I had given enough (including Hopkinton last month), I decided that I needed to work on strength—in particular, my mental strength. I had been finishing a bit too fresh, even though I felt like I just couldn’t go faster, and the gran fondo a month ago showed that I could bike faster. Either I needed more physical strength to get the job done, or (just as likely) I had untapped potential that I could draw upon. Either way, I sensed that I could go faster and needed to work at it; I just needed to be a little more willing to suffer, to be willing to go into the pain cave on the run and know that I would come out of it a couple hours later very satisfied with the result.

When I visualized the race last night and this morning, I could see myself focusing on my technique in the swim, working hard, and finding myself in a group of people with a good pace. After riding the bike and run courses last weekend, I figured I could put in some good effort on the bike and possibly set myself up for a PR. I also visualized myself being more deliberate during the transitions, attempting to speed them up. And that’s pretty much how the first three hours and 41 minutes of the event went today.

I was having more trouble getting excited about the run. I’ve run half-marathons (and longer) before, and I find them difficult but doable. Almost all of my long races have been urban—with lots of landmarks to show progress—but this course was extremely rural, yet it had very little shade. I tried to put that in a little box and just think about digging deep to go hard, but when I started out on the run course, it felt incredibly difficult—mostly mentally. Usually, I don’t have trouble running off the bike, but today felt slow, and I had some trouble believing that I could perform at the level I wanted/hoped. I wasn’t having fun, and two hours of running seemed like a very, very long time. The thoughts of a DNF started early, well before I started walking at the first aid station . . . right at the first mile.

But I knew I wasn’t going to quit. On Thursday, I decided that I would be racing hard in my TeamWILD kit for Mari Ruddy, the founder of TeamWILD and the Tour de Cure “Red Rider” program for people with diabetes. She had been missing since Tuesday, and I didn’t know whether I would be racing in her memory. Fortunately, that was not the case, and she’s recovering now. No matter how bad I felt—and I didn’t feel very bad, just soft—I couldn’t give in. Plus, I would know that I could have finished, that I should have done better. It was never really an option.

So, as I was walking out of the first aid station, I came up with “Plan B.” I would run to each aid station and then walk for two minutes before starting to run again. Coming out of the second aid station, I briefly talked to a guy in my age group who was also walking: “A run/walk is the only way I’m going to get through this half marathon,” I said. “You and me both,” he replied. Shortly afterward a funny thing started happening. I started passing people and making better time than during my previous 70.3. Of course some people passed me on the run—they were running, after all—but I caught most of them when I started running again. I was actually kind of amazed at how effect the technique was. By the time that I got to mile 6, I had a good thing going, and I was pretty confident that I was in a good place for a PR. I decided that I could run through the last three miles, cultivating some of that toughness that I wanted.

When I crossed the finish line in 5:38:42 with a new PR by almost 20 minutes, I felt like I actually had given almost everything I could access today. I wish that I’d had the strength to run the whole thing at a respectable pace, but I’m not sure that I would have been able to do better than today’s 8:56/mile (5:33/km) if I had tried to run the whole thing anyway. Thinking about the run/walk, I see a clear area for improvement, but I definitely see the value in it and will keep it in my arsenal for tough days like today.

I’m doing my next 70.3 (the Timberman 70.3) in August. This race promises to be much tougher because of all the hills. Hopefully I’ll be tougher, too.


Oh, and of course Lisa took some great photos, despite Patriot being a difficult course for spectators with cameras.

Posted in Cycling, Reluctant Triathlete, Running, Swimming | 6 Comments

Back to the Pool: A Story in Four Acts

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Jeff Mather

I. Between being sick and the high school being closed for spring break, today was my first day back at the pool since the 10th. I had gotten a little used to sleeping in—all the way to 5:30—but I was still pretty happy about the chance to get my swim on. How would it feel? Pokey? Speedy? I had no idea. Frankly, I didn’t care; I was just happy to be back. Usually I have a plan, and today I decided to swim 2,000 yards continuously. Easy to remember.


II. I was glad to see Pat there when I arrived.

“How was your marathon?” I asked, and she made a face that was hard to decipher.

“I ran twenty-five and a half miles. I was feeling really good. It was so weird; we were all running, and then we literally all just stopped inches away from the person ahead.”

“Man, that sucks.”

“Yeah, but I still have my legs, so I can’t complain. I’m just glad my daughter met me at the 20th mile to run with me a bit, instead of waiting at the finish line.” I did the math on the way into work. At the pace she was going and the distance she had already run, she was probably less than five minutes away from the finish line when the bombs went off.


III. I have a little ritual I do three times a week at the pool. I sign in at the little table on the pool deck and then walk to the nearest open lane, where I sit and dangle my legs over the edge while I put on my swim cap and adjust my goggles. Then I look down at my watch and reset it before hopping into the water and convince myself to get going. Today, when I went to look at my watch, all I saw was the fur on my arm.

Oh dear, this could be a problem. How would I know how far I had gone? For a continuous swim, my pace is slow enough that I can pretty easily use the time on my watch to figure out my distance. “A little under 33 minutes swam,” I can say to myself, “means 33 laps. Only seven more to go.” No watch means no easy lap-counting.

Pat offered to lend me her watch, which I’m pretty sure is a water-resistant analog watch with a leather band. Not that there’s anything wrong with wearing a lady’s watch in the pool, but it’s an interesting sartorial choice. (Of course, Pat did wear sunglasses at the reservoir for a couple weeks before somebody suggested goggles with optically corrected lenses. And I’m glad they did, because I got in on that action really fast. Seeing where you’re going is a good thing.) I declined the watch offer, since I thought it would be nice to have a little bit of extra freedom, and the wall clock would tell me how long I took to do my 2,000 yards. I started at 5:45, almost on the dot.

Without a watch I had to pay attention to swim the right amount. I counted . . . en español on the way out and en français on the way back. Uno/un to bente/vingt twice. That seemed to work pretty well. Having a lane to myself also helped, since there were fewer distractions: I didn’t have to worry about anyone getting in my way, and the lane dividers made it harder to see what was going on in neighboring lanes.


IV. At the end of my swim, the guy one lane over (who was recovering between sets) asked, “Do you do triathlon?” Yes. Yes, I do. So we chatted a little bit about how much fun it is. He told me that he will be doing the same tri in Hopkinton that I will. “I guess the water is only supposed to be 60º.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that last year it was around 56ºF (13ºC). “Do you do a warmup swim?” Personally, no, but I never do a warmup. (It’s just another variable with with the pre-event diabetes management. Plus, that’s what the first couple minutes of the race is for, right?) “I’m just worried I’ll get out and be cold while standing around for the start.” Yeah, that’s a real possibility (and another good reason not to do a warmup), but the water will definitely take your breath away.

Only three more weeks. I can hardly wait!

Posted in Reluctant Triathlete, Swimming, This is who we are | 1 Comment

Cold

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Jeff Mather

It all started a few days after the half-marathon. I had already decided to take a couple days off running following the race, although I’m not sure I could have actually gone for an easy run on those days without hurting myself. That very cold but fast-ish race really beat me up. On the Monday and Tuesday of the conference I was hobbling around, and sitting still comfortably for long periods of time was a challenge. But by Wednesday I was feeling fine, so I went for a short run around downtown San Jose.

It was colder than I had expected, and I had only packed a couple of short-sleeve running shirts—it’s California, right?—so I was a little chilled for the first ten minutes or so. The same thing happened Saturday morning, when I put in seven flat miles from my hotel to the airport and back along the excellent Guadalupe River Trail. In the days between those runs, I got a case of the sniffles and a sore throat, but it went (mostly) away, even after a nice (but chilly) hike with friends along the coast at Half Moon Bay.

I could hear on the other end of the phone line that Lisa had a bit of a cold, too. I assumed that we both got chilled in New Bedford—me running and her waiting around for me to finish—and then compounded it with a cold outdoor run or bike ride (in Lisa’s case). The day I returned home from California—a week after the race—Lisa was flying to Oregon, and we passed somewhere over the middle of the country. When she returned home the next weekend, her cough had progressed to something more menacing.

While she was gone I did my usual thing. Swim in the mornings three times a week. Run after work a few times. Ride my bike a few times. The weather was gradually warming up, but these workouts were all a bit cool. The bicycling and the swimming felt difficult, which I attributed to not having done much of them recently, but the running was good . . . almost easy. The day before Lisa arrived home I went for a decidedly difficult seven-mile run. It was hard partly because it was chilly and the route I picked had a 2.5-mile hill in the middle of it. But really it was tough because I had given blood the evening before.

Last week the temperatures finally warmed up a bit. I was still coming home from a ride with a runny nose, but at least the temperatures were in the sixties and seventies. Monday and Wednesday I did some incredibly hard (for me) swim sets and was coughing a bit afterward, but I didn’t think anything of it. My swim paces were still off my best times, but I was feeling strong. Wednesday I went for a run.

All last week my BG readings had been terrible. Terrible as in: high all day except immediately after I exercised, during which they dropped 150+ mg/dL (8.5+ mmol/L). In general, I seemed to be insulin resistant. I loaded myself up with insulin and my blood glucose barely moved. 180 (10) was the “new normal” where my body seemed to want to stay. Except that I had finally gotten myself down to 130 (7.2) on Wednesday before my run, which had me feeling incredibly nervous. Because I’m stubborn, I went running anyway, and ended up walking the third of four miles in a bit of a stupor. When I finally started running again, my hypo sweat had me almost shivering. That evening Jess had to talk me down—which I admit was quite easy—when I expressed feeling that I totally sucked at diabetes.

That night and the one before I slept in the guest bedroom because Lisa’s coughing prevented me from sleeping. Even the cat abandoned the poor girl.

Thursday, I finally started to put things together. The ineffective 115-120% basal rates, the slow swimming, the coughing, the sniffles, the copious amounts of Mucinex D that I was taking to loosen up my congested chest, . . . I didn’t suck at swimming or diabetes. I was getting sick. Not (hopefully) the same bronchitis crud that I had last year (and that Lisa seems to have now) but definitely something. I went to bed early.

Friday, I skipped the pool. It was tough for me to do. The coming week is spring break for the town’s kiddos. And as Pool Lady used to say, “No school. No pool.” I didn’t want to take an extra day off swimming before a full week hiatus. But I needed the rest, and I think the chlorine was messing with my already fragile sinuses. Midmorning, I felt like I was in a haze. “I think I’m going to go home early,” I told Lisa, who had been given an antibiotic prescription by her doctor the previous afternoon. By noon I canceled my afternoon meetings and went home to lie on my sofa. I watched a fascinating episode of “Nova” about Australia before falling asleep to wake up more than an hour later with the cat asleep atop me.

Lisa and I had planned to go to New York on Saturday to see “Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity,” which are three of my favorite things. But Friday evening, as I was laying around sounding pathetic, Lisa (easily) convinced me that we should go another weekend and concentrate on getting well. Which is what we did.

I concentrated—I really did—but the jury is still out on how well I am. I did the dishes yesterday, and we shopped for groceries today, and that was about it. Well, I did read 150 pages to finish The Romantic Revolution: A History. But mostly I slept and sat around. And coughed. And sniffled. And coughed a bit more.

The good news is that I slept better last night than the previous. My head also isn’t pounding the way it has been the last couple of days, nor is my skin quite so crawly. And while I’m still coughing and sniffling, it’s a little better than before (I think).

The hardest part—perhaps worse than actually feeling like crap—is knowing that my first race is only a month away and that I haven’t been training much recently. But I’m trying not to worry, because usually when I come back from an illness, I end up doing better than before.

Anyway, tomorrow is Patriot’s Day, the best day of the year. I just need to make sure that I dress overly warmly so that I don’t get chilled again.

Posted in Cycling, Diabetes, Running, Swimming | 2 Comments

In the Bag – Swimming

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Jeff Mather

I still can’t bring myself to write about the cross-country ski lessons. Instead, here’s another picture post.

I’m in the base building part of the triathlon season. That means plenty of low-intensity work focusing on endurance and form. Over the last week and a half, I’ve done lots of swim drills. I’m trying to imprint better technique by repeating specific actions; when I do the whole stroke, I’ll be able to each part efficiently by habit. What I’ve discovered is that doing all the parts of the full stroke together hides a lot of inefficiency in each part. I get through the water without a problem when I keep my arms and legs moving the whole time, but take away the pulling part of my stroke, and my legs can barely move me. Meanwhile, when I do a drill that focuses just on my streamline, I notice that my legs drop a lot when I raise my head to breathe. And when I do a single-arm drill, I have a tendency to over-rotate . . . to the point of accidentally winding up more than once on my back.

Getting better is a process. The drills are the process.

Doing drills requires stuff. I take two bags with me to the pool. Here is the cat inspecting them:


The red bag—which I got at a color imaging conference some years ago—used to be the only one I took to the pool. It holds my towel, toiletries, a little bit of “oh no my BG needs a snack before/after swimming” food, some clothes, a silicone swim cap, and optically corrected goggles. It also has my swim pass and an expired USAT membership card. (In case there’s a triathlon emergency, I guess?) This is all of my dry stuff.

The other bag holds all of the stuff I’m going to take onto the pool deck. The mesh bag by Speedo is enormous, and I feel like a dork carrying it, since my pool-mates are all very minimalist. Oh well.


Going clock-wise from the lower left:

  • Pull-buoy. A flotation device I use to concentrate on the upper-body portion of the stroke and to help develop arm strength.
  • Speedo BioFuse swim fins. I first used fins during the OMG-Early! swim technique classes I did last year. They’re invaluable for streamline drills.
  • Finis kickboard. Unlike a typical kickboard, this helps keep a normal body position while doing kicking and single-arm drills.
  • Swim socks. Yes, I wear these neoprene socks in the pool. I discovered the hard way that it doesn’t matter which size of fins I wear, I’m going to get two blisters in two very predictable places on my left foot without them. So far so good with these “attractive” accessories.
  • Pace timer. A beeping, waterproof metronome that I put under my swim cap to work on my pacing during long endurance swims. I set it for 28-ish seconds and try to time each 25 yard length so that I’m pushing off the wall when it chimes. Going out too fast is easy. Catching up after going out too fast and then slowing down, that’s hard.
  • Swim Workouts for Triathletes. This spiral-bound, waterproof book has lots of great swim workouts for the self-coached swimmer.

What do you take to the pool?

Posted in Swimming | 5 Comments

January 2013 Recap

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Jeff Mather

We can close the books on January:

  • 31 workouts (8 swim, 8 bike, 13 run, 2 Nordic ski)
  • 215.9 total miles
  • 26 hours, 34 minutes
  • 16,700 calories
  • Farthest swim: 1.3 miles
  • Farthest bike: 44 miles
  • Farthest run: 12.6 miles

Plus, one shoulder injury that had me away from the pool for a week. (More about that later.)

Posted in Cycling, General, Historical Record, Reluctant Triathlete, Running, Swimming | 1 Comment

The Announcement

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Jeff Mather

This morning I did an extra-long, pre-holiday endurance swim of 4,000 yards. For the curious, that’s 2.27 miles and just short of an Ironman swim distance. Had I known beforehand, I might have done the extra 250 yards to get me to there. When I was heading back to the locker room, Pool Guy called out, “Great Swim!” It was indeed.

Speaking of Ironman, it’s been years since I rode 112+ miles on my bike, but I rode over 100 miles twice this year (in the Twin Cities and Death Valley) and they felt pretty good. Just like this morning’s swim, they were shorter than the full Ironman distance and they weren’t races, but the distance is in my legs for sure.

One thing I’ve never done is run a marathon. I have run a couple half marathons and 18.6 miles around Hamilton Harbour, but I always balked at running a full marathon. At first my thinking was “26.2 miles is a long way, and I’ve never raced half that.” During my first half-marathon, I distinctly remember thinking midway through that “two hours of pain is more than enough, thankyouverymuch, and I can’t imagine racing hard for a full marathon.” After my first half-ironman, where I raced hard for almost six hours, that complaint doesn’t hold up very well.

26.2 car decalAnnouncement #1 — the small announcement: After years of saying that I didn’t want to run a marathon—all of those protestations were true, by the way; I wasn’t just being coy—I’ve decided that next year I will run my first marathon. For one thing, I’m pretty sure that I’m at the point in my conditioning where I could race one and not just run it. I mean no offense to the people who run marathons with the primary goal of finishing them, but when I toe the line at the start of any race, I’m in it to finish as high in the standings as my body and mind will let me. I wasn’t in the right place mentally to do this in the past, but I am now.

I’m still mentally preparing myself to run uncomfortably fast for an entire half-marathon next March. I’ve been changing how I talk to myself during my tempo runs and mile repeat workouts on the high school track. Gone is the self-doubting question “Will I be able to hold this tempo for 13.1 miles?” In its place during each lap is “Here’s another quarter mile at 7:00/mile pace. I can do ten seconds slower than that for ten more miles.” Even if my brain is not completely sure I can do it now, I know that my body can. I’m going to fake it ’till I make it, and I’m going to keep visualizing success over the next three months until it’s time to do it for real.

Also, there are a couple of marathons that I would like to do someday (“bucket list” stuff, if you will, although I hate the term). One of them is the Boston Marathon, which I’ve watched every year but one since 1998. (Here some photos and reminiscences from 2006, 2007, 2011, and 2012.) The day of the race is my favorite of the year, and each time I watch it I get a little twinge of envy, wishing I were running with that crowd. But usually, it’s just that: a twinge. That all changed one day after work last summer during my long run, which took me along the Boston Marathon route. As I was running past the Natick Common, which is where I almost always watch the race, the church bells started ringing. Instead of drawing everyone outside as the lead runners approached, they were simply announcing the hour, but they might as well have been tolling for me. I’m pretty sure that was the moment when I actually decided to make the jump to a marathon. (The other is Big Sur, which just looks ridiculously beautiful.)

Despite a few people trying to convince me to run Boston next year for charity, I knew that I didn’t want Boston to be my first marathon. I want to enjoy Boston when I do it. Well, as much as you can enjoy a multi-hour throw-down. I also kinda want to see if I can meet the qualifying standard. Plus, I plan on doing more triathlon next year, and I want to focus my training appropriately. So I’ll be running the Bay State Marathon in October—a couple months after the end of triathlon season—in “scenic” Lowell. (Why do I sign up to do long-distance running events in blue-collar, post-industrial cities? Why not?)

Ironman M-Dot logoAnnouncement #2 — The BIG announcement: Now we come back to the beginning of this post. I have improved my swimming. I have a solid base for cycling. I’m moving up in distance to marathons. Moreover, I had a good half-ironman experience; my diabetes is in a pretty good place; and the idea of doing triathlon for 12+ hours doesn’t really bother me.

I’m going to do an Ironman . . . in 2014.

As much as I would love to do a full iron-distance event next year, I’m just going to have to accept the fact that the age on my calf will read “40″ when I finally do my first. I’ve thought long and hard about when to try it. As with the marathon, I want to do well. That’s going to involve some additional endurance and strength work over the next two years. I will be racing next year, and those races will mostly be longer distance events, but I’m saving the big one for a bit longer.

Who knows what will happen after that?

Well . . . I have goals. . . . But that’s all I will say on the subject. Let’s get through one Ironman first.

Posted in Cycling, Reluctant Triathlete, Running, Swimming | 4 Comments

Progress

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Jeff Mather

Sometimes you have to take the long view to get the big picture. I like the way the chart below suggests that I’ve broken through another barrier with my swimming. (I’ve gotten stuck on several plateaus over the years before dropping to the next one for a while.)

26 Sep 2009 -  500 yards -   35:00 - 7:00/100 yds
24 Oct 2009 -  900 yards -   35:00 - 3:53/100 yds
21 Nov 2009 - 1250 yards -   40:00 - 3:12/100 yds
19 Dec 2009 - 2000 yards -   50:52 - 2:33/100 yds
23 Jan 2010 - 1800 yards -   44:15 - 2:27/100 yds
 9 Mar 2010 - 1250 yards -   30:03 - 2:24/100 yds
 9 Dec 2010 - 1250 yards -   29:48 - 2:23/100 yds
 4 May 2011 - 1500 yards -   33:30 - 2:14/100 yds
24 Oct 2011 - 3600 yards - 1:21:12 - 2:15/100 yds
 2 Dec 2011 - 1850 yards -   39:45 - 2:09/100 yds
 2 May 2012 - 1650 yards -   36:45 - 2:14/100 yds
 7 Dec 2012 - 2500 yards -   47:09 - 1:53/100 yds

Tomorrow is the last of my early Saturday morning swim classes, which have been so helpful in getting me to where I currently am. I’m looking forward to sleeping in past 4:15 next weekend!

Last week we used Halo swim trainers during practice. They’re basically a bench with a template near your head and resistance tubing. You lie face-down on the bench on the pool deck with your arms forward past your head and pull the tubing (which is anchored to something a few feet away) toward your feet. The template helps direct your arms in the correct freestyle motion, but you have to pay a lot of attention to keeping your forearms vertical during the “pull” part of the stroke when they’re even with your shoulders. (If you can imagine floating above your body and watching the path of your elbows, you would see them making question marks. And if you were to look at yourself from the side, you would see your forearms start even with your streamlined body and then drop into a vertical position, which you hold while pushing backward, until you bring them to be in line with your body near your thighs. Simple, eh? Technically, I guess I know how to do the butterfly stroke now.)

This device is really fantastic at imprinting correct technique—muscle memory, if you will—working the main upper-body swimming muscles: the lats, deltoids, and triceps. I can also feel my swim stroke starting in my core more than before. It was so effective that I could feel it for the next few days after the workout whenever I raised my arms over my head. Keeping my forearm more vertical makes it a stronger lever, but boy does it hurt. Ouch! . . . but in a good way, of course. At the end of the practice session, I swam a 300 yard time trial in less than 5:10, which is really fast for me and made all of the torture effort worthwhile.

(And to think that I asked Santa for one of these systems!)

I’m still not super fast, but I was keeping up with Jennifer—one of the fastest master swimmers at the pool—for a bit last week. This week she brought her two preteen boys to the pool a couple of times to work on their flip-turns. It was the funniest thing, and it reminded me that I need to start trying that again myself.

Now I just have to work on my kick.

Posted in Swimming | 4 Comments

Triathlon Tools for MATLAB

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Jeff Mather

Recently I got tired of continually writing the same equations at the MATLAB command prompt to convert my swim, bike, and run times into paces in the format we’re used to seeing. Temporarily putting aside my laziness, I wrote a handful of tiny helper functions to do the conversions and display them. Voilà, Triathlon tools for MATLAB (ver 1.0). In the ZIP-file you’ll find a bunch of basic functions:

  • Convert swimming times to 100m or 100 yard paces
  • Convert a running time to pace/mile or km
  • Compute cycling speeds from time and distance
  • Pretty-print the output of these functions
  • Convert running paces to treadmill speeds

Each one comes with help and examples. As you can see below, these pretty much dwarf the actual computation code.

function [m100, s100] = swimPace(distance, varargin)
%swimPace   Convert swimming lengths and times into 100 pace.
%   [M100, S100] = swimPace(DISTANCE, M, S) computes the "100 pace" (time
%   per 100 yards or meters) given a particular DISTANCE and the number of
%   minutes M and seconds S needed to swim it. M100 is the minutes part of
%   the 100 pace, and S100 is the seconds part. DISTANCE should be either
%   in yards or meters, and the pace will be in the same units.
%
%   [M100, S100] = swimPace(DISTANCE, TIMESTR) computes "100 pace" given a
%   DISTANCE and a string representing the time needed to swim it (for
%   example '5:18'). It is more natural to use this syntax to specify times
%   longer than one hour (for example, '1:10:37').
%
%   Examples
%   --------
%   % Example 1 - Pace for a 300 yard swim.
%   [m,s] = swimPace(300, 5, 10);
%   paceString(m, s, '100 yards')
%
%   % Example 2 - Michael Phelps's 400m IM world record time at the
%   % 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China.
%   [m,s] = swimPace(400, '4:03.84');
%   paceString(m, s, '100m')
%
%   See also bikePace, runPace, paceString.

% Copyright 2012 Jeff Mather
% This code is licensed under a Creative Commons "By Attribution" license
% (CC BY).  See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ for more details.

[m,s] = getTimeParts(varargin{:});

totalTime = m + s/60;
unitPace = totalTime / distance;

pace100 = 100 * unitPace;
m100 = floor(pace100);
s100 = (pace100 - m100) * 60;

By the way, here are the answers from MATLAB for the examples shown above.

ans =

1:43/100 yards

ans =

1:01/100m

Happy swim/bike/running!

Posted in Cycling, Fodder for Techno-weenies, MATLAB, Reluctant Triathlete, Running, Swimming | 3 Comments

True Confessions… Monday, 5:00AM

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Jeff Mather

I have a confession. I don’t really like getting up to go swimming. Usually my displeasure is just a normal part of the transition from sleeping to waking, but some days—as I’m standing in the waist-deep water adjusting my goggles and convincing myself to put my head under the water—I don’t even really like the idea of swimming until I’ve gotten a few hundred yards of water behind me. I’ve gotten past the point where I was a few years ago when I couldn’t wait for the swim to be over, but there are still days that I’d rather not be doing it, even though I like the way I feel afterward. Basically, swimming doesn’t bring me the same pleasure that riding my bike for hours or running through the woods and suburban neighborhoods does.

This morning as I was getting ready to put on my swimmers and the rest of my clothes before heading to the pool, I had to do that whole “goal-oriented” thing that I seem to be drawing upon a lot recently. Why do we go to the pool? Because the only way to get better at swimming is to swim, and the pool isn’t going to swim itself. That’s right. Now go do it! But I swear that if I hadn’t paid for my swim classes already and been seeing some improvement from them, I’m not sure I would have dragged myself out of bed on Saturday at 4:15. And if today weren’t the only day the pool is open this week, I might have gone back to bed for another half hour (even though I would have been awake for a good part of that thinking about how “bad” I would have been for not going to the pool).

But I did get up on Saturday to drive to Worcester, do some drills, learn some pointers on the high-elbow pull—which I had learned about on the flight back from LA—and get a really nice compliment from Patty, the coach, as I was leaving the pool deck. (“Hey, your technique looks really good.”) The rest of the day I could tell that I was doing the pull correctly (at least with my right arm) since my deltoids and triceps feel like I’ve been lifting weights.

And I didn’t go back to bed this morning. Instead I went to the pool and swam 2,050 yards in a delightfully cold pool. I had only intended to swim 40 laps, but I lost count somewhere in the 20s and finished with one extra. Usually I count laps—in Spanish on the way out and French on the way back—and do a new split timer on my watch every 10 laps. In the recent past, when I was averaging a minute per 50 yards, it was easy; I could just look at my watch, and if it was closer to 9:00, I had one more lap. If it was near 10:00, then that was another 500 yards. That’s all changing, and I have to pay more attention to my lap count. Now if I see something near a 9:00 on my watch in the first three-quarters of a mile, I know that’s probably 10 laps. (I still slow down a fair bit near the end of an endurance session . . . which just means that I need to do more speed and strength work on the other two days that I go swim.)

I’m not going to say that I’m fast yet. I swim at a very fast pool. Between 5:45 and 6:30AM the lanes fill up with fellow triathletes, former collegiate swimmers, and a whole bunch of very speedy high schoolers. I’m not the slowest person at the pool under 50 anymore, but I’m a lot closer to keeping up with Jennifer and Dara and the girls’ swim team. I know it’s not a competition, and I spend most of my swim focusing on my technique and pace, but I find it’s good to be reminded that I can get faster and to have a whole bunch of people faster than me nearby to spur me onward.

That’s why I go to the pool at an unreasonable hour: to practice and to get faster. I feel like I’ve broken through a plateau where I had been stuck for about a year, and every morning swim is a chance to continue progressing. It’s probably going to take a bit longer before I eagerly hop out of bed to go swim . . . maybe even until summer when I go to the lake again. Nevertheless, here’s hoping a week away from the pool, with some extra sleep along the way, refreshes me enough to make it to Christmas.

Posted in NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2012, Reluctant Triathlete, Swimming | 1 Comment

Shoulders, Elbows, and Arms

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Jeff Mather

Sunday, I flew to Los Angeles to attend the bi-annual meeting of the International Color Consortium. On the way out, I did a bunch of reading and note-taking on stuff from the office. The ride was kind of choppy for an cross-continental flight, so I didn’t get a chance to stand up and walk around much. On the occasions when I did stretch out in my chair, I realized I was doing the extension drill that we’ve been practicing on Saturday mornings at the pool: arms straight up and pressed close to the ears, one hand over the other with the top hand’s thumb curled under the bottom hand.

During last Saturday’s class we worked on extension a little more and put on fins to work on our kick. I’m learning how to rotate my shoulder forward and inward so that my arm reaches as far out in front of me as possible. Not only does this prepare me for a good catch and a long pull, it tightens up my core and lengthens my body, making me more slippery in the water. I’ve been told to pay special attention to my hand placement so that my hips stay high in the water. There’s a lot to think about, which is why we do a bunch of drills so that it becomes second nature.

After about 45 minutes of drills, Patty (the coach) said, “Okay, let’s do a set. We’ll do 5×100 yards. Pause after the first one to get your pace.” Off I went. The pool was fast Saturday morning, and I was keeping up with the other four lanes as we led out the swim. Imagine my surprise when she called out a 1:30 at the end of the first 100. Either the YWCA pool is smaller than the high school’s or . . . I’m getting faster. Yay!

Of course, she also said during the third 100 that, as I tired, I wasn’t getting nearly as much extension as before. So I worked on that for the remainder of the set. That’s typical for me; my times at the beginning of a set tend to be faster than the later ones.


Yesterday, I flew home. Since there was no WiFi on this flight, I decided to read Swim Speed Secrets, written by American Olympic gold medalist Sheila Taormina. I had been holding onto the book for a few months, waiting until I could devote lots of thought to it. The time had finally come to learn the secret. It’s quite good—well written and perfectly illustrated for clarity—and I recommend every swimmer go through it.

What’s the secret? It’s super simple, really: Keep a high elbow during the pull and feel the water with the whole forearm and hand. By keeping the elbow high and the hand straight with the forearm, you create two levers with each arm and recruit a whole bunch of shoulder and core muscles to push yourself through the water. She provides the analogy of pulling yourself over a wall below you in the pool. (Here’s a PDF excerpt of what her form looks like.)

I probably amused the flight attendants yesterday on a couple of occasions by making small swimming poses with my arm to see what this felt like. (Fortunately for me, there was no one in the middle seat on my row.) This morning I went to the pool and paid attention to my elbow placement. I have two thoughts: (1) Even if Scott Johnson gushes over my V-shaped swimmer’s back, pulling with your elbows high uses the shoulders in a very new and intense way, and I need extra strength there to make this work. And (2) OMFG, the far wall approached really, really fast! I could feel the water better with my forearms and hands, and it really did feel like I pushing myself past something in the water. Not only that, but I could actually feel my stroke starting in my core more than before, and my body rolled the way it’s supposed to as the lever of my arm created a torque. My time for the first 500 yards was just under 9:15, which is fast enough that I almost worried I had missed counting a lap!

I still have quite a way to go before this is second nature, and it’s pretty clear that I have an imbalance between my left- and right-hand strokes. I also noticed that I was paying a lot less attention to my extension and kick (the things we worked on the last couple of Saturday mornings). Plus, as my arms grew tired, it was harder to keep my elbows up and have as strong of a pull, and my times suffered a lot at the end of my 2,000 yards. Friday, I’ll do more drills so that I can be mindful to each item in isolation.

The drop off in my speed at the end of the sets notwithstanding, I’m so excited about these two developments. Now I just need to practice, practice, practice. Fortunately (?) the winter is long.

Posted in NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2012, Swimming, Travel | 4 Comments

T1 Represent

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Jeff Mather

I’m gradually learning the names of the people I swim with. There’s Pat, who I seem to have known for as long as I’ve been swimming. “Pink Suit Lady” is actually Jennifer. Then there’s Joy, who hasn’t been to the pool much since her first triathlon in September. Katie is the young woman in the blue suit; I learned her name this morning. A fellow swimmer pointed out Chappy the Pool Guy’s real name on a plaque with all of the other people in the Massachusetts Swim Coach’s Hall of Fame. Yup, Pool Guy is a hall of famer.

Today I met Ned.

It started out weird. I was walking out of the shower—a time when I try to ignore anyone and everything between me and putting on my clothes—when he asked, “Do you have an insulin pump?”

“Yes. Have you heard it beeping?” My pump, which is also my CGM, starts complaining loudly after a half-hour of being away from me.

“No, I saw your infusion set.” Clearly here’s a man who knows something about diabetes. I’ve always wondered whether people see the diabetes paraphernalia attached to me and what they think about it. “I used to have one of those, but I found it too easy to be complacent and cheat. And my A1c kept going up, so I switched back to pens.”

“Hey, you go with what works,” I said. “I like the pump, and I need the tenth of a unit dosing that it allows.”

We chatted a bit about being diagnosed as adults. Before he was diagnosed 32 years ago at 29, he told the doctor, “I think I have diabetes,” and the doctor replied, “Let me be the judge of that.” His 800 mg/dL blood sugar was quite convincing. Like many adults, he was misdiagnosed as type-2. If I remember correctly, he was on pills for a year before starting insulin.

Then he said something that surprised me about his diabetes—— Let me back up.

In the water we all move in our own way, while on land we’re pretty similar in how we walk around. I’ve noticed Ned walks with a limp and a cane. For years, his doctors assumed that the problems with his legs were diabetes related: “You’ve had diabetes for decades. These complications are normal.” He finally found a specialist who was able to see past the diabetes to the underlying cause: adult-onset muscular dystrophy. “At 61, I’m finally one of Jerry’s Kids,” he joked. Here was the surprising thing. The doctor who diagnosed him indicated that there’s some evidence his diabetes may, in fact, be partially caused by the same thing behind his muscular dystrophy.

The human body is a fascinating thing in its pathologies.

Posted in Diabetes, NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2012, Swimming | 3 Comments

Cognitive Dissonance… Saturday, 5:30AM

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Jeff Mather

Charles and I were hanging out on the pool deck waiting for our 5:30AM Saturday swim class to start. Since there were a bunch of us in the class, we decided to share a lane together (along with Dan, a guy that neither of us knew). Patty, the instructor, was banging on a locked box with her tennis shoe. Inside the box were a bunch of swim fins we would be using in practice.

“Okay, why don’t you hop in? Here’s how it works: The faster people are usually in the middle lanes, and the slower people on the outside.”

Charles and I looked at each and then at our pull buoys and fins, which we had plopped down in front of lane 3, a fast lane. “I guess we’re going to need to move this stuff.”

We are both members of the Landry’s tri club and swim together in the sumer. In the couple of races that we’ve both done, I have been slower than him on the bike and run, but he’s always chasing me at the lake. (Even though I’m definitely mid-pack during those summer open-water swims.) Neither one of us considers ourselves especially fast.

Patty stopped us, “Based on the class you took last month, you’re in the right place, Charles.” We looked at each other, shrugged, and hopped in for about five minutes of warm-up swimming.

“You’re faster than me, Jeff. Why don’t you start, and we’ll circle swim.”

And I was off. A few minutes later I caught Dan, passed him at the wall, and then was holding myself back to keep from swimming into Charles. Somehow I was in one of the fast lanes and had lapped my lane mates.

“What is going on?” I wondered. “Why am I one of the slowest people at my pool in the morning and during races and one of the fastest people whenever I go to a swim clinic? I’m here to become more efficient and powerful—and I’m sure I will—but I’m having the worst cognitive dissonance right now.”


This paradoxical fast-but-not-fast thing has been going on with me for quite a while.

If you’ve talked to me about my races—whether running or triathlon—you know that I’m almost always happy with my results. I race as fast as I can go, and (depending on the competitiveness of the event) I often do very well overall. I don’t beat myself up for not being able to go faster than what my abilities will allow me. Far from being envious, I love the competition that comes from having faster people around to push me to my best results.

Of course, from time to time you’ll also encounter my frustration or impatience. Just because I do well doesn’t mean that I’m completely satisfied. Even though I’ve progressed a lot over the last couple of years in every athletic area, I sense that I can keep improving. I’m happy with the accomplishment, but I want to do better next time. “What do I need to do to be faster next race or next year?” It’s a question I ask myself all the time, and the answer is usually to keep putting in the hours and doing the workouts. I’m a firm believer that—no matter how innately gifted you might be—you can’t begin to approach your potential without lots of hard work. I’m fine with that; the race is just the tip of the iceberg, and I find all of the training deeply rewarding.

The one place where I’m rather impatient, though, is swimming. It’s true that three years ago, I could barely swim, and two years ago I was swimming more efficiently but not very quickly or very far. I’ve come a long way since then—swimming in open water and the ocean, racing, and generally getting faster—but I’m still nowhere near as fast as I know I can be. Worse, I fear that I’ve plateaued, hanging out around 35 minutes per mile at the pool.

It’s worth saying again that I’m very happy with my results. I’m just very eager to continue progressing, and I’m trying hard to rise to my potential.

So I’ll be waking up at 4:15AM on Saturday mornings again for a little while longer. And I’ll be putting on the fins and doing the streamlining drills on weekday mornings. And learning how to kick better and transfer power from my core to my arms and . . . Let’s just say I’ll be working hard.

Posted in NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2012, Reluctant Triathlete, Swimming | 5 Comments

Anchors – Friday, 5:45AM

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Jeff Mather

. . . In other news, my legs are beyond worthless when I swim. It’s been ages since I swam with a pull buoy (which you put between your thighs for flotation and to move all of the effort to your upper body), but I used one this morning at the pool. Imagine my surprise when I saw that my time over 100 yards was consistently 10 seconds faster when I didn’t use my legs. Those ten seconds might not sound like much, but they turn into more than three minutes over a mile, which is a big deal.

And just to prove the “My Legs Are Anchors” point, I also used a kickboard this morning for the first time. Those 50 yards were so slow and not pretty. Not at all. I’m very glad there were only three of us at the pool for most of the morning, so that no one got to see my shame.

Well, tomorrow is a brand new day. Hopefully, Patricia the Swim Instructor will whip me into shape. I’ll be channeling my inner Céline for sure.

Posted in NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2012, Reluctant Triathlete, Swimming | 3 Comments

Swim Lessons

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Jeff Mather

This was in my inbox yesterday.

Hello Swimmers,

You are registered for the 6-week Tech Swim Class that begins this Saturday, November 3! I am looking forward to seeing you in the pool.

Here are a few details: Please arrive between 5:20-5:25 (doors open at about 5:20), and on the pool deck by 5:29. We will start promptly at 5:30. You need a swim cap in the YWCA pool; these will be provided. If you have a pair of training fins, please bring them to every class. If you don’t own them, I have plenty to share in all sizes. Also bring any other training tools you may have, such as pull buoys, hand paddles or gloves, etc. If you don’t bring your own fins, you should grab a pair from the coffin on the pool deck before you get into the water.

That’s 5:30 AM, y’all . .  on a Saturday . . . in a town 40 minutes from where I live. OMG, what have I done?! Well, I want to learn how to swim faster. whimper

Posted in Life Lessons, NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2012, Reluctant Triathlete, Swimming | 4 Comments

How the Race Was Run… and Planned… and Practiced…

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Jeff Mather

I’ve been working on this post in one form or another for almost two months. That’s how long it’s been since I did the Rev3 Maine triathlon, my first 70.3. In an earlier post I wrote about the event itself: how it went, what I felt, how I pushed myself, and my happiness with the result. This one is about the journey and the practical parts of the tri.

Literally minutes before leaving for the airport to go to Barcelona with Lisa last March, I signed up for an 18-week training plan with TeamWILD. Previously I had been my own coach, mixing swim and bike training sessions around a standard 5K, 10K, or half-marathon training plan. The running plan was sensible, but everything else was quite ad hoc. I was eager to try something a little more holistic and which would provide a bit more structure in my bike and swim workouts. I also knew that I was going to need to have my nutrition and diabetes management dialed in as I upped the distance, otherwise four months of training would be wasted and leaving me wondering “what if?” The TeamWILD plan looked like it would give me what I needed.

I’m so pleased with how everything turned out. I trained hard, worked on developing a race plan, experimented with different nutrition and insulin dosages, and ultimately executed my plan almost exactly as I had hoped. I also learned some important lessons from experience (i.e., mistakes) during races last year and earlier in the season. These are the kind of things that you don’t expect to happen but still have to prepare for. Sometimes I was better at working around the problems, but I always tried to incorporate what went well and what didn’t into my next race plan.

On the big rides I did during the summer, I had been lowering my basal insulin rate by 30% about a half-hour before heading out, eating right before starting, and giving a tiny bolus of insulin along with it. This seemed to work. I didn’t manage to follow this plan for the Olympic-distance NYC Triathlon, and the experience left me with high blood sugar, dehydration, and a tough run at the end. In Maine, I was actively patient on race morning, watching my CGM and waiting to eat, bolus, and give Lisa my pump until the very last moment before my swim wave went out. (My backup pump was waiting for me with my bike in transition. I used it during the rest of the triathlon.)

The swim was tough; it’s definitely my weakest discipline of the three. There was a lot of churning water and bumping swimmers. Someone next to me almost knocked off my goggles with his elbow. The waves didn’t really bother me, but not being able to see very well because of the small swells had me anxious. Halfway through the swim I had that recurring, whiny thought: “I don’t really like swimming.” But then I reminded myself that I was only twenty minutes into the race, it was a bit early for those “Are we there yet?” thoughts, and it would be a long day if I kept up that line of thinking. So I thought about my form and buckled down.

A bit more than 45 minutes after dashing into the water, I was high-stepping my way out, unzipping my wetsuit and running up the main street of Old Orchard Beach into transition. I tested my blood sugar before hopping on the bike, and it had actually fallen a little bit. I wasn’t low, but I was heading in the direction where I knew that I needed to start eating right away.

The bike portion was pretty good. My training consisted of longer, low-intensity rides eventually up to 56 miles, which is the distance of the bike leg of a half-ironman triathlon, along with shorter high-intensity interval and tempo sessions. I had gotten pretty used to what it felt like to ride at my target heart rate during training, so it was easy to get into groove. In fact, it felt a bit too comfortable, and I go back and forth in my mind about whether I should have been a little more aggressive. During the race, though, I was worried about saving enough for the run, so I held back. It was probably the right decision, but it was hard to do.

I tested my BG on the bike, which is something that I had been practicing on my afternoon and weekend rides. What I didn’t take into account, though, was that my jersey would be a bit wet when I went to test. Water is the enemy of BG testing. It makes it hard to get a nice droplet of blood, and it fouls the test strips. I was only able to get one good test in, but it told me that my nutrition plan of eating about 25 grams of carbs every half hour in the form of energy gels and blocks was working well. 2:57 after heading out on the bike, I was back.

The run was the toughest part of the day for me. After almost four hours of swimming and cycling, I was starting to get tired. But it was at this point that I started to think about whether I was in a place to achieve my stretch goal!

My primary and easiest goal was to finish. Next, I hoped to have a good diabetes day and have a smart race where I executed the plan that I laid out in the previous couple of weeks. Then there were the time goals that I hoped to meet. Conservatively, I was estimating 6.5 to 7 hours to complete the 70.3, but I knew that if everything went right, I might be able to go under six hours. Having had an okay swim and a solid bike performance and seeing good blood sugar numbers, I was in the place to start pushing myself for that sub-6:00 finish.

All things considered, the run was quite difficult. By itself, running a half marathon isn’t too hard, but after swimming and biking, it took on a life of its own. Having the time goal really helped. It kept me motivated and prevented me from walking a few times where it would have been easier to relax for a bit. I ran hard but not fast (for me) as I plodded through the 13.1 miles.

But in the end I finished with a combined time of 5:58:36!

Training for the Rev3 Half was incredibly rewarding. Even though it took up a lot of time, I feel much stronger physically and mentally, and my diabetes skills are much better, too. I am definitely going to do more 70.3 races in the coming years.

Posted in Cycling, Diabetes, Reluctant Triathlete, Running, Swimming | 2 Comments