So I finished 2013 better than the middle of 2013. Dear reader(s) know I had an interesting 2013, if by interesting you understand I mean DNF.  I’ve learned a lot in 2013.

For one, I learned that if my wife accompanies me on a marathon swim, I DNF. I attempted two marathons in the last year, year and a half (Swim for the Potomac 10K and Ocean City 9-miler), and both times my wife came with me and I didn’t finish. Granted, it was because I was ill-prepared. But still…she’s the variable.  😉

I also learned that I shouldn’t let little things bug me so much that I drop swimming. I had my swim bag stolen out of my van in the summer, and from then for about 3-4 months I was in a funk, where I rarely swam. That was a mistake, and most likely the reason for my DNF in Ocean City, all joking about the spousal unit aside.

But the year was positive, as well. I learned that I love coaching, and I think I’m good at it. I coach for DC Tri Club in their Master Swimming Program. My triathletes are great, if a bit whiny. But they listen, they try out what I suggest, and in a few instances, they come back to me and thank me for helping them decrease their swim times in triathlons. That is worth the pain that is driving from Old Town Alexandria to northwest DC every Friday.

I’ve gotten a little more relaxed about my swimming. If I don’t make a workout, meh! I also started swimming with my daughters’ team, the Sea Dragons of Alexandria YMCA. The coach there told me he loves having me (and one of the swim-moms) swimming with them because he can use us. Example: “If Mr Tyson beats any of you on this 100 free, you’re reswimming it.” I don’t mind that. In fact, it makes me swim faster!

I learned that even if I miss some swimming, including missing weeks of swimming, I can go back and still swim comfortably. I termed this kind of swimming “swimming horizontal.”  I learned in Swim for the Potomac 10K that my lower back is the most important muscle of my body. If that hurts, I don’t finish. So I concentrate on “time horizontal.” I try to swim a long swim once a month. I’m talking 9-10K at a time. More important: 3 hours horizontal. I’ve learned that if I do that, then I succeed. After Swim for the Potomac, I concentrated on simply swimming horizontal for as long as possible. Result? I swam Swim the Suck (OMG, I love that swim so much. I wish I could do it every year. This year I’ll be deployed, so I won’t be able to make it…but I just learned that the USMS 1-3 mile OW championships is being sponsored by COWS.  Hmmm…) in 4:44. Not bad for a fat old guy for 10 miles.

So, I ended the year missing my goal of 300 miles. Just shy of 250 miles. I did 5500 meters yesterday in 91 minutes, which I thought was AWESOME for me. That’s about 3626m per hour. Today I did 9100 meters in 2:53. That’s just under 3200 meters per hour. I’m happy with that! And you know what? I felt strong at the end, able to really push hard. And my lower back? Do I even have a lower back? I can’t feel it! It doesn’t hurt!  Hurrah!

So 2013. Love it and hate it. But I wouldn’t change it. (Well, maybe I would have finished Ocean City.)

Well, if you’ve read more than a few posts here, dear reader(s), then you know 2013 was not my season. Compared to my first season in 2010 (Christiansborg Round 2K and Cyprus 5K), my second (Big Deuce 2-miler, Southern Zone 5K and Dart 10K), and last year (the Texas 4K, the NJ 5K, the Potomac 10K (or, rather, 8.75K), and Swim the Suck 10-miler), this year royally sucked. Here was my initial schedule:

• END-Wet, 26.7 miles
• C3 Circumnavigation, 15.1 miles
• Swim the Suck, 10 miles

I didn’t do any of those, unfortunately. Two withdrawals were my fault; the last one I had to withdraw due to a family wedding, so not my fault. Here is what I ended up doing this year:

• Tampa Bay relay, 24 miles
• Swim Ocean City, 9 miles
• Swim for the Potomac, 3K

And of those, I only finished one, the 3K. Our relay of six only got ~18 miles, and I only swam 4 shifts of 30 minutes each, so maybe I swam 4 miles that day. Ocean City was a bust at 4.1 miles according to Mr Garmin. 

My season went to shit around when I had my swim bag stolen out of my car, mid-summer. That coincided with my primary solo pool, where I go to do nice and long pool swims, closing down for an extended period of time (4+ months) for repairs to the HVAC. Hell, they’re still not open; November 1st is their advertised opening, adjusted from an initial October 1st opening back when they first closed down. Both those events really got me down, swimming-wise, and I just couldn’t get out of the funk. Like I’ve posted before, my mileage was on par to go over 300 miles for the year until mid-summer. I’ve done little to no swimming since. It’s horrible. Next year won’t be any easier. I’m either deploying first half of next year, or the second half. I won’t know for another month or so. Having that degree of certainty does not lend itself to planning out 2014.

So, I’m trying hard to get back in gear. I’ll go swim tonight. I’ll swim Wednesday (I swim with my girls’ team at the Y). I’ll try and go on Thursday. I’ll go early to coach Friday night and try to get some meters in. Slowly but surely I’ll get back in the swimming mood. It’ll just take time.

So, I did some math, which I’m capable of doing if everyone leaves me alone and it’s quiet and I have a calculator.  Amway, I’ve only swum 189.66 miles this year so far, counting last night’s awesomely fun masters workout. (Besides warm-up and cool-down, we did a timed 5 x 100 SCY swim, during which I swam 1:13, 1:14, 1:16, 1:18 and 1:21. And that’s from the wall, ya’ll!) Back to the point: I’ll need to do just over a mile a day every day to hit my goal this year, which was 300 miles. So, to make the math easier, I’m aiming for 8 miles a week between now and New Year’s Eve.

Will I do it? I don’t know. Really, it doesn’t matter. But it’s fun to have goals. Maybe next year I’ll just track time. I say loudly and often that I am more concerned with time horizontal than distance. (My back complains if I don’t have a lot of horizontal time prior to an OW swim.) Perhaps I’ll put my money where my mouth is in 2014 and just track minutes.* We’ll see.

*This year so far I’ve swum 108 hours 3 minutes. That’s it. Pathetic.

Results are in. I did the 3K in 58:40.  Daughter #1 did it in 21:38 (6 minutes slower than last year for some reason) and daughter #2 did her 1K+ in 34:53. Poor thing would have been near the top if she had just stuck to the course. I wonder if the 500m course was a little big? Why, you ask? Because last year (link pdf), the top times were in the 9-11:00 minute range. This year (also pdf) they were in the 15:00 minute range. I have no way of telling since I didn’t have an extra GPS watch lying around to give to one of my daughters, and no name is repeated from 2012 to this year except daughter #1.

I got a great picture from the event, suitable for framing. I know what my dear reader(s) are saying. “That’s you?”  Well, my wife and doctor recognized me immediately!

I finally got my Garmin working, and have the map from my 3K (ha!) swim. Here’s the map:

As you can see from the very start, the loop was a bit short of 3K. We started at a mutual starting point, the same one for all races, then swam toward our buoys, which for the 3K were green. That explain why my start and finish are at two different locations. Still don’t know why the loops didn’t add up. Also, it seems at one point I got an atypical south-to-north current and for a few seconds was swimming at 20mph! Live the dream! Anyway, I’m not sure why I’ve got so much non-moving time. I was speaking to my daughter for that long, certainly not over 10 minutes. So, I’m really confused. My moving pace is awesome for me, but probably unrealistic with so little swimming this summer. But the average pace is a bit slow, even with the couple of minutes I spent getting my youngest back on her way. Who knows. I really wish I could manipulate these data more. In the Timing box, you can see the completely flat spot right after my speed boost. That is probably the time I stopped to talk with my daughter. If I could manipulate this, I could figure out exactly how many minutes I spent in one spot, then I can deduct that from my totals to find out my pace.

The one good thing this map shows is that I’m getting a little better at staying on course, although if you zoom in, you can see I still need some work. God, I love technology.

Dear reader(s), you know if you’ve read my infrequent blog posts this summer, that I’ve not had a successful swim season. From lack of preparedness to real life interfering with my swim schedule, I’ve not had much luck this year. In fact, until today, every race I entered I DNF’d. That’s not good.

But today I took part in the Swim for the Potomac. This swim is put on by WaveOne Swimming, a group of OW lovers who years ago decided to bring OW swimming to the National Capital Region. Besides the Atlantic Ocean, there was nowhere legal to swim OW in the DC area. They went through the pain of getting permissions for swims in the Potomac, and are trying to bring awareness to OW swimming in this area, especially in the Potomac. Denis Crean is the mastermind behind this organization, and no slouch himself. He’s also the OW chair of my local masters swimming committee.

Alert readers will by now have figured out that this was the swim last year that I didn’t finish, the 10K that became a 8.75K. So this year I decided to go for something I knew I could finish. No, not the 5K. Even that I wasn’t sure of, after my pathetic attempts this year (DNFs in Tampa Bay and Ocean City) and what with my practically zero swimming all summer. (I only swam 58.6 miles between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and most of that was in June and the first half of July. Yes I know that sucks.) So I signed up for the 3K. I had swum that much in practice a week or so ago, so I figured I’d just swim it slowly and finish. Plus, my girls were doing the 500m, so I definitely wanted to finish for them.

Wow was I wrong. I felt so good, I should have done the 5K. The 3K flew by, except for the middle of the second lap, which I’ll explain in a minute. Anyway, I felt great and was really able to put the pedal to the metal, sts. I’d love to give you a map of my swim from my Garmin, which I did remember to bring and did remember to start and even press laps. But for some reason, our new Windows 8 computer is not cooperating with the Garmin, so the map will have to wait.

So, I let all the giggling high school and middle school kids clog the start area while me and the rest of the adults hung out to the sides and back. The gun went off and boom, we swam. Wasn’t long before the kids sprinted forward, but I must say I held my own with some wetsuit-clad (don’t judge them! the water was only 76 degrees) men, even bumping one particular guy who couldn’t swim straight. And yes, dear reader(s), I actually swam pretty straight. Little to no correction needed between sightings. I was so proud. (Another reason I’d like to get the map uploaded.)

Lap one of three finished, I pressed the lap button and started stretching out and getting into my groove. On leg 2 of lap 2 I started picking up the pace, realizing that I’m doing just fine and have no reason to save anything for later. In the middle of leg 3 I noticed whom I thought was one of the high school girls just treading water with her goggles off. Then I heard, “Dad!” There was my 10-year old, way off course from the 500 she was doing, wondering where she was. Poor thing finished her first 250m lap and then started following other green-cap clad swimmers until she realized she was doing the 1000m loop that we 3K swimmers were doing! She was freaking out a little, not knowing how to get back. I pointed her to the end of the pier and told her to swim there until she got to the finish line. Thankfully, a volunteer kayaker (thank you all!) came by and said he’d escort back to her course. I wish I had a GPS on her, because she did a full 250m loop then almost an entire 1000m loop, and she only signed up for the 500m race! Poor thing came in last, but she did do more than twice what all her competitors did. At the end I asked her why she didn’t just follow her sister, my almost-14-year old. “She was going too slowly, Dad!”  Sure enough, the older daughter told me, “We got in the water and started and boom, Lucy was gone!”

So I finished lap 2 and then decided to pick it up for lap 3. I wish I could tell you the time. Maybe when Garmin Support responds to my email. Regardless, lap 3 felt great and again I was navigating way better than I normally do. Around buoy 2 I started picking up the pace, and around 3 heading home I put my head down (sts) and really pushed. As I got to the pier a bunch of people, non-family people even!, were cheering loudly for me to swim faster. Then three of those 5K kids swam by me. Oh! That explains it. Well, it helped me nonetheless. I pulled in and turned the Garmin off.

So, my final time of 58 minutes and some change includes a few minutes calming my daughter down, which is okay with me. I felt so bad for her; she said she doesn’t want to swim this race next year! So, I have a year to change your mind, is what you’re telling me?  (The girl just started competitive swimming summer of 2012. Within a couple swim meets, she’s started destroying me. Her LCM 50 back is :41.78; 50 fly 41:98; 100 free 1:16.98!)

Funny how sometimes swims just pop up. Got an email from the guys at WaveOne Swimming. In the email they mention the Endless Summer Swim, a 5K swim about 2.5 hours south of me. THIS WEEKEND! What?! Holy crap.

I’m thinking of entering. They give you something like 3 hours to finish it. Might be just what I need to get out of my funk. I’ve been skipping practice and not swimming, biking instead (no, I’m not becoming a triathlete…as long as triathlons have runs in them I’m out). I just haven’t been into it. But perhaps a nice slow swim in a lake will do the trick?

There is a 500m swim for the under-12’s. I’m trying to talk my lazy, ennui-laden 10-year old (who, btw, just did a 5000 yard workout yesterday, her longest yet in the year she’s been swimming!) into coming down there with daddy to do the swim. I may force her to do it.

So, dear reader(s), yours truly may be back in the saddle again soon. Maybe…

Well, this 2013 season is turned into an interesting season. I’m not being very successful. Tampa Bay? We didn’t make it. END-Wet? I withdrew. Ocean City? Quit not even half-way. But I get ahead of myself.

The reason for my failure at Ocean City is 99% my fault. I was not ready for the salt water. Made my tummy queasy. I was not ready for the waves. And we’re not talking weeny waves. We’re talking 5-6 ft high on the beach. Not much reduced 100-odd yards out. Very nauseating. I was not ready for the cold. Cold! Not EC cold. Not (probably) Catalina cold. But for weeny Mike, the water was cold. I’d say in the 62-63 degree range. The organizers after the fact said 64 I think. Regardless, freaking cold. And my stupid back. It hurt. And not like last year in the 10K I made only 8.75K of. I hurt my back two days after registering (of course). I zigged when I should have zagged and pulled something. I was on 600mg ibuprofen every 8 hours for about 4 days prior to the swim. It started feeling better Friday of the swim. It was killing me only a bit into the damn race. Still, all the above can be chalked up to me not preparing myself properly. What I want to talk about here is the 1%.

The race was 9 miles along the shore, going north “with” the current (ha!). Buoys would be placed at intervals. Red/orange for the start and finish buoys, green intermediate, and I think yellow to designate the feeding stops at 3, 6 and 8 miles. So really, there was no way to get lost. I didn’t ask for a kayaker as I thought that would be unfair seeing how I registered on the last possible day, a week prior. I figured I could drink a lot of water prior, then take advantage of the drink stops.

The safety brief went well. The Captain of the beach patrol went over safety, and I thought did a pretty good job. The Captain said that at noon they’d have to pull two lifeguards to take up to the 6 mile mark for the 3-mile swim start (all three races would have the same finish) and then at 12:30 they’d take two more for the 1-mile swim. The Captain mentioned a large number of lifeguards, something on the order of 14, but I can’t remember exactly.

My first indication of a problem was when a swimmer asked a question about withdrawing, and what do we do, are we disqual’d if we stand-up, something along those lines. The Captain pointed to the race organizer and said “That question is for him.” The organizer stated that the swimmer is disqualified if they leave the water. Then someone asked how we get back if we quit. He didn’t have an answer. I thought, My goodness, did you guys not dry run this? But I figured, why worry?

The start went off like a hitch. The water was bracing, and I had to take short breaths for a while. My hands froze, as did my feet. I followed some of the wetsuits and lifeguards. A wetsuit and I ran in to each other once, but other than that, no problems. Little did I know that he would be the last swimmer I’d see all day.

One or two lifeguards kept paralleling me. I had to stop a couple times to pee. I just can’t get a hang of starting to pee while horizontal. They seemed to be concerned for me, asking me if I’m alright. I didn’t realize at the time that i was in last place. Didn’t hurt that the lifeguard who paralleled me for a majority of the time was cute as hell. I breathe right not because she was there, but because that’s what I do dammit!

On one of my pee stops I looked at the race time and I was a good hour in when I realized I hadn’t seen a buoy yet. I wasn’t any farther in or out from the start buoy, so I was confused. Maybe they’re farther apart than I think. At an hour I should have been at or near the 2 mile mark. Surely I wasn’t going so slowly that I hadn’t hit the first intermediate buoy, was I? At 1:40 race time, a jet ski came up to my lifeguard and took her away. She gave me two thumbs up as she scooted off. I stopped to look around and saw that there were no more lifeguards, no swimmers, no kayaks, nothing around me. Some surfers were near shore, but no one was swimming. I was cold (still!) and alone. Weird.

So I was cold, alone and my back hurt. Who care? I just kept going, figuring I’ll finish but it’ll take longer than I’d hoped. At 2:00 I began to get worried as I still hadn’t seen a buoy and hell, where was the 3-mile feeding stop? How could I have missed it? They described it as a small boat with inner tubes around it filled with water, Gatorade, Gu’s, etc. Oh crap! I’m two hours in and I haven’t even swum 3 miles yet? Holy crap, I’m slow. I asked a couple surfers if they’d seen any buoys and they said no. One looked up and down the beach from his sitting position and he said he didn’t see anything that looked like a buoy.

I plowed on, increasingly hurting and freezing. My hands were frozen, and when I would make a fist out of my hand, it would feel like my fingers were cracking. This is lower cold than in the UK or Denmark, so why am I not warming up? Dammit. At 2:30 I stopped. My brain kept telling me that I was off course. But that was impossible since the race was just swimming up the coast. But the animal brain won out. I started coming. Hell, if I’m 2.5 hours in and I haven’t even swum 3 miles yet, then I’m doomed.

When I could stand up (the waves knocked me down several times), I pulled my GPS out of my cap and saw that I had swum 4.1 miles. What? How? So where the hell was the 3-mile feeding stop? I looked up and down the beach. I found a green buoy, about as far out as I was swimming, about 200 further yards north. But no boats, no kayaks, nothing. And I was still freezing.

The organizers were wonderful in their response to my whining! They admitted to coming up with the same problems and solutions. They will require all 9-mile swimmers have kayak escort next year. And they’ll have a designated escort vehicle for swimmers who have to pull out of the race.

It wasn’t all bad! My wife and kids got to catch some history on the beach. At around noon, they noticed a small helicopter-UAV flying above the beach. A bunch of people started clapping. The kids and wife weren’t too impressed. It’s just some guy flying an RC helicopter. Just then, three long-haired men in full running gear ran past them on the beach and dove into the water, still in their sneakers and everything. They were giddy with laughter, so happy and excited.

Well, they should be. Turns out these three men just finished running a long way. All the way from San Francisco. No, that’s not a typo. They started back in February and, get this, averaged 28 MILES OF RUNNING A DAY. Yes, 28 miles! Talk about a triad of Forrest Gumps! These men raised money for sarcoma cancer research (God bless ’em) and noon last Saturday at Ocean City, MD, was the planned arrival for them! (My 16-year old is the first comment on that article.) These men ran for Miles 2 Give. Hearing about these guys made my weekend.

(The picture above is of these guys after they jumped into the ocean. My start buoy is on the left.)

I’ve found a local marathon swim that I’ll be attending this weekend. After having to drop out of END-Wet due to lack of preparation, I was glad there was a close swim to fill in the blank in my schedule. It’s been a long time since Tampa, so I’ve been itching to race. There are the occasional locals races, but recently it seems they are all the types where you have to raise a set amount of money in order to participate. I don’t like asking people to give; I prefer to just have a link on my blog and in my email so if people are interested, they can give money.

The race I found is Swim Ocean City, in, you guessed it, Ocean City, MD. There are three lengths being contested and yours truly, of course, has chosen the nine mile race. The race will be with current, the organizers promise. They have contingencies set for either a N-S route or the reverse, depending upon the current. I’m hoping they have some sort of sooth on staff who knows for sure that the current won’t change in the middle of the race. When I first heard of this race, two things kept me from signing up: one, they didn’t allow kayak escorts (that combined with drink stations only at 3-, 6- and 8-mile marks) and two, it was only a week after END-Wet.

Well, as I said, I didn’t do END-Wet. And since I brought up the escort rule in the marathon swimmers forum, the organizers changed the rules stating that you can bring a kayaker, or even just a paddler and they’ll find you one. I ended up signing up way too late to beg ask my uncle to escort me, so I thought I’d try out the drink stations. My plan entails drinking a lot of water starting the night prior, and even more right before I get into the water. I’ll force myself to stop to get water at the 3-mile mark if I’m anywhere near 90 minutes by that point. But if this race is like the Dart 10K and I hit 3 miles at some crazy time like an hour, I may just skip that stop.

I’ll put a couple Gu’s in my suit for nutrition. I’m going to practice what that feels like tomorrow morning. Not eating the Gu, but swimming for an hour plus with two little plastic pouches tucked somewhere between my belly button and crotch. I won’t need any electrolytes as I’ll be swimming in the ocean, so I’m good there. And if I make the 3-mile mark quickly but drag to mile 6, then I can drink a bunch there to make up. Or maybe I’ll just force myself to drink at all the stops.

I’m taking the wife and 3/4 of the kids. The other quarter has to work and HA! he gets to take care of the dog. Free labor! Anyway, the family can spend time on the beach while daddy “works,” then we can hang out a little, maybe attend the post race party at Trader Lees, then head home. It should be fun.