Category Archives: Swimming

Ironman Texas Practice Swim, April 28th 2012

By tjfry | April 19, 2012

It’s that time of year again. Time to get dialed in for Ironman Texas. You’ve done the long rides, ran the long runs, and now it’s time to go for a long swim in Lake Woodlands. A 1.2 mile loop will be marked with the full support of lifeguards and boats. They will also have vendors and a bag drop to leave your stuff while you swim. Starts at 7:30am and be sure to get there on time, as they will stop letting athletes in the water at 8:30am. Please note that the entire Ironman Texas course will not be available. Swimming up the waterway is a big no-no before raceday. After the Ironman course closes, they will move the buoys and set up the CB&I practice swim course. This will be a 500 meter triangle for those competing in the CB&I Triathlon on May 5th.

Here’s the flyer:

http://www.thewoodlandstownship-tx.gov/DocumentCenter/Home/View/2790

Worried about your first Ironman swim or the  CB&I Triathlon swim? Then sign up for the clinic I’m putting that morning. We’ll go over the course, what to watch for, what to watch out for, tactics, worries, you name it. Bring your questions and I’ll be happy to answer.

You can sign up by calling 281-210-3950 and ask for TJ Fry’s swim clinic.

See you out there.

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The Red Headed, Step Brick

By tjfry | March 19, 2012

If you’re new to this sport, you will soon hear the term “brick” if you haven’t already. If you’ve been doing this sport for a while you probably hear it on a regular basis. The term “brick” refers to the training of two sports sports back to back without any rest. The term was created back in the late 80′s or early 90′s, when a pro triathlete and his training buddy (who would become the executive director of USA Triathlon) would do this type of training, and at the end, make a habit of quoting a Pink Floyd song. “Well, knocked that workout out. Another brick in the wall”. Over time that phrase stuck to that particular workout and became known as simply, “the brick”.  Most often people train on the bike and then immediately follow it with a run, in hopes of some race day simulation for the body. For some, bricks are a regular part of the workout diet.  For others, they skip them all together. Most of us fall somewhere in between.

For those who are regulars to the workout, they will argue that it helps your body adjust to the next sport quicker and teaches you to (in the case of the bike-run brick) run strong on tired legs. While we could discuss the virtues of the bike run brick, I’m going to save those, if any, for another day. What I did want to hit on was what I think of as the more important of the two bricks. The swim to bike brick.

On the bike to run brick, your cycling muscles are fully engorged in blood. Get off the bike to run and your legs will feel like lead. Partly because fatigue is setting in, but partly because the blood is sitting in some of the wrong muscles. For most it takes just a few minutes for the blood to shift an inch or two to the correct muscles before you feel like you have your running legs back. The fitter you are, the more blood vessels you have, the faster you get the blood moved over to those neighboring areas.

The swim to bike, however, is an entirely different equation. First of all, instead of using the same or neighboring muscles, the muscles you use for the swim are at the opposite end of your body. Back, shoulders and arms are all quite a distance from your calves and quads. So the travel time is considerably longer. Next problem is that you go from horizontal (swimming) to vertical (running to your bike and then biking). You also move from a zero gravity environment in the water, to gravity in all its glory. This creates adjustments that your body will need to make, not just with the muscles, but the organs as well.

These differences present some much different problems. First off is just standing up. With all the blood either in your shoulders/arms and balanced evenly in your organs for a weightless environment, you are going to feel horrible in about 10 seconds. Headrushes, dead feeling legs, and a heart rate that is going through the roof are all part of the fun. You will often see a very large number of people walking from the water to the transition area on race day for this very reason. Unfortunately it doesn’t end there. When you climb on your bike there is a high probability that your body is still working hard to reallocate it’s resources. I’ve found that it takes me as long as 20 minutes to get fully adjusted in an Ironman. Others mileage will vary based on how hard you pushed the swim, race distance, swim ability, etc., but you get the idea. Where a bike/run run lasts about 3 minutes to fully adjust to, the swim to bike acclimation takes a much longer time.

So why don’t many people practice this transition? Two big reasons. First is logistics. It can be hard to find a body of water that allows easy and quick access to the roads you ride. Short of a lake or outdoor pool that meets the critera, an easy fix could be your fitness center. Go get a really hard swim in. Hustle through the locker room and climb on a trainer just as fast as you can and then gun it. It’s not perfect, but it can help. Second is that water is involved, and triathletes as a population just don’t like to swim. So anything that includes water will more often than not be put to towards the bottom on the list of priorities.

Do yourself a favor and try and work one of these types of workouts in just once this summer. See if it helps, ’cause the last thing you want in your next race is to be still sucking wind 30 minutes into the bike ride. Happy Training.

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Bilateral Breathing

By tjfry | November 2, 2011

After spending some time helping some people with their stroke, I wanted to chime in on the importance of bilateral breathing. Most would agree that it’s an important thing to learn, although there are people out there that think it’s a waste of time and argue the restricted breathing that it creates. That’s what’s so fun about the internet. You can get someone who took a weekend clinic about swimming and come Monday they are experts in technique. It’s worth stopping by internet forums for this reason alone. I can always find something there to make me smile. But I digress…

For those new to swimming or unfamiliar with the term, bilateral breathing means to breathe to both the right and left side while you swim. Simple enough concept. Sorta like dribbling with your right and left hand when you play basketball. The problem is that quite a few new swimmers (and let’s face it, a lot of swimmers who’ve been at it for a while) shy away from it because it feels awkward and can take a while to adjust to. Added to that that, if you’re struggling with swimming to begin with, and then you must hold your breath for 2 strokes (if you’re breathing every 3) then you’re going to get winded in a hurry. But just because it’s difficult shouldn’t mean you gloss over the idea. The benefits associated with it are many. In fact, as you might have guessed, I’m going to go over a few of them here.

Sighting – For triathletes this is the most obvious argument that is made, and perhaps, one of the least important. In any given open water swim, you are bound to get the sun in your face at some point. So if you are breathing to your right side and the sun is in your face, then the ability to breathe to your left is a great help in navigating your way through the course. The reason I say that this might be the least important is that you can also just close your eyes when you breathe and lift your head to sight in front of you to get around this problem. Not a great solution, but it will do the trick.

Symmetrical Technique – This one’s a biggie. Almost without exception, swimmers will have a strong side and a weak side. Right handed? Then your right arm/pull is typically stronger than your left. To make matters worse, swimmers will cater to the strong side by breathing to the strong side. A the domino effect begins..In order to breathe just to one side (we’ll use the right for this discussion)  they start swimming with the left shoulder lower in the water to make for an easier breath.  This makes one arm pull deeper than the other. To compensate for that they begin to reach a little further with the right arm to get a bigger pull with the strong arm. This soon turns into an overreach, and now there is a slight wiggle in their stroke. In order to compensate for the wiggle, the swimmer adds one really large kick with his right foot to get the body to rotate back over. Now he has a scissor kick and can’t swim in a straight line. What started out as favoring one side of breathing a little has turned into a bit of a messy stroke. This isn’t an exaggeration either. I have corrected a stroke just like this on numerous occasions by simply forcing them to breathe every 3rd stroke to make the pull symmetrically. There are other examples I could give such as dropping the elbow and breaking form when you breathe, but this is a blog, not a book.
Notice the asymmetrical strokes in the following videos. Strong swimmers, but the uneven stroke is costing them efficiency.

Rotation – Good body rotation is a big focus in learning how to swim well. Grab any book on the subject of swimming and rotation is mentioned early and often. When you choose to breathe on just one side though, you only develop half of that rotation. Because you’re favoring (as I mentioned above) one side, you will not rotate fully back to the other side. This is also at trap when people breathe just to the right for a length and then just to the left for a length. It’s a typical workaround for those who just hate breathing every 3rd stroke. So by favoring one side you rotate well in one direction and then finish rotating on the other side completely flat on their stomach. By not continually alternating your breathing you don’t learn proper rotation, you just learn how to drop a shoulder.

Swimming Straight – This is also a play off of the technique issue (isn’t everything a play off of technique with swimming?). An imbalance in your stroke leads to swimming crooked. It’s quite simple really. If one arm has a bigger reach/stroke than another, even if by a tiny amount, then the stronger arm/bigger stroke will control the direction. Never an issue in the pool as you have a black line and your hands naturally adjust pitch to steer in a straight line. Get in open water however, and you you’ll find yourself swimming all over the place. Happens to everyone. When I breathe to my left I tend to steer right just a little. Still working on that.

Now, I know the first thing some of you are thinking. “Well I watched (Insert Name Here) race in the Olympics/Ironman/World Cup, and they breathed to the same side the whole race. If they don’t do it why should I think it’s important? Answer is pretty simple really. When you race, technique needs to almost be automatic and getting enough air needs to be the focus. In training, you are focusing on technique so that it becomes automatic, so that needs to be the focus. In other words, when the effort is big (training or racing) get your air, but the rest of the time dial in that stroke.

If nothing else, watch the best swimmers do it. If you think it’s tough and they make it look easy…maybe, just maybe, there’s something to it.

Now go breathe right…..and left.

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My 1997 Kona Race Report

By tjfry | September 13, 2011

With less than 30 days until I head back to Kona for the Ironman World Championships, it’s safe to say that I have this great event on my mind. So I thought I would put up my race report from my first trip there in 1997 when I was a pro. Now, “race reports” didn’t really exist back then, but I kept a pretty detailed training log so I’m just going to convert my shorthand of details into a readable form. Race reports can be hit or miss, so proceed at your own risk….

I should probably back up a few weeks and provide a little lead up to race day first. This was a year that I was able to hit a lot of big races and truly get to race like a pro. Big races, big destinations and huge training days. Great fun. About 5 weeks before Ironman, I had a race in Nansei, Japan. Went out there with a few other Americans (Garrett McCarthy and Becky (Gibbs) Lavelle to name a couple), along with some others from around the world. They put us up in pairs and my roomate was New Zealander Cameron Brown. Lots of great stories came from that week, but that’s another day. I had a rough day on a rough course and finished 7th overall. I was in the middle of my Ironman build and was trying to get my iron levels back to normal after a summer at altitude, so I wasn’t happy, but satisfied considering.

Back in Texas, training was pretty intense for me. I was basically doing a 1/2 Ironman every day of the week, and then hit a long run and ride on the weekend on top of that.  350 miles a week riding and 60 running was getting logged, along with swimming under Eddie Reese and the University of Texas men’s team a few days a week (nothing humbles you quicker than swimming repeat 500′s, holding 5min or under and worrying about getting lapped). I didn’t fully know what to expect with Kona, but knew that if I had any hope of playing along, I needed to hit some big volume. It was about as much as my 23 year old body could handle, and as it turned out, maybe a little too much. On too Kona…

Got up at 4:40am. Had 2 Ensure type drinks, a banana and a powerbar for breakfast. Emmanuel Millet, of one of my sponsors,  Aquaman Wetsuits, picked me up and took me to the start. Waited my turn to get marked and pump up the tires, then waited again to hit the port-a-potty. Ran out of time to get a run warmup, so I ran in place for a few minutes to get the blood pumping. Then it was time. So I got in and warmed up in the water.

Then the strangest thing happened. Everyone is trained in this sport to the air horn. Typical start for any race around. Ironman uses a cannon, but for some reason decided to use the air horn as the 5 minute warning. I think you know where this is going. For the first and only time in Ironman history, there was a false start. The horn went off and I nailed that start, broke free of all the pros and began gapping immediately. 150 yards later a wall of lifeguards stopped us. Bummer. So they backed up 1500 athletes and got them positioned again. The cannon sounds and I jump to the lead again, but this time some of the steam was gone and got a group right on my feet. I lead out to the turn with Wolfgang Ditrich right on my heels. On the way back I figured someone else should take a turn and Wolfgang moved up. As we approached the finish I could sense the excitement in our group of 4 and felt the pace quicken bit by bit. I knew that first out usually got big camera time and I wasn’t really interested. I wanted an even race. So I let them sprint to the dock and came out 4th in 49:39

Ran through transition and passed 2 in the tent. Only Wolfgang was in front of my now.  Rolled up Palani Hill, the enormous crowds and out on the Queen K (Slightly different course back then). Settled into my pace in 2nd place on the road. Sitting out there I had the company of 2 helicopters, and various press vehicles zooming by. Around 50 minutes into the ride, the first pack of contenders rolled by that contained Tim and Tony Deboom. Shortly after came all the big names. Jurgen Zack, Lothar Leder, (eventual winner) Thomas Hellriegel, Peter Reid, Christian Bustos, Cameron Widoff, Ken Glah and a couple of others. (note: looking back, this was one of those moments in your life that you look back on and smile.) I rode with the clan for a while and remembering thinking how the pace was not that bad. Out of my range for 112 at the time, but definitely attainable. Then the day started to turn it’s twisted turn for me. I began getting cramps in my left hamstring. Not that intense, but something that I needed to pay attention to. So I eased off a bit and kept stretching it out. Playing this stretch then pedal game spit me off the back of the group and there was now only 1 other rider with me. Lothar Leder. We rode in proximity of each other up the climb and headwind out to Hawi. At the turn in Hawi I somehow missed my special needs bag, which meant I had to improvise the rest of the ride and live off the aid stations. It pissed me off at the time, but it was a great lesson to learn.

We had a nice tailwind coming down from Hawi, but when we got back to the Queen K, it became a stiff headwind of 30 mph all the way home. This is where my next problems showed up. The bottom of my right foot began cramping pretty intensely and there was noway for me to stretch it (no, getting off my bike and taking off my shoe was not an option). Additionally, the course drink by MetRx was not sitting well with me. Felt completely bloated, so I switched to Coke. As the ride wore on, the foot was getting worse. The cramp had now spread and climbed midway up my calf. The pain was getting beyond intense and the horrible wind didn’t help. I clocked 12mph on a downhill in one of the nastier stretches. Just outside Kona I was about at my breaking point and actually began to cry briefly. Thankfully I arrived in town shortly after and was protected from the wind. T2 was about 8 miles south of the swim back then, so I still had a ways to go, but was happy to see faces. A good friend and fellow pro at the time, Tim Watson rolled up next to me about this point. We exchanged a few words and rode to T2 together.

I got off my bike and had trouble putting weight on my foot. One of the volunteers rubbed my foot while I changed and headed out with Tim (No idea of transition times as back then they were both added to your bike time). Steep climb out of T2 and then in and out of the “pit”. As I ran I felt better but never great. Pace dropped into the 7:20′s and then slowly crept upwards. 1:41 at the half, and began catching some of those who dropped me on the bike. Shortly after 13, I started running into problems again and the pace jumped about 1 min per mile. Held onto this pace until around mile 20 when the bottom just fell out. Pace jumped to well over 12 minute miles. Started stopping at every aid station and legs began stiffening. Started asking for potato chips at aid stations and people were digging through their personal belongings to get me some. Then I began peeing every other mile or so. Final miles were in a blurr. Very little memory of the run back into town to the finish. I crossed the line and walked over to my parents. We went over to the food and I began to try to eat. While talking to them I began to lose my vision. Everything was going blurry and I went from feeling bad to feeling like death. Some doctors came over and carried me into the med tent. Began to feel very cold and temperature began to drop. I overheard the doctors say that I was going into shock and then heard one yell at me to stop letting my eyes roll back in my head. Then every movement caused cramping. Even my jaw cramped. 3 I.V.’s and a shot of magnesium (for the cramping) and I came out of it. Bottom line: my sodium levels dropped too low and hyponatremia kicked in. I crept to the car and headed to the hotel, with my tail firmly between my legs.

It was one of the worst experiences and best experiences I’ve ever been through. I decided that night that I would never attempt another Ironman again. It just wasn’t my bag. Olympic and 1/2 Ironman were more my thing.

Then I got on the plane to head home and noticed that if I had just changed my nutrition like this and adjusted my training like that, then maybe I could…..

And that my friends, is how addictions begin.

 

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