Back in the Pool, One Year Later

Last year, the London Olympics rekindled my love for swimming. It had sort of died out after I got to college and decided I'd rather hang out with everyone in Fitten than keep going to swim club after the first week (which I fully regret, by the way- not that it wasn't fun hanging out with everyone, but I really could have used some regular exercise). But when Olympic trials rolled around last year, I got right back in the swing of things. I was following swimmers on Twitter, watching all the races and the ridiculous "Call Me Maybe" video, but eventually I realized I wanted to get back in the pool too. So, a year ago yesterday, I went back to the Augusta Aquatics Center for the first time.

Throwback Thursdays - Summer League Swimming

One of the trends on Instagram is to post a "throwback" picture every Thursday for "Throwback Thursday" (#tbt). Since my past is actually more exciting than my present, at least when it comes to things to blog about, I'm going to try and write Throwback Thursday posts every week about things I used to love, stories from back in the day, etc. And, of course, a potentially embarrassing old picture.

In 2000, my local neighborhood pool formed a summer swim team. I joined with a few of my friends and thus began my (not-very illustrious) competitive swimming career. I went into the beginning of the season only knowing how to do freestyle, but by the end of the summer I was doing the 100 IM at meets, and I was hooked on swimming.

My team picture from 2002, back in the days when I used way too much Sun-In

Where's the Wall??? An Adventure in Long Course Swimming

For my entire swimming career (if you can call a binder full of participation ribbons a career), I have swam short course yards - only 25 yards per length. The only time I did meters was when one of the pools we swam against during summer league was meters, and I would always look at the heat sheet in confusion because my times were much slower than I remembered. I also never did club swimming, which would have had me swimming long course meters (50 meter lengths) ages ago. Unfortunately, I didn't, so my first experience with swimming LCM was today, during my first trip to the pool after it switched over from SCY for the summer club season.

Final thoughts on WWRLD (with gifs!)

I've commented on Ryan Lochte's E! reality show What Would Ryan Lochte Do? a couple times previously, both negatively and postively, and since the show finished up last week, I figured I would give some final thoughts on it.

What has Ryan Lochte done?

So a couple of months ago, E! announced that Ryan Lochte was getting his own six-episode reality show called What Would Ryan Lochte Do and I actually defended it on my blog, saying it would be a good way to get people interested in swimming again before Worlds this summer.  However, E! finally released a trailer that was more than just 30 second flashes of Ryan saying "Jeah!" over and over again, and I'm going to have to go ahead and take back my previous statement.  This show looks like it's going to be the same sort of ridiculous train wreck that every other E! reality show is.

The majority of the clips in the four and a half minute "super trailer" focused not on Ryan's training or meets or really anything even remotely related to swimming, but on him trying to find "the one."  There were a couple of clips of him blowing off practice to go to a bar, clips of him trying to pick up girls at the bar, clips of him talking to his "assistant" about finding the one, clips of him talking to his mom and sister about picking up girls at the bar.  Ryan's explanation of how to properly say "jeah" was longer than any of the clips of him in the pool.

Sure, the clips of him with his family were cute.  Sure, the ridiculous faces he made when he was trying to think of what the "Lochte Edge" was were hilarious.  But Ryan said he's doing this show to try to raise the profile of swimming, and it doesn't seem like that's the angle the show wanted to take.  I'm sure E! didn't want to just air six episodes worth of Ryan swimming laps at practice, and I knew that was never going to happen.  It just would have been nice to have seen more swimming in the preview of a show about a swimmer.

Of course, the unthinkable could happen and the show could actually be better than it seems from this trailer.  There could be more swimming and less "looking for the one" but honestly, this is E! so that's never going to happen.  This isn't NBC trying to hype up the Olympics.  This is a channel whose showcase show is about Kim Kardashian, so I'm not really expecting it to focus as much on the sport.  That's not to say I'm not going to watch it, because I will be so there for every episode.  But I'll probably end up watching every episode with a sad longing for something much more pool-related.

Why America Will Never Nationally Televise Your Second-Tier Sporting Event

So this week was the start of the NCAA Division 1 Swimming Championships.  It's streamed online only with delayed TV coverage, and this has prompted a TON of tweets about how swimming should be televised and not the NCAA basketball that is going on right now as well.  I really hate to say this, but those people are pretty delusional if they think that's actually going to happen.  Sports television coverage in the US is designed around events that the average American sports fan would watch, and unfortunately for many fans, a ton of sporting events don't fall anywhere close to this category, and as much as I love swimming, it isn't in that category

The "average American sports fan"

I am a Spoiled Swimmer Part 2 - Problem Solved!

After a second disappointing swim in the gym pool, where I luckily had the pool to myself but the water was way too warm for me to swim laps comfortably, I was thrilled to see the sign that said "pool closed for repairs week of 2/11."  It was the perfect excuse for me to check out an actual aquatic center.  Mountain View Aquatic Center was only about 15 minutes away, so I suited up and drove over there one morning that week to test the waters.

I Am a Spoiled Swimmer (or, Adventures in Gym Swimming)

For all the years I have been swimming, I've never really thought much of my pool situations.  For eight summers I swam once or twice a day with my summer league team at a nearby neighborhood pool.  For four years of high school, I swam five afternoons a week, four months a year, in the Olympic-sized aquatics center downtown.   From August through last week, I swam at that same aquatics center up to three times a week, and those were glorious swims.  I never had to share a lane, never lacked equipment, never had any problems. And apparently I shouldn't have been taking that for granted.

I recently got a job in a different city and moved into my new apartment last week.  My apartment had a deal where I could get a free month trial at the gym right down the road, and they have a pool so I figured I would try it out until I can find another pool that is convenient to home and work.  I don't know if it was just today, but there's a good chance I may be having to find another pool sooner than I expected.

When I got there and saw that it was only three lanes, I was a little apprehensive, but I blew it off.  Not every pool is going to have sixteen lanes like I'm used to, I could deal with that.  I thought I was going to have to share a lane, but in the time it took me to stretch one of the lanes cleared out, so I was good on that one.  However, my stretching time also made me realize two other things- first, the pool was in the same enclosed area as the spa so it was grossly steamy and hot, and second, that there was no box of equipment.  I have my own goggles, cap and fins, but I never bothered to buy a pull buoy or kickboard because my aquatics center always had plenty of them in their equipment box.

I was annoyed, but I could deal with this.  I looked through the workouts I had and picked one that didn't have lots of kick and pull sets and figured I would either remove the ones it did have or change them up.  With that settled, I jumped into the empty center lane and things went south from there.  I immediately realized two things-  the pool was only three feet deep all the way across and it was salt water.  I could deal with the depth, but the salt water is something I've never really had a chance to get used to.  I've always swam in chlorinated pools with the exception of a few summer league away meets.  It was really unpleasant at first and I found myself drinking twice as often from my water bottle (which overall probably isn't a bad thing) to get the taste out of my mouth. Maybe it's something I'll get used to over time, or maybe all the pools here are salt water and I'll be forced to learn to deal with it.  Regardless, it didn't make my experience any better.

While swimming my warm-up, I realized the biggest difference between an aquatics center and a pool at a gym- aquatics centers are for swimmers, and gym pools are for people who want to swim.  I don't want to step on any toes or insult anyone, and I know I'm not the world's greatest swimmer either.  Normally I look like an old lady stuck swimming in a pool of Michael Phelpses.  But today, I was the Michael Phelps in a pool of old ladies.  I really don't want to downplay anyone's swimming efforts, because it's a great way to exercise, but these people's strokes were all over the place.  They were kicking wildly and out of rhythm and splashing all over the place.  The small width probably made this more prevalent, but I felt more like I was in a wave pool than a swimming pool.  I normally pride myself on having a really even stroke count, especially when I'm swimming 200 or more yards at a time, but today I had a different stroke count every single length.  It was so annoying to me that I ended up cutting out almost half of my workout and leaving after less than an hour.

It could have just been the time of day, or it could have been those particular people.  I could end up getting used to all of these different factors over the next month, or I could end up going out of my way just so I can have all the luxuries I'm used to at an aquatics center.  Whatever the case, I definitely learned something about myself today- I am a spoiled swimmer.

Top Moments in 2012- #5: Getting Back in the Pool

Since I started college, I had been gaining weight.  The only thing mythical about the Freshman Fifteen is that you only gain it freshman year.  Back in the summer of 2010, I did Weight Watchers for a little bit, and managed to lose 15 pounds, but when I went back to school in the fall I gained it right back.  I won't go into specifics, but let's just say that I weigh more than I would like to weigh.  The worst part is that I'm pretty lazy when it comes to working out, especially since I hate running, so I never really had a routine for going to the gym or anything.

After the Olympics this summer, though, that changed.  Watching all of the swimming events reminded me of how much fun I used to have swimming and how much I used to love just being in the water in general.  So I decided that a great way for me to start losing weight and getting back into shape would be for me to get back into the pool again.

I started swimming when I was ten years old, when the neighborhood pool we were members of started a swim team, so I was a founding member of the Rivershyre Tiger Sharks.  I loved swimming in general, and being able to swim competitively just made it even better.  Unfortunately, I was never very fast- I got last or second to last in almost everything, but I always loved going to the pool and going to practice and just being in the pool in general.  I had already basically chosen club soccer over club swimming at this point, so I was just swimming in the summer and the kids who were swimming year-round were getting so much better than me, but I didn't really care that much.

By the time I got to high school and started swimming there, the 2004 Olympics had happened and I had a Michael Phelps poster that I'd gotten at a meet that summer hanging up on my wall and despite the fact that I loved soccer, swimming was my favorite sport to actually do.  I loved being in the water- it was a great way for me to take my mind off everything else and just relax in the pool.  I kept it up all through high school and was a co-captain my senior year.

I went to the first meeting of the swim club my freshman year at Georgia Tech, but I didn't want to make time to go to practices at night, so I just never went back.  Looking back now, I wish I had, because not only would I have been able to stay in better shape during college, but I would have made some more swimming friends too.

So when I was inspired to get back in the pool after the Olympics in August, it was the first time I had been in the pool in over four years.  I started out slow, using some of the beginners Speedo Pace Club workouts of around 1000 yards.  I kept gradually bumping up my yardage until I was doing a mile or more every time I was going to the pool, which was one to three times a week, depending on how I was feeling.

After Thanksgiving, I decided I wanted to kick it up another notch, since I knew I would be eating more and the main reason I had gotten back in the pool in the first place was to lose weight.  With my dieting and swimming combined, I've lost 20 pounds so far.  I've been doing up to two miles now the past couple of times I've been to the pool, and even though I haven't been in a couple weeks due to being out of town and not feeling up to it, I'm excited to get back into the pool after Christmas and diving back into my swimming routine.