80 minutes at the gym in the morning doing lights weights, core and RC work.

Afternoon swim:

I modified one of SwimStud's fav ladder sets to include more kicking and drills:

600 warm up
200 drill
Main set = 3 x (200 kick, 200 swim, 2 x 100, 4 x 50, 8 x 25, 50 EZ). I did it like this:

#1

200 dolphin kick on back with MF on 3:00 (went 2:20)
200 free smooth on 3:00
2 x 100 dolphin kick with MF with board on 1:30 (went 1:05ish)
4 x 50 single arm fly drill with MF on 1:00
8 x 25 fast flutter kick with board (ouch!)
50 EZ

#2

200 dolphin kick on back with MF on 3:00 (went 2:20)
200 free smooth on 3:00
2 x 100 single arm fly drill on 1:45
4 x 50 IM order (fly-back, back-breast, breast-free, free-fly) on 1:00
8 x 25 fast flutter kick with board (ouch!)
50 EZ

#3

200 dolphin kick on back with MF on 3:00 (went 2:20ish)
200 free smooth on 3:00
2 x 100 kick with board and MF on 1:30 (went 1:05ish)
4 x 50 roll backstroke drill on :50
8 x 25, alternate EZ and AFAP free
50 EZ

200 C/D

Total: 4100

I'm pretty sore and tired from training. I haven't had a day off since Sept. 26. Usually I take Saturdays off, but last weekend, a beautiful fall day and the lure of the running trail beguiled me. Really looking forward to taking tomorrow off! And I almost never say that. lol

Today was my scheduled day for doing a fly set to help my 100 fly. I'm trying to take the advice given in the "Training for the 100 Fly" thread. Was deciding between sets given to me by Cream Puff, Jeff Roddin and Greg Shaw. Decided to do Greg Shaw's 10 x 75 fly set. As you can see below, I gave myself a generous interval (as he suggested) to hold form. I used fins because there is no way I can swim that much fly without them without shoulder pain. I did this set in September, but had to alternate fly and one arm fly drill. This time, I did it all fly.

600 warm up
200 fly drills
4 x 25 build

10 x 75 fly on 2:00 with fins (held 49-50)
(probably should have done a 25 easy after each 75 rather than hanging on the wall)

200 EZ

3 x (5 x 50) on 1:00:

#1 backstroke:
1-3 descend
4, AFAP with fins (27-28)
5, EZ DAB
#2 backstroke kick:
1-3 descend
4, AFAP with fins (27-28)
5, EZ DAB
#3 backstroke:
1-3 DPS
4, AFAP with fins (27)
5, EZ DAB
100 easy

Total: 2700

Sunday, 26 Oct 2008

Patriot Sprints today!!!! (SCY)

Got in about 900 warm up. Felt OK but kinda lethargic. Did some sprints and I was having a little trouble getting up to speed.

First Event
100 Fly - 1:00.93 seed - since this was my second time swimming this, I wanted to go after a little harder and try and break 1:00. Welllllll. Had a good start, hit the first turn perfect but should not have waited till the flags for my first breath. Focused on long and strong. Hit the 50 mark and saw splashing from the middle of the pool ( I was in lane 8) that indicated that I was holding my own with Jeff Roddin and Neil Williams. At this point I realized that I just _might_ have gone out too hard. Felt OK on the next 25. Hit the last turn well but my feet slipped right as I pushed off. And then the piano fell. My arms just started getting soooooo heavy and I felt like they were 2 inches long. Focused on staying low and driving my arms forward. Hit the wall. Looked at the board and it said 59.1. Let out a whoop, then I looked again and it said 58.92 even bigger whoop!!!! But my splits reflected a definate go out like a man and die like a dog swim. 26.53/32.39. Yikes. Well, I wanted to swim this more aggressively, maybe this was just a little _too_ aggressive?

50 Fly - 26.03 - after my 100 Fly, I really felt like 25.5 (or better) was possible. Another good start, good breakout hit the turn well but was just a little off in my finish. 25.76. I was concentrating so much on going fast that I was just spinning my arms too fast and not getting a good catch but still a .3 time drop from my previous PB.

50 Free - 23.18 - really, really, really want to break 23. Antoher good start, 4 strong fast SDKs, got up and going. Hit the turn. Came home but for some reason I took three (????) breaths on the way back. Not sure why. 23.21. Ugh, another low 23 time.

Then there were the sprints. A lot of fun.

25 Back - finally I have a start at Mason that does not involve my feet slipping. Missed my stroke count so I lunged when I should have taken another stroke. 13.45. Which sure as heck beat last year's 16.44.

25 Breast - Absolutely NAILED the start. I carried so much speed into the water that I had to delay my pullout by about a second. I usually start it 2 sec after entry. Just ripped thru the pull with a huge dolphin kick. Surfaced and 4 strokes to the wall. 13.83.

25 Fly - Once again I felt like i was just spinning my hands thru the water. Not happy with this one. 11.95.

25 Free - Went heads up with Chris Stevenson. Thought I had him but apparently he nipped me at the finish. Chris: 10.71, Me: 10.90.

Last years total time: 55.41
This years total time: 50.13

Gotta get that down to 47.00 by next year.

2 Nov 08

SCM with team

300 swim, 150 kick, 150 pull

6x75 Free on 1:20
4x50 Fly kick on 1:05 - put fins on and SDK at least 7 kicks then DK on back.
6x75 Stroke on 1:25 - Back
4x50 Free kick on 1:00
6x75 IM on 1:25
200 Pull
50 EZ

Question: Am I A Coach?

This may be a dumb question, but it is something that has been in the back of my mind for quite some time.

I posted this in coaches forum and we see what the real coaches think.....

Primarily, I swim and train myself. I get up at 4:45am and I am in the water from 6:00am to 7:00am M-F and from 7:00am-9:00am on Saturday. Sometimes, friends will join me for sets and we trade calling sets.

Some of my self coaching activities:
I write my own workouts
Keep a training log
Keep a performance log
Read all I can about the sport and have a modest library
Purchased and studied Reese and Marsh's instructional DVDs
And I've read extensively about anatomy, exercise physiology and kinesiology (biology undergrad; engineering Ph.D).
I've purchased a Flip Video Camera with the underwater housing so I can video tape my stroke below the water (with the help of a friend).
And I have library of video recordings of race competitions.

I use the information to plan my swim season and to correct certain stroke and race faults. I believe that you have to concentrate on controling gross motor movements so that you can correct flaws during practice. I have a list of cards that remind me of the things that I need to fix based on watch my video taped performances. Before these gross motor movements can become automatic, they have to be burned into the proprioceptive memory (muscle memory).


I plan to conduct a simple velocity analysis on some of my video recordings of my race to find areas for improvement.

I love competing and have had some success at the national and world masters level - which why swimming has become my adult avocation.

So, can I call myself a coach?

BTW, I spent several summers coaching and served as a volunteer assistant coach for my college - back in the ancient days of mens college swimming.

20 Nov 08

Changed it up and swam a different practice tonight. Germantown Indoor Swim Center. SCY yards but at least 12 feet deep, better water temp and MUCH better air quality.

Got there late tho so I had an abreviated warmup and got started late. Light crowd so ended up splitting a lane.

SCY with team (8:30 to 10 but got in at about 8:45)

500 w/u - 100 free, 100 back, 100 kick, 100 free, 2x50 back

Set#1
4x75 Free on 1:10 (still warming up)
50 Fly on :55
4x25 Free on :30
R: 60
#2
2x75 Free on 1:05
2x50 Back on :55
6x25 Free on :25
r: 60
#3
4x75 Pull on 1:05
3x50 Br on 1:00 - worked pull outs
8x25 Free on :25
r: 60
#4
2x75 Free on 1:00
4x50 Kick on :50
10x25 Free on :25
r:60

#5
4x50 Free on :50
6x25 Back on :25
4x50 Free on :45
8x25 IM order on :25
4x50 Free on :40 - 1st one was :27 then I just died

100 w/d

3650 in about 1:15. I probably could have pushed the 75 intervals down 5 seconds but I wasn't 100% if I could sustain it. PLus the pace clocks at each end were 5 seconds different and that made for some interesting intervals. I'm really tired right now but I haven't felt this good about being tired in a looooooong time. I'm very happy that I was able to self motivate as I was splitting a lane with someone considerably slower than me.

Since I will be unable to get a swim in until Saturday, I will be doing my first double of my Masters career today.

25 Nov 08

scm with team (5am- 6:30) - could do the first hour

300 free, 100 back, 200 kick, 100 free, 2x50 DPS w/u

8x100 Free on 1:45
1 - 75ez, r:05, 25fast
2 - 50ez, r:05, 50fast
3 - 25ez, r:05, 75fast
4 - 100 fast
R: 60, repeat

4x50 Kick on 1:10
200 pull
6x100 on 1:50
1 - 25fl/50fr/25fl
2 - 25ba/50fr/25ba
3 - 25br/50fr/25br
repeat
4x100 IM on 2:00
did 100 w/d and got out here.
The rest of the board, I think
4x75 Stroke
4x75 Free descend
4x50 Kick
4x50 Free descend
4x25 Stroke
100 w/d

3100m in 60 minutes

We'll see how this evening's practice goes. Unfortunately, I know what it's gonna look like, a shortened version of this one.

Swam the Chicago stop of the Tyr Grand Prix series this weekend. 2 weeks ago, I had dreams of trying to put of a top 10 worthy time in something and was getting in some good training and was feeling like I had a decent shot to do it. Then reality hit and I got sick, no training for the week and a half before the meet and got off the antibiotic the Friday before.

Saturday
Very nice tank. Beautiful facility. Water was a bit chilly. Did about 1200 warmup. Just didn't feel good in the water. Was tired and heavy and it definately didn't feel like the taper blahs.

First up was the 200 IM, since I had never swam it (and wanted to get the most rest possible) I was seeded NT - I had a goal time of 2:27.5 but went 2:34.67 - Fly felt good (31.52) but I didn't push hard enough on back (40.5), survived breast (47) and really didn't bring it home in free (35.5). Knew when I hit the wall that I had more left than I should have, even considering the illness. Ah well, first time swims are just for getting a feel for the race.

After only about 45 min (meet ran FAST):
Next was 50 Fly (seed: 28.83) - goal time was 28.13 - just didn't have the legs. Swim felt OK but hit the wall in 28.86.

About 35 min later:
100 IM - seed was 1:09.00 (converted from SCY) - just didn't have it. Felt like I was struggliing the get my arms moving. Hit the wall in 1:08.06. Knew I would be owing Fort a beer for this one.

About 45 min later:
100 Free - (59.13) goal time was 58.1 but I knew that wasn't going to happen, wasn't going to swim this, had even told everyone I was going to scratch but then I found myself behind the block whiel cheering for Dana, Heather and Michelle, still in my suit, with goggles in hand. So I decided to try and go for a 50 split and then swim down. I knew it wasn't a great 50 as I could feel I was very low in the water and my kick was weak. 26.71/43 something for a stellar 1:10.

Then just had a fun relay with the Bad Grlz. I swam the breast leg of a medley. We weren't going for sped. Goal was to do it least strokes possible did it in 4/6 strokes and in 40 seconds.

Sunday

Felt better but was very so in my lower lats and the front on my left shoulder. But I felt like I was able to get up to speed better than Saturday. Did about 1200 warmup.

First event:

50 back (seed 33.49) - Swimming backstroke in meters and I have not been able to get on the same page. I've gone 28.0 in SCY but have been struggling to post times even close to that when converted. Had a good start and for me I stayed under for a long time (about 11-12 meters), hit the turn OK, I rolled over a little to early so I had to take a slow stroke. Stayed under for 5 SDKs and missed the finish as I should have taken another stroke but I finished in 31.61 so I have finally put up a meters time in the range of my converted SCY times.

50 Free - seed of 26.45 - just do not understand why I can not get under 26 in SCM. I go 23.10 in SCY, that _should_ mean I can go under 26 SCM. Decent start (but not according to the Grrrlz), no breathed thru the turn and took 2 strokes before the first breath but should not have taken a second one at about 7m to go. Decent finish but the whole race I could just feel an absolute disconnect between my stroke and my kick. 26.69. UGH. Went .1 faster LCM in August.

100 Fly - Had set a goal time of 1:05.00 but that wasn't going to happen. Mark Gill had stepped up to race Jody in the heat prior and went 1:10 so I knew that I at least had to put _some_ effort into it. Decent start but halfway back on the 1st 50 I knew I was in trouble as my arms were already starting to fade. Finally finished the race. 1:09.30. Not what I wanted but a decent time given the circumstances.

Edit: Finally looked at the official results and I have no idea why I thought I went 26.69 in the 50 Free. Guess I looked at the wrong lane? Results showed 26.10, which is still not where I think I should be but is a more reasonable swim all things considered.

Five days before Christmas, and many of us here in the Northeastern United States find our wistful thoughts turning to open water swimming season.

This begins, of course, with the annual Sea Isle City Polar Bear Swim in February.

Here is footage from last year's pilgrimage to the frozen Jersey shore, with some bonus scenes towards the end of girl on girl scissoring, a great way to limber up for any kind of swimming performance, I must say.

Apologies to those of you who have already seen this. I hope soon to be posting new video. For now, I hope this helps inspire my subscribers to sign up for a polar bear dip themselves.

the PG rated musical version:


the scrofulous version with girl on girl scissoring bonus scenes:

I am looking into getting a slightly better video system than the kind i have now, which, I must say, works well with Skype but not quite so well with YouTube. In any event, if you can endure a certain dyssynchrony of image and voice, which actually reflects the way I am feeling today with my splitting Nyquil hangover, I invite you to watch today's vlog.

PS I once read that Mr. Rogers made his show purposely slowed down and laconic because he felt that kids in this hyper stressed world of ours never got a chance to just watch something soothing and langorously monotone and, well, . It is in this spirit that I present today's video.



PS Word of the Day: laconic. I thought I knew what this word meant, but it turns out I was completely wrong. To wit:

A "laconic phrase" is a very concise or terse statement, named after Laconia (a.k.a. Lacedaemon [Greek Λακεδαίμων]), a polis of ancient Greece (and region of modern Greece) surrounding the city of Sparta proper. In common usage, Sparta referred both to Lacedaemon and Sparta. ...

I don't always "fact check" what I write, so please use this as a cautionary example of why you should never take what I recommend seriously without at leave three second opinions from actually knowledgable sources.

Today's vlog will be best understood by those who take a moment to read Leslie The Fortress Livingston's fascinating blog account of bureaucratic machiavellianism run amuk.

I would have loved to hire Al Pacino to play me in today's film. Only Al could give the full apoplectic spittle-flying frenzy "You're out of order! You're out of order"/"I oughta take a flamethrower to this whole f-ingplace!"/"Say hello to my leedle fren!" style outrage that this situation deserves.

Unfortunately, Al was working on another project, so I had to play Jim myself, which is never ideal.



If, by the way, you have not yet seen Leslie's fourth-45-49-year-old-woman-in-world-history-to-crack-30.00-in-the-50-SCM-fly performance, you can see it by clicking the link atop my vlog.

* * *

On a more stereotypically swimming-oriented blog note, my good friend and swimming coach Bill White sent out tonight's practice, which consists of a warm up (6 x 100 on 1:20) followed by a 1650 RACE.

I replied to him by email:

Bill, correct my math if you see errors:

You will average about a 1:10-1:20 pace, which means that your 50s will be 35-40 seconds each.

Every time you lap me, it will mean I need to add an additional 35-40 seconds onto whatever time you end up doing.

Thus if you lap me only four times, or every 412.5 yards, this would mean I will need to add between 2 minutes and 10 seconds to 2 minutes and 30 seconds to your final time.

I am expecting you to break 20 minutes as if it were child's play. But let us just use the 20 minute mark for simplicity's sake. I should be able to finish in 22:10.00 to 22:30.00, correct?

Using the Bill Time Distance calculator from yesteryear, this would leave me with an average 100 pace of between 1:20.61 and 1:21.82.

If you, on the other hand, hold a 1:10 or 1:15 pace, you will swim it in 19:15 or 20:37.50 respectively.

***

I will let you know how it goes.

For those who don't want to read my blather, here's today's movie, which actually has some production values thanks to my wonderful son Jack, who produced this for the Men's Health video channel!



Now, the blather:

Yesterday's practice, it turns out, was different than I thought because I misread the date. We actually do the 1650 "race" on Friday. Yesterday, we did instead:

10 x 100 on 1:25 warm up
20 x 50 on :40
10 x 50 on :35
10 x 50 on :40
6 x 50 on :35
7 x 100 on 1:25 cool down
steam bath

This was not easy, in fact, I still feel like there is food tickling my epiglottis, trying to escape.

Anyhoo, it got me to thinking that before Friday's 1650 in-practice race, it would really help if I could lose a smidgen of the winter weight gain that has crept up. Today is Tuesday 10:30 a.m.. Goal: 17 lb. weight loss by Friday 6:30 p.m.

Tip: break this down into manageable units. To wit, if I can just lose .21 lb. per hour between now and then, I will achieve my goal.

Today's vlog is a video I made for Men's Health with the considerable help of my son Jack. It was based on an article on Food Psychology I wrote a year or two back. If any of you would like to read the article itself, feel free to send me your email and I will dispatch a copy of this in .pdf form.

My email address is Jamesthornton1@comcast.net

Please also send me a jpg file of you in a swimming suit for my "calendar" project, which may end up being a movie instead.

Thanks.

Here is that link again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srncg...e=channel_page

Merry Christmas and assorted other secular, religious, and Druid holidays to one and all. I am hoping to get a better camera soon, so please do not give up too soon on my Vlog simply because of its piss poor production values and generally uninteresting subject matter to date!

Improvement is possible!

Who knows what the next year will bring?

In any event, today's Vlog represents my Christmas present to my fellow swimmers. If you watch this, and I hope you do, I know it will be easy to dismiss the recommendation therein as the groggy advice of a narcoleptic well into his dotage.

Resist this urge!

Please, allot yourself 8 minutes at the end of your next practice to try out my recommendation, which blends the best of swimming, with the best of Karmic meditative Bhuddhism as such is understood by me, a fellow with no understanding of it.

Then let me know if you do, indeed, find this to be as deeply relaxing as I and my follower have. (Note: one my New Year's Resolution is to up the number of follower to plural. My other New Year's Resolution is to not lose the follower I do have.)

It has been a couple days since last I vlogged. Thanks to Jim Matysek's suggestions, I now know sort of how to make preview stills of my vlogs appear on the vlog site proper, and I suspect you will find this as exciting as I do, which is to say multiple exclamation points exciting!!!!!!!!

For regular posters on the threads, I did one version of the photo calendar montage set to music, but was unable to upload this, and thus am redoing it. I can no longer call it a USMS calendar. The main reasons here are A) USMS is a registered trademark upon which the likes of me, like the rattlesnake on some currency, have been advised "not to tread", and B) it is no longer a calendar.

Stay tuned for what it is, though I am not quite sure myself yet what this is.

I also plan to post a new vlog soon that might up viewership slightly by adding a visually stimulating guest to the site. But the time for this has not yet come.

These are just two of the many reasons to stay tuned!

In the meantime, I do not want my 3 or 4 regular vlog viewers to forget who I am. Thus I am now presenting another film on open water swimming to whet your appetite for the cold wet season to come!

A short explanatory preamble: last September, I traveled with my friends Jocelyn Smith (one of the comely scissorers in Captain's Plunge, the scroffulous version) and Jeremy Cornman (a former Sea Isle City lifeguard and extraordinarily talented amateur triathlete who I can nevertheless beat at distance swimming) to the Jersey Shore. We were supposed to do an open water event at Cape May, but we got there at midnight, and registration was a 6 a.m., and we decided to sleep instead of paying the $30 to freeze.

The next day, I decided to create my own open water swimming event in Ocean City. It was the day before the 56th Birthday of me and my twin brother John. The event, which is now going to be held on an annual basis, is knows at the Pre-Birthday Open Rough Water Shark and Snapper Blue 2-Mile Swim.

If you would like to pre-register for next year, send me $29.00 and I will have my lawyer draw up an ironclad waiver form for you to sign and notarize. This will include, but not be limited by, the truncation of assorted appendages and other body parts by razor sharp, recursive teeth.

On this note, I present for your viewing pleasure: Sunk.

Here is a vlogging gift to my fellow swimmers, and an homage to 2008--a year the likes of which only our centenarian comrades have likely seen before.

I tried to include pictures sent by the generous posting community on the forums, plus I shamelessly pilfered the photo albums of my swimming friends on Facebook. You may notice a disproportion of pictures of me and Dara Torres. I used the former for filler and the latter (which I took last January when I swam with and interviewed her for a story--pdf available on request!) as inspiration for all of us to keep striving regardless of our respective stages on the aging curve.

Over the course of 2009, please feel free to email me swimming photos, which I will save and use to compile another assemblage. Email address: JamesThornton1@comcast.net

Better yet, consider joining Facebook, which now has tons of our swimming comrades amongst our ranks. It's free and simple. Befriend me at James Scott Thornton (Pittsburgh) and I will refer all our USMS swimmer friends as Facebook friends.

Happy 2009! Thanks to all the contributors, including those who intended to contribute and those who didn't!

Thanks to the 353 (and counting) of you who viewed my last Vlog. The one criticism I received most consistently about this heartfelt homage to my fellow masters swimmers across this great pool-dappled country of ours was this:


As one of the small handful of artists working in the rarefied medium of Masters Swimming Vlog Art, I could very easily have turned my back on such criticisms, shrugging the hues and cries of the "audience" as merely the jejune wimperings of the masses.

But I am not like this!

I appreciate my audience, though God knows that some of the members therein probably are so jejune they don't even know what jejune means!

Forgive a moment of private chortling over a certain befuddled Aryan Nation friend in Arizona.

Okay, composure regained.

As regular readers of this vlog may eventually learn, I have a somewhat sickly nature, though I rarely mention it and never complain about it. I have been sidelined from the pool today due to a fear of explosive emissions of pretty much any stripe imaginable save the one most women who know me actually like to imagine. Thus no swimming to report on today, other, that is, than the swimming of my head. I can say without equivocation that it has Gone the Distance today! http://www.usms.org/fitness/content/gothedistance

So what I propose to offer you today is a Vlog in the spirit of Partially Swimming Related Subject Matter, if by partial you accept the definition "not very much if at all." Instead, I am including an homage to my wonderful brother John. He is the mind behind the Leslie Livingston SCM butterfly Travesty of Travesty video, the Polar Bear Plunge (both scroffulous and musical versions), the epic Sunk, and pretty much anything you will see on this Vlog that is actually kind of good.

John and I are identical twins, though people who have not met us in the same room often think I have made John up. Some who have met us, while acknowledging some familial resemblance, nevertheless don't think we are identical twins. However, according to the University of Minnesota Twin Study's David Lykken, Ph.D., we definitely are.

One of is is the Good Twin; one the Evil Twin. Perhaps the hard turns my life has forced upon me accounts not only for the discrepancy in our character but in our looks.

John no longer swims, but holds the family records for the 100 freestyle and backstroke, and probably butterfly, too. Neither of us can complete a 100 breaststroke in the alloted time frame, i.e., the length of the entire meet.

If you are of a liberal persuasion, I strongly urge you to visit John's YouTube Channel, Rustyscupperton. If you are frothy-mouthed conservative, and for some reason you miss a swimming practice, you can still get your heart rate up to the target zone by similar visitations.

It is all, as they say, good! http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...=0&oq=Rustyscu

And here is my homage to John, with a little of me in there too, satisfying the earlier request, which I shall briefly recap here again:


Just as Trenton makes, and the world takes--so is it that You ask, and Jimby gives!

Q & A with Jim Thornton

--by Jim Thornton

Q. Hi, Jim. Would you like to say hello to our audience?

A. Hello to you, Jim, along with our fellow masters swimmers, RSS feed subscribers, the CBS viewing audience, and my good friend Mr. Martin Scorcese.

Q. So, your output lately has really been astonishing. I can't believe you are posting more, so soon! People sometimes ask me, Jim, do you have a life?

A. Excellent question! I do have a life, but it has been on hiatus for quite a while now. At the risk of overloading you with vlog material, and perchance exhausting your appetite for all things Jim and Jim-like, as if such might be remotely possible!, I am nevertheless adding the latest swimming-related video made entirely by my DNA. That is to say, by John.

Q. John? Refresh my memory here.

A. Those who have been thrilled by "John is Real, Really" recently know that John, my identical twin brother, likes to make movies. Today's vlog is on a subject that many masters swimmers have either A) participated in personally, B) considered participating in but have heretofore postponed the actual impulse to the future, or C) find this quaint hibernal passtime an embarrassment for our great sport of swimming.

Q. Surely, you're not bringing up those Palin girls again?

A. Of course not! I refer, of course, to the Polar Bear swim concept, wherein a bunch of tubs o' lard like me and John partially denude ourselves and go into some incredibly frigid sources of moisture in the hopes of losing massive winter weight gain. Speaking from experience, you don't really lose any weight. But you do lose, massively, the appearance of weight from an area of the body that can easily be mistaken for midriff bulge tugged downwards by gravity.

Q. Always, those Palin girls find their way back! Okay, Jim, one last question before watching John's excellent polar bear swim film. You mentioned several blogs ago that you were going to swim the 1650 in practice. How did that go?

A. Hard! I ended up swimming an average pace of 1:14.41, give or take, for an overall 1650 time of 20:33. This was in full hair exposed mode, no body suit, no dive, and water temperature of 85 degrees.

Q. Yikes! Did Bill lap you, as expected, four times?

A. Actually, Bill almost evaded swimming it entirely, but I taunted him into it. He swam a 19:27 after I got out, and we calculated that he would have only lapped me once, though with a 5 second head start (had we been circle swimming) almost twice.

Q. How's that make you feel?

A. I am not sure yet. I am still checking various age-grading programs from programmers in the US, Finland, and the UK. When I find one that provides me some reason to celebrate, I will let you know, Jim.

Q. I have heard that Latvian age-grading is particularly lenient for 56-year-olds like you, and harsh for 38-year-olds like Bill.

A. I have "nyet" yet looked into it! But on this perfect segue, i.e., Ivan the Russian Bear slowly morphing into John the Identical Twin Polar Bear, the Thornton genes gives you today's vlog...

(Note: Just found out while attempting to preview this that I can only use 10 emoticons at a time, so must divide today's vlog into three mini installments. Sorry for the bother. --Jimby)

Okay, no footage today, no still photography, no cartoons, no hieroglyphics. I am trying to figure out the cheapest, most portable, best, and least easily stolen & destroyed camcorder to buy, and it is proving surprisingly difficult.

So, today's vlog will be made up of words and emoticons.

I swam a meet today after having awakened from uneasy dreams and drunken three mugs of . I should have eaten a because I tend to get foot cramps a lot, especially when the water is and I don't drink enough . I was how I would swim, because for the past four days I had been feeling , laid low by in my inner ear, that caused a certain nausea and need to to the bathroom fairly frequently, plus I had a sore throat. In fact when we arrived at the meet, i actually had to to the bathroom. But maybe this is more than you care to know.

(Sorry for making you read this backwards. --Jimby)


In any event, I the previous record holder of the 100 I.M. from the #1 spot in our league , which was something of a pyrric victory, because it was --embarrassing for a humble guy like me to to admit--my own record.

This was followed by a mediocre 50 fly, an okay 25 free --a staple of our league, since we aren't so as to think such a distance is beneath us!

But then I swam the 400 I.M., setting a new record (not my own!) by 9 seconds, with a rather pathetic 5:11 in the 55-59 age group.

If I were not a teetotaller, I would have to propose a to my personal best post-diarrhea/nausea/sore throat performance in a pool measuring 18" deep (in the shallow end; I literally scraped my knuckles during warm up!)

There are many fluid media in our world today. Obviously, viewers of this vlog are most interested in the aquatic medium, which is at once natural and foreign to us. We spend the first 40 weeks or so floating about in a sea of our own urine, possibly sporting gills for a short while in the "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" process.

Fascinating but possibly off the subject explanation:

[Note to those who took Science for Dummies TM in college and somehow escaped learning this magical phrase. What it basically means is that our development in the womb, or ontogeny, repeats, or recapitulates, the evolution of ever more complex life forms, or phylogeny, of earth's animal life. We start off as one-celled organisms, progress into something a bit more like a sponge-like ball of cells, progress even further to the gilled salamander stage, etc. until we come out as humanoids 9 months later.

If you ever want to make someone think you are either smart or pompous, you can't do better than to memorize "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" and use it at every possible opportunity.]

Back to fluid media

Only during this womb submersion in the amniotic brine are we totally at home as sea creatures. Once born, we become largely terrestrial life forms, dependent on air, unable to swim without lessons at the Y that once again recapitulate a certain phylogeny--starfish, guppies, eels, pikes, sharks, dolphins.

Fascinating but possibly off the subject reverie:

[More fodder for digression. How many of us did, in point of fact, learn to swim at a Y? I can remember like it was yesterday the half century ago when 6-year-old Jimby took his first breaststroke-like pull in the tiny basement Sewickley YMCA pool, achieved propulsion, and quickly taught my twin brother John how to swim! I don't know what was more satisfying? As the surgeons say, "See one, Do one, Teach one!" To this day, I credit teaching my brother how to swim as one of my signature life achievements.]

Penultimate desperate attempt to justify today's video:

We never regain our vestigial gills, alas; never again regain that amphibean-like blind cave frog nature, the blissful subconsious memories of which, I am convinced, are the chief cause for the return to the womb fantasies guys like me chronically suffer.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I try to return to the womb every chance I get.

Where was I?

Wrapping things up quickly here, let me restate today's vlog's central theses:

1. We are born from tiny seas of our own creation
2. I taught my brother how to swim
3. Air is also a fluid medium
4. Swimmers like to flock together
5. Please enjoy my twin brother's latest charming and short YouTube film, narrated by the irrepressible Cameron, who students of this vlog will recall pronounced me "Sunk" during my inaugural open water swimming event.
6. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.