U.S. Masters Swimming Discussion Forums - Most Popular

It's all about speed now

by

, April 12th, 2010 at 07:01 PM (Elise's Fitness Fun)

A friend pointed out that there is just 37 days left until Nationals and that it is time to get very event-specific. She's got that right! In looking over my training, I can see that I have not worked on speed enough lately. Time to get to it!

Today, I did a workout of 2700 yards using the fins most of the time. I'm a little pressed for time, so I'm not going to put the whole workout down. One of the sets was 4 rounds of 3 x 75 on 1:15 with fins. With each round, I mixed up the order of the 75s, doing a 75 fly, 75 free, and 75 dolphin kick on back each time. Really tried to work the walls. SCY is about the walls and LC is about the swimming. I stink with the walls, so this is my chance to work them.

I like swimming solo on this type of stuff because I can really focus and I don't have to worry about hitting somebody coming off the wall. I think swimming solo will really allow me to work on some quality stuff.

Updated April 12th, 2010 at 08:39 PM by elise526

Categories: Uncategorized

12 Comments

A Decade of Jim's Amish Mudhole Freestyle Results

by

jim thornton

, April 13th, 2010 at 07:15 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

Younger middle-aged swimmers interested in seeing a possible glimpse of their swimming performance trajectories from the late 40s to late 50s might be able to glean some clues from my own changes over the years.

I am by no means a top echelon swimmer, but I am not completely mediocre either, having placed in the Top 10 around 30 times or so in the last decade, and even making the FINA World's Masters Tabulations on several flukish occasions.

I officially started swimming masters in 1984, at the age of 32, when I saw a sign for a team forming at the then brand-new St. Paul (MN) Skyway YMCA.

I think we had maybe one or two meets in the next 11 years; competition was definitely not a high priority for me at that stage of life.

My wife, two Minnesota-born youngsters, and I moved back to my boyhood stomping grounds of Sewickley, PA in 1995. The Sewickley YMCA Sea Dragons, which I had swum with as a youth, now boasted a masters team, and I joined this and eventually took over as coach.

Again, I did not compete much until some of my fellow swimmers goaded me into going to some of the local AMYMSA meets (for Allegheny Mountain YMCA Masters Swimming Association.)

Resuming meets at the now long-in-the-tooth age of 48 was a bit nerve wracking, but I slowly warmed up to it.

Our league holds meets every two-three weeks from September through April. One of the many capital chaps involved in the AMYMSA administration has computerized all the Top 10 times going back to the league's inception in the early 1980s (if not before.)

This fellow, Steve Love, is a nuclear engineer and very likable sort. He recently made it even easier for us to find our own times in various events for every one of the past ten seasons.

For my fellow data-mining enthusiasts, a look at my own times here may be somewhat illuminating.

A few preliminary notes:

These do not necessarily reflect each season's best performance by me since I often swam faster in USMS sponsored meets in great pools. Most of these swims below were done in what I affectionately refer to as Amish mudhole facilities because they are sprinkled around the hinterlands of Western PA farm land, are never more than 6 lanes and sometimes as few as 4 or 5, have a tendency to be on the hot side, and often have lane lines that are fully submerged at the point of wall attachment.

The past decade also reflects times done in the tech suit era, beginning with the Aquablade I got when I was 48 and ending this year with a somewhat distended B70 I just used at Clarion.

What this data does have going for it is a reasonable sense of year-to-year consistency. A few of the venues have changed, and the tech suits arguably improved a bit, but for the most part I was swimming these same races in the same set of Amish mudholes.

The major variables have been my own aging process (from 48 to 57) and fluctuations in how much training I was able to get in each year.

My major conclusions from looking at my apples-to-apples times over the past decade are that A) raw speed does seem to have diminished (ignore the 25s since these are hand-timed and dependent on the reflexes of your hand timer!) and B) there is some correlation between how many weekly miles you average in the pool and how fast you swim your events, though the shorter events appear to be more forgiving of slacking.

I also hope you will note that I am presenting my data not so much in the spirit of self aggrandizement as a science project with me as a Human Test Subject, i.e., a reasonably ordinary Swimmer Everyman, if you will--who has enjoyed training and competing with some consistency over the past decade and hope this might inspire my younger comrades to do so, as well.

Well, enough preamble for now. Here is the data, and I truly and earnestly solicit any observations my readers might have regarding their interpretation of same.

__________________________________________________

JIM THORNTON 57 Average Miles Swum Per Week: 8.21 so far

25Free SEWY 12/09 SEWY 11.23

50Free SEWY 04/10 CLAR 24.50

100Free SEWY 04/10 CLAR 53.14

200Free SEWY 04/10 CLAR 1:58.59

500Free SEWY 04/10 CLAR 5:24.12

1000Free SEWY 04/10 CLAR 11:32.38

1650Free SEWY 03/08 MAIL 19:34.18

__________________________________________________

JIM THORNTON 56 Average Miles Swum Per Week: 7.82

25Free SEWY 09/08 BARL 10.78

50Free SEWY 02/09 FRNK 24.63

100Free SEWY 04/09 CLAR 53.39

200Free SEWY 04/09 CLAR 1:59.28

500Free SEWY 04/09 CLAR 5:28.42

1000Free SEWY 04/09 CLAR 11:50.12

1650Free SEWY 03/08 MAIL 19:54.24
__________________________________________________

JIM THORNTON 55 Average Miles Swum Per Week: 7.16

25Free SEWY 12/07 BARL 11.37

50Free SEWY 04/08 CLAR 24.78

100Free SEWY 04/08 CLAR 52.97

200Free SEWY 04/08 CLAR 1:58.03

500Free SEWY 04/08 CLAR 5:24.57

1000Free SEWY 04/08 CLAR 11:31.24

1650Free SEWY 03/08 MAIL 19:47.91

__________________________________________________

JIM THORNTON 54 Average Miles Swum Per Week: 7.18

The Lost year...JIM THORNTON 54, did not swim AMYMSA
(for reasons to complicated to get into here)

__________________________________________________

JIM THORNTON 53 Average Miles Swum Per Week: 5.24

25Free SEWY 10/05 GROV 11.56

50Free SEWY 04/06 CLAR 25.04

100Free SEWY 04/06 CLAR 53.97

200Free SEWY 04/06 CLAR 1:57.07

500Free SEWY 04/06 CLAR 5:25.87

1000Free SEWY 04/06 CLAR 11:32.00

1650 free did not swim

__________________________________________________

JIM THORNTON 52 Average Miles Swum Per Week: 7.00

25Free SEWY 09/04 SEWY 10.84

50Free SEWY 04/05 CLAR 24.92

100Free SEWY 04/05 CLAR 54.09

200Free SEWY 09/04 SEWY 1:58.33

500Free SEWY 04/05 CLAR 5:24.30

1000Free SEWY 04/05 CLAR 11:32.91

1650Free SEWY 03/05 MAIL 20:41.65

__________________________________________________

JIM THORNTON 51 Average Miles Swum Per Week: 7.50

50Free SEWY 11/03 ERIE 24.34

100Free SEWY 01/04 AVY 52.87

200Free SEWY 04/04 CLAR 1:57.32

500Free SEWY 04/04 CLAR 5:20.77

1000Free SEWY 04/04 CLAR 11:22.29

1650Free SEWY 03/05 MAIL 18:59.22

__________________________________________________

JIM THORNTON 50 Average Miles Swum Per Week: 7.92

25Free SEWY 01/03 MEAD 11.03

50Free SEWY 10/02 BUTL 24.28

100Free SEWY 04/03 CLAR 53.02

200Free SEWY 01/03 MEAD 1:56.07

500Free SEWY 04/03 CLAR 5:20.35

1000Free SEWY 04/03 CLAR 11:15.86

1650Free SEWY 03/03 MAIL 18:53.69

__________________________________________________

JIM THORNTON 49 Average Miles Swum Per Week: 7.21

25Free SEWY 10/01 CUMB 11.01

50Free SEWY 04/02 CLAR 24.25

100Free SEWY 01/02 AVY 52.50

200Free SEWY 12/01 GROV 1:57.88

500Free SEWY 01/02 MDVL 5:26.07

1000Free SEWY 04/02 CLAR 11:33.85

1650Free SEWY 03/02 MAIL 19:27.75

__________________________________________________

JIM THORNTON 48 Average Miles Swum Per Week: 5.08

25Free SEWY 01-01 MEAD 11.28

50Free SEWY 02-01 CMU 23.84

100Free SEWY 02-01 CMU 52.09

200Free SEWY 04-01 CLAR 1:59.29

500Free SEWY 02-01 CMU 5:44.15

1650Free SEWY 02-01 MAIL 20:34.05

__________________________________________________

Categories: Uncategorized

32 Comments

Tampa bay recap

by

chaos

, April 18th, 2010 at 07:52 PM

Tampa Bay Marathon Swim Recap

The day was perfect… sunny with periods of overcast; a welcome relief from the otherwise “tanning index” of >10. Water temperature; between 68 and 72 degrees, though I was hoping forecasts from earlier in the week would prove correct and the water would be closer to the mid 60’s.

I slept well Friday night but woke up rather early for the 7AM start… around 3AM. I tried to get myself sorted out without waking Clare from her slumber, as I would need her to be awake enough to handle my (what turned out to be) 32 feedings.

The Feed Program
With the guidance of Steve Munatones, I constructed a fabulous telescoping feed stick with two (one black and one white) double swiveling cup holders. I searched far and wide to find some wide mouth stainless steel, flip top containers that would hold about 12 oz each and fit nicely into said b&w cup holders… but to no avail. I had to settle for Rubbermaid plastic substitutes. Though these containers have slightly raised graduations depicting volume, I marked them off with blue electrical tape at 4 oz and white electrical tape at 9 oz. Each container holds 20 oz so having them less than half-full keeps the weight at the bottom and reduces the chance of having them tip out. I am embarrassed to say that I left my glorious feed stick in the back of my Yaris at JFK International Airport and so Clare had to resort to the old string and caribiner standby to get the feeds to yours truly. For each feed (40 minutes from the starting bell and then every 20 minutes) Clare would toss me 2 bottles tethered together… one containing my nutritional concoction and the other containing good old H2O so that I could pick and choose whichever combination my body required at that moment.

Race Day Nutrition
While back in NY, I filled all my bottles with the various powdered mixes that the days efforts would require. They included:
Pre-Race – 3 scoops of Hammer Nutrition Sustained Energy, 1 scoop of 1st Endurance Pre-Race, 4 1st Endurance Optigen Capsules, 3 1st Endurance Multi-Vitimin Tissue Rejuvenator capsules. This was mixed with 16 oz of water and consumed 2.5 hours before starting time. I drank another 12 oz of water 30 minutes to the start.

Swim Mix and Schedule
I did a long (30,000yds) pool swim in February, in part to experiment with caloric intake during a sustained effort. The results were mixed, but I did learn that having the option between high calorie and just plain water for each feed would give me the opportunity to fine tune things. I am happy to say that I successfully employed this during my TB swim:

My feed consisted of about 285 calories/hour… this was achieved with 3 scoops of 1st Endurance lemon-lime EFS in 27 oz water broken into 20 minute servings of 1 scoop in 9oz water. At each feed, Clare would toss me two bottles; one containing “the mix” (marked with blue electrical tape) and the other containing water. For most of my feeds, I drank the mix only, but when elimination seemed to take more effort, I took some water as well. Two feeds (around 7 and 8 hours) I took water only.
At hours 4, 6, and 8, I also took 1 Hammer Tissue Rejuvenator (but no NSAIDS). Three feeds were also supplemented with special treats… 2x rice pudding; mashed up and liquid to render it drinkable and 1x cinnamon brown sugar oatmeal given the same treatment. I also had 3 feeds where “the mix” was replaced by gels… 2x Hammer Gel Huckelberry and 1x 1st Endurance EFS vanilla.

Post Swim
2 scoops of 1st Endurance Optigen in 12 oz…. the most delicious thing I ever tasted in my whole life and 4 Hammer Tissue Rejuvenator capsules…
and a Sierra Nevada draught Pale Ale.

Equipment
2 generous full-body applications of SPF 30 Banana Boat Sport.
A slathering of my very own special “channel grease” mix (consisting of 3oz anhydrous lanolin, 3oz vasaline, and 1.5oz zinc oxide),
liberally applied to any and all areas that might be subject to chaffing from the very abrasive nature of salt water including… groin, butt crack, arm pits, neck, shoulders and jaw line… every single hotel towel employed to remove the excess from my hands.
Black Finis polyester brief… size 32.
Blue 70 Vision goggles with amber lenses…. These fit perfectly and didn’t require a single adjustment the entire 10hr 49mn swim, though I must confess; I did trim my eyelashes to keep them from brushing against the lenses.
Speedo earplugs.
White silicon Total Immersion swim cap.
……. Nothing to add….. all performed well; zero wardrobe malfunctions.

Oh yeah…. THE SWIM!
I am not sure why this swim isn’t more enthusiastically attended.
-It is well organized. Ron Collins and company put on a serious event in a casual environment. All this year’s solo male entrants have EC bookings for the 2010 season and consider TB to be a good measure of training (yes… I know there are many differences between TB and the EC)
-The male and female course records are held by world class swimmers, Chris Derks and Penny Palfrey. I would think that this would attract lots of big guns to see how they might measure up.
-Entry is easy… no lottery, no need to book years in advance.
-Relays can a fun way to break into marathon swimming; not sure if you want to swim the whole 24 miles? Grab a relay partner or 2 and swim as much as you want. Last year I swam +/- 18 of the 24 miles (my relay partner, Patty was generous enough to grant me the lion’s share).
-There are worse places to be than St. Pete in April. Most of the watering holes up north just aren’t warm enough to get more than a quick dip in… so get your “brine fix” here!

I started the swim at a pace that I thought I could sustain for 10 hours… stroke rate in the mid 60’s, and by my third feed, the field was spreading out. I didn’t express any kind of “race plan” to Clare, and our communication was limited regarding the other swimmers. At about 5 hours, I looked forward, didn’t see any boats, inquired: where is everybody?.... you’re out in front. (cool) I never saw another boat until near the second bridge… I asked: Whose boat is that? Clare replied, “don’t worry about it, its a relay team”. The wind picked up and there was a pretty good chop now so I settled into a slower stroke rate of 60SPM… no reason to get sloppy now with just a couple of miles to go. As I walked up to the beach I was surprised to see Craig Lenning sitting there already… I wonder when he passed me? It would have been a welcome diversion to have someone to swim with after 7, 8, 9 hours alone out there. Perhaps we will have the opportunity during MIMS on June 12!

10hrs 49 mins

Updated April 19th, 2010 at 09:21 PM by chaos

Categories: Uncategorized

8 Comments

Jim! The acclaimed new HBO series

by

jim thornton

, April 21st, 2010 at 11:12 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

Tomorrow I leave for Colony Zones. I am hoping that when I return on Sunday night, or possibly Monday afternoon, that I will have excellent news awaiting me regarding a new acclaimed HBO miniseries based on my life.

You may say I'm a dreamer....
But I'm not the only one...

-John Lennon

Here is how this rapidly developing news began developing rapidly:

Backpacker Magazine has been serializing little video clips from my time in the Wilderness last fall. In an effort to let my various acquaintances know about this, I sent out innumerable Facebook postings, and when these went largely ignored, decided to try a more direct approach, that is to say, a mass emailing.

Here is what I wrote:

______________________________________________

Dearest Munificent Swimming Friends of Jim,

How I treasure each and every one of you!

Great news!!! (Though I should say at the outset here you will not hurt my feelings if you delete this unread!)

Part 2. of my Lost in the Wilderness video diary is ready for your viewing at the Backpacker magazine web site!

In fact, you can also find The Trailer and Part 1.here at this web site also: http://www.backpacker.com/jim-thornt...inations/14087

Part 3�the Finale--is going to be posted on April 26th. I can�t wait to see if I live or die!

For those of you who like to read, I will also attach the .pdf of the actual story. Feel free, of course, to delete this unread if you have reached this point in today�s email and are having second thoughts and cold feet!

{Note from Jim--if you want me to send you, too, a .pdf of the actual story, just send me your email address and I will!}

My feelings are impervious to insult! You won�t hurt them by deleting any of this at any time!

However, if you can leave a nice comment on the Backpacker web site, it might help secure my employment for future oddventures that � assuming they don�t kill, maim, or completely dement me � you might find future amusement in living vicariously through my sufferings.

I am, for instance, trying to talk them into sending me to Death Valley this summer to hike around and see just how thirst quenching mirages are...

Again, videos here:

http://www.backpacker.com/jim-thornt...inations/14087

(Comments are moderated so won�t appear immediately.)

PS If you want to be removed from any of the very infrequent mailings of mine in the future, just send me a note to this effect. If, however, you want to add some of your friends, you can send me a note to that effect as well.

No wonder I treasure each of you so!

Jim Thornton

Jim's USMS Masters Swimming Vlog:

http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?u=26

_____________________________________________

This mass emailing, alas, provoked a...less than mass response.

However, quantity is not the only measure of a response. There is also quality to consider.

And one of the few respondents that actually did write me back was the lovely swimming star, Cheryl Kupan. You can look up Cheryl's astonishing masters swimming record here: http://www.usms.org/comp/meets/indre...wage=&highage=

As remarkable as her swimming has been, what is even more intriguing to me is her life among the New York Glitterati.

This is what Cheryl recently posted as her "status" on Facebook:

Cheryl Kupan is wondering if she can find date/friend for the Entourage premiere...

Naturally, I thought she meant the kind of thing we little people mean when we say things like this on Facebook--i.e., can anyone out there in Coraopolis, Leetsdale, Edgeworth, Emsworth, etc. with cable, HBO, and, preferably, a High Definition TV, invite me over to watch Vince, Drama, E, and Turtle when they resume their mildly amusing lives of leisure and privilege?

(from left to right: Hodding Carter, Rahm Emmanuel, Mike Ross, Michael Schmidt, Jim Thornton)

But it turns out that Cheryl is not like the little people. She means the actual, live, Entourage premier somewhere out in Los Angeles.

She told me that she works for Time Warner, which owns HBO, which makes Entourage. And furthermore, I managed to wheedle out of her that "the HBO chicks" love her.

Could I somehow finagle a Munchhausen by proxy syndrome pathological love spin-off sort of arrangement for me?

Could I?
_________________________________________

Okay, so, with the above background in mind, and the premise set up, here is our subsequent correspondence.

Cheryl, I hope you don't mind. And I really hope that the HBO chicks that love you/by-extension-us don't mind.
_________________________________________
Jim's inaugural gambit: sent out mass emailing, see above.
_________________________________________
Cheryl's reply:

In a message dated 4/21/2010 1:48:42 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, jamesthornton1@comcast.net writes:
Part 3�the Finale--is going to be posted on April 26th. I can�t wait to see if I live or die!

Wow! Real life Drama! I have lots of catching up to do. I'm the reading type, so I'll take if for the train ride/snooze home.

I too will wait in anticipation for April 26th to see your fate. Is there a "Will Jim Live or Die" pool that I can put a wager in?

{note from Jim--Cheryl picked out this pretty-in-pink font color expressly for me. At least I am pretty sure she did.}

_________________________________________
Jim's reply:

Insider tip: Bet on him not making it.

Send your wager to me, and if I don�t make it out of Idaho, I will pay you your winnings within 24 hours!

PS Consider floating The Jim Thornton Story/Experience to your friends at HBO. This has mini series written all over it!
_________________________________________

Cheryl's reply:

Let me read through it first -- HBO does do quirky.
Is this more like Hung, or Curb, or redneck Sopranos?
I can't wait for my train ride home to start reading all about your adventures....

{note from Jim: she has abandoned the pretty-in-pink font color to a business-like black. My heart skips a beat}

_________________________________________
Jim's measured reply:

It�s a little like Hung meets Survivor Man only I am neither hung nor a survivor but rather loser freelance writer forced to go on these oddventurous trips to keep from losing his house. A few of the other ones I�ve done over the years:

� Lay down with dead cows in the Chihuahuan desert in hopes of coaxing vultures into landing on me

� Jetskiied to Siberia where I was held at gun point by Kalashnikov-toting Soviets

� Set my own personal land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats in a 69 Mustang with a Lincoln Continental engine tweaked to burn Nitrous

� Blowgun monkey hunted in the Ecuadorian Amazon

� Almost got electrocuted testing out a shark-repelling device while swimming through a feeding frenzy of sharks

� Scissored through a half-pipe at Breckenridge, twice, on a �snow bike� after breaking my ribs on the thing 20 minutes earlier

I also have done the same kind of thing with countless unnecessary medical procedures�from virtual colonoscopies to anti-impotence �trans-urethral micro-suppository pellets� (not actually impotent, so in order to simulate this, I had my wife sing Ethel Merman songs in bed).

I will attach a few pictures!

Desperation breeds desperate measures�as enthralled viewers of HBO�s new acclaimed seriesJIM! will surely attest to!

Joking aside, I have so many of these first person experiential stories I�ve written over the decades that we could do easily do 5 years worth of episodes in visually spectacular locales. Throw in some (fictitious) love interests, like the cruelly beautiful publicist for HBO who keeps threatening to cut my show, and a Dickensian assortment of Smallweed-like rapacious creditors, and I think we have the next American Masterpiece on our hands!

_________________________________________

Cheryl's reply:

You had me at Hung, then lost me at not hung.

_________________________________________

Jim's reply: {note--I am not proud of this, but Hollywood is a cruel town. You do what you must to secure yourself a place on the casting couch.}

What I meant was that I am not hung. I�m HUNG!!!!
But I was afraid this would scare the Japanese side of your family tree.

______________________________________

Cheryl's reply:
OK!!!!
But I was afraid this would scare the Japanese side of your family tree. --good memory.
_______________________________________

All right. As of now, the ball, or perhaps balls, for I have floated quite a few concepts here, are in Cheryl's lovely court/cougar cave.

Who knows what the high-powered beautiful media mavens of Manhattan are thinking?

If I had to venture a guess, she's on the horn with her stiletto-heeled HBO chick mafia, telling them even now about this sad sack rube who has blundered onto a pot of gold with his sad sack life.

They may even be debating ways of negotiating a low-ball rock-bottom option for my life story.

Let me take the angst out of the equation for you, Cheryl.

You are correct. I am no "sophisticate" with even the most rudimentary understanding of "moral obligation bonds backed by collateralized Burger King Limited Partnership swap derivative shares amortized against the yen."

These kinds of money things baffle and daze me.

My life story is my gift to the world.

I will let it go in a heartbeat for an option in the very, very low seven figures.
____________________________________
Cheryl's reply to JIM! ?

Apparently, she is still thinking it over.

But when I get back from Colony Zones, I am confident everybody's gonna get well!

Categories: Uncategorized

15 Comments

57 years, 7 months, lifetime best!

by

jim thornton

, April 26th, 2010 at 06:31 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

I have spent much of my life as a late bloomer subscribing to a basic philosophy:

What is mediocre in youth becomes steadily less so provided you can hang onto it.

In my very mediocre life of swimming, my best high school time in the 200 freestyle was a 1:56.00 via hand timing. The only time I got to swim it in college was even worse--1:57 something.

When I resumed competing in masters, I have a video from our little Y championships where I did, at age 45 or 46, a 2:08.

I did not make it into the 1:55's till age 49, when I did a 1:55.11 at Y Nationals in Ft. Lauderdale.

At 50, my best time was a 1:55.48.

At 51, a 1:55.42

At 52, a 1:56.41.

At 53, a 1:57.07.

At 54, a 1:57.09.

At 55, a 1:58.03

The momentum of the Grim Reaper at this point seemed clear and inexorable.

But then, with the help and inspiration of my friend and swimming coach nonpareil, Bill White, I began once again to train a bit harder, hoping to redeem myself in the new age group....

At 56, a 1:56.07...a new Zones record at last year's Colonies Zone meet, and a time I was sure would be the high water mark for me for the rest of my life.

But then, plagued by mysterious groin lesions and isolated systolic hypertension and excessive daytime sleepiness and massive financial misgivings and the influx of impossibly fast Super Hero swimmers like Jack Groselle and Michael Mann into a once geriatric age group that could actually field a pretty competitve Jr. College swimming team of semi-centenarian-pluses...

I decided to try to overcome my personal decrepitudes and recapture, perchance even build upon, my 20-something swimming mediocrity...

And thus it was, on Sunday morning, April 26, at approximately 10:15 a.m., I readied myself for my best event. I was a bit tired out already from the previous two days.

On Friday, I had already swum my personal age group best in the 1000, in the process setting the new Zones record!

Event 1 Men 55-59 1000 Yard Freestyle
================================================== ================
ZONE: Z 11:23.72 4/20/1997 Drury Gallagher
NATL: ! 10:07.36 5/14/2006 JIM MCCONICA
Name Age Team Seed Finals
================================================== ================
1 Thornton, James 57 TEAM PITTSBURGH 11:44.00 11:22.39Z
29.39 1:03.28 (33.89)
1:37.64 (34.36) 2:11.32 (33.68)
2:46.34 (35.02) 3:21.41 (35.07)
3:56.55 (35.14) 4:30.46 (33.91)
5:05.95 (35.49) 5:41.17 (35.22)
6:15.69 (34.52) 6:49.54 (33.85)
7:24.64 (35.10) 7:59.90 (35.26)
8:35.16 (35.26) 9:09.60 (34.44)
9:44.21 (34.61) 10:18.27 (34.06)
10:51.76 (33.49) 11:22.39 (30.63)

On Saturday, I had set my personal age group bests in the 100 and 500 as well:

Event 6 Men 55-59 100 Yard Freestyle
================================================== ================
ZONE: Z 52.86 4/25/2009 James Thornton, TPIT
NATL: ! 48.37 4/30/2000 RICHARD ABRAHAMS
Name Age Team Seed Finals
================================================== ================
1 Trevisan, Paul 58 COLONIALS 1776 51.10 50.24Z
24.25 50.24 (25.99)
2 Thornton, James 57 TEAM PITTSBURGH 53.35 52.43Z
25.39 52.43 (27.04)

(I broke my own zones record here, but lost it to the remarkable god-like swimming god, Paul Trevisan, in the next heat)

Event 18 Men 55-59 500 Yard Freestyle
================================================== ================
ZONE: Z 5:24.84 4/25/2009 James Thornton, TPIT
NATL: ! 4:57.82 5/20/2007 JIM MCCONICA
Name Age Team Seed Finals
================================================== ================
1 Thornton, James 57 TEAM PITTSBURGH 5:32.00 5:23.18Z
28.94 1:01.25 (32.31)
1:34.60 (33.35) 2:07.93 (33.33)
2:41.22 (33.29) 3:14.34 (33.12)
3:47.97 (33.63) 4:20.96 (32.99)
4:53.64 (32.68) 5:23.18 (29.54)

(I broke my Zones record and fortunately Paul does not swim anything longer than the 100. So this one stood.)

I am not particularly fast, nor do I boast particularly good endurance. But somewhere in the intersection of "somewhat fast" and "somewhat good endurance" is the perfect distance for me: the 200.

And so it was I woke Sunday morning with an semi-digested full platter of Mephis-style dry ribs still in my digestive tract and feeling a bit nervous and crickity as is my wont.

I would like to give a big thanks to Rich "SwimStud" Bell, who suggested a strategy for swimming the 200 about 10 minutes before my heat: he said to build the final 75. Regular readers of this vlog know that I generally try to really stretch and stay smooth on the 3rd 50, then blast out the final 50 sprint. But Rich convinced me to start building earlier.

I would also like to thank Leslie "The Fortress" Livingston for keeping our house in fine shape during my absence, and for feeding me her proprietary Mystery Smoothy in the morning, with its various secret greens, coconutty water admixtures, whey and hemp protein, berries of various stripes, and a little of this and a little of that.

And I also want to thank Chicken of the Sea, Amanda Hunt, who in her aboriginal HTFU Aussie wisdom finally managed to communicate to me another bit of advice that others have been suggesting for years: i.e., that you will swim faster in you keep your eyes open.

In the 100, for instance, I was bemoaning my lousy time, having glanced at the scoreboard and seen somebody else's time--a 53:35, worse than what I had swum two weeks ago in the Amish mudhole.

Amanda tried to console me by saying that I had actually swum 103 yards. (When the film has been processed, I will post my various swims, but the 100, in particular, was very erratic. There was a collission in which I appear like a salmon in rut with lane line.) Anyhow, her words sunk in, and even after I learned I had actually swum a 52.43, I realized I might have gone faster if I had limited the race to 100 yards.

But enough preamble. I mounted the blocks chanting the words, "Eyes open, eyes open, eyes open."

The race started.

1:54.89 later it was over for me.

It was the fastest 200 of my life.

Possibly the shortest 200 of my life as well, as the footage will show: I swam right on the line the whole way.

I also feel I split it perfectly for me--out in 55.39 and back in 59.50:

Event 32 Men 55-59 200 Yard Freestyle
================================================== ================
ZONE: Z 1:56.07 4/26/2009 James Thornton, TPIT
NATL: ! 1:50.85 5/14/2006 JIM MCCONICA
Name Age Team Seed Finals
================================================== ================
1 Thornton, James 57 TEAM PITTSBURGH 1:58.90 1:54.89Z
26.55 55.39 (28.84)
1:25.44 (30.05) 1:54.89 (29.45)

Sorry for going on so long about this. I know that even my fellow swimmers tend to suffer eye-glazing when reading about the swimming performances of people outside their own age groups.

But I never, ever thought I could do this.

And I know this sounds like one massive bragging session (we all know the sound of two hands clapping, but who knows the sound of one hand clapping? Well, I do, actually. Since I usually clap it most loudly on my own back...)

Anyhow, I offer this vlog to all my fellow masters swimmers, afflicted as we all are with some various species of infirmity and woe and calamity and weakness.

It is possible, with the help of your friends like Bill and Leslie and Amanda and Rich and all the others we see at these meets and correspond with on these forums...

It is possible to hold onto your youthful mediocrity much longer than you might imagine, and by so doing, wait it out and transcend it.

Categories: Uncategorized

29 Comments

Jim: The Classics Illustrated Version

by

jim thornton

, April 27th, 2010 at 03:36 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

Okay, after this, I will take a break from swimming self-aggrandizement and move onto other areas of self-aggrandizement so vlog followers won't get sick of me.

But I can't help myself.

I must post footage of what proved to be the greatest meet experience of my life.

Many many thanks to the munificent Chicken of the Sea, Amanda "HTFU" Hunt, who filmed all these races.

Swim #1. 1000 yard freestyle (Friday night)

Fortunately, this does not include the 1000.

Even I would be hard pressed to watch me plodding back and forth for 11:22.39 Z

Swim #2. 100 yard freestyle (Saturday morning)

I was sort of out of it for this swim. I got up on the blocks late after some confusion about what heat I was in and was still semi-putting my goggles on when the starter, perhaps noting my discombobulation, had one of the only quick interludes of the whole meet between the "take your marks" and the "go."

So, I did not have time to remind myself to keep my eyes open. You will see on the third length that I hit the lap lane. What you can't see is that the turns on the far end of the pool were all wobbly because of this slippy metal rim that the GMU pool has around its perimeter.

When I finished the race, I looked up at the clock and thought I had done a 53.35, slower than two weeks earlier in our Amish mudhole. I was horribly disappointed and instantly groggy and bedraggled.

A half hour later, when they posted the results, I saw that I had been looking at the wrong time on the board. I had actually swum a 52.43Z, which turns out to be my fastest ever electronically timed 100 as a masters swimmer. (I went a 52.09 hand-timed at CMU when I was 50.)

This time beat my old zone's record of 52.90, but it was crushed by the great sprinter, Paul Trevisan in the next heat. Still, I had a new Zones record for about 1 minute!

Anyhow, great joy for me here-- and a tincture of what might have been had I had time to remind myself to keep my eyes opened:

http://www.youtube.com/user/saddlebagz69#p/a/u/2/7gcg2M8Y2m4

Swim #3. 500 Freestyle (Saturday afternoon)

I swam this race, like the 1000, not in my B70 but rather a FS1 I had purchased in the pre-B70 era but never worn before. My goal was to man up for this race and not coddle myself too much, vis a vis pain avoidance. But I also didn't want to suffer arm lockjaw half way through and require mechanical hoist water evacuation. Thus I attempted, as best I could, to adopt a metronomic death march kind of approach, with a bit of a sprint at the end if there was anything left.

Note: I am putting these videos in order of how I swam the races, but you might want to save watching this one for last and take the precaution of cushioning the floor around you with throw pillows in case it causes you to nod off.

My time--5:23.18Z--beat my old Zones record in this event.

http://www.youtube.com/user/saddleba.../3/gfi1biu0uUs

Swim #4. 200 Freestyle (Sunday morning)

This was the high point of my swimming life--a new zones record (beating my time of 1:56.07 from last year.

Event 32 Men 55-59 200 Yard Freestyle
================================================== ================
ZONE: Z 1:56.07 4/26/2009 James Thornton, TPIT
NATL: ! 1:50.85 5/14/2006 JIM MCCONICA
Name Age Team Seed Finals
================================================== ================
1 Thornton, James 57 TEAM PITTSBURGH 1:58.90 1:54.89Z
26.55 55.39 (28.84)
1:25.44 (30.05) 1:54.89 (29.45)

'Nuff said.

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj0dgN1-H90"]YouTube- Jim's 200 free[/nomedia]

Immediate aftermath:

http://www.youtube.com/user/saddleba.../7/HIkAZSslQBw

Aftermath continued:

http://www.youtube.com/user/saddleba.../6/wze2QdxAfoU

Swim #5. 50 Freestyle (Sunday afternoon)

Being as I had absolutely no chance to make the Top 10 in the 50--and doubt I could have made the Top 100 in this pure sprinter's event--I decided to end the meet on a note that might preminisce my FINA-legal future.

And so it was for the first time since I was 47, and the Speedo Aquablade body suit had not yet been invented, that I actually raced something in a jammer.

The suit was the new Speedo racing jammer, which had a peculiar feel. People who have raced in so-called paper suits told me its got a similar tactile sensation to this. I have a size 34 gut (if I am being generous to myself), so I wore a size 30 jammer.

It got on easily, perhaps too easily.

My initial concern with this suit was that it compresses and miniaturizes the one part of my body that needs not further miniaturization. Moreover, by compacting the flesh here, it only served--like a pasta extruder--to push more fat out where I suspected it might be flubbering and blubbering like a sail that has lost one of its lines in a gale.

In other words, I did not think I would be swimming with the sleekness of an orca but more with the inelegance of a sumo.

My best times this year previous to today were a 24.81 and a 24.50, both swum in Amish mudholes with my B70 kneeskin.

I figured that if I could break 26.0 in the jammers, I would be doing okay.

To give myself some additional boost, I first took some Jolt, the use of which is illustrated in the following, where I instructed Leslie in the proper application of the gum:

http://www.youtube.com/user/saddleba.../1/bofYC-y2qn0

Next, I did the pre-50 weigh in on the George Mason University cattle scale. Why they have this thing in the natatorium baffles me, but I used it anyhow.

http://www.youtube.com/user/saddleba...13/oXxlukFno6A

Finally, I moved to the blocks for the first of what would prove two starts in the 50:

http://www.youtube.com/user/saddleba...14/JWJv2NVxuR0

Then the second start and actual race:

http://www.youtube.com/user/saddleba...15/v3t25IghfqU

Followed by the aftermath:

http://www.youtube.com/user/saddleba...16/u3BkgqwjeBw

My time of 24.78 is the best jammer time I have done as a master. I don't know what the discrepancy between this and a B70 time would be. Last year, my 50 in the b70 was a 24.17, so if we compare these, it's a .61 second difference.

However, I also swam the 100 and 200 slower last year, so it is possible I might have beaten my 24.17 this year had I done it in a B70. I doubt I would have beaten the time by anymore than roughly have the time I beat my 100 by (52.90-52.43=.47/2=.23). So saying I might have done a 24.17-.23 = 23.94 in the B70, that would suggest that switching to jammers cost me .84 seconds per 50.

Not great, but I suspect learning to keep my eyes open could make up some of this, shaving off chest hair a little more, and losing the gut maybe a wee bit more.

But such is fodder for future vlogs. This is the time to reap, not to sow!

Updated April 28th, 2010 at 05:02 PM by jim thornton

Categories: Uncategorized

19 Comments

Motivating Water Nymphs

by

jim thornton

, May 2nd, 2010 at 05:43 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

Girls these days have it hard.

They have become the Super Gender, excelling in everything from academics to sports to Godly favoritism.

If you look at standard TV sitcoms, these Super Girls are often linked with Loser Guys.

Cases-in-point:

Ed and Heather

Esmeralda and Quasimodo

Michele and me

Because today's girls are so ridiculously good at just about everything they do, and so absurdly better than our drone gender, it has become increasingly difficult for us (i,e,. the still primarily male mentor/coaching ranks) to find new ways to motivate these super girls in the pool.

Trophies?

The typical super girl has so many trophies that they have become old hat!

Old hats?

Alas, they have a surfeit of these too!

On our team here in Sewickley, we are blessed with a super girl of the highest rank--a great swimmer who can also taxidermy road-killed raccoons via the so-called "brain method" (whereby the hide is cured in the fatty acid emollients of the critter's brain), turning said sad specimen into one of the most spectacular handbags you have ever seen in all your born days.

Mistress Mollie is something of a globe hopper, too--wintering in the Islands hither, summering at the beach thither, returning to Sewickley only for short interludes between the shifting of the high social seasons of her different preferred locales.

How might I manage to motivate such a girlish specimen to even greater heights of accomplishment?

It seems, at first glance, an absolutely impossible dream!

But I have found that the key is the right admixture of evoked emotions. These cannot be entirely sweet; these can't be entirely sour; these can't be entirely sensual appeals to appetites unspoken but obvious; nor can they be wholly the instigation of massive disgust and "is that all there is?" desperation.

No. The psychological appeal must include all these things and more.

Of course, every super girl is unique, and you must find a distinctive set of motivational tools to push her individualized set of buttons. (There are usually three of these.)

In this video, I demonstrate how seemingly peculiar set of props--including a veterinary medical display item and a man who uncannily resembles it--conspired to get our team's super girl Mollie to respond way beyond my wildest dreams.

Please feel free to borrow and adapt the protocol for use in motivating your own team's super girls.

Oh, and one more thing: You're welcome!

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x_CPWdx-Eg"]YouTube- Motivating Mollie[/nomedia]

Categories: Uncategorized

9 Comments

Night Nurse Mollie: Night Strangler, Pt. 2

by

jim thornton

, May 11th, 2010 at 12:14 AM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

As perspicacious viewers of [nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMpL5zIuN2M"]The Night Strangler Part 1. - YouTube[/nomedia] have perhaps managed to glean already, your narrator has been tentatively diagnosed by the sleep lab technician, Ashley, (who parenthetically concedes that she is not allowed to diagnose sleep disorders), that the odds are extremely high I suffer from sleep apnea.

This is a common condition typically suffered by those with stentorian roar-like snoring, obesity, and over-sized necks.

I don't do or have any of these things, and in fact, sport a neck that measures 15 inches when I am flexing it, which technically qualifies me for the diagnosis of "pencil-necked geek."

Still, people like me are known to have apnea despite our lack of the traditional red flags. And it looks like I almost certainly am soon to be getting official word--after a certified sleep doctor has examined my polysomnographic results--that I am, indeed, a PP-NGWAOSA, AKA, "paradoxically pencil-necked geek with advanced obstructive sleep apnea."

The good news, if this does prove to be the case, is that a lifetime of malaise, neuralgia, fatigue, excessive daytime fatigue, night sweats, high blood pressure, nervous temperament, morning hoarseness, vulnerability to sore throats, pronounced stupor, and hog-whimpering headaches upon awakening with or without the explanation of alcohol--all these symptoms and many, many more may not have been psychosomatic and/or the result of character defects which we all, myself robustly included in this unanimity of opinion, assumed was Jim in a Nutshell explained.

In fact, rather than being a neurotic whiny little bitch of a boyish old baby, I might in fact be something of a hero, whose relative lack of complaint about his life's circumstances over the years (a minor word here, a sigh there, perhaps a faintly uttered phrase under the breath a la, Jesus, that hurts like a mother ****er!) can only be described in light of what we now know to be the true extent of my life torture as...astonishing bravery of the sort rarely seen in the human animal.

All this, to be sure, awaits further medical evaluation and sanction, and I do not in any way mean to risk a torn shoulder labrum patting myself brusquely upon my own back even if I so surely deserve such a vigorous patting!

In any event, for those rare individuals who still do not know what apnea does to the sleeping human hoping for a moment of repose, the truth is not pretty.

Not pretty at all.

Since my semi-diagnosis by a knowledgeable though uncertified lab tech, I have had trouble sleeping because of the Nightmare on Elm Street murder scenario I am certain awaits me every time I nod off.

To protect myself from premature demise, I took the liberty of hiring a night nurse, young candy-striper Mollie, fresh from the nunnery, to keep watch over me as I slept, protecting me from the bogey man that lives inside me.

Yikes! Asked to remove film. I did so!

Oh, and there was one scene in the film that was so graphic and disturbing in its nature that the Ratings Board on Vimeo, YouTube, Mayo Clinic Medical Videos, RedTube, and all the other reputable user sites that I submitted it to forced me to remove it.

As an added bonus, I am including that disturbing Out Take, as well. Click here...if you dare: [nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8AW-9i8uns"]Night Strangler Pt. 2 Out Take Prolonged Overly Graphic Str - YouTube[/nomedia]

Updated November 29th, 2011 at 05:02 PM by jim thornton

Categories: Uncategorized

12 Comments

See Pap Sleep!

by

jim thornton

, May 18th, 2010 at 07:26 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

The next appointment at the sleep lab wasn't supposed to happen till June 13th, but I asked them to call me if somebody canceled, and somebody did. So I go back tonight at 8 p.m. for round two.

A brief recap:

Regular readers of this vlog may recall that from time to time I have complained, well, not complained exactly, more like objectively described without emotion my experience with what sleep doctors call EDS, or excessive daytime sleepiness.
One of our many, many capital fellows in the USMS greater community, Dr. Tom Jaeger of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, wrote in to suggest I take the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (which can be found here: http://www.bami.us/Sleep/SleepScale.html
On the following scale, I was somewhere between very and dangerously:

Score of 1-6: you're getting enough sleep
Score of 4-8: you tend to be sleepy during the day; this is the average score
Score of 9-15: you are very sleepy and should seek medical advice
Score of 16 or greater: you are dangerously sleepy and should seek medical advice

Car crashes--and presumably Honda Metropolitan scooter crashes, as well--are said to be a risk in the untreated sleep apnea patient, especially when the apnea itself is happening at 85 mph.

Tom at the time suggested going to a sleep lab to find out what was the likeliest culprit. Statistically speaking, sleep apnea is by far the most common cause in the population in general, and middle aged males in particular. However, some of the conventional red flags -- a thick neck, obesity, and very loud snoring -- were not on the Jim check list of attributes, and I tended to discount the likelihood I was an apnea sufferer.

What I thought was much more likely were any or all of the following:

a drug side effect, particularly my long use of antidepresants
an occult virus -- a slow virus, in my vernacular -- or possibly a tsetse fly bite through which was vectored into my blood stream the trypanosome responsible for sleeping sickness.
Or idiopathic hypersomnolence, AKA, grogginess for which there is no known physical, emotional, or existential cause.

Time passed.

The symptoms waxed.

The symptoms waned.

The symptoms returned like a Dunan yo-yo strapped forever to my **** you finger.

Then a new symptom arose: ISH, or isolated systolic hypertension.

My internal Dr. Gregory House had a field day with this new information. Could the Effexor XR be the cause of my ISH? What about the Provigil I had begun popping to counter my E.D.S.? Could I simply be overtraining? Might there be some sort of gluten allergy lurking in the background?

But I am not a high-achieving white woman. Surely gluten allergy could be crossed off the list.

Hovering in the background over all such speculations is the one disorder I Know for certain I do indeed suffer: hypochondriasis of the non-delusional variety.

Or do I?

Might there be an alternative, unified, and actual physical illness kind of explanation for why I suffer:

morning headaches and sore throats
night sweating
persistent daytime grogginess
neuralgia and myalgia
Provigil deficiency
and so forth?

So I checked into the sleep lab and to my amazement was diagnosed with sleep apnea.

Tonight, I go back in for a second night in the lab, this time to be fitted with a CPAP mask and a second round of testing to see if this reduces the number of apnea events (i.e., where I stop breathing).

Do Robots Dream of Android Sheep? Naa! Naa!

Part of me wonders if all of this is actually yet another elaborate scam from yet another scammeister of the Medical Industrial Complex, anxious not only to test and diagnose apnea at no little expense to the system, but to then ladle on with the need of expensive apparatus, the profits from which will line the pockets of yet more medical industrial golf club members hoping for dues money.

I Googled "picture of a swindler," and this is what it came up with.

Please keep your fingers crossed that only the best will come of this; that I will not be played yet again for a fool; that persistent daytime grogginess and its innumerable social and cognitive sequellae shall all but disappear from my life in coming weeks; and that a brand new, ebullient, vital, and sleep-restored oxygen hording Jimbo will very soon be taking over this vlog, and bring a new level of interest unfathomable at the present time!

I Googled "picture of extreme excitement" and this is what the Internet thinks I might look like after CPAP treatment, though I have some doubts, I must admit. Some little, tiny, niggling doubts.

Categories: Uncategorized

19 Comments

In Atlanta

by

elise526

, May 19th, 2010 at 10:46 PM (Elise's Fitness Fun)

Got to the Tech pool around 4:30 today to register and do a warm-up/workout in the pool. Really glad that I got over here today as there was only one guy in my lane. After he got out, I even had the lane to myself for about 15 minutes.

I hear tomorrow is going to be a zoo with everybody coming in to grab a swim when the pool opens up after the competition. I had not planned to swim tomorrow as I've got plans to possibly see some family and friends. I felt a little bit tight today, so I may have to go over to Emory at some point tomorrow and snag some pool time there just to avoid the crowds.

Today, I got in about 1800 of various sets and easy swims. Part of me wanted to get my HR up, but another part of me, the super protective part, wouldn't let me get my HR up over 140. No good to leave my race in the practice pool. On the other hand, I'm hoping I won't be sluggish when I race.

Observations:

1. The meet planners and volunteers seem to be extremely prepared and very much on top of things.

2. There are plenty of signs directing you where to go.

3. Water temp was great. Very refreshing, but not too cold. Perfect for racing.

4. Walls are flat and easy to turn on the 25/75, but hard to get out when you finish. I swam over to the side ladder to get out which I never do.

5. Lifeguards are being very helpful.

6. Enjoyed the music they were playing. I heard some good fifties and sixties stuff playing. Sorry Geek.

7. Air felt good to me. Didn't have any breathing issues.

8. Do not like the locker room. It has no benches and just a few stools. The changing area is one big area the size of a classroom. No privacy vis a vis rows of lockers at all. We will be staring at each other as we shove our bodies into our suits. I'm even considering putting on my suit in my room and leaving the straps down and unzipped. I'll throw on a pair of shorts over the suit and a t-shirt and just drive/ride over to the pool.

9. I'v heard there may be another locker room around. May have to check this out tomorrow.

10. I was a goof-off today in the pool compared to most in there swimming. I guess the distance types are in there. I know some that probably go nearly as fast in these types of workouts as they do in a race. In any case, I felt like a seriously lazy sprinter.

11. Saw mainly two body types with the men and the women: ectomorphs and endomorphs. Saw very few mesos, but I guess the meso events aren't until Friday, so maybe this is why I didn't see many. I'm a meso, so kind of felt out of place.

During my workout, there was a skinny girl in the lane next to me moving it out really fast in freestyle. I'd use her to try to get my HR up when I was doing a few 50s. To get my HR up, I even tried to remind myself that the little skinny girl should not be able to swim that fast. Alas, the overprotective side of me made me back down.

Updated May 19th, 2010 at 10:54 PM by elise526

Categories: Uncategorized

12 Comments

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

by

jim thornton

, May 25th, 2010 at 09:50 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

This just in! This just in! This just in!

A new link to the Ciara Movie, Thank Heavens for Little Ciara's, may actually allow my vlog audience to see this rejuvenating mood-boosting video despite the copyright issues of the owners of the song I used.

Try clicking this (and let me know if it works for you even if you aren't a facebook member.) Suggestion provided by one Mr. Bill Sherman of Kansas City, Missouri!

Hats off, Mr. Sherman! Now please all of you try clicking here! http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/vid...v=397876503758

(Note: if you aren't in the mood for a long romp through my ruminations on moppet daughters, please feel free to skip down to the bottom and look for the words: Click Ciara Movie Link Directly Below!

If you are in a horrible mood, or even a borderline bad mood, or maybe even an okay mood, or perhaps in a good mood, or even one so ecstatic you can't believe it could get any better, regardless of how you are feeling right now, I do guarantee you that watching my movie on Ciara will put you into a better place than you are now.

Of course, I would be happy if you choose to read my ruminations on moppet daughters, too. Nothing wrong with that!)

My teammates Bill and Mark are both very lucky guys.

They are indefatigable swimmers who never whine and, to my knowledge, have never been compared to "that teacher on South Park" the way I have.

Is this really what I look like? or is it more just a personality type I share with Mr. Garrison?

But Bill and Mark share something besides swimming god status, and this something is what makes them both beyond just lucky but blessed.

I refer to their respective adorable little daughters.

In Bill's case, the daughter is Ciara, who always cheers for her Papa at swimming meets;

and in Mark's case, the daughters are Caroline (a second grader), Georgia (a Kindergartner), and Lila (not yet in school but Harvard class of 2028).

When I was enduring a particularly rough patch of psychiatric woe a few years back, Ciara was arguably the best antidepressant I could find. I would simply lift her up and apply her like an analgesic tablet to my forehead, and the pain would disappear for a while.

Remember that product that used to be advertised for headache relief?

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_SwD7RveNE"]YouTube- HEADON! Apply directly to the forehead![/nomedia]

Watching the commercial for Head On actually caused headaches so intractable that all the homeopathic placebo evocation in the world could not remedy them!

Ciara application, on the other hand, always worked!

Recently, Ciara drew her father a picture, wandered downstairs and found him, then wordlessly pointed out how she wanted him to play with her.

Here is her picture, which immediately became one of my favorite artworks of all time!!!! (The movie, Thank Heavens for Little Ciara's, which I shall post below, is my attempt to film a recreation of this art work's creation and first unveiling.)

Bill playing with his daughter Ciara in the way that Ciara has instructed him to do.

After seeing this picture, I thought Bill--alone among guys in the world--had the luckiest situation imaginable. He was the father of the artist/human analgesic tablet, Ciara, in whose adorable orbit he could forever bask and benefit! Who else could boast coming close to such a beatific life?

It turns out that Mark actually has a similarly daughter-rich wonderland, too.

Yesterday, Mark did not appear at our 7 x 500 swimming practice, presumably because he had just gotten back from Atlanta and was tired. Bill, who wrote the workout, didn't make it either. In fact, I am pretty sure I am the only person who actually swam all 7 of these 500s. But that's off topic.

Anyhow, I went over to Mark's house after practice to congratulate him on his times and console him about his initial sense of failure in the 100 breaststroke.

(You can read a great account of Mark's psychic metamorphosis from Ferklempt Meshugina to Mensch in Mark's own inaugural blog, You Never Forget Your First Time, here: http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?b=9805).

The following pictures are what I found adorning Mark's front door. More unbelievably good artwork done by little daughters who love their daddy!

What swimmer in all God's firmament would not want to come home from Nationals and be greeted by this?

Note a few details here--the dolphin (a surrogate for father Mark?) on the starting blocks on the left, followed by the same dolphin with his Gold Medal standing sunlit on the podium once the race is done.

Note, as well, the meet's "score" of Home O vs. Visitors 1,000,000 "because of my dad"; and finally, check out the order of finishers:

Cox (Mark's last name) in the No. 1 spot.
Some guy named "Rider" that none of us, including the artist, Caroline, know (she almost put Bill here, but then decided not to because he would beat her dad),

and finally, in 3rd place, that is to say, last place, "Thornton.")

Okay, enough. I realize this is in danger of becoming a Megila (n.).

(A friend e-mailed me today and was bantering about in a bit of Yiddish, so I've been trying to improve my vocabulary here. If you need help with this, I recommend a quick perusal of http://www.infoplease.com/spot/yiddish1.html for some basics.)

Okay, if you took my option to skip all of the megila so far, and desire only to watch the movie about Ciara, here that is.

I defy anybody to watch this and not emerge happier than they were before the viewing, no matter how disappointing or gladdening a recent swimming meet may have proved!

Click Ciara Movie Link Directly Below! (i.e., the words right under these!)

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/vid...v=397876503758

Updated May 27th, 2010 at 12:35 AM by jim thornton (changing movie link to something I hope will work)

Categories: Uncategorized

18 Comments

Grasshopper Blogging Advice

by

jim thornton

, June 8th, 2010 at 01:25 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

Recently, a rookie USMS blogger turned to me with a look of admiration and perplexity on his young, 42-year-old face and asked me two earnest questions. I can�t remember the exact wording he used, but it was pretty close to this:

1. Jim, you are such an amazing, preternaturally gifted vlogger, I feel sheepish to approach you directly with my Lilliputian�s inquiries. But I can�t help myself, so great is my need for answers. First of all, why can�t you write more vlogs�two-a-days, perhaps, but at the very minimum, something every day, if even just a haiku or villanelle? Honestly, I don�t mean to be so demanding here, so needy. But you haven�t posted a new vlog since May. Speaking for many, many, many of us in the greater USMS community, life without our daily dollop of Jimtastic Jimdiosyncractic life wisdom comes very close to being, well, unlivable. When oh when will you vlog once more?

2. Secondly, as an aspiring blogger myself, who hopes to attract the occasional view and comment, whose own efforts here started out promisingly with 100 views for the inaugural posting, but which has been backsliding slowly but surely ever since (precisely the opposite, I must add, of your own vlogging course, which has continued to gain momentum over the years like Genghis Khan�s small rag tag hordes eventually coalescing into the world�s largest army ever!), I am hoping you might offer me some insights and advice into what makes a popular blog?

Oh, grasshopper!

Please, feel free to always come to me with your earnest entreaties and queries!

Like the Robber Barons of yore, most of life�s astonishing success stories like me reach a point in our trajectories towards the heavens when it is no longer just about ME, ME, ME, ME, and a little more ME! Eventually, the likes of me feel compelled to give back something, to prepare the next generation to take our place when the palatial sarcophagus is erected and its precious cargo ready to sleep forever without a CPAP mask!

I am slouching ever so quickly in the direction of said sarcophagus and bed of everlasting granite! Nothing exceptional about me in this regard! I shall put on my death shroud pajama bottoms one leg at time, I assure you!

And so it is that while I still have apneic breath left in the ragged lungs, I shall answer your questions, thus, one by one.

1. Though this particular vlog here breaks the recent drought of entries, there is a reason for the drought. As perspicacious readers will note, we last left the groggy Jim and his Zarathustrianly high Epworth Score poised on the brink of obstructive sleep apnea treatment. Like many of my infirmities, I have managed to coax my real-world editor into letting me write about this topic for eventual magazine publication. He has, however, asked me to refrain from blogging about the topic until said article is done and published. I am doing my best to honor his request. Alas, as a somewhat obsessive fellow by nature, my ongoing travails in the world of sleep-wake disturbances are all I can think about lately. Until your recently merciful inquiries, dear grasshopper, gave me new fodder to ruminate over and write about, I couldn�t think of anything to opine about, so fixated were my thoughts on nocturnal oxygen deprivation, hypoxic brain damage, non-restorative multiple anterograde amnestic arousals, and so forth.

2. It�s hard to say what attracts views. Most people get very few. Leslie the Fortress Livingston, on the other hand, gets zillions. Some of my own entries, too, have attracted attention, though not all with the 7,500 plus hits of such classics at Lost Person Behaviour and Will Swim for Polish Vodka. It�s kind of a hit or miss thing.

I think Leslie does well partly because she is a pulchritudinous chick that men want to be and women want to be with, or whatever that old chestnut is. In any event, I believe there are tons of women swimmers out there who read Leslie�s excellent blog to learn about her sometimes eccentric training techniques and remedies for orthopedic and gastrointestinal havoc. That these techniques and remedies are seldom burdened by actual science is no doubt a plus. We live in age where the anecdotal trumps the statistical and evidentiary, and Leslie gives us the former in an entirely unadulterated manner. She also has her coterie of male followers like Qbrain and SwimStud. If you examine a typical Leslie blog, it�s usually filled with specific advice on dryland exercises, underwater monofinic shooter regimens, gluten-free recipes, Family Circus-like balancing act info, passionate tech suit advocacy, taper strategies, and so on. Always, these are delivered in a friendly manner with a hint of feistiness�like Doritos with lime. She gets a ton of hits and an amazing number of comments with virtually every stroke of her iMac keyboard.

But does such interesting and actionable advice account entirely for the dear girl�s popularity as the Queen of Blog? Personally, I think her true appeal transcends mere swimming. Say the phrase �social networking,� and Leslie defines both the �social� and the �networking� phases here. Leslie is constantly leaving comments for other bloggers and tending to her manifold online friendships with the expertise of a bonsai gardener. The reality is that Leslie is such a nice person, I think she�s become like the USMS de facto mom with whom and through whom everyone in the extended family diaspora communicates--the nexus point, if you will, of the masters swimming world at large.

But what about me?

My vlog, which I am no longer writing (no doubt to its detriment) quite so often under the influence of Ambien, takes another approach. Its connection to swimming is often tangential at best, though I do try to work in something here and there about swimming on occasion.

Case-in-point: during last night�s T-30 swim, I managed 2360 yards compared to your own 2200, right? Though who, really, is counting here. If we have learned one thing in the modern era, it�s that awards are given for participation, not victory! Enough about swimming.

I think the most popular of my vlog entries have been popular because I write�in perhaps an overly unashamed and unfiltered way�with precisely whatever weaselly human emotions I happen to be feeling at a particular time.

For instance, if I had had your subject matter today�first time swimming long course in 20 years, and doing so at a ridiculously early hour and with a new group of diehard swimmers I�ve never met before--I might have thrown in some references to the tolls taken by circadian rhythm shifts (with referenced scientific studies to bolster the claim), explain how this no doubt impacted my swimming performance accordingly, but despite this, I still managed to climb from 4th in my lane at Pitt�s morning practice to 1st place, my progress measured not so much by the joy I felt in my own heart, but the chagrin and downright misery so evident on the maws of the deposed alpha males whose spirits I had crushed.

Who knows, I might have even quoted Conan the Barbarian yet again in my vlog (I think I have referenced this quote every couple weeks since I began the vlog):

To wit, when asked, �What is the meaning of life?�

Conan the Barbarian answered:

�To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.�
In any event, to sum up how to get more readers for your blog:

Be nice like Leslie
Be weaselly like me

Oh, and post more pictures.

---------------------------------------------

Conan the Steroidian--Is his suit FINA legal? Can we wear knives?

Categories: Uncategorized

22 Comments

I'm Begging You For Mercy

by

swimmerb212

, June 9th, 2010 at 05:36 PM (Too Neurotic to be Suitably Aquatic)

Grrr... I just realized that if you start typing, and then click "Go Advanced" without saving, poof! goes your blog.

What I was saying that today was R&B day. The playlist is below, and the "dancing banana" best song was "Mercy" by Duffy, which was also the inspiration for the mix because of an article Jim Thornton left for me. It's about music boosting endurance, and they suggested Duffy as a good artist to work out to. They were not wrong.

When the song came on, I switched from kicking freestyle with a board to backstroke kick so I could hear the underwater speaker better. It rest of it went like this:

What Is Hip?, Tower of Power
Love and Happiness, Al Green
Can't Take My Eyes Off You (2000 Box Set Version), Diana Ross & The Supremes
Back To Black, Amy Winehouse
Do I Need You, Ann Peebles
Hot Pants Pt. 1, James Brown
Mercy, Duffy
Baby I Love You, Aretha Franklin
Superfly (Superfly), Curtis Mayfield
Back to Mephis, David Sanborn
School Boy Crush, Average White Band
Buttered Popcorn, The Supremes
I'm Lookin' For a Love, Bobby Womack
Can't Hide Love, Earth, Wind & Fire
Serious, Duffy
Que Sera Sera, Sly & The Family Stone
What it Comes Down To, The Isley Brothers
Wat Does It Take, Jr. Walker & the All Stars
I Was Made to Love Her, Lenny Williams
Rehab, Amy Winehouse
That's the Way Love Is, Marvin Gaye
Respect, Aretha Franklin -This can be on every workout playlist, every day, and I'd be cool with that.
I Didn't Know the Meaning of Pain, Otis Clay
Pain In My Heart, Otis Redding
I Believe I Can Fly (Space Jam), R Kelly
Hit the Road Jack, Ray Charles

The best song besides Duffy was of course "Hot Pants" because how could it not be? Reminded me of that great episode of Season 8 of The Simpsons, when Homer eats a Guatemalan Insanity Pepper and breaks the lighthouse while a tanker is in the neighborhood. Cut to the tanker...
Sea Captain: Arr, matey. Nary a warning light to be seen. 'Tis clear sailing ahead for our precious cargo.
Sailor: Uh, would that be the hot pants, sir?
Sea Captain: Aye, the hot pants.

...as they near the rocks under the broken lighthouse...

Sea Captain: Jonathan Livingston Seagull! We're on a collision course! Hard a-starboard!
Sailor: [just checking] Uh, port?
Sea Captain: [quietly] Aye, port.

Then the credits roll as the tanker hits land and hot pants wash to shore and everyone dances to "Who Wears Short Shorts?"
Note: must acquire that song.
I really, really wanted to get the video clip for that scene for you all (must be a giving blogger,) but I have no idea how to create one that isn't readily available on the internet, and when you Google "Hot Pants Simpsons" you mostly get this:

(Guess who's trying to have the most popular blog ever? At least with the guys...)

Er, we also did a workout today. It felt like a lot more than the 3700 yards it was. Probably because I did 2 75's of fly, which is more than I normally like to do:

500 swim
400 IM Drill
300 Pull
200 Kick
100 EZ

12x25 IM, 4 drill, 4 kick, 4 stroke

6x75 fast swim
250, 50 EZ + 200 IM
6x75 stroke
250, 50 EZ + 200 IM
4x125, 2 swim, 2 stroke for time

... then I had to go to work. In full-coverage pants.

Categories: Uncategorized

2 Comments

Gu, Finger: My Two Gifts

by

jim thornton

, June 11th, 2010 at 05:16 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

The grasshopper blogging advice proffered in my previous entry got me to thinking about the nature of selfish altruism.

For most of my life as a sentient being, i.e., starting around 7 or 8 when I began to speak in normal English instead of the idioglossia or "twin speech" that me and my brother John ("udder Man") Thornton used to use to communicate, anyhow, ever since then, I have understood the wisdom of the following chestnut:

It is better to give than to receive.

Of course, it also immediately struck the 7-year-old man-child philosopher within me that if this was, in fact, true, then the ultimate gift one might bestow upon another human being was to agree to serve as the receiver. This, by definition, allows the other to be the giver, or better person.

Q.E.D.:

If it is better to give than to receive, than it is even better still to receive than to give.

Armed with this more sophisticated understanding of morality, an understanding that I concede many adult moral philosophers have trouble grasping, I began then, and have continued ever since, practicing selfish altruism, my motto being "take, take, take, and take some more!"

Who knows how many people over the decades I have allowed to spiritually enrich themselves at my expense? Who knows how much largess I have accepted so that others might appear greater than me in the eyes of God?

Which brings us back to Water Rat's recent hope that I might provide him with blogging advice. As those who read Grasshopper Vlogging Advice http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?b=10074 will surely remember, I dispensed no shortage of helpful counsel with no expectation of remuneration of any kind!

Indeed, in the Zero Sum Game of USMS blogs, where there are only so many readers to go around, and any new blog that attracts readership to itself will surely siphon away hits from the old established staples--almost like rival religious sects trying to attract tithers--my very advice, it could be argued, would be helping Water Rat at my own expense!

This was, in other words, a clear example of me practicing the simple-minded form of altruism--the giving not receiving kind as opposed to more complex (and morally superior) receiving so the other can be giving kind.

Simple-minded to the point of being jejune though such generosity proved to be, it also--and I am almost embarrassed to admit this--felt good!

In an attempt to recreate this good feeling, I would like in today's vlog to give back directly to the Greater USMS Swimming Community.

Gift No. 1

The first gift is endorsement of a product that has been a godsend to me personally. If you suffer, or know anybody who might suffer, from exercise-induced hypoglycemia, try GU five minutes before practice.

It almost always prevents those horrific symptoms that can result from exercising with insufficient blood sugar: shakiness and trembling, weird blinking lights in the visual field reminiscent of a migraineur's aura, and feelings of ravenous starvation that come on in a twinkling.

I originally popped a packet of GU gel before practice:

The orange and mixed berry flavors proved the easiest for me to stomach.

My Sewickley teammate Ben Mayhew later told me that GU had come out with a new product that was easier to take:

These are surprisingly edible, I must say. If you have kids, and they occasionally eat fruit snacks, the GU Chomp is very close in flavor.

Anyhow, if you do occasionally have this problem of exercise-induced hypoglycemia, get some GU of either sort and keep it with you at the pool. No need to thank me. It is, after all, better to give than receive.

Gift No. 2

Admittedly, the number of the exercise-induced hypoglycemic masters swimmers out there is probably not overwhelming, and of this number, those who don't already know about GU are no doubt fewer still. Thus Gift No. 1 might not affect a huge population (although the population that is affected will be affected quite positively, I believe.)

I would like to give something else that all USMS swimmers, fitness swimmers, and swimming blog readers across the globe might benefit from.

What could this gift be, though? What would benefit such a wide array of swimmer types, genders, and gift-receiving-preference subtypes?

At first, I thought it might be impossible to find something that everyone would like.

But then yesterday, at breakfast, I was reading an article about Galileo.

Galileo while evidently still in possession of all his fingers

The article was actually less about Galileo in his entirety than it was about Galileo and one of his fingers.

Some background:

Fans of the least famous of mortal sins, simony, or the sales of religious relics including the mummified body parts of Saints, will recalls that Luther was so at odds with this practice that it drove him to establish Lutheranism.

I actually had occasion to see St. Andrew's finger in a small church in Italy when I was 11.

Later that same summer, I saw another St. Andrew's finger in yet another small Italian church.

By the end of the summer, I had seen so many fingers that I became convinced St. Andrew suffered from polydactyism.

I assure you, I am no polydactyle myself! Just an ordinary man with 10 ordinary manual and 1 subordinary urological digits!

But enough meandering and shilly shallying discourse here. The main point that I am trying to circle around to is that the newspaper article on Galileo said that his finger is now in the possession of somebody or some institution or some country or something--I did not read the whole article.

I stopped as soon as I realized that giving your finger to posterity is something that I actually could do, myself.

Could do, and, in point of fact, should do.

Galileo's actual finger in display case.

I wish I could say that the recent economic downturn has not affected my fortunes too greatly, that a half century of practicing the complex form of altruism had allowed me to save up enough to afford such a dazzling display case, with its golden accouterments and whatnot!

Alas, I have fallen upon hard times financially and otherwise.

I am not sure how much longer I have, but I would formally like to announce in today's vlog my intention to give USMS my finger upon my passing.

If someone would like to organize a fund raiser to purchase a suitable display case where my gift could be housed, possibly in the new USMS offices in Saratoga, possibly in the museum portion of the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Ft. Lauderdale (maybe they could have my finger next to Duke Kahanamoku's surfboard?), I would happily provide no shortage of finger pictures to use in the campaign.

Note the body suit on the Olympic great, Duke, AKA the Big Kahuna.

On an entirely unrelated note, if for any reason USMS cannot accept my gift, I would happily give my finger instead to FINA.

Categories: Uncategorized

10 Comments

On Philosophy and Amateur Brain Experimentation

by

jim thornton

, June 16th, 2010 at 01:27 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

The other day, my fellow depressive Bill and I were discussing the convolutions of my most recent sickness unto death. Perhaps discussion is the wrong word. For this portion of the conversation, I was Ille and Bill was Hic (or is it vice versa? I was the talker; he the listener.)

Let us call this latest condition of mine X. Bill said nothing as I enumerated all the variables I could possibly think of that might be causing, or at least exacerbating, X. Let us call these variables M, F, L, R, C, and 997-aFL (s4) subtype Pi.

{Note: at this point, bird-of-a-feather neurotics who have a faint sense of deja vu might want to re-read my October 20th, 2009 vlog entry, "Anatomy of a Nutty": http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?b=5966}

During the current "discussion," Ille and Hic were sitting in the clouds at Woodland Swimming pool, a horsefly occasionally buzzing around preparing to deliver one of its disproportionately nasty bites.

Oh, where have you gone, bags of Horse Urine we once draped around our pool to trap these fiends?

In any event, against this background of humidity and the threat of a painful blood-sucking bite that could take place at any moment, Bill appeared to stay awake throughout my self-diagnostic analysis. When I moved on next to the treatment possibility ruminations phase, he just as patiently as before listened to the spectrum of potential remedies I had managed to conceive for myself, most of which will involve either a doctor's prescription pad, or a willful ignoring of the prescribed courses I have already been consigned to follow.

When I had finally exhausted myself of all "man of action" self-delusion, all "rage rage against the dying of the light" impotent questing for a cure, Bill smiled in the bemused fashion of those who have traveled similar low roads and long ago made peace with the incorruption and ineradicability of their own weltshmerz!

I sighed, all talk having leaked out of me, and Bill became Ille and I Hic, which is where we should have been, of course, all the while.

He said, "Don't look left, don't look right. Just look straight ahead and move forward through the horror that is life for people like us. All else is distraction and a waste of time."

At this precise moment, as it was dawning on me that I had never in my life met quite such a philosopher, the horsefly landed on Bill's lovely wife Colleen's head and its mandibles cracked open. Bill smacked the brutal bastard hard enough to stun them both.

I found the fly on the concrete unkinking its little legs and stretching its gossamer wings, gathering its forces, as it were, to attack once more. Before it could do so, however, I was able to lift a plastic Adirondack pool chair and position its front left leg over the insect's body, and crush it to perdition.

The fate of us all, eventually!

Unblinkingly and without naps, cocking my head neither left nor right, allowing my orbs no swivel room either in any direction other than straight ahead, I resolved to take his advice as best I could.

The gift of hopelessness for the neurotically hopeful is, alas, something we in the latter camp cannot enjoy continually. Instead, we take it out now and then and say to ourselves, "Ah what a fine, fine present this is! I should play with it more often."

But then our essentially flawed natures overcome us once again, if not quite so deeply as before. And we begin to experiment with things from left and right fields, respectively--though not with as much soul-shattering confidence as once we were able to muster.

And so it has been over the past several days that I have concocted strategies to test out variables M, F, L, R, C, and 997-aFL (s4) subtype Pi.

The first of such tests is the slashing of a certain daily dosing of a certain nightly palliative, one famous for not brooking rejection gracefully.

Yesterday, having turned my back on Substance P, I could hear the sound of electric bug zappers inside my brain everytime I moved my eyes too quickly. This bzzzzzz, perhaps ironically, was most pronounced when looking suddenly to the left or right--exactly as Ille had forewarned!

Another odd quirk: an embarrassing load of sentimentality that proved very close to uncontrollable. Imagine that feeling non-sociopaths get at the end of tear-jerker movies like Home Alone or The Death of Little Nell or Ron Burgundy: Anchorman, where the eyes flood with tears even though you know you are being manipulated, and you pray the theater lights remain dark long enough to compose yourself so that your wife or girl friend or golden-hearted escort service referral does not think you are a pussy!

It was thus for me with everything I encountered yesterday: weepiness triggered by junk mail, a perfectly ripe avacado, intimations of mortality, the death of horseflies.

Today, the electric brain is quieter now, the ducts desiccated.

Tampering with variable 997-aFL (s4) subtype Pi, alas, has done little to improve the sickness unto death; just as Bill predicted!

I shall take his gift out of storage again, and look at it a little longer this time, before allowing myself to succumb to another sideways search for hope.

Tinkering with variables M, F, L, R, and C, I'm sure, will prove no more helpful than experiments with 997-aFL (s4) subtype Pi. I doubt I will spend much time concerned with them, and I wish I could spend no time on them at all.

But I can't. It's not my nature. For some, the beauty of hopelessness can take years to reveal itself.

Categories: Uncategorized

26 Comments

Self Portrait as Flayed Man

by

jim thornton

, June 28th, 2010 at 05:57 PM (Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton)

For those you of a religious bent who are interested in exploring more deeply the long entrenched history of anti-body hair sentiment by God himself, I highly recommend you check out my gentile twin brother's attempted midrash, or n., pl., Mid�rash�im (mĭd-r�'shĭm, mĭd'r�-shēm'), on the subject.

A midrash is, of course, any of a group of Jewish commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures compiled between A.D. 400 and 1200 and based on exegesis, parable, and haggadic legend.

In John's midrash (pictorial excerpt to whet your appetite for more,), he ironically used the two of us as stand-ins for Esau and Jacob. I am not sure why, but he made me Esau even though 1) John is actually the firstborn, not Jim, and 2) my relatively much more common immersions into vats of chlorine have actually left me significatnly less hairy (and thus presumably more favored by God) than John, though I must say, if I were God, I would favor him, too, regardless of our relative states of hairiness.

To find the complete midrash, with its surprising insights into antiquated Biblical nonsense still taken very seriously by those who have never actually read this part of the Bible, please check out this link: http://www.jrtart.com/bsd/smooth3.html

Categories: Uncategorized

57 Comments

Those Were The Happiest Days of My Life

by

swimmerb212

, July 6th, 2010 at 07:47 PM (Too Neurotic to be Suitably Aquatic)

Back to work today. What a weekend. I hope you all had a great weekend. Between Friday and Monday, I swam at Lake Minnewaska thrice. On the second visit, on Saturday afternoon, I swam my 200th mile for the year!* My goodness if Minnewaska isn't the most beautiful place to go for a casual dip.

Today at the pool, I made a playlist for the end of the holiday: a mix of celebrating America and the summer. I finished it up with "Back on the Chain Gang" because now it's all 5-day workweeks until Labor Day. (I've been at my job less than a year, so I have no vacation time saved up, I used my one allotted day on the Middlebury swim meet, and it was worth it, darn it.)

Summertime, Fitzgerald, Ella, First Lady of Song [CD2]
One Headlight, The Wallflowers, Bringing Down The Horse
America, Paul Simon, Concert In The Park, August 15, 1991 (Disc 2)
A Horse With No Name, America, Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits - 1972
American Girl, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Greatest Hits
Lump, The Presidents Of The United States Of America, The Presidents Of The United States Of America
Surf Wax America, Weezer, Weezer (Deluxe Edition) - CD 1
America, Neil Diamond
Dancing In The Dark, Bruce Springsten, Born In the USA
Walk Of Life, Dire Straits, Brothers In Arms
American Idiot, Green Day, American Idiot
Hot Stuff, Donna Summer, The All Time Greatest Movie Songs CD2
Hot Pants Pt. 1, James Brown, R&B Deluxe
Junebug, The B-52's, Cosmic Thing
Here Comes The Hotstepper (Pret-A-Porter), Ini Kamoze, The All Time Greatest Movie Songs CD2
Too Darn Hot, Fitzgerald, Ella, First Lady of Song [CD1]
Hot Cha, They Might Be Giants, Flood
Red Hot Pepper, Wynton Marsalis, Mr. Jelly Lord - Standard Time Vol. 6
Brown Eyed Girl, Van Morrison, Best Of Van Morrison
I Can See Clearly Now, Jimmy Cliff, The All Time Greatest Movie Songs CD2
Back On The Chain Gang, The Pretenders, Learning To Crawl

Despite this rockin' mix and all, I didn't swim much today, only a 1650. I was sore from stress, and the crushing fact of having to go back to work today. Tomorrow, during the team swim, I'll see if I can kick it in a little, because the thing I love the most about swimming is that it's when the real life can't touch me.

Also, over the weekend, all you crazy running people inspired me to see if I can run. I went 2.5 miles on the unfinished trail that connects the rail trail to the Walkway over the Hudson. It was a mix of running and walking, and it wasn't actually the worst thing in the entire world and I even went kind of fast, so I may try running again someday, as soon as my calves unknot themselves from this weekend's adventure.

*Some of my Go The Distance teammates & I have referred to extra-curricular non-workout swimming as padding the FLOG.
Use in a sentence: I just swam a personal best in the 200 Free! I'm going to warm down with a thousand so I can pad the FLOG.

Categories: Uncategorized

4 Comments

Fri Jul 9th 2010

by

ande

, July 9th, 2010 at 07:22 PM (Ande's Swimming Blog)

Fri Jul 9th 2010

Shaved

Subscribe to Ande's Swimming Blog

scy
chris Coached
6:30 TO 8:30
Austin UT Swim Center diving well
swam with tyler jon & doug
beside mike, todd & Marcio plus james fike
Guest SAM PERRY was in DA house
dove in around 7:00

MAIN SET

swam easy
the guys were doing
4 rounds of 3 x 300 followed by 4 x 25
I did half the 300's & all the 25's
felt fine

did between 1500 & 200
mostly easy some fast

WENT to BREAKFAST at at Kerby Lane on the Drag with Sam Perry, Tyler, Todd & Doug Dude

warmed up again for the 50 fr

haven't really been training for 50's

wore a B70 Nero TX

thought I was in Heat 19
then realized it was heat 10
hopped up

Went 25.96
Hoped to go faster

It's my fastest time this season in a jammer

2010 MEETS:

July 8 - 11, 2010
Senior Circuit #4 Meet Info
Austin, TX
entered:

Fri
50 Freestyle

Sat
100 Butterfly
50 backstroke

Sun
200 Individual Medley
50 breastroke, &
50 butterfly

07/23/10 - 07/25/10
2010 South Central Long Course
Southlake, Texas
Days till LCM ZONES
Entered Zones yesterday & got my hotel

Categories: Swim Workouts , USA-S Swim Meets / Events

5 Comments

Too cold to swim outdoors?!?

by

swimsuit addict

, July 30th, 2010 at 05:47 PM

Today I swam up at the Riverbank State Park pools. I started out in the indoor pool and did

1000 lcm warmup

6 x 100 FR/BK @ 2:00

100 kick w/ fins
4 x 50 (25 fast / 25 easy) w/ fins @ WWSMM
100 dolphin dives w/ fins

Then I went outside to the scy pool�it hadn�t been open when I first arrived, and when I had asked about it the lifeguard looked at me like I was crazy and told me it was COLD out there! For the record, it was in around 70 and a little breezy this morning! The pool water was probably about 82, so it was pretty perfect, especially once the sun cleared the indoor pool building's roof and shone on the pool. The only place that might have been anything like cold was the lifeguard chair, which is always shaded in the morning. I was glad when they opened it up, since warming down in the sunshine with views of the Hudson is one of the chief delights of swimming at Riverbank during the summer.

Once outdoors, I just did some slow warmdown swimming and some sculling and balance drills. I got to share a lane with my swim buddy Kathleen, who is on an ow swimming tear this summer. I also got to see a few swim friends in the indoor pool that I hadn�t seen for a while, and wish one of my teammates good luck before he heads off to Germany to compete today. It was a very friendly and calm lap swim session. My legs were feeling a little sore and tight from the plyo yesterday, so the kicking felt especially good.

Tags: blissy, riverbank, swimming outdoors

Categories: Uncategorized

9 Comments

Governors Island race report

by

swimsuit addict

, August 1st, 2010 at 02:34 PM

This morning I did the Governors Island swim. Governors Island is a small (172 acres) island in New York Harbor just a 5-minute ferry ride from the southern tip of Manhattan, and today�s race almost circumnavigated it (because of difficult tides/ferries coming and going/air vent for the Holland tunnel, we skip the northernmost tip of the island).

Getting to the race start required checking in, getting a special 6:45 am ferry to the island, walking over to another dock on the island where we were to finish, checking our bags and getting chips, boarding another ferry, riding around the top of the island to the race start, jumping off the ferry, and lining up behind 2 buoys for an in-water start. There were 200+ folks in the race, so it took awhile for everyone to make it off the boat and to the race start, but there was beautiful scenery to look at while we waited. Finally everyone got into the water, they started us, and the race was on!

During the first half of the race we swam down the western side of the island. There were great views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Last year this part of the race had some significant chop and waves, but this year the water was pretty calm, and there seemed to be a slight helping current. As we rounded the the southern tip of the island, we could see the Verrazano Bridge in the distance. Going up the Buttermilk Channel, the only challenge is to be sure to stay away from the 3 piers. On the right is the Brooklyn waterfront�very industrial, with warehouses and big gantry cranes, which is kind of neat. The finish is right before the Holland Tunnel air vent (that little protrusion to the northeast at the top of the island), and it is easy to miss�you actually have to turn left and swim underneath a gangway, before you can see the exit ladder. Last year I overswam it and had to turn back; this year I did a better job sighting and swam right to it.

I was with or near a group of about 7-8 swimmers during the last portion of the race, and worked really hard the last 300 meters or so trying to pull away from them. I got ahead of all but one guy (who obviously had the same idea as me about sprinting to the ladder!) and finished the race as the second woman overall. That surprised me, since there were plenty of women in the field who are better distance pool swimmers than me, but open-water races can be unpredictable that way. (And just for the record, I�m thinking of myself as the women�s masters champ this year, since the first place woman was just 15!) Overall, this year's race probably had more favorable currents and conditions than last year's--my time was 42:04, compared with 48:06 in 2009. I'm guessing a maximum of 30 seconds of that difference came from swimming the race better.

The highlight of the day was catching up with a number of my open water buddies whom I haven�t seen all summer. I would have stayed out on Governors Island longer and enjoyed the hammocks post-race, but thunderstorms were threatening. (I did get some hammock time yesterday, when I went out to scout out the race course and when the weather was gorgeous). Chaos was there and won his age group, and I was happy to get to chat with him a bit afterwards. He was on Sharpie duty during race check-in, and incorporated a smiley face into my race number which obviously brought me luck.

One interesting thing that they did during this race was to have a number of �Swim Angels� wearing different colored caps who were designated as helpers/calmers-down for anyone having anxiety or distress in the water. They basically just hung out in the water and made sure people were comfortable and happy, gave directional/sighting advice, etc. I think this is an idea borrowed from triathlons. They also had some volunteers on land doing the same thing before the race.

Tomorrow we head off to Lake Placid for a few days, and I�ll get to swim in one of my all-time favorite swimming spots, Mirror Lake.

Tags: governors island, new york city, open water, race report

Categories: Uncategorized

10 Comments

Discussion Forums

Most Popular Blogs

It's all about speed now

A Decade of Jim's Amish Mudhole Freestyle Results

Tampa bay recap

Jim! The acclaimed new HBO series

57 years, 7 months, lifetime best!

Jim: The Classics Illustrated Version

Motivating Water Nymphs

Night Nurse Mollie: Night Strangler, Pt. 2

See Pap Sleep!

In Atlanta

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

Grasshopper Blogging Advice

I'm Begging You For Mercy

Gu, Finger: My Two Gifts

On Philosophy and Amateur Brain Experimentation

Self Portrait as Flayed Man

Those Were The Happiest Days of My Life

Fri Jul 9th 2010

Too cold to swim outdoors?!?

Governors Island race report

+ Create Blog

Recent Comments

Find Blog Entries

Blog Categories

Archive

<	March 2021
Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31	1	2	3

<	March 2021
Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31	1	2	3

<	March 2021
Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31	1	2	3