U.S. Pond Scum Breeding Beasts

Have you heard the one about the boy who did a cannon ball into a pond and ended up dying a couple weeks later because some water got up his nose? I'd like to say I'm kidding, but I'm not. Read this.

As it turns out, there is a rare amoeba called naegleria that lives in the glop in the bottom of some fresh water sources (ponds, etc.). If it gets up your nose (such as from splashing), it can tunnel into your brain and well ... you'll be doing the high-dive from above the clouds after that. From the article, it sounds like this creature is rare. I just hope this doesn't spread. I can't believe it's right here in the USA. Sounds like something out of the Amazon, or some Steven King book.

Martin Strel - New Book Out + Update On His Health

I got an email today (weee!) from the AmazonSwim newsletter people. It had good news and some kind of icky bad news. I could never do it justice, so below is a good chunk of it - straight from the newsletter. I encourage everyone to pray for the Feeesh Mawn's speedy recovery. Meanwhile, I'll be getting my copy of the book real soon. PS I need to add Amazon River to my swimming goals (pool laps, of course).

"Hello to all of Martin’s fans. Martin had to seek medical care last week after he was diagnosed with parasitic flatworms in his bloodstream. It took five months for the little guys to set up camp in his veins and lay eggs before the symptoms were noticed. He’s been treated with some heavy antibiotics and is now feeling better.

The Man who Swam the Amazon, Martin’s book, is now available. If you enjoyed our website, you will hear many inside stories from the expedition that were never told on our website, including a lot of behind the scenes stuff.

The book is already climbing the charts in the outdoor adventure category and is now on sale at Amazon. They are doing a preorder special for the next few days, selling the book at $11.53, currently the best price available anywhere as it normally sells for $16.95 ..."

To find the book on Amazon.com click here.

About Some Future Posts

I got a new cell phone this week with a qwerty keyboard so look for more live posts soon!

Mid-TN Olympic Trials Competitors Named

Congratulations to the eleven high school and college swimmers from Middle Tennessee who have qualified for the Olympic Trials. This link takes you to the Tennessean newspaper's web site where the article lists the athletes by name, their respective schools and their swimming specialty. Unfortunately it doesn't mention the teams that have supported them each in their development. Good luck everyone!

10 Meter Belly Flop - Guiness Record???

In the past I've ranted about the removal of diving boards from many swimming pools thanks to insurance premium increases. Future generations will never know the finer points of the cannon ball, can opener and the preachy. The technique is not forgotten by some however and so it is my pleasure to honor those who have kept up the spirit. Here is a video of an American guy on a Japanese television show who performs a 10 meter 7 cm belly flop into a 30 cm deep kiddie pool. Jump to 3:42 for the jump and 4:20 for the closeup splash. Also, be sure to check out the audience in their tuxedos. Did I hear "Guiness" mentioned by the Japanese announcer?

Is Cold Water Better for Exercise?

The seasons are changing and though the temps are falling, some of us are still lucky enough to be permitted to swim in an outdoor pool. I, for one, feel particularly blessed because this is the time of the year when I feel like it all comes together. For one, I swim faster when the water is colder. Sure, part of it is because I just want to keep from feeling cold. But a big part of it is that I CAN swim faster. All summer long I've been swimming in hot, sweltering summer heat. The air was hot and the water was hot. It made me lethargic and toward the end of a work-out, when I really like to see what I had left in the tank, on these hot days there was often little to none. With the cooler weather, and the cooler water, I've got energy to spare and can really pour it on. I haven't spent the past hour sweating out all my fluids and the tank is still a quarter full at the end. I love this time of year! Now if they could only get the lifeguards to stop quitting and going back to school.

Swimming Links I Promise You'll Enjoy

In complete violation of the blogger's code which says you should keep your visitors on your site, I've built a large collection of outside links which pertain to swimming. I've selected them based on their entertainment value and/or educational value. To see them, just scroll down the left side of this page. They are listed under the erroneous heading, "blog roll". Enjoy.

How O2 is Good for You

This past weekend, I took my family tubing down a rocky stream in the Smokie Mountains. Being a former lifeguard (and a dad), I tried to keep my eyes on the younger, less strong swimmers in our group. But as fortune would have it, I was the one tossed from my tube and thrown along the rocky bottom. Besides bruising my forearm, my torso slammed a well rounded rock. I didn't realize the problem until bed time when I felt pressure on my lower right lung. Things got worse as the week progressed and I was nearly doubled over by mid-week after doing a bunch of fairly aggressive flip turns. The painful sensation brought back memories of pleurisy which I experienced back in 1995 after a bought with the flu. Apparently the blow to my chest aggravated the lining on my lung. While it's quite painful, but I'm confident it will heal as it did more than a decade ago. Harking back on those flu days, I remember being short of breath - a sensation I'm not experiencing this time, thank God - and strangely mystified at the effect the loss of oxygen was having on my ill, but still youthful body. Time healed things and since then, I've built up my lung capacity significantly. I find that swimming has increased my ability to hold a lot of air and more efficiently process oxygen. Like many of the people I swim with, I can attest to the great feeling the body has when it has a lot of oxygen pumping through it, after a good workout. The body's cells get a surge of oxygen, giving your whole body a fulfilling feeling, almost like having eaten a good meal. If you haven't ever experienced this surge, keep up your workouts and build up the time in the pool (check with your doctor first). You'll be amazed at the natural high you can get from simple oxygen.

Swimming in the Navy - How to Make Artificial Waves

I think I'm as impressed of these guys jumping off the aircraft carrier as I am of what happens next.

Bored with Laps? Add'm Up and Go Places

If you've spent any time looking at this blog template, you've noticed the left hand side has among other things, my distance goals over time. I came up with the idea of distance goals for my lap swimming when I started getting bored. Going back and forth, over and over and over and over (etc., etc., etc.) can get pretty dull. Setting personal fitness goals helped, but I never felt like I was getting anywhere. One day, I did a little mental math during a quieter lap and figured that in a year, I could do over 300,000 meters. I was floored, when I considered the possibilities. I started thinking of all the places I could go, if I really could add all these laps together, and that's how I came up with my goals. Since then, it's been fun to daily add to my progress and see how far I've come, and this is only the first year. I recommend this application to anyone who does repetitive travel oriented exercise e.g., running, treadmills, rowing, you name it. The long term goals keep you going and you can look back and proudly see where you've been. Besides that, people can relate to a swim to Bermuda more than say, 12,500 one-hundred meter laps.

FS Stroke Losing Power? Try this Simple Step.

Besides a huge kick, I'm finding nothing beats a full hand of water to get some instant speed and distance out of my freestyle stroke. "Full hand of water"? Yes, it's strange to write as it is to read, but I can't think of a better way of expressing what I'm talking about here. I'm referring to keeping the maximum amount of water in your palm as you go through the entire pull part of the stroke. Tip your hand just a smidgen and you'll lose pull power. This is because the water slips past your hand if you tip it - so don't tip. If this is a totally foreign concept, I encourage you to try the following. You can do this experiment in just about any body of water, including the sink or bathtub. With your body still (standing is ok), palm your hand and put it under the surface and pull it through the water so you pull as much of the water as you can. Now do it again, but tip your hand a little bit. Notice in the latter case how much less power you've created. Now try a full pull again, this time shape your palm in the water so you get the more pull. Keep trying various palm positions until you can't get any more power out of it. When you've reached the maximum, note the position shape of your palm. This palm position (shape) is what you want to use in your swim stroke (for both hands, of course). So, if you find yourself inexplicably losing power, think about your palm position. It's an easy fix and off you'll go! Enjoy.

Make Your Mind Enhance Your Swim Stroke

It's fun to swim parallel with someone in the same lane or adjacent lanes. For me, it inspires me to pull harder and kick stronger. Yesterday I found myself swimming parallel to another swimmer who was using paddles to enhance her pulling muscles. Usually I just give up any thought of trying to keep up with anyone using paddles or flippers. They just enhance the stroke so much, there's usually no way I can keep up if the swimmer has any stamina to speak of. Nevertheless, I tried and without thinking, found myself mirroring the swimming next to me with the paddles. I was reaching further and pulling more water than I usually do. How do I know this? I really don't, but I felt it, and I could tell I was cruising along faster than usual. What was the trick? I guess it was all in my mind. I do have a tendency to mirror people on land (they fold their arms, I fold my arms; they speak with a British accent, I do the same ... I know it's weird and certainly not intentional), so why not in water too? Now I just need to figure out how to make it happen for me independent of others.

Goal #3 Complete - Escaped Cuba

If you'll excuse me, I must succumb to bragging from time to time (since no one else will do it for me). I've completed another in my long-term swim goals today (see left-hand panel of my blog template). Since Jan 2, 2007, I've swum 226.72 miles, or put another way, I've swum the distance from Havana, Cuba to Miami Beach, FL. Don't try this for real - ok, maybe Martin Strel could give it a crack. Next goal, the length of Lake Michigan.

Swim Ripples Needed

This looks like the perfect place to swim. But then, if I swim here, would I get swimmers itch again? See my August 13th post.

Power Stroke

Power is always an issue with me. Either I've got it going or I don't. Today, as fortune would have it, I had it. I generally get it, when I'm swimming in a lane next to another good swimmer. Just the ambition to keep up or pass usually gets me going. Today, it was none of that. I just had it going and for some fortuitous reason, I made note of what I was doing. From time to time, during the swim, I slowed, and made note of that too. What I discerned was that when I forced my body to stretch out to its longest - from toe to fingernail - and when I combined that with a straight (freestyle) pull down to the vertical point (pointing at the bottom of the pool) before making the first move into any sort of s-stroke, was when I got the most power going. The exaggerated stretch made my stroke longer and in effect gave me a larger propeller. I experimented with the s-stroke too, noting that I could start it long before I reached the vertical point. This early s-stroke defeated the available power, while a delayed s-stroke enhanced it. Try it out and see if you get these results.

Most Crowded Swimming Pool

Have you ever complained about a crowded swimming pool? Watch this, and you never will again. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom to see the youtube video.

Swimmers Itch

No, this isn't a post about how I can't wait to get in the pool to do laps. This is something much more serious. Swimmers itch is a serious condition - if you are exposed. I had the unfortunate experience of coming in contact with the dreaded source of swimmers itch this past July. I'd heard about it for years, and never thought much of it despite the warning signs I'd seen posted at state parks in Wisconsin. I never had any symptoms that I was aware of. Then one night while on vacation at the lake in Wisconsin, I started feeling like there were worms crawling around in my eye-brows and around my face (really!). It was the strangest sensation and it lasted all night long. About every thirty seconds or so, I would feel this tingle. My first reaction was to scratch it lightly or just pat the spot. This usually stopped the sensation for a minute or two. But after doing this for a couple hours, I got frustrated - I wanted my z's. I lay there in the dark trying not to touch my face, but it literally drove me crazy. If I didn't scratch the spot, it just got worse. I got out of bed and studied my face, looking for what felt like something breaking through the skin and coming out and wiggling around. Nothing. Was I going crazy? I felt like I was experiencing something a character in a Steven King movie might go through. Well I finally got through the night and the symptoms seemed to pass. I first blamed my bedding. Summer cabin bedding can be notorious for bugs, but that wasn't it when the next night it started again with fresh, clean sheets. Needless to say, I survived, but barely. I've since learned about swimmers itch. Here's a great link that explains swimmers itch in much more detail than I have time or patience for. I pray for anyone who reads this who may come into contact with this larvae, to towel off well and shower after your lake/pond swim. If anyone experiences a night like I had, maybe they could write a good movie about it. It was scary!

What Hard Core Swimmers Do for Money

Ever wanted to make money from swimming? Some people really do make a living in the waves. There of course are those ironman types who get sponsorships and free stuff. Let's not forget folks in the Coast Guard and other military that do rescues and re-con. There are guys who swim at the base of dams and oil rigs to check their stability, etc. But here's one job for the rest of us. I found it on-line today and thought, now there's something I could do. Then again, maybe not. Thanks income.com!

Look Inward - Learn to Understand Yourself

Sometime in my latter teen years, someone once said to me - this after I was probably complaining about something or other - "look inward and there lies the truth." Yeah, I paraphrased that. I really can't remember what was said, who said it, or why. But the jist of it has stayed with me all my adult years. Sometimes it slips. This past week was one such case. In my most recent post, I complained about pool temperature, ozone, did I include global warming - I can't remember. Whatever the case, I was speaking about all my muscle aches I'd been getting lately and how I was having to exert extreme effort to get done with my routine. Well, if I had followed my own advice, I would have looked inward. Turns out I had a virus. I even had compared the muscle aches to that when I had the flu years ago, but did I put two and two together? No. Knocked me out all weekend and Monday too. Back at it today, but slow due to need to recover lost energy. Muscles happy again. I think understanding one's body is a big key in getting in shape. I must pay better attention to the signals it gives me. My body was shouting last week and I didn't even bother to listen.

Tracking Efforting

To use ESPN Radio's vernacular, I really did a lot of "efforting" today. It's been warm for several weeks now and averaging in the 90's each day. Needless to say, the outdoor pool is starting to heat up - even with the chiller running at night. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that's when I start complaining. Today I had a double whammy. The pool temp was high and the weather forecasters were saying that there was an ozone warning - a health warning - even the fit were waned to avoid exertion. Well I'm not one to follow the weather man's advice all the time so this AM I did my swim thing ... and I paid for it. Not only was my speed poor, despite some serious efforting, but I could feel my lungs hurting, like when I had the flu some years ago. I can only conclude that the extra ozone in the atmosphere makes oxygen uptake more difficult (hence, the warnings). But all is not bad, dear readers. I came away from all this with a new idea! I am going to add two new columns to my exercise log - "efforting" and "speed". I'm hoping I can use this daily info to see patterns and trends in my bio-rhythms, swim performance, etc. I expect knowing what has been and may be (projections) will help me understand my own body system better and maybe even push me to the next level. While none of this is posted on this blog, I will be sure to let you guys know if this helps any. In the meantime, could you just cool things down a little?