Category: swim

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Our Family Trip To Grand Palladium Mayan Riviera

We’re big on travel in our family, and we want to give our kids great, diverse experiences, even from a young age, even though travelling with young ones can be very stressful.  So far, we’ve been going South in even-numbered years (it was Turks & Caicos for 2012) and ski vacations in odd years (Mt. Ste. Anne for 2011 and 2013).  I’m glad this year wasn’t a ski year, because after the Polar Vortex(es) of this winter, I couldn’t take more cold and really needed some sun and warmth.  We all did.



The Beaches resort in Turks and Caicos really spoiled us in terms of what was possible for an all inclusive with child care, but it was too expensive to repeat this year.  My wife did some great research and we booked a Sunwing holiday through Corinne at Have Baby Will Travel.  We were going to the Grand Palladium in the Mayan Riviera, Mexico.  I’d been looking forward to it for a while but as the days before the trip trickled down to single digits, I got worried.  I’d had bad experiences with charter airlines in the past, getting tripped up on baggage weight restrictions and being crammed (me=5’11.5”) into small seats.  I’ve got to say, though, combined with our using their online check-in, Sunwing made it really fast and efficient, which is very important, because I find it hardest to manage the kids when standing in line.  Having got through baggage drop-off and security quickly, we had time to kill before boarding but I find the gate area a lot better space for managing kids, the Lightning Kid’s disagreement with an escalator about direction of travel notwithstanding.

The flight went well too; the kids are too energetic to be easy on the plane, but they’re experienced enough flyers that they weather most of the challenges well.  We were warned of keeping track of our immigration papers on the flight, and briefed about the customs procedure (where you push a button to determine whether you’re going to have your luggage searched) by the flight crew.  Exiting the terminal, we bought snacks for the long bus ride to the resort – 15USD for a beer, a water and a can of Pringles.  Ouch.  The kids slept a little on the bus ride, which made things a little easier.

Grand Palladium in the Mayan Riviera is a resort with 4 different lobbies: Riviera, White Sands, Kantenah and Colonial.  We were booked in the latter, which I liked, because as far as I could tell from the map, it was closest to one of the biggest pools, the kids water park, the beach, and definitely closest to the “Mini-Club” (child care).  The Colonial lobby is next to a Flamingo lagoon, which made a strong first impression for our arrival.


 Our room was ready with a crib, and the couch had been pulled out and made with sheets, so both kids would have a place to sleep.  We’ve struggled with this in other hotels – we’ll request a crib, be assured that one will be there, and come up empty when we check in.

Once we were ready to explore, we found we had a neighbour: a rather large iguana; I asked Shark Boy to give him a name and he picked “Max”.  At first we were astounded not only by how tame he seemed, but how nobody else seemed to notice him (or us staring at him).  It turns out, these things are everywhere on the resort, and if you’re grossed out by lizards, I have to tell you that there was a startling absence of bugs, and maybe that’s a coincidence, and maybe it isn’t.  The entire resort is peppered with mangroves, which not only protect the landscape from erosion and give the local fauna a place to live (while making little visits to the inhabited sections of the resort) but also provide extra shade.  As a melanoma survivor, it’s not always easy to enjoy sunny destinations and the shade provided by the mangroves as well as some sheltered paths was really welcome.

Cooling off became our first priority.  We found the big pool (or one of them) and started in the shallow end.  Shark Boy has gotten the hang of swimming (thanks to his grandfather) and he splashed around in the water as comfortably as his namesake.  We didn’t really get to sample the rest of the pool much; in spite of an on-site daycare, we spent most of the time with the kids… more on this in a bit.  I would have liked to use it to swim a few lengths in the mornings before things got busy, or spend some time at the pool-side bar, but I was able to fetch drinks from it once or twice.

After the pool, we showed the kids the new water park.  I took the Lightning Kid with me on a water slide and was chided by the life-guard who directed me to the rules board… where we couldn’t find what rule I had broken.  Finally he pointed out “Always obey the life-guard” which would have to do.  No big slides for the Lightning Kid, and he was hesitant on the smaller ones, but fun in the water is still a favourite for both kids.

The other thing that had made me apprehensive before the trip besides the flights was that we’d all be in the same room.  The Lightning Kid was waking up 2-3 times a night still, I snore, and Shark Boy sometimes gets nightmares if he’d overtired or overstimulated (both of which were likely while on vacation), so I thought we’d all end up waking each other up and come back from vacation less rested than when we left.  That couldn’t have been further from what actually happened.  The kids were so tuckered out from walking and swimming in the sun that both nap-time and night-times were a breeze to get them down and keep them down.  It’s almost upsetting to me, because we strive to keep them active and outdoors every day, but the Canadian suburbs simply can’t compete with living by the beach in Mexico.  As for me, I think the sea air helped my sinuses or something, because snoring was lessened.

Speaking of the beach and sea, I think this was the best part of every day we spent there.  Shark Boy could really show his stuff (and make his parents’ teeth sweat) being thrown around in the surf, and the Lightning Kid loved running into the water repeatedly after a (mispronounced) “1-2-3-GO!”, not to mention running up to people on beach chairs and socializing. I’m really happy that the boys were able to get so much out of being on the ocean.

The resort had activities that I would have liked to try including kayaks, catamarans and stand-up paddle boarding at the beach, not to mention archery on their sports field. It was for this kind of thing and the potential for date dinners/lunches that the ‘Mini-Club’ (for Shark Boy, age 4) and ‘Baby-Club’ (for the Lightning Kid aged 2) were supposed to come in handy. I think the Mini-Club would have been fine (especially once Shark Boy’s initial resistance was overcome and we got into a routine) for longer stays since they would take them to the water park or beach. The Baby Club, however, gave us a walky-talky to reach us at a moment’s notice (which you want in a way, just in case), but apparently had very limited range, as they specified we couldn’t go further than the beach or pool area. This, combined with picking the kids up at lunch time made for limited opportunities. More than anything else, we used our kid free time to research what on-site restaurants to try and other logistical details. I did manage to fit in one scuba dive, though. The dive shop was right at the beach and the dive site was only 5 minutes by boat, so I managed a single tank dive in something under 90 minutes; perfect when you have kids to get back to. The weather had been kind of windy all week, so visibility was not so great and we didn’t manage to spot any big ticket items like sharks or turtles, but I did see some lionfish, pufferfish and a seahorse (not pictured).


The resort had both buffet-style and a la carte restaurants. I was surprised by how good the quality at the buffets (La Hacienda, Tikal and Grand Azul) were with plenty of healthy things like fruits and smoothies, local dishes like antojitos, international cuisine including paella and run of the mill stuff like chicken fingers for the kids. By contrast, the a la carte places didn’t seem as good, with the Italian place (Portofino) being the biggest disappointment (slow service, bland food), the Japanese being mediocre (interesting Mexican twists on the sushi, but not high quality fish, I think). The Mexican a la carte (Adelita), on the other hand, was mouth wateringly good, and we had a nice, if rushed due to Baby-Club hours, date night dinner.


While we did get around the resort mostly on foot, there was the opportunity to take little trains (on wheels, not tracks) from one lobby to another and the boys got a kick out of the ride. Shark Boy and I used this to attend a ‘Surf Party’ with animal mascots (known as Raggs and Friends – side note: Raggs has a friend who is differently abled – hooray for inclusion!) run by the Kids’ Club staff. There were plenty of evening entertainment options for the kids (if they weren’t too tired from the days activities) including a Pinata party one night too.

Surf Party

Pinata Party

I have to confess that there were times I wish we had taken a holiday without the kids; the funny thing is that now I have trouble remembering the specifics of what made it so difficult. I guess it just got frustrating trying to take the kids to places like the pool and the beach while they actively worked against making it easier to do so (e.g. resisting getting dressed), even though the destination was where they wanted to be. What I do remember, is all the smiles and fun we had. Grand Palladium not only gave us a taste of sun and sea (as a family), but a good sampling of both Mexican cuisine and the local ecology too.

An Agouti

The resort has a crocodile lagoon in addition to the flamingo lagoons

Coati and raccoons were occasionally visible around the resort.  We saw a monkey once too.


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Watch Me Swim!

One of the things I’ve been itching to do since I have a waterproof (and idiot-proof) camera is get some underwater video of my swim stroke.  I managed to do this a couple of weeks ago, but it’s taken until now to get this thing uploaded and edited.

Compared to the other two disciplines, my swim is strong, but that doesn’t make me a coach or expert of any kind, but I figured I could eyeball my form and evaluate it on a few key measures that I know (or at least, I believe) to be important.  My information is partly from ‘Swim Bike Run’  by Hobson, Campbell and Vickers and the rest from informal chats both on-line and in real life with other triathletes. Key concepts are:

  • Hand Entry – ‘Always enter your hand into the water in a line directly in front of your shoulder… A common mistake among triathletes is “cross-over,” which occurs when the hand is place inside the shoulder line usually in line with the head.’ There’s an interesting parallel with running there, because your hands shouldn’t cross the mid-line of your body then either; it’s all wasted energy.
  • Catch – Once the hand is in the water, you actually complete the extension and reach the rest of the way forward underwater.
  • Body Roll – ‘… once the arm pull is ready to begin, your body has rolled to that side or your hips are facing away from your hand.’   Body roll is key to getting core muscle power involved in your stroke, but I confess I’ve gotten mixed messages on how much is enough. Swim Bike Run seems to indicate the whole body, while others seem to be saying that it should be mostly torso, with everything below the waist being more neutral in the water, which would result in a bit of a ‘twist’ motion.  That’s the ideal I thought I was working toward, but the video might reveal otherwise….




Whether or not my roll below the hips is excessive or not, the asymmetry is a problem.  Watching the video gives me some things to think about the next time I’m in the pool, and it’s cheaper than a coach.
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Midweek Motivation: Seek The Hard

I wanted to get this post out for Monday as in “Motivational Monday”, but instead I’ll steal from Kovas at Midwest Multisport Life and do “Midweek Motivation”.



I was riding along during the bike leg of the Muskoka 5150.  I was somewhere around the halfway mark and had some of those nasty hills behind me, and I found myself cruising along and thinking to myself: ”This is nice…”

Then it hit me.  I found it “nice”, because it was easy (there might have been a slight decline) and this was a race, I shouldn’t find it easy, and I couldn’t afford to savour it or draw this out.  The easy, downhill or even flat parts should be over as quickly as possible, and I needed to get to the next uphill climb – I needed to Seek The Hard (part).

On that day, I tried to blast through the easy parts and get to where I was really working; on that course, in that weather, it wasn’t hard to find.

Seeking the hard in training is just as important – that’s how you get the most out of the time spent, and make yourself ready for any hard parts you face in training.

This last week, I sought the hard in my training.

On Sunday, I tried this WOD from AllAroundJoe, which combines swim intervals, burpees and sit-ups.




I completed the 5 rounds of 200m swim, 10 burpees, 10 sit-ups in 25 minutes flat, then did the 800m swim (after stopping to put on my wet-suit... doing burpees in a wet-suit on a hot summer day isn’t ‘hard’… it’s stupid… important to know the difference).

 On Tuesday, I did a modified bike #WorkoutHack with less hill repeats due to the crazy heat and humidity. Check this out:





On Wednesday I tried our corporate gym’s ‘Tabata’ class. A warm-up, then 6 different Tabatas (most involved altenating whole body exercises on the 20 second work intervals). It was… intense, to say the least.

 Friday was another hot day, and my weapon of choice was a Burbathlon. I’m hoping training in the heat gets my body acclimatized to it should the weather be as punishing on race day. I used this article to shape the kinds of strength work I’m trying to build into my Burbathlon workouts.






Fitness bloggers love to discuss what their mantra is; what do they repeat to themselves to keep digging deep and find the strength to keep going when they simply don’t want to anymore? Seek The Hard… I may have found mine.

What’s Yours?

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How To Put On A Wetsuit

I’ve had two wet-suits  and they are both with sleeves.  Though I won the second one (which I still use), I still advocate sleeved wet-suits over sleeveless (Farmer John types).  I guess if you’re going to need a wet-suit  you might as well get full buoyancy and insulation; I’d hate to go through the bother and expense and still be sitting in the water thinking: “My arms are cold.” 

I’m sure the argument for more arm freedom can be made; all I’m saying is that this advice is intended for wet-suits with sleeves (though I bet a lot of it can still apply).

N.B. Always handle your wet-suit with short, trimmed fingernails.  Piercing and scratching the outer layer of the wet-suit will hamper its effectiveness in the water and ultimately limit its useful lifespan.

The basic guiding principle is that higher is better.  As you’re pulling the suit up your legs, keep hiking it higher.  If the bottom cuffs end up too high on your mid-shin, you’ll still have an easier time getting them back down again once you have enough slack left for you shoulders.
Grab a bunch of your wet-suit and keep pulling it upward.  

Hike it up!


Keep doing this as you get the suit on past your waist, right up your upper body.  You’re moving any slack in the suit right up to your shoulders – that’s where you’ll need it.  When you maximize the slack around your shoulders, you guarantee maximum mobility for when you’re doing your freestyle stroke.

Higher still!


I confess it takes patience to get things just right; if you have a friend/loved one/tri-groupie to help you, it can make it a lot easier.



Once you’ve got the suit all the way up, use the little tether (hopefully no-one has cut it off while trying to be helpful – long story), to pull the zipper closed.  You may have to lie some flaps down to get the thing zipped; this is another part where being patient and getting it just right can save you chafing and frustration during the swim.  We all want to be our best in open water and if you’re calm and comfortable it’s one less worry during the swim.

I usually put some Body Glide on my neck just in case, though!
Any other wet-suit tips you might know of?
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The Germany Journals (Ger-nals?) Part 1

Telling the whole wide world you’re going out of the country is not really wise – so though I wanted to blog about this trip to Germany as it happened, I needed to save up the posts until we got back.


This afforded me a unique opportunity to treat it more like an old fashioned journal.  I’d write up the days experiences for later reading in a notebook – old school paper and pen!


The first thing on my packing list is running shoes.  I’m hoping it’s going to be that sort of vacation.  I’ve had similar ideas in the past and though these trips aren’t exactly sedentary, I usually only get sporadic runs in.  The kids kill the plans, to be frank – they don’t sleep, they get sick, they get us sick and I’m too exhausted to train and it’s not fair to make my wife take them both when she’s just as tire, if not more so.  It’s her vacation too.


DAY 1:


There was a a good deal of me that was afraid of this trip – the exhaustion and disappointment have detracted from the journey the last two times.  Still I looked forward to visiting my brother and his family near Frankfurt and my Father-in-Law and his wife in Berlin and being on vacation beats digging ditches.  The one thing that scared me more than anything was THE FLIGHT: 8 hours overseas with a 3 year-old and an 18 month-old.  When Shark Boy was 18 months old we made the same trip and 3 adults weren’t enough to control him on the plane and now it was the Lightning Kid’s turn and there would be two of us, still with Shark Boy to contend with.


It’s been my experience that airlines don’t do that much to help the parents of small children.  I don’t want special treatment per se, but I figure you can’t expect toddlers and babies to be reasonable so making them comfortable ends up helping make everybody more comfortable.  We had two things in our favour this time compared to previous trips:

  1. A direct flight
  2. Lufthansa as an airline


We’ve had problems booking seats together on other airlines (KLM and British Airways to name and shame) and/or getting the bassinet row (up against the bulkhead – the airline gave them to tall passengers instead) but Lufthansa did both by default before I was able to do our online check-in.  That was nice, but common sense is still not that common; the period when a man is rocking a baby to sleep might not be the time to ask him about menu choices in a loud voice, Ms. Flight Attendant!  We basically pulled an all-nighter and the kids didn’t sleep enough but they kept their misbehaving (especially loud screaming/crying) to a minimum.


Between being up all night and jet lag, the first Saturday was basically a write-off for accommodating fatigue and allowing recovery.  The only activity I can claim is lugging suitcases and chasing children… but our rewards were a filled-zucchini, wheat-beer, and plenty of chocolate.
The Zucchini was for lunch, traditionally the warm meal, whereas dinner is lighter.


DAY 2:


Between a nasty cough and jet lag the Lightning Kid gave us a rough night but thankfully Shark Boy adapted to the environment of his cousins’ bedroom with ease.  Seeing the cousins (ours 3½ and 1½, theirs 4 and 2) get along and play together is one of the biggest appeals of this trip – better than the beer and chocolate even!


After taking the kids to a playground and lunch, my brother and I were able to go for a run.  I remember grabbing my heart rate monitor strap while packing, but I couldn’t find it in my suitcase (flashforward: it was found in a box of diapers when we got home) – luckily I still had the Garmin watch unit to track and quantify the run.  My brother led the way – luckily he let me know it would be a lot of climbing early on, so that three-quarters of the time would be spent on half the distance – otherwise I’d have thrown in the towel early.  We got 10km done in just under an hour – pretty good considering the hills.




In the afternoon we made an outing to downtown Bad Homburg for ice cream – running and spaghetti ice cream were the two things I wanted to have regularly on vacation – things were off to a decent start!
I didn’t do any food photography or else I’d offer you a better view of Spaghetti Ice Cream.  Note the Lightning Kid’s smeared face and trademark electrified hair.


DAY 3:


On Monday the weather was terrible and fatigue levels were high so we didn’t get up to much besides visiting my brother’s sister and brother-in-law (does that make them my in-laws squared?).  It gave the kids a change of scenery and a chance to play with other kids  (though I suspect the novelty of different toys is the real draw for them) and the adults got to partake in the German tradition of coffee and cake (though maybe I should have tried harder to emphasize more of the former and less of the latter.


DAY 4:


With the long weeknd over we had a prime opportunity to take the kids to a local pool.  We took Shark Boy and his younger cousin and kept the Lightning Kid at home due to his lingering cough and a possible ear infection.


Community pools in Germany are like shopping malls with different size pools instead of stores – warm pools for kids, lap-swimming pools, outdoor pools, water slides, wading pools, whirlpools (do I sound like Bubba from Forrest Gump yet?)… enough to rival some full-on water parks in North America.  It’s frustrating to think how often pools back home struggle to survive city budget cuts when they would have a fraction of the operating costs they do in Germany.  It seems like the culture embraces physical activity and being in the water more somehow – which doesn’t make me feel any better about the situation back home.


The good news is that Shark Boy had a blast – his favourite was the smallest slide, though he was willing to do the biggest one with me – a long, dark twisting tunnel with lights that flashed on and off – he politely declined a second go round.  Non-swimmer kids were required to wear water wings – these gave him some extra confidence to be at arms length from me; in fact, by the time I gave him a flutter board, he was using his flutter kick to swim clear away from me and I had to chase after him.  Though it was heavily assisted – it was the first time he moved himself through the water independently and I considered it a milestone to be proud of.


TO BE CONTINUED! STAY TUNED FOR PART 2!
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Felicitous Friday: Week in Review

Another week has gone by with enough interesting developments to merit a recap post!


  • On Tuesday I did a new record for longest swim workout using the ‘Ladder’ workout from Meals And Miles’ Swim Workouts Compilation.  That was before breakfast, and I made it to a Gravity Machine class for lunch.  If I had one more workout/form of exercise, I could have called it another Trifecta Tuesday, but since I didn’t, we’ll call it a #FAIL 😉
  • Those two workouts made me a little sore for Wednesday, but it was some of the nicest weather we’d had all year, so wild horses weren’t going to keep me from doing a Burbathlon! I wasn’t too intense on upper body strength exercises, but I did fit in lunges with a park swing, box jumps on a bench, push-ups, step-ups on a stump, balance beam on a few logs, as well as jumping and (simple-)vaulting some logs and a baseball diamond fence.

    It starts with a hill and a path into the woods….
    The Big Hill to Climb
    Dips in the trail…


    This pic was taken in a colder season… but you can see the lunge with a swing.

  • That all left me too sore on Thursday to do my planned workouts, so recovery it was… especially since I neglected to wear compression or foam-roll the night before.
  • Friday is a day of excitement.  I tried out a bike workout hack that I’ve had rolling around in my head for a while, but you’ll have to wait to see it..  The rest of the weekend is jam-packed with activities and get togethers including initial planning this year’s Levac Attack and a Fitfluential Tweet-Up (or whatever we call get-togethers of online friends) to welcome Pavement Runner to Toronto, where he’ll be doing the Goodlife Toronto Marathon.


How was your week? Is your weekend full of fitness and excitement?

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Swim Workout Hack: Swim with 100 Pushups

Introduction

I started doing Burbathlon as a way to cheat on time, and hybridize two workouts: strength training and running.  The end result has a cardiovascular profile similar to interval work, yet I get a better variety of muscular challenges than I’d get from either the gym or the trail alone. I thought about extending the concept to other triathlon disciplines: thus was born the #WorkoutHack.


Swim Workout Hack

I’ve been using the 100 Push-ups app for Android lately, and I’ve been a lot more consistent about getting the workouts in 3 times a week than when I first wrote about 100 Push-ups.  This past Tuesday, I was running really late and the situation was made worse by the fact that I (temporarily thankfully) lost my wallet.  By the time I got to the pool, I knew a full length workout wasn’t in the cards.  That was OK, because the idea of doing a more high-intensity interval type workout had been kicking around in my brain for a while.  These kinds of workouts are all the range, since they promise great caloric burn and metabolic boosting in little time, as long as you’re willing to put up with some painful intensity.  Before I describe the intervals part, let me just fill you in on how I worked up to it:

  • 250m warm-up
  • 100m set concentrating on good form especially on the follow-through of my stroke.
  • 100m fist swim; swim with fists closed, the idea being that after doing this, you get a better ‘feel’ for the water.
  • 100m with open hands again – the ‘follow-up’


The idea was that I would then do my 100 push-ups workout for the day.  These workouts give you a set of prescribed push-ups reps to do, then either a 60 or 90 second rest, depending on what part of the program you are in.  I wanted to swim an interval during the rest period; if they gave me 60 seconds, I’d do 50m, if they gave me 90 seconds I’d try for 100m – which is a little fast for me.

On Sunday, I had performed the ‘exhaustion test’ for the end of Week 4: you simply perform as many consecutive push-ups as you can.  The test should be performed within 48 hours of the last workout of the week, yet still rested from that workout.  I scored 42 push-ups.  Which, for Week 5, Day 1, put me here:


Set
Reps
Rest
1
36
60 seconds
2
40
60 seconds
3
30
60 seconds
4
24
60 seconds
5
>40
60 seconds

That was… a little tough for me.  What’s worse, is that I had also been playing around with swimming unfueled; I don’t eat breakfast before my swims.  The idea is exercise in a carbohydrate-depleted state might increase the capacity of the muscle cells to burn fuels aerobically.  I only do this on my swims, and so far it’s been OK as long as I eat right after the workout (and a bit of a time saver in the mornings).  It was not a good idea on this day however, and I ended up doing this:


Set
Reps
Rest
1
30
50m swim
2
23
50m swim
3
20
50m swim
4
19
50m swim
5
16
50m swim

That’s still 108 push-ups, so I’m not ashamed, but my advice to you if you try it (or to myself for future attempts):

  1. Pick a workout that you think you can do, don’t try this when you’re at a new horizon in the program

  2. Fuel beforehand.

That`s about a 30 minute, 750m workout that left me tired (the warm-up was omitted from my Garmin tracking by mistake). Workouts where you are tired (but still going) are the bread and butter of the triathlete`s regimen, after all.



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Gear Corner: Swimming With Music Part 2

Last Tuesday, I found myself swimming to music.  I have very little idea what parts of my overall digital music collection are on my old iPod Nano, but as the music played, there were a couple of things I noticed while in the water:

  • I found myself doing a better ‘twist’ in the water, the hip rotation gave me a little more power in my stroke.  At least, that’s how it felt.
  • ‘Feeling’ the music occasionally put a little extra power into my pull, but even more on the follow-through of the stroke (just before my hand would exit the water).
  • These actions did have a negative effect on my body positioning, as my upper body would seem to bend off the axis of the direction of travel; I was ‘worming’ a little in the water with the trunk of my body.


I pulled some stats of my pool swims from the Garmin Connect website

Time Distance (m) Average Pace Total Strokes Average Strokes per Length Average SWOLF
36:50 1500 2:22/100m 751 13 48
57:20 2250 2:09/100m 1115 12 45
26:52 1125 2:28/100m 612 14 51
32:52 1300 2:14/100m 652 13 46



The top row represents the ‘musical swim’.  It looks like it’s not as good as my previous swim based on average number of strokes per length or the ‘Swim Golf’/SWOLF score*.

*”Your SWOLF score is the time in seconds plus the strokes it takes you to complete one pool length. For example 30 seconds plus 25 strokes equals a SWOLF score of 55.”

The comparisons are imperfect at best, since some of those lengths were done with pull-buoys, hand-paddles, or both.   What I would really need is an apples to apples comparison – maybe do a 400m-500m set with and without music and make sure that the interval is separate and identifiable compared to my drill sets or other exercises.

What about the music itself? Is there any science behind this idea?  I Googled ‘Ideal Swim Cadence’ and most websites weren’t willing to stick their necks out with any numbers… except this one.

“The ideal swim cadence is very dependent upon your height and swim speed. Typically, at a pace of 1:50 per 100 yards, an athlete will take between 55 and 65 strokes per minute. At 1:20 pace, we are looking at about 65 to 80 strokes per minute. In each of these, taller athletes should fall at the lower end of these ranges.”

The stroke count is based on the number of times my left arm (where I wear my Garmin 910XT) goes around; we can assume my right arm does an equal number of strokes.  So I looked up the Tempo in BPM (beats per minute) on SongBPM.com.  I hope I either do a left or right on every beat, or simply the left (i.e. both arms go around the stroke cycle between beats).  So I put in columns for not only the tempo, but half the tempo.

Title Artist BPM (according to SongBPM.com) BPM/2
Anything ‘Cept the Truth Eagles of Death Metal 126 63
Hey Boy Hey Girl Chemical Brothers 127 64
I Want You Back Jackson 5 ?81-104? ?
Jackson Lucinda Williams 76 –
Still Remains Stone Temple Pilots 132 66
Alright Hear This Beastie Boys 102 51
New Years Day U2 134 67
Plush Stone Temple Pilots 72 –
Hypnotize System of a Down 77 –
North and South of the River U2 103 52
Stand By Me Ben E. King ?116-123? ?


I highlit the songs that ‘felt’ the best as I was swimming.  The 1:50 per 100 yards pace comes out to 2:00 per 100 meters, so I’m a little slower than that, but I think you can link that cadence to about 63-77 strokes per minute.








Obviously the whole notion is a little ‘out there’ and at the least bears further experimentation before drawing conclusions, but I still thought it was interesting.  I can’t wait till I can find time for a longer pool workout (or two) to play with it a little.

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Gear Corner: Swimming With Music Part 1

Some facts:

  1. I enjoy swimming.  Really I do, I like being in the water and the way it feels, sounds and looks.
  2. I get bored easily.
  3. Swim training (when it’s not open water) involves a lot of back and forth laps in the pool.  That can get boring, even for people like me.
  4. I’m a tech-geek, and I probably wouldn’t get up to half the exercise and training that I do without toys to play with.
With that in mind, it’s easy to see why I’d invest in devices like those from H2O Audio.  I started way back buying one of their earlier editions for the 2nd generation iPod.
Exhibit A: The Accused
My first problem was having the wrong generation iPod Nano… I had a Black 1st edition which I lost after putting it in a jacket pocket in the spring, then not using the jacket again for an entire season.  I bought a 2nd generation one and was off into the water.  The problem with this ‘Waterproof’ Case was that it relied on a rubber gasket to maintain the seal, and this gasket was not fastened to the case with any kind of adhesive; it was up to the user to make sure there would be a seal every time you put the iPod into the case.  You can guess what happened…

Exhibit B: The Victim
Now normally, when burned by a poor quality product, I simply turn my back and walk away, but I guess my gear-head self wouldn’t give up on the concept when I saw later generations of the products.

I got what is now branded as the Amphibx Armband.  What I liked about this piece was that different size devices could be fit into it; they kept in simple and it was easy and flexible to be able to connect the speaker/headphone jack.
Once the original iPod Nano had been recovered (it’s probably gone through at least another two cycles of long-term loss and recovery), it had been eclipsed by other devices as a prime music device.  So it was a great candidate to be potentially sacrificed to the Water Gods in another experiment.  No issues, the armband hasn’t leaked yet.

The problems weren’t over yet though.  I still had the first generation earphones.  These things looked like the speakers from a telephone, only somewhat miniaturized.   They were hard to fit into my ears, and got uncomfortable after a while, but even worse, they’d let plenty water get between them and my ear canal.
My hands are pretty average size, so you get an idea of how big the speaker is…

So I would typically start playing music at a given volume, then start swimming.  As water got in my ear, the volume would seem to go down to the point where I couldn’t really hear the music (I would have thought I’d hear the music better due to water being a denser medium than air, but I’m telling you what I experienced).  I’d turn up the volume to compensate, but the second the water cleared (if I took my head out of the water for sighting, or to take a break or anything), the music would be deafening.  



Someone told me there was a newer better model out so finally this year, I got a pair from Amazon*.  The Surge Sportwraps seem to be marketed for Boardsports more than swimming (probably because the band around the back doesn’t play well with a swim cap), but I like that they hug the head; it’s what I look for in running earphones too.

On my last Trifecta Tuesday, I went for a swim.  I was a little tired from a 16km run plus the Kyle’s Krusade Virtual Race 5k (PR!), so I decided I simply wanted to crank out 1.5km in the pool without drill sets or anything complicated.  The perfect setting for the new kit.

Though I ended up stopping a few times in the first few hundred meters to adjust the phones in my ears and make the Sportwrap play nice with my goggles and swim cap, I can tell you the audio experience was better than ever before and the volume stayed at a fairly even level so I was able to enjoy music throughout the swim.  I’ll revisit what effects that had on my swim experience in Part 2 of this series.

*H2O Audio has been re-branded to X-1 Audio with some new (yet again) product lines.  There still seems to be a Canadian Retailer using the H2O Audio Brand though.
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Half Marathon Training Week Recap: New Distances

Looking back at the week in training that was:

  • Saturday was the long run, in some very warm weather for the season.  To avoid mud, I stuck to side-walks so my joints and Achilles tendons took more than the usual amount of pounding, I’d have to say.  I was conservative on the way out, and more aggressive on the way back.  Going slow feels weird because I have a time goal in mind for the race, but I think the structure might be paying off…  14.3km done.
  • We were out late seeing the movie Les Miserables, and Shark Boy didn’t get to bed on time either, so Crossfit on Sunday was sacrificed.  Taking a rest day was probably smart.
  • Monday continued to be mild, but I figured it would be dry enough to run on trails.  Almost right, my shoes got wet (though my Salomon XR Missions have done some good water protection for my feet this season) and at least once I had to wipe a big, heavy clump of mud off the soles.  I hit the prescribed mileage, and the pace was slow as recommended (6:34min/kim)… at least on average.  I think I did some walk breaks and speed bursts to keep that average pace.
  • Tuesday was meant to be a Trifecta Tuesday with an early morning swim, plus strength and 1 more activity that I hadn’t decided on (maybe Yoga), but when I got to the gym, I found the pool crowded, and I had forgotten a towel; I went home and had breakfast with the family instead.  I managed to make it to the Etobicoke Olympium at lunch.  The Olympic (50m) pool had been cut in half for lane swimming, but though there were a lot of people there too, the lane etiquette was roundly observed, and it was no problem getting a good workout in.  In fact, I did my longest pool workout swim with 2.3km including drills, 4x75m intervals, 4x200m and another 4x75m.
  • Wednesday was my favourite run of the week.  The trails were dry and the sun was out.  I managed a 6:04min/km pace, and I began to see how a 2 hour half-marathon might be possible.
  • On Thursday, I did a Cross-training session in a group exercise class.  PB Freakin Fit is run by Personal Best (who manages our corporate gym) and is structured much like a Crossfit Workout of the Day (WOD).  Due to the equipment available and the space used, a lot of modifications need to be made.  This workout was a warm-up of jumping jacks, skipping, jogging on the spot, then a countdown: run across the room and back then do 10 push-ups, repeat with 9, 8, 7 push-ups right down to 1.  The first main set was 5 rounds for time (RFT): 20 Frog Jump Squats, 10 Renegade Rows with Mountain Climber, and 20 Hindu Pushups.  The second set involved AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) in 10 minutes of 20 ski-jumps, 10 burpees with dumbbell shoulder press, and 20 wide-stance prisoner squats. I can still feel the effects as I write this on Sunday.
  • Friday was a tempo run on the treadmill; new distance (2 miles/3.2 km) at a speed of 6.8mph with a 1 mile warm-up and cool down
    • I took a rest day on Saturday, and on Sunday, in spite of freezing temperatures and 48 km/h winds, I got a new distance of 16km or 10 miles.  That’s more than I’ve run in one sitting in at least 3 years.



I took a weigh-in toward the end of the week: 200lbs. Not great progress but heading in the right direction…


This was a week of new frontiers of distance, and I love seeing and feeling the progress.