Read this before you get the Oregon Scientific Swimming Watch as a gift

With Christmas coming in a couple of days I have a feeling someone in our club will be getting swim gadgets. Being a gadget guy, I have owned my share of them, unfortunately most of them do not prove useful in the end. Of all the swim gadgets I have tried, the SwiMP3 and tempo trainer are the only ones that are used with any frequency. And even then, their applicability is limited.

The tek tok belt and the underwater walkie talkie flat out didn't do what they were supposed to do. The stroke rate button on the stopwatch just isn't as applicable as I thought it would be, the need for the finger watch disappeared when I stopped the practice of just going to the pool and doing a long straight slow swim. While I don't own one myself, I never see the lap counters that attach to the end of the pool in use any longer.

So now we come to one that is available now. The Oregon Scientific swimming watch. This one counts your strokes and laps for you then shows you your accumulated totals among other things. Looking at the manual for it I see one somewhat misleading thing and one glaring oversight.

The watch says that it calculates calories burned. I am sure that they used the best data available for the calculation, however it looks like swimming economy varies widely. So any sort of calculation will give calorie burned readings which may be way off the mark. That said, I suppose it is better than what you are currently using to estimate the calories you burn swimming.

But the glaring ommission is that it doesn't show how many laps you have swam as you are swimming, only the number of strokes and time.

To me, the main purpose of the watch would be for those days when you are scheduled for a long swim. Say 1800 yards. About halfway through that you might want to take a glance at your watch whiel turning to see how many laps you have done. Well, the oregon scientific watch doesn't show that information until you "STOP" the watch. And after you hit STOP, it starts all over again, so you can't really take a glance to see if that was 900 or 950 yards.

Just a little thing I noticed. Consider that before putting it on your christmas list or before your family spends $100 on one of these at best buy.

For those of you who are right now thinking, "Man, I wish I had known this three weeks ago before my Mom got me one as a Hanukkah gift" I apologize, this just popped up on my radar screen today.


Results from here and there

Good evening, 

I happen to know about a few different race results for people.

1. Last weekend was the Rehoboth Beach Half Marathon. The BATC's Bob V managed to pull off a PR for the distance in 1:27. Bob is recovering from a broken collarbone but that seems to be coming along nicely.

2. The results of the US Masters Swimming 3,000 and 6,000 postal swims are out. Jamie Fick was 5th in his age group in the 3,000 swim and 3rd in the 6,000. Yes, 6,000 yards as fast as possible in a 25 yard pool. Good fun!

3. In more swim news, Trish Cummings hit a lifetime best with a 50 freestyle swim split of 32 seconds in a relay at the master siwm meet in Easton.

I think the next big batch of results will be from the Celtic Solstice this weekend. The 5 mile run has grown a lot in the past few years and I expect many of our members will be there. Best of luck.

Winter is a good time to swim, info on some swim competitions


As the winter chill settles in, some people find that it is a good time to get their swimming together. There is an organization called us masters swimming that provides competitions for adult swimmers much like usa triathlon does for adult triathletes.

YES, EVEN YOU!
A big question already forming in your head is, "DO I have to do flip turns?" The answer to that is no, you don't. You don't have to do flip turns and if you don't, you won't be the only one who doesn't. Flip turns are faster, a worthwhile thing to learn, but no you don't have to do them. Tell your local adult swim coach you are interested in a meet and tell them you are interested in learning flip turns an they should be able to help you. If you don't have a local masters coach, shoot me an email and we will figure out a way to get you going, we have done this for people who wanted to do a meet in previous years. If you want to teach yourself flip turns, you should be able to find a reasonable learning progression for them on the internet or youtube.

"Do I have to dive off the blocks?"
The proper way to say this is, "Do I GET to dive off the blocks?" And the answer is a little surprising, in masters swimming you are not required to dive form the blocks at the start. Some people climb on into the pool and start by pushing off of the wall. Perfectly legal and acceptable. Though to be fair, the people who do this usually have mobility problems. 

Just like the men and women on TV, you get to start from the blocks, it's pretty fun. But if you have never done it and want to, the RED CROSS shallow dive progression takes less than 20 minutes and you will be set. Again, your local adult swim coach should be able to take you through this progression and you will be good to go. But if you don't have a local adult swim coach, send me an email and we'll figure out a way to get you spun up.

MORE ABOUT SWIM MEETS
Remember how self conscious you were before your first triathlon? You thought you would stick out like a sore thumb? And then you got there and everybody is kinda doing their own thing and everybody was pretty supportive so it was really cool? Yeah, swim meets are the same way, except even more so, there are usually 17 possible events at a swim meet, and each swimmer can do 3 of those 17, so everyone is either swimming, resting from their last swim or getting ready for the next swim.  At the swim meets there all shapes and sizes, fast and slow, younger and old, experienced and inexperienced. And everybody is having a good time. So don't be afraid.

There are three things coming up that you should know about.

1. Swim meets - every month the maryland region hosts a swim meet for masters swimmers. These meets are free to participate in once you join us masters swimming. At these meets there are competitions for every stroke in the 50 and 100, a 200 freestyle, 200 IM, at least one other 200 yard event, or a 400 IM, or a 500 freestyle swim. The next swim meet in fact is this Friday December 10th in Easton. There will be an awesome stylish silver mini van leaving the Providence Road park and Ride at 12:20 PM on Saturday, if you'd like to come along please send an email.

2. Postal swim meet - postal swims are distance swims that you do in your own pool. Wherever you normally swim. You mail in your results (ergo the name postal) and USMS publishes the results along with everyone else across the country. There is usually a specific 4 week time period in which you have to do it, and you need to have someone record your splits for every 2 laps, but those are the only rules. It is very flexible and is an excellent challenge. The next one of these is in January, literally hundreds of people across the country do the one hour postal swim in January. In this one, you simply get in the pool and go as far as you can in an hour. Resting is allowed, but the clock keeps running, so keep those rest times short! 

I find this an excellent mid-winter training goal or training session for the winter. Gets you off on the right foot. You can find info on this competition at www.usms.org under the long distance section.

3. Distance swim meet in March - the website is down right now so the particulars aren't available. But in early March there will be a special distance swim meet in Catonsville. This meet will offer the 1,000 and 1,650 freestyle swim. These are events that a triathlete might like to do, 1,650 yards is pretty darn close to 1,500 meters. You can go and do both of those events if you are feeling really strong! There is a fee for this meet, but it should be quite low, nothing like what we pay for triathlons.

The homepage of us masters swimming is www.usms.org
The homepage of the Maryland region is http://www.teamunify.com/Home.jsp?team=msmdlmsc

If you have any questions about any of this, email kpjoubert@yahoo.com for more info, we'd love to see you at the next swim meet. Then we'd love to see you at the front of the swim pack at your next tri.

Achieve Kids Tri

Hello BATC'ers, 

For all who attended the club meeting before the holiday, thank you for taking the time to listen about the prospect of bringing a tri camp for youth aged 9-14 to Baltimore.  As I mentioned, I'm in the initial stages of conversation with Achieve Kids http://achievekidstri.org/, the national non-profit organization sponsoring the initiative.  If the right supports are in place, it is a distinct possibility that a Baltimore camp could be a reality this 2011 summer.  So please, consider using your gifts and talents to make a difference.

If you weren't at the meeting, please take a minute to look through the Achieve site.  If you are interested in getting involved at any level, contact me at pbs1207@gmail.com or cell # 410-206-0394.  The most pressing needs at the moment are finding the right venue to host the camp and also finding the right head coach.  If you have any ideas on either need, let me know, and by all means feel free to forward this to any friends or contacts that might be interested in getting involved.  

Thank you.

Sincerely, 
Paul Smith

_________________

ACHIEVE provides youth ages 9-14 with a fun, life-changing experience by introducing them to the sport of triathlon.

Headquartered in Washington, DC and acting in partnership or collaboration with local governments and private organizations, ACHIEVE takes kids through a 6-week instruction and training program, provided free of charge, insured and monitored by experienced and trained coaches. The ACHIEVE program helps kids master the fundamentals of swimming, cycling, running, and triathlon racing, as well as the essentials of proper nutrition, stretching, strength-training, and flexibility. The ACHIEVE program concludes each season with a timed short-course triathlon race, certified and sanctioned by the USA Triathlon association (USAT).

ACHIEVE was founded in 2007 by Charles (Chuck) Brodsky, founder of The Nation's Triathlon™ with the support of Washington, DC Mayor, Adrian Fenty, an avid triathlete, and Washington, DC's Department of Parks and Recreation.  The program was launched at Turkey Thicket Recreation Center in the summer of 2007.  The success of the initial year led to expansion in 2008 to an additional site in DC and to Houston, TX.  In 2009, there will be three locations in DC and two in Houston.

In order to remain all-inclusive, ACHIEVE is a free camp that provides youth with all of the equipment that they will need during the program; including bicycles, helmets, swim fins, pull buoys, goggles, kickboards, a one-of-a-kind ACHIEVE  cycling jersey, as well as training from experienced coaches.

A major component of the ACHIEVE program is to expose kids to the many benefits that come from participation in endurance sports. Training and racing in endurance events teaches athletes how to be disciplined, goal-oriented and focused, and helps to foster respect for self and others. In the long run, endurance athletes tend to be more successful in their careers, more community-involved, and are healthier than many of their sedentary peers. ACHIEVE aims to inspire these traits in its camp participants and to realize our motto of “Enriching Lives Through Sport.”