SmarterFitter Blog Less diet, more brain

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This last year I’ve been swimming regularly and cycling every day. More recently, I began running. I’ve thought about doing a triathlon, but I’m a little worried. I should feel great from all this exercise, but often I feel sluggish and stiff. Am I not stretching enough? Sleeping enough? Eating enough? (Wouldn’t that be a wonderful problem to have?!) Sometimes I’ll have a great swim one day, and a lethargic run the next. Yesterday I took a brisk one-hour walk with Tim after swimming the day before - the walk totally conked me out. How embarrassing. I should be perfectly capable of walking!

It turns out that multi-sport training in tough, and it’s basically impossible to excel in more than one sport at a time. The New York Times explains that the body responds to different sports in different ways. Changes that help you be a kick-ass runner may screw your swimming. And if you think about musculature, it makes sense:

Swimmers need large muscles in their backs and shoulders. Runners and cyclists want small, light upper bodies. Cyclists need large quadriceps muscles. Runners don’t, and in fact they don’t want any extra muscle weight on their legs.

It’s just as well that I don’t hope to win any races; I just wanna have fun and be fit. In fact, training for a triathlon should be good for a recreational athlete like myself. Or so says the physiologists:

Cross training — cycling one day and swimming the next, for example — lets you maintain your energy and enthusiasm and avoid injuries that come from doing the same activity day after day. That’s also part of the appeal of being a triathlete, [triathlon coach Joe Friel] said.

“It’s fun to train,” said Kelly Couch, a 30-year-old triathlete from San Mateo, Calif. “Just being a runner, just being a cyclist, can get a little stagnant.”

Agreed: doing multiple sports is appealing, if only for the variety. But what about my energy? Are there any triathletes out there who’ve experienced this? I’m not even training for real, yet, and need a little reassurance that a triathlon won’t totally wear me out for all the other good things in life, like strolling in the park and throwing frisbees and playing pool.

For Peak Performance, 3 Is Not Better Than 1 [New York Times]

An article in today’s NY Times discusses the various pros and cons of heart rate monitor training. In my experience, heart rate monitors only work if you know your own maximum and minimum heart rate. There’s a pretty good book that explains how to do this called (and you’ll forgive the title) Heart Rate Training for the Compleat (sic) Idiot.

Here’s something from the article that I didn’t know: swimmers have lower heart rates when they swim than when they run. Why?

The reason, Dr. O’Connor explained, is that during running, your heart has to push blood against gravity to bring it to your head. During swimming, your heart does not have to exert that extra force.

The Flutter Over Heart Rate

The new Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit is being hailed as the “world’s fastest swimsuit” as athletes wearing the swimsuit have broken three world records within a week of its debut.

Even if I won’t be joining the 2012 Olympic hopefuls in purchasing the £320 suit, I can’t deny that the research from Speedo’s “AQUALAB” is pretty cool. The team used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to determine the sources of drag from the skin. According to researcher Dr. Herve Morvan, “with CFD analysis we were able to use the compressive properties of the suit to make the swimmer as hydrodynamically efficient as possible.” They also used similar simulations to train athletes, showing the effects of swim cap and finger position in performance.

This suit has 5% less drag than last year’s high performance Speedo, the FS Pro, which helped swimmers break 21 world records. Hey that’s not bad. With all the FS Pros going out of fashion, maybe I can find one used on ebay?

Or maybe I’ll just stick to breaking my own records with my £12 Speedo.

Link to Speedo LZR Racer
Link to Engineering The World’s Fastest Swimsuit on Science Daily

Attendance is dwindling at my Monday night swim lesson. I guess “the new” is wearing off as some people discover they are only in lust with “intermediate swimming” (and the Clissold Leisure Centre). Selfishly, I like this: fewer students means more attention from my instructor. This makes the class more of a lesson than a practice drill.

Last Monday, as I practiced the breaststroke, my instructor reminded me to bend my knees and bring my heels as close to my butt as possible: hard work but better form for faster swimming (I tend to forget this when I’m swimming alone, and do only a half-ass job of bending my legs). We then did the backstroke for a few laps, and he picked me out of everyone to demonstrate good form!

I’m learning how to get a good cardio workout from swimming. It seems obvious now that all it takes is a little concentration and a lot of hard kicking, but when I first started I couldn’t both kick hard and breath properly at the same time. It’s taken over a year to get to this point where I feel comfortable breathing, but that’s ok - I look forward to seeing where I’m at in another year’s time.

After all that wondering, it turns out it’s half term and swim lessons are off for the week. Frankly, I’m a bit relieved.

As mentioned, I have a mild cold. I’m supposed to go to my swim lesson tonight, and I really don’t want to skip it because I already missed last week. Seeking answers, I typed my query on the Goog. Here’s what exercise physiologist Elizabeth Quinn reckons:

The average adult has two to three upper respiratory infections each year. Many athletes wonder if they should continue their training routine when sick. While research is limited, most experts recommend that if your symptoms are above the neck and you have no fever, exercise is probably safe. Intensive exercise should be postponed until a few days after the symptoms have gone away. However, if there are symptoms or signs of the flu, such as fever, extreme tiredness, muscle aches, swollen lymph glands, then at least two weeks should probably be allowed before you resume intensive training.

A small study conducted by Thomas G. Weidner at Ball State University backs up her claim. Researchers infected a group of volunteers with a rhinovirus and divided them into two groups: exercising and non-exercising. The exercising group trained at 70% of their measured heart rate for 40 minutes a day.

At the conclusion of the study, analysis of exercise training data, physical activity profiles, symptom severity scores and actual mucous weight measurement showed no statistically significant difference between the exercising and non-exercising groups.

The authors reiterated a useful model for exercising during a cold. If symptoms such as a runny nose, sneezing or a scratchy throat exist (so-called “above-the-neck” symptoms), it is probably safe for an individual to exercise at a lower intensity. If these symptoms recede in the first few minutes of exercise, intensity may be increased accordingly. Exercise is not, however, recommended for individuals experiencing “below-the-neck” symptoms of a cold, such as fever, sore muscles or joints, vomiting or diarrhea, or a productive cough.

I’ll see if I can back up Thomas and Elizabeth’s claims after my swim tonight. I’ve exercised on a cold in the past but this always seemed to make it worse, but it’s quite likely I pushed myself too hard. In fact, I took two very leisurely turns around Clissold Park this morning and it felt terrific; it cleared up my nose and, well, I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day.

My swim is from 7:30-8:15. I am going to have a light meal at 5ish, and then something small after my swim, following which I am going to crawl into bed and try to sleep for a very long time.

Link to Should I exercise with a cold? at About.com
Link to Can you still exercise even with a runny nose? at BlueSuitMom.com

I’ll start with the good news: I ran on Sunday for the first time in months. I did two loops of Clissold Park, running solely on grass, and walking over the odd stretch of pavement. It was something like 2 miles.

While the run wasn’t hugely difficult muscularly or cardiovascularly, I could definitely feel it in my joints, especially my knees. But fortunately not my ankle.

This was supposed to be a light jog to get me used to running again, so I was really surprised when I woke up (after a very broken sleep) with very sore legs on Monday morning. I usually like this kind of physical feedback, but instead I immediately thought “Ugh, I don’t want to go to my swim lesson tonight”. All day I had this on my mind, feeling dread at the thought of going, but guilt at the thought of skipping.

Eventually I decided that these mind games were stupid and I should just do what would make me and my body happiest. So I skipped my swimming lesson in favour of rest. That night, I slept 8 hours straight, and went for a swim at the London Fields Lido before work on Tuesday morning. It was only the second time I’ve been to the Lido this year, instead tending towards the closer and newer Clissold Leisure Centre. But the CLC doesn’t beat the Lido in length (50m) or ambience (outdoors, heated). And on Tuesday morning, the Lido was enshrouded in fog, so much fog that I couldn’t see the few brave swimmers around me (unless I looked under water). And after such a good sleep, the swim felt great. My legs were still sore but the swim loosened them up. For those 26 laps (1300m) and 35 minutes, I focussed my thoughts on swimming, breathing, kicking, the task at hand. At the end of it, I felt totally relaxed and wondered why I ever traded this pool for anything else.

This is what swimming is about for me: the relaxation, the quiet, the peace. It’s not fun when I’m swimming back in forth in a crowded pool, thinking more about not bumping into people than on the swim itself. These quiet spots are hard to find in London.

I started with good news, which usually means some bad news to follow. But now that I’m at the end of the story, I realise there is no bad news at all. If anything, it’s that the Lido will become more crowded as the days get longer and the weather gets warmer. Even so, the atmosphere is so completely other from the rest of London that it’s impossible to complain. And more people in the pool is a sign that winter is ending and summer is on it’s way. Good news triumphs again!

The best news of all is that I’m looking forward to swimming again. Tomorrow. In the morning. At the Lido.

To my relief, my swim instructor did not even hint at the butterfly last Monday. Instead, we dove right into the breast stroke, a popular stroke among swimmers at the lido. It’s slow and frog-like, but easy… or so I thought…

With the breast stroke, the synchronisation of feet and arms is key to speed. The legs and arms should never be outstretched at the same time (news to me). So here’s how it goes:

1. Start by kicking off from the wall and stretching out in a straight line.
2. Move your arms around in a circle, lifting your face out to breath.
3. Put your head back in the water and finish the circle by stretching your arms out in front of you.
4. At the same time as step 3., kick your legs like a frog.
5. Repeat from step 2.

Steps 3. and 4. are the tricky ones, because your arms move before your legs, not at the same time. This seemed counterintuitive at first, but after a while I got used to it, and was pleased to see I was swimming faster as a result.

It was a good class, but not great. In general, swimming hasn’t held the same joy for me that it did before Christmas. Maybe it’s because I’ve been swimming at the new Clissold Leisure Centre, which is closer than the London Lido, but busier, indoors, and shorter in length (25m instead of 50m). Even so, I’ve been feeling very low energy, which inevitably makes swimming less enjoyable.

Where has all my energy gone? I partly blame a lingering cold that won’t seem to die. The bigger problem is poor quality sleep. Either I don’t sleep long enough, or I wake up during the night. Why is this? Noisy neighbors. Alcohol. Food. Lack of a schedule. Lack of light.

So this weekend I’m having a quiet one, resting up and trying to regain some regularity to my sleep schedule. I won’t swim until Monday’s class, but will test my ankle with some light jogging on a soft surface. I have a workmate who’s been encouraging me to do a triathlon. The only thing stopping me is the running (it used to be swimming, my how things have changed!). I’ve made an appointment with my GP who will hopefully refer me to a specialist that can prescribe me some insoles or something (if the fix is that simple, I will be thrilled). In the meantime, I am going to do a couple of turns around Clissold Park tomorrow morning, alternating between running and walking. The weather is suddenly glorious in London: cool, but blue skies and sunshine, at least during the few hours of daylight. And I love the park early in the morning, with its frost and happy dogs and notable lack of small children. Bliss.

Link to the basic breaststroke at the BBC

Crossposted to spacekadet.org

Last night’s swim lesson was exhausting. Or rather, I was exhausted.

Saturday and Sunday night was out with friends, eating and drinking and while terribly late, I never sleep very well when I’ve had too much to drink. So Monday I was tired and by 7:30pm’s swim lesson, I was more in the mood to curl up with a bowl of hot soup and a book than put on a bathing suit. But I went because I paid for it and I knew I’d miss it if I didn’t go.

I guess I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t in the mood, because our class was half the size as when it started. Fine by me: more attention from the instructor.

We spent what felt like an eternity doing the back stroke. Backstroke is sort of like freestyle but on your back (huh). The BBC’s excellent backstroke for beginners has a nifty instructional animation and some useful tips. For instance

• It is a good idea to count how many strokes it takes you to swim a length so you will know when you are getting close to the end of the pool. (Brilliant!)
• Try and swim with all of your body close to the surface of the water, almost like you are lying on your back in bed with your head on a pillow.
• Use long fast kicks, making sure your legs are moving up and down.
• Keep your knees underwater and bent a little, and your toes should make a small splash when you kick.

Then our instructor had us learn the butterfly. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the butterfly in action, but it’s really weird looking, and somewhat ridiculous unless you’re an olympic athlete who swims to win rather than a normal person who swims to stay fit and relax. On top of all that, the butterfly requires really good technique. Wouldn’t it make more sense to perfect the basic strokes before getting into something advanced?

I was annoyed by the butterfly, and by my own unwillingness to try something new. I only did a couple [poorly executed] laps before class was finally over and I could go home and comfort myself with chickpea soup and a grapefruit (even if it’s wrong).

The learning point here is one lesson that I seem to revisit over and over again, but manage to forget every time: I just don’t have enough energy to work full-time, write part-time, swim, cycle, eat well, and have more than one or two drinks in a sitting. That last item on the list basically screws everything else, mainly because I don’t sleep well. This is an even harder lesson to learn than the butterfly. If I never swam the butterfly again in my life, at least I’d still have a social life.

What I need to remember is not the bad feeling of being tired, but the good feeling of swimming on a good night’s sleep, a well nourished body, and a bloodstream gushing with oxygen rather than toxins. Now how do I remember that when I’m at the pub?

Link to BBC’s Backstroke for beginners

Crossposted to spacekadet.org