That afternoon I met Holden back at the Cadence facility and he took me to a local pool. The pool that Cadence usually uses was closed that weekend so Holden took me to a local high school pool. Apparently the regular pool is really impressive but I was more than pleased with the high school pool. The idea of a secondary school in the UK having such an impressive pool was completely alien to me.
I got changed and then sat on the bench while Holden revealed to me the secret of great swimming. Now I am not sure whether I should share this or not because I don’t want to get to Lake Placid and miss a qualifying slot because someone has read my blog and learnt the secret to great swimming. Therefore if you have read this and finish ahead of me in my age group at Lake Placid I would be very grateful if you would decline your Kona slot – thanks for your understanding :-).
So the secret to great swimming is efficiency of effort. I know everyone thinks they know that already but there is a bit a more to it. Holden talked about fluid dynamics and the more energy you expend pushing against the water the more resistance you will have coming back at you. Therefore you want to get through the water without fighting against it. Now for me the biggest resistance I was creating came from my legs. Holden was relatively happy with my arm movement – not perfect but good enough. The glaring problem with my stroke is my irregular kick.
I start kicking and then every time I take a breath I scissor kick to regain my stability in the water. Going back to the fluid dynamics every time I do this huge scissor kick I create a lot of resistance in the water and slow myself down. My coach does not want to try and reinvent my stroke this close to the racing season as it would more than likely be counter-productive but I can make a lot of progress if I can coordinate my kick. He showed me a few drills which involve me establishing a steady kicking rhythm, from the hips, and then trying to windmill my arms (not pulling, just rotating them) without disturbing my kicking rhythm.
The importance of a good kick cannot be overemphasized. I must admit I was one of those people that believed you didn’t need to kick during a Triathlon swim and you were better off saving your legs for the bike and run. When I finally decided to start improving my kick I thought it was all about using my legs to provide propulsion through the water. I was completely off track and the analogy Holden used was that you wouldn’t try and run with your arms locked by your side and similarly you shouldn’t try and swim without using your legs. I do not need to develop a kick to power me through the water, although if I was competitive swimmer in the pool I certainly would, but instead I need to develop a kick which will hold me steady in the water and stop me fighting against the water unnecessarily. From there everything else should naturally fall into place in terms of breathing and body rotation.
Holden went on to explain how I should be whipping my legs to create the kick and explained some other body dynamics but the broad theories he was selling me seemed to make total sense and I really feel like I can make a significant breakthrough with my stroke with minimal effort. I was pleased to find out that the rest of my stroke is not too bad and that I have the in water conditioning I will need and only need to really work on technique.
That evening Wendy and I went out in a storm hit Philly city center and had a dinner at a great little restaurant near 2nd St Station. It was called the Continental Martini Bar and the food was delivered to the table tapas style. We had a lobster mashed potato dish, chicken satay dish and a humus dip and it was all top rate food and highly recommended.
The following day I was back at Cadence for another blood lactate threshold test, this time on the treadmill.
On the way to the store Wendy and I stopped at the Art Museum to get the obligatory Rocky p
hotos. It was fun to see a bus load of kids get dumped at the bottom of the steps by coach and then run up and down before being shepherded back onto their coach. One of the little boys even had a pair of boxing gloves on.
Holden was busy so the test was taken by Colin Sandberg who did my bike fitting last year. Colin is about to embark on his first full season as a Cat 1 racer and he is looking super lean in comparison to when I saw him last year and I believe he now has some ridiculously high power to weight ratio.
The test is exactly the same as for the bike test but instead of increasing wattage the tester increases the speed of the treadmill. Colin explained that it is a little more important to start the run a little bit closer your lactate threshold than is necessary on the bike as you do not want the test running too long, as running is a load bearing sport and you tire more quickly. I warmed up and then Colin started me off at 9.1 mph. I had clearly fooled him into thinking I was faster than I am with my marathon tales and snazzy running gear as I was almost immediately over my LT threshold. We stopped the test and started over when my body had returned to a lactate level well below the test base line threshold of 4.0. This time I started slower and we fell into the familiar 3 min blood sample, pin prick routine.
Colin computed my results that lunch time and Holden is going to send me my bike test results by email. I won’t comment on them now as I think it is probably worth doing a separate post.
The last thing I did before leaving the store was say hi to Brian Walton. He is Cadence’s VP of Performance and is a former Canadian professional road and track cyclist who has been inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame. He has raced professionally for teams 7-Eleven, Motorola, and Saturn and he is an Olympic Silver medalist, not to mention a winner of the Milk Race (aka Tour of Britain). He normally leads out the Cadence group ride on Saturday morning and I was really looking forward to the opportunity to ride with him but I am sure there will be another opportunity. I also believe he is the only person I know who has their own Wikipedia page (if you look it up he is Brian Walton Cyclist not the 17 Century Bishop of Chester in case there was any confusion). Before I left he put me in contact with a Cat 1 racer here in DC who has sent me information on some local group rides. It would probably be really good for my cycling if I tried to stay with a few of these faster group rides with more experienced cyclists.
As I left I collected my bike which the mechanics had very kindly been working on. Everything is now nice and tight again and the rattles from the slightly misaligned group set have now gone, many thanks Woody.
So all in all a great weekend was had by all but I hope to never have such an awful drive up as we did on Friday. I learnt a hell of a lot and I am really pleased with my swim session and feel like I have a way forward which I can now practice on my own in the pool. It was great to see all the staff again most of whom I had not seen since the selection weekend in November. As I said in my first post way back when everyone there is super friendly but more importantly very, very knowledgeable and the store is well worth checking out if you are after high end coaching or equipment.
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