Go the Distance!

My daughter is in Colorado Springs for four days, at the US Olympic Training Center, for "Distance Camp." This is a couple dozen kids from all over Pacific Swimming (Northern California and Nevada) who "like" the distance events (that may be too strong a word) and do well in those events. The sprinters do the 500 free, and the specialties move up to the 1000, 1650 and 5K/10K, with the 400 IM thrown in just for fun.

The workload is completely insane, with four different coaches supervising. Each workout the

coaches get into a virtual muscle-flexing contest (HA -- as though coaches still have muscles!), trying to make the workouts even more challenging than the last one. And at 6,000 feet elevation, that puts some serious hurt on the swimmers. The picture at right is of swimmers leaving the pool after their last workout.

The kids stay in the USOTC dorms, eat at the fabulous cafeteria (where the cooks are no doubt selected for their ability to remain calm as they read recipes that begin "take 24 dozen eggs . . ."), and mingle with the amazing athletes there from all over the country who are using the facility's other venues. There are fencers, triathletes, gymnasts, weightlifters, pentathletes, shooters, wrestlers, track and field, and various paralympians milling around, some in residence there. I'm sure there are some pretty ferocious card games at night.

My child-free four days was almost the complete opposite of what she's doing right now, except for the eating in bulk. I swam for half an hour (I did, however, look really good), had three beers consecutively last night, and kept it smooth but steady as I transferred clothes from the washer to the dryer. I've had months of training like she's doing, and I'm a little over it now. I appreciate the importance of the work, and I remember how proud I felt each day, but I have lost some of that need to do more, more, more. About 90 percent of the need.

I feel the same way about basketball, and I know how that happened. I spent five years as a high school Athletic Director. I hired the coaches, processed eligibility, collected forms and fees, ordered and inventoried all the uniforms, organized the meetings and banquets, and went to a jillion meetings where every person there was wearing brightly colored warmups, as though we could still rip off our jackets at any moment and throw down a monster dunk at the buzzer.

One of my jobs was working the gate at basketball games. At first it was fun; the action was fast paced and the crowd and loud buzzer made it seem almost professional. But after a few hundred games -- boys and girls -- it all became a blur. Too much, way too much. Can't watch another game ever. And that's too bad because the high school kids were basically good. It's not like the NBA, where the rosters are filled with folks that have methodically checked off all the categories of felonies on their bucket lists. I wouldn't go to an NBA game if you could peel off center court tickets on the back of my Cheerios box.

But I digress. So I'm glad my daughter is training hard, and loving to train hard. She's had a well-planned career (ouch! my hand got a cramp patting myself on the back) that's left her enjoying the sport and continuing to improve. She'll look back on those days in Colorado Springs one day and say -- what the hell was I thinking? -- but she'll be proud, as I am of her.

Lap Me and Lap Me Again

I remember my wake-up moment like it was yesterday, or better yet -- today, when I actually woke up. I was swimming with my team, Lamorinda, and we were doing our monthly test set: a timed 3000. My swimmers today think a 15-minute swim is bad, but this was something even I dreaded. I was in Lane 6, the Distance Lane (thus my car's license plate), in Heat 2. We six swimmers had counted laps for the swimmers in Heat 1, and now they were doing the same for us. I was next to Laura Alonzo, a Junior National qualifier in the 50 free and 100 back. While I was the "old lady" of the team, 30 years old compared to the pool full of high school kids, I was one of the better endurance swimmers. One of my proudest moments ever as a swimmer was the 12x100 I did once in workout, on a 1:30 interval, with all of them 0.3 seconds apart.

A couple years after this swim Laura went to college at Harvard and then to Med School at the University of Pennsylvania. Now she does diabetes research and is a professor at Pitt -- all of this info just to clarify that even at 16 she was really, really smart. Not the kind of gal who had no freakin idea how many laps she did (which I hear routinely), or someone who would say "crawlstroke," (ahhh, you're killing me here!), or the kind of swimmer who leaves two seconds early, does illegal turns, and is incapable of holding her breath more than four strokes (roll call: Present!). No, Laura was mature and incredibly talented.

Laura and I didn't do the same sets often, but I felt that I could hold my own with her on the freestyle sets. When the 3000 started she moved ahead early. Like a true distance geek I was checking my 100 times on the paceclock while I was swimming, and I was consistent. In those days I could repeat 1:12s or so all day, and oh man are those days LONG gone! Just typing this makes me and drool uncontrollably as I suck in my gut and try to curl up from my stoop. Laura was holding around 1:06s and lapped me every 24 laps. When she came close I'd try to hang on and pick up the pace, but she soon blew by only to reappear exactly 24 laps later. It was like Wet Groundhog Day. Every 24 laps I couldn't believe it all over again. Every single 24 laps she came by (that's 120 total, for the math-impaired), never slowing, never tiring, always in the exact same passing place. I was getting more and more frustrated: hey, I was the distance girl here -- how could a backstroker be putting up such a beatdown?

Finally she finished, and I was forced to endure the most humiliating 250 yard solo swim ever. I think she warmed down, staying in the pool till I finished. She could have showered, changed, done a few calculus homework problems, and whipped up a souffle, but thank goodness she didn't.

I had to take a super serious look at myself that day, wondering what the hell I was training for, when a backstroker (okay, one of the top 50 high school backstrokers in the United States, but still!) could crush me like a grape. I didn't have any answers. If only I had a scoresheet that listed "poor technique," "old age," "mental lack-of-toughness," "no kick," and "feel for the water," I could have selected some really good answers.

Brooding about it for days, I finally asked my coach, Ray, to explain it to me. He said, "Marcia, sometimes people are just more talented than you are." And I thought, whoa -- that was deep -- because that had never even occurred to me. I thought that all hard work pays off kind of soon, or soon-ish. But in reality that's just not going to happen as often as it should. Sometimes there's a Laura Alonzo waiting to run you down like a unlicensed guy at the wheel of a WalMart semi, playing Words With Friends on his cellphone.

Anyone can be a good winner, or their coach. But it's a lot harder to lose or be that person's coach. And today in my daughter's high school championships, as a mom, it's hard to take a sobbing 14-year-old in the shower, hold her close and tell her it's going to be okay if you haven't experienced it yourself. While I eventually did beat Laura in my best-ever 200 free at a meet in Texas (one time only, and she must have had some disease which she later went on to find a cure for), I learned way more from the 3000 than that victory. And the next time my daughter does a best time, I'm sure it will be even sweeter because of what happened today.

Dress for Success . . . in Swimming

Besides hunting free-range bison and weaving baskets from reeds I gather myself, part of my weekly chores in San Leandro involve going to a little organic dry cleaners, aptly named "Organic Dry Cleaners." The sweet young Korean owner, maybe tardy a few ESL classes, is always behind the front counter. The other day she said to me, "Ooooh. New style in shirt!" It was about 70 degrees and I was wearing a print top, which I'd pulled out of the closet that morning after months of wearing heavier clothes. She continued, "Usually say 'swim' on shirt!"

Oh man, busted.

I have devolved now to wearing swim t-shirts and/or swim sweatshirts with my jeans or capris on a daily basis. I do not, however, own the shirt on the right.

When I was a high school athletic director I was involved in athletic governance at every level I could. I organized our school's teams of course, but I worked at the league and section level as well. Meetings, meetings, meetings. The AD dress de jour was a warmup suit (matching polyester pants and jacket) with a polo shirt underneath. As I was clearly moving up in the world I always wore dresses or suits, makeup and jewelry at those meetings. That's right, you're still in Marcia's blog! I really did. Dress for one level above your current position, they say. Why I would have wanted to be League Commissioner and go to 750 playoff games each year (including thrilling 24-20 Varsity Girls Basketball games) was inexplicable.

After I left the AD job I moved on to coaching swimming exclusively. My dressing up was then limited to awards banquets (perhaps "banquet" is too strong a word for lasagne and green salad) once per season. After my last college coaching gig ended I have stabilized here at the Masters coaching and college teaching plateau, where dressing up is never required. But as I still compete occasionally, and those competitions usually come with free t-shirts, I have been accumulating many swim couture items. So, I wear them.

My daughter, a freshman in high school, dresses exactly the same. My first thought is 'Whew! Saving some money here!' and my second is 'Dang, she needs a little exposure to the effort it takes to be a grown-up.' It just about killed her to get into a skirt for her Bat Mitzvah, and she begrudgingly wore a cotton skirt and white blouse to every Bat Mitzvah party she attended, oblivious to all the other seventh-grade girls wearing size 00 miniprom dresses and heels.

She comes from a decade where casual rules (and that would be squared because we're in California), and because she's so comfortable being a jock she wears the uniform with pride. Many of her swimming buds dress the same way, but there are plenty who do the whole Hollister/Nordstrom's thing. I've seen really good swimmers do an entire 5000-yard practice with mascara and eyeliner. Like you need eye makeup when you're half-naked and wet with three high school sophomore boys in your lane.

But I guess she'll figure it out when she needs to. I do dress up occasionally (anniversary, Thanksgiving, Passover, and the occasional trip to the Grand Jury -- wow, that's more than I thought -- but not so much. I'm confortable and happy. So is she.

Here's Looking at You!

To say I'm a competitive person is a little like saying that Raiders are kind of off their game this season. It's probably why I have such a hard time posting this blog with any regularity, because I really need the time to focus without distractions. And my life is all about the distractions. In fact, I'm not sure I'm living a life, just little pauses of silence between distractions.

My latest competition was against all my other fellow alumni at my high school class reunion last weekend. They didn't know they were in competition with me, which was just as well. If they had, they probably wouldn't have been so happy to see me. I trained with Olympic fervor, jogging and swimming and aerobicizing weekly, till I was actually able to overcome an elderly Chinese man wearing Dockers and a buttoned shirt, while doing my lap around Lake Merritt. Man, that felt good!

I like my Pilates class and my general exercise class too, because I can look in the mirror surreptitiously and see how coordinated I look except for those rare 20-30 times/class when I fall off the damn Bosu ball. I really enjoy competing and can't understand when people tell me that they like to just do the workouts and never compete. Seeing measurable progress is what keeps me going.

So I figure out ways to compete in Pilates. Besides counting the number of times I fall off the stupid ball each day, I check out all the other women in the class. I see who has the heaviest weights, who leans into the stretches the farthest, and who has the best posture. These (almost all women) classes at the club are supposed to be about shared community goals, but I can't help it. When I walk out of there I want to say to myself, man -- I totally kicked their ass today!

Some people just love the addiction of fitness, never getting out of shape and trying new challenges. While I enjoy being in shape, it's just too hard to do now with all my distractions. I'm on a ridiculous number of committees and boards, mostly having to do with swimming. Stop me before I volunteer again. And I've got a daughter that never says no to any new activity. So I compete wherever and whenever I can. Sometimes it's in the pool, sometimes around the lake. Sometimes people don't know it, but they're about to get crushed in aerobics. And sometime soon, the Bosu is going to hide when I walk in that room.

My New Reality Show

So You Think You Can Swim!

Well, you're soooooo wrong! You think swimming is moving . . . in water. Any way at all.

I don't. I think it is side-breathing, putting your face all the way in. Owning goggles. Not being exhausted from warmup. Not getting out to fix your cap, cough, or rest. But most of America doesn't see it that way. The people in my swim classes at Laney College are REAL swimmers (at least they are now, after we all went through hell together -- mostly my personal relentless, blood-pressure-spiking hell) But each semester I have at least three or four who think they can swim but have absolutely no freakin idea what that means.

They swing their head side-to-side, out of the water. They borrow goggles the first day. (That's my deal-breaking question to see if they belong in my class!) They swim as fast as they can -- the first lap. They say they are good swimmers, except "for breathing." Red Flag!!!

I don't even like the way people swim on those Senior Citizen medicine ads. Denture cream, Viagra, Celebrex. You name it, if old people need it -- they show happy soft-focus active seniors swimming laps, wearing ginormous goggles and sensible suits. But they can't swim! Really, if they wanted good senior citizens could you please just come to a Masters National Championship and pick like anyone! I'm just offended.

We got back from vacation at Pinecrest Lake a week ago. It was just a beautiful, perfect swimming lake. Water temp in the low 70s, clean and clear, all fish scared away from my daughter's futile attempts to reel them in, and uncrowded. People trooped down to the shore from their cabins, townhouses, or camp sites each morning. They were dressed like swimmers and carried the gear swimmers might need -- but when they got in, they were so delusional I thought I was at a Republican Empathy meeting. A few people tried to make it out to the lane line which designated the swimming area -- and had to hang on in exhaustion after . . . 25 yards.

One dad, who swam heads-up like Tarzan in the early movies -- except that Johnny Weismuller was an actual Olympic Champion, and this guy was a idiot -- actually tried to teach his son how to swim. It was all I could do not to get up and slap him silly. Must read magazine. Do not look up. People come up to me all the time and ask me "how to swim," like I can tell them that magic thing in five minutes and voila! How do you land that Space Shuttle again? Oh, okay -- got it!

Mark Twain wrote: "Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid." And that was this dad. Loud. Insistent. He went on and on about how to move your hands, how to kick, where to look. All wrong. Every word.

And surveys come out saying that 39 percent of Americans are afraid to put their head under water. This guy must have considered himself one of the ones who Knew How. So many people think that if they can get through 25 yards or put their head completely under water, they can swim. Once again, I'm offended. I admit it, I'm a swimming snob. But please learn from a real coach. And stay out of my lake, it ruins my vacation. And I worry about you.

p.s. first picture is GOOD; second picture is BAD. Duh.

Mr. Perimeter is Back

Did you ever turn to your favorite newspaper columnist to read "Favorite Columnist is away, but we're running one of his old columns in his place" -- well, I'm trying that. Some people may not have seen a series of guest columns I did a couple of years ago on an online swimming site, but now that I'm training again I think it's relevant. Plus, I just saw Mr. Perimeter again. Good to know some things never change. Read below, it is updated as needed.

Laney College pool is awesome, but I never actually swim in that pool. I never train there because people would bother me too much. I like to go to a small club that my family belongs to near our house. Almost all the swimmers there wear really dorky goggles and put in their 20 laps before calling it a day.

Training there also makes me look like Marcia, God of All Swimming – which is nice. The pool has faded targets and a black line on the bottom that is light grey, but there is a hot tub and nice showerheads. Unfortunately the pool is kept at 82 degrees, which always feels good when you first get in, but about halfway into your main set you feel like your head is just going to fly off. I can only swim well in the morning, because in the afternoons there are always beachballs flying in and out of my lane, and the sound that really makes me look for a ledge: “Marco . . . Polo.”

And, did I mention the current?

Being a distance swimmer I’m used to the first lap feeling really good, but not acting on the impulse to sprint like a nut. But here, it feels re-e-e-ally good because it is two strokes less on the odd laps then the even ones. Some pool-construction genius directed the incoming water pipe from the pump room down the side of the pool and heading towards the far end. I’m thinking it was probably aftermarket. It’s good, I guess, that I get used to overcoming adversity on the final lap (not to mention every other lap), but it’s not something that, say, Teri McKeever at Cal probably has to deal with. You know, not that I would want her job.

Anyway, yesterday during my workout the water was its normal balmy temp, but because the morning was overcast there was only one other person in the pool. Unfortunately he was on his back, sculling at his sides and doing some sort of bicycle kick that was one notch up on the exercise-meter from lying on the couch watching ESPN. Did I mention he was doing perimeters? Just scooting around the eight-lane pool, backwards, ducking under lanelines about as fast as syrup oozing across my kitchen table. (Ha. As though my daughter would spill!) Every lap I lived in fear that I wouldn’t see him in time and come flying into his gut on a flipturn a la NASCAR as he was meandering on his way. He said he was doing his “mile.” Glad I caught him at the end.

And then when I got out I think I cut myself drying off with the pool towels.

You know how everything is getting bigger? Not just food portions, but towels too have also jumboed up. Washcloths now are the size of hand towels; hand towels are the size of bath towels; and bath towels are the size of spinnakers. Except at my little club. We’re allowed to take two towels each day, but the first one doesn’t even fit around my hair. I have to use it as some sort of large headband. The second one has to dry only one limb at a time, but they are so sharp that you have to rub really slowly unless you’d intended to exfoliate. Down to the bone.

What the heck, less laundry for me. And I didn't hit Mr. Perimeter. It wasn't Laney, but it was okay.

And this is Marcia, my . . .

Outside of the pool, my swimmers have a hard time describing me. No one feels right saying "this is Marcia, my coach," because most of my students don't really think of themselves as professional athletes. And not too many are sure enough about calling me "friend" because in my job it's not really a give-and-take relationship. I give orders and they take it. It's a little like the exchanges between me and my 12-year-old daughter at home.


"Get in!"
(Swimmer: silence)
(Daughter: silence)
"Let's GO!"
(Swimmer: fiddles with goggles)
(Daughter: fiddles with iPod)
"I don't have ALL DAY!"
(Swimmer: slowly puts on cap)
(Daughter: slowly puts on shoes)

That's just not how most people talk to their friends.

Having a coach is a little weird when you already have another job and are over the age of 22. But I love it -- it's a sweetly charming thing to say about me. Personally I would be embarrassed to say I had a Personal Trainer. It's just a little too bourgeois. Plus, no great swimmers would dream of having a personal coach. Maybe for a little technique work once in a while, but since racing is what it's all about, having an empty pool just means you never learn how to do that.

I have lots of professional people in my swim classes at Laney College, but few of them even know what their lanemates do outside of the pool. I do, just because I chat with people in the two minutes before they get in each day. But unless you share the Locker Room Experience with someone, it's hard to get to know a lot of details during workout.

Do we really need to? It's so wonderful that we're all just judged on ridiculous criteria like:

Can/Can't Do Breaststroke

Non-lethal/Dangerous Torpedo Sculler

Goes Out Too Fast and Dies Like a Pig/Smart

One of my students recently received her PhD and I got everyone to sign a card for her. The best comment ever was "Congratulations, Matt (Lane 2/3)." Gotta love Matt, who identifies with his lane. At 6 a.m., that is often all some swimmers know about each other.

Everyone is begoggled, most people have caps on, and there aren't many people wearing suits that aren't black. When someone tries to describe another swimmer to me -- whose name they don't know -- it is often "She's got a blue cap and swims over there" (vague gesture north or south). What they WANT to say is "She is the worst kicker I've ever seen, never knows what the set is, and I can totally kick her ass on the 4x100s." But of course, we're too nice for that.

So I think saying your lane is completely appropriate. Marcia is "the coach," you're "Lane 2" ("Lane 3" when none of the good people come.) That settles it.