Water is Life
I heard this story a couple times now and it never gets old. Lots of valuable in this speech from Gary Hall Sr. for any swimmer.
University of Michigan and former Race Cub head coach Mike Bottom sat down with Gary Hall Sr. while in the Florida Keys for a training camp. You can watch the first part of the interview with Mike on the Race Club website.
Another year came to a close and as the last two years, it’s time to share some statistics about 2010. You’ll notice that I wasn’t a poster child for training in 2010 and as I announced in last year’s post, my focus was on graduating, which I’m happy to say I did.
To sum 2010 up, I swam a “grand” total of 339.5km in only 79 swimming sessions and competed in only 2 meets which adds up to about 113 hours in the water. The two meets I decided to swim in 2010 were my club’s, Lancy Natation, annual home meet and Masters Nationals to make me “feel better about myself”.
Although I decided to try to make more finswimming practices in 2010 after some good results in 2009, it just didn’t fit in the plan neither. But even without being in race shape I did also compete in two finswimming meets in 2010. A one race showing at my finswimming club’s, Dauphins Genève, annual home meet and one day at Nationals.
Just the other day I came across this article about a young swimmer who wrote and produced a song about the life of a swimmer. I thought this was worth sharing and if you’re a swimmer, you should absolutely listen to the song! Here’s an excerpt from the article on USA Swimming’s website.
Dylan Ludwick, 17, a member of the Tri-Hampton YMCA swim team in Bucks County, Pa., recently submitted a song to USA Swimming that he wrote and produced for his team’s annual taper meet. […] Ludwick offered his song as a free download, but would like to encourage swimmers to show their appreciation by donating to the Fran Crippen Elevation Foundation. Ludwick grew up watching Crippen swim in the Middle Atlantic LSC and had a chance to compete against him at last year’s 5K Open Water National Championships.
Download the song [download id=”6193″] or read the full article on USA Swimming’s website.
Swimming in the years B.J. (before Jaked) supposedly wasn’t a sport of high interest. There seemed to be a lonely warrior, Michael Phelps, on a quest to bring swimming to the main stream and into the living rooms of millions of people. The road to his 8 gold medals at the 2008 Olympics certainly took swimming out of the 4 year shadow the sport was known for. But who would have thought that this would be just the start of swimming media mania? The so called “shiny suits” made their way into swimming and with them the world record line on television looked like a technical error by the broadcaster with oftentimes the full field ahead of it.
Swimming was nothing like we knew it B.J. anymore. Legends were taken down and the rate at which world records were broken was higher than any FINA staff member possibly could hold up with. Most WR probably never officially were one as the approval process took longer than another swimmer taking down the new standard once more. I wonder if they even cared to hand out the official certificate you’ll get for a WR. FINA’s administrative expenses must have tripled at least during the shiny suit era.
And of course selling suits that regularly ripped after a single use had to be more than just a great business to be in. Let’s face the truth, most of us were not sponsored by one of the suit manufacturers and the pressure to under perform or get beaten up at a meet wasn’t an option and the dollars bills ended up wrapped around our bodies in form of one of those shiny suits.
Ron Judd wrote a great article on my friend Gary Hall Jr. and him living in Seattle and his after-work swimming experiences. Read the full article from the Seattle Times called “Gary Hall Jr.: Olympic medalist now a hero to diabetics” online.
Christop Gertsch, former swimmer himself and now writer for different Swiss newspapers, wrote a great article on Dominik Meichtry called “Der Schwimmer und sein Meisterwerk“. This really sums up perfectly the life of a swimmer.
It’s been a while since I last posted something and I’m not positive that my time with the Swiss Army is a great excuse. I did have a few ideas for new content during the last weeks and started working on several of them. But I have to admit that life in the army is different and writing wasn’t always a top priority. So for now an update on what I’ve been up to this summer before reporting to the Swiss Army and some things that happened during that time.
I’ve been assigned to a troop called “Mob Log Ber Kp 104-1” or simply the Mammoths. Compared to my first experience with the Swiss Army I did have a better time but I’m glad it’s over now. We still had to go through some training but it was more specific to the mission we had to accomplish during those weeks.
There’s really not much more I can share with you other than the news that put a smile on my face during the time with the Swiss Army…so keep reading for some swimming related news.
My friend Richard Hall produced a swim DVD for ASCA (American Swimming Coaches Association) and USA Swimming called “Swim Essentials: Teaching the Fundamentals to Age Group Swimmers . The DVD demonstrates fundamental progressions and basic teaching techniques for free, back, breast, fly, and starts and turns.