David’s article was published in the Washington Post on November 14th.

I am a science reporter at The Washington Post (also a triathlete) who is doing a story on deaths in triathlon. As you know there have been a bunch this season (two at NYC, two in different Vermont races, one at Dewey Beach in Delaware three weeks ago, one at the Nation’s Tri in D.C. in early September). As always, most occurred in the swim. I am looking for some triathletes will to talk to me about panic attacks in the swim leg of races, as I think this is an overlooked and underdiscussed possible explanation for these deaths. I see that you blog has had some interesting discussions on this topic in recent years. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to get in touch with the people posting to the discussions.

Are you willing to talk to me on the record about this phenomenon if you have ever experienced a panic attack (or some version of one)? Can you give me the names of any triathletes who have had such experiences whom I could contact and see if they are willing to speak on the record?

thanks and best
David Brown

David Brown National Staff The Washington Post

 

Last month, I took my daughters to Carowinds Amusement Park in Charlotte, NC.   We had a super fun day.   We got a great deal by typing “Facebook” into the group discount code box at the top of the Carowinds website.

I wore my 2XU calf sleeves to help support my legs throughout a long day of walking. They worked well for that, especially since I was planning to go for a swim and they are quick dry.  More about compression sleeves later…read on about my fun day at Carowinds.

I wasn’t expecting to get in a workout at Carowinds, but I did.  It was an awesomely fun workout in the wave pool.    Every 5 minutes or so, a horn blows and huge waves are generated at the deep end of the wave pool.     I got in and started swimming laps.    It was great training to fight the waves, and bob in and around the crowds of swimmers.   The waves last about 5 minutes, then there is a break of 5 minutes.   I needed those breaks, too, as it was exhausting.   I swam for a good solid 30 minutes.   Here is a random Youtube video I found that shows the wave pool…

I had not brought goggles so I got alot of chlorine in my eyes during that swim.    By the end of the day, my vision was blurred.   I had a very difficult time driving home, and to make matters worse, we drove for 3 straight hours through a torrential downpour.   Bad vision + bad weather = very stressed out Carol by the time we arrived home.  I was so happy to crawl into bed that night, fosho!

I raced the White Lake Half iron triathlon yesterday. Brutal day…race report later.

I wore blue tinted goggles during the swim. I had such a hard time seeing the buoys, and I kept wondering why they used brown buoys instead of the usual bright orange. It pissed me off! I was wasting alot of time stopping to tread water to make sure that I was on target. At about the half way point, it dawned on me that maybe the blue tinted goggles were masking the orange color. So, I stopped to tread water, and lifted my googles. Dang, the buoys were actually bright orange. So, my tip for today: don’t wear blue goggles!

I used photoshop to re-create what I was seeing. It wasn’t bad when I was up close to the buoy, but from a distance, I could not see them at all!

I swam for 1 hour tonight at Lake Jordan with my friend, Russell, who is also doing B2B.    We had planned on swimming  4000 m, or about 6 laps of the cove.  But it was way too f’ing cold, so we bailed after 1 hour (4 laps).  I wore my neoprene booties, so my feet were fine.   I skipped my neoprene cap because I hate the way it digs into my neck.  As soon as I put my face in the water, I wanted the cap.  But it was such a long way back to the shore to get it, so I decided to just suck it up and start swimming.  I figured I’d warm up soon enough.  WRONG!

The cold was such a shock that my whole body became tense.  My hands, ears and face were incredibly- uncomfortably – cold; and, I couldn’t wait for the workout to be done.     I breathed every two strokes, rather than the preferred every three, because I wanted to get my face out of the water as much as possible!  I kept thinking about my friend, Rebecca, who did B2B last year in 37 degree air temperature.   She did not have warmer air to bring any relief from the frigid water.

After 45 minutes, my fingers were so numb that they became useless in catching the water.  They would not stay together like a paddle no matter how hard I tried.    My stroke completely degraded.    I  tried fist swimming to see if that would help, but that seemed slower.  I ended up just forgetting about my fingers, and thinking about my palm and forearms doing the work to catch the water…that helped.   The last lap was pure agony and I just wanted it to be over.  I kept thinking about how hard it is going to be to get on a bike feeling that cold.

As Cold As Ice!

http://www.youtube..../watch?v=kul2VstxtCc

Walking back to my car, I looked down at my hands…they were BLUE!   I was so glad for the neoprene booties – at least my feet felt perfectly comfortable.  Next week I will try to tolerate the neoprene cap…it will be worth the discomfort of the chin strap if it keeps me warmer.

For B2B, I was planning to breeze thru transitions as fast as possible, even considered skipping the changing tent and wearing my tri suit under the wetsuit. But now I think the primary goal of T1 will be to warm up and make sure I am warm for the bike ride. I hate being cold!  And cold muscles do not perform nearly as well as warm muscles.  So, hopefully, a few minutes lost in T1 getting warm, will pay back in a better bike performance.

Cold was my friend today.   I am always glad for adverse training conditions.  They help me learn how to prepare, mentally and physically, for the challenges I will face on race day.    And if I am better prepared for adversity on race day than my competitors, that that gives me an edge.

Water temp: 68 degrees.
Air temp: 67 degrees.  Air sure felt alot warmer!

The Garmin 310xt does not work too well in water.  That cove is only 750m per lap max, so I swam about 3000meters.   Garmin is saying that I swam 3.7 miles in 1 hour.    No way!  And, if you click the link below, you’ll see my zigzagging… no way I am THAT bad at sighting!  Am I?
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/16757539

Found this video linked from Matt Fitzgerald’s blog...I am going to watch it a few times, then head to the pool for my workout.  I hope I have the same Eureka moment that Matt had!

link: http://www.youtube..../watch?v=x3ctBUV08_o

Great quote from the video: Don’t forget, if you get the catch correct, it puts alot of pressure, strain and stress on that shoulder.  And sometimes, if you’re not used to it, the brain will tell you to choose a weaker position.

Update later in the day: I did not have a Eureka moment. I struggled with mimicing this pull, and it ended up making me alot slower. I did notice it was easier to “get it” when using a pull buoy. This tells me that there is something wrong with my balance that I need to correct first. After struggling for an hour in the pool, and feeling very un-fishlike, I gave up, did some fingertip drag drill to help me get back in to my own fishlike groove. I will explore this idea later, maybe after working on my balance. I believe that changes in technique are like fitting a puzzle together. Sometimes you can’t put a piece in place, until other pieces are correctly fitted. Kaizen.

My friend, Scott Dewire, had a very scary swim experience at Ironman Coeur d’Alene. His wife, Rebecca, wrote about it in her blog.

The important thing is that Scott is safe and sound; but, hearing him tell the terrifying experience of his swim makes me sick to my stomach. The short story is that within minutes of his swim he was pummeled and hit hard over and over again and could just not get any air and starting taking in water and seriously thought he might drown. He experienced his first ever panic attack and tried to get help from the kayaks. He said there was just no way the kayaks could get to him and other swimmers around him noticed that he was in trouble and offered to help. [ read full article ]

First of all, I am so very glad that Scott is okay! Secondly, this story scares the hell out of me. Scott is young, male, incredibly athletic and has two ironmans under his belt already. So if this can happen to him, it can happen to anybody!

My plan for my own Iron distance race this fall, B2B, was to try and get in a really good swim split so that I could get ahead of the throngs of slower bikers. I have never minded contact in the water. But I’ve never been in the water with 1000′s of other swimmers. The female “midlife crisis age group” – of which I am a member – is pretty tame when it comes to the triathlon swim. But now I am rethinking my swim strategy. I should probably play it safe and stick to one side of the pack, to avoid the risk of getting pummeled like Scott did at IM CDA.

I hope Scott can once again enjoy the triathlon swim.

According to The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not your enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

This is how I approached my open water swim at Jordan Lake yesterday…

You can’t tell by looking at that surface of the water (see picture), but the conditions were a little choppy. Just enough to make it a challenge to swim! This is my favorite type of swim workout…it’s just alot of fun, and great training for races, too. I am always hoping for a choppy swim at my races, because it is one of my strengths.

I did three laps of the cove nonstop, about 2100 yards. The first lap was pretty easy. The current was stronger on the way out so the way back I was swimming faster!

Then the wind picked up and created some waves and a stronger current. On the way out for lap 2, the waves were coming from my left and pushing me toward the shoreline, so I had to work on pulling harder with my left arm to stay on course. I sometimes also would give an extra flick in the water with my right hand toward the shore in the final follow-thru of my stroke, to give my body a little push back in the right direction.

On the third lap, the waves were even bigger and seemed to be coming straight at me. If I stopped to tread water, they didn’t look like big waves. But they felt big while swimming through them! When the waves are coming toward me, I like to push my head lower in the water to drive my body underneath them. I also slow down the cadence of my stroke, almost as if doing a DPS (distance per stroke) drill. This reduces my need for oxygen, so I only need to breathe every four strokes,thus allowing me to keep my head underneath the waves longer. Even though I am swimming a bit slower, I feel as if this is the fastest way to get through the waves, because I am swimming straighter and am not wasting energy fighting the waves.

On the way back from the third lap, I was swimming with the waves coming from behind. This sounds like it should be easy, right? Wrong! The waves made it hard to breathe, and interrupted my swim stroke. I experimented with different things, trying to work with the waves, rather than fight against them. I found that carrying my head a little higher helped my body get pushed along by the waves a little easier. A little bit like a body surfing effect. As I swam, I tried to sense the waves with my body and time my stroke accordingly. I tried to breathe while I was in the trough of a wave, to avoid getting a mounthful of water. And I tried to time my stroke so that I was driving my leading arm into the water as the wave crested over my head, to use the power of the wave with the power of my stroke. I got into a really good groove, completely in synch with the waves. At times, I would get out of synch, so just paused my stroke a bit until I could get back into it. It was great fun.

So, now you know my top secret swim tip. Get lots of open water swim training! That way you will know your enemy!

I put the Sugoi Velocity Tri Suit through some more testing. Part 1 is a video blog about swimming in the suit. I really loved the suit in the water. It was very hydrodynamic, comfortable and felt like a second skin.

I tried the suit a couple times on bike/run bricks, and it felt hot. But then I realized I was feeling hot on ALL my bike rides and runs no matter WHAT I was wearing. So, I figured it was just me. Hehe, guess I am a ‘hottie’!

I am feeling a little better now on that front, so I decided to give the suit another spin. I swam for 45 minutes at the lake and then went for a 5 mile run. The weather was 75 degrees and very humid. I had a really great workout. This is what I wrote in my BT logs:

11:00 AM Swim 45m 2100.00 meters Avg HR: 132
OWS at lake. Good solid swim. Had fun playing with my stroke in a slight chop.

12:00 PM Run 49m 4.92 Mi 09m 58s/Mi Avg HR: 152
Big Woods Brick, 5 miler Climb: 745 feet
Good solid hilly run. Felt strong! was going a pace that I thought I could hold for a HIM race.

This time I did NOT feel hot in the Sugoi Tri suit. The suit was very comfortable and light weight. Honestly I didn’t even think much about it much at all. I was just focusing on putting in a solid run. That is a good thing – you shouldn’t have to think about your wardrobe while you are working out!

My Comments…
The legs seemed to stay in place fairly well despite no silicone grippers.

I had a Gu in one rear pocket, and was able to retrieve it easily while running. I had my car key in the other rear pocket. It was still there when I got back to my car. Good thing!

While I was running, I poured some water over my head. Some water went into the partially unzipped neckline of the suit. It took quite a while for the water to dribble down and out the legs. This had a nice cooling effect, and I imagine if I was in a race on a really hot day, this might be great.

The suit was still wet when I got home, 30 minutes later. The fabric does not seem to dry quickly while still wearing it. I don’t think that matters during a race. It is so lightweight that it doesn’t hold much water.

I did get a little bit of a wedgie butt toward the end of my run. I have a long torso, so one piece [bathing] suits normally do this to me!

Here’s the really cool thing: I had to pee afterwards. There’s no bathroom facility near my lake swim spot, so…you know me, I trekked off into the woods. I was actually able to bunch one leg of the suit up to my crotch, and then do a “side pull squat pee maneuverer”, ala Paula Radcliffe: http://www.youtube..../watch?v=W6I2-YP42rs This is my preferred method of peeing on the run. It’s very easy with loose running shorts. It’s usually impossible with tri shorts or bike shorts.

Here I am at home after my workout. I think the suit looks really great. I will wear it at Triangle Sprint triathlon in July. For Rev 3 Tri, I will wear my Trakkers Team suit, which I think is also going to be a Sugoi brand.

I wrote this earlier, in case you missed it: the sandy hue that the white fabric picked up from my lake swim washed out of the suit…and it looks nice and bright again. The rear pockets also did a good job holding my cell phone and Gu while riding. The pad was thin, but comfy. Seems like all tri shorts have a thin pad, and as long as you have a good relationship with your bike saddle, not a big deal for sprints, olys, and even 1/2′s. For a full iron race in November, I would take time to change into bike shorts, for sure.

Hold on to your hats folks – another swimming post by Carol. I was at the pool doing my workout, which today I got from Gale Bernhardt’s book, “Swim workouts in a Binder”. I did E(Speed) #2. While I was swimming, I was thinking more about my balance issue caused by setting up my catch too soon. I talked about that in my last swimming post.

Today I noticed that the reason I lose balance – and thus am tempted to start my catch early – is that my recovery arm (the one that is going over the water) is also doing it’s thing too soon. In other words, while one arm is extended and I am breathing, the other arm is already up in the air at about the half way point. I think it should still be at my hip at this point. But I’m not sure.

So I experimented with keeping that arm in the water longer and giving the water an extra little push past my hip with that hand (maybe that’s called follow through). That seemed to help. Later today, I came back to my blog and watched the Michael Phelps youtube video to see how he does it. I want to see just where is the left arm when the right arm is fully extended? Trouble is, he swims too damn fast, so I cannot see it in that video. Sheesh, I wish I had that problem!

I went searching Youtube for a slow motion swim video so I could study this more. Didn’t find one, but I did find another great swim video. Fun to watch, if nothing else! The main point of this post is just to give you and idea of what I go thru with swimming. I am constantly doing this sort of self-analysis of my technique. I think it helps me get at least more efficient. Maybe a bit faster, little by little, in tiny increments. Kaizen.

http://www.youtube..../watch?v=SBxlphJBIcM

There’s a good reason I don’t talk much about swimming. I am not passionate about it. Sometimes I have good swim workouts where I feel fishlike. Most of the time I struggle with inadequacy in some element of my stroke or another. I sometimes think about blog topics while I am swimming, but swim technique is so hard to describe, that I can never find the right words when I get home.

Two blog readers, Kari and Ginger, asked what I do for swim training. Here is my swim plan for this week. Pretty much every week of my 20 week half iron training plan looks just like this, with varying distances.

I always print out my plan and bring it to the pool. Having something to follow helps me stay focused at the pool. If I forget, I tend to get bored and quit early.

I don’t like swimming enough to head to the pool 3x per week. See, there’s that lack of passion again! So I only do the Tuesday and Friday interval workouts. I cannot stand to do a long continuous swim in the pool, it’s just way too boring and I can’t seem to stay focused! Those I save for my open water swims. Now that the weather has warmed up, I can swim in Jordan Lake. So, now I drop one of the other workouts, and add the Sunday long continuous swim, at the lake.

Oops, I see this week’s Sunday workout was actually supposed to be a time trial, rather than a long continuous swim at a moderate pace. Oh well, no way I could count that many laps in a pool to get an accurate time trial time, so I don’t do those. I can only count up to a 300. Once in a while, I’ll do a 3×300 time trial test and compare to earlier results. I never see much improvement. I guess at least I know I am not slowing down. So, that’s a yay!

I change the swimming days around as desired: this week I did the Tuesday workout on Wednesday; and I did the Sunday workout on Friday. I try NOT to change the days around for my bikes and runs. I think it’s more important to do those workouts in the right order.

If I have any swim secret at all, it is to get in alot of open water swim training. I think it’s fun swimming in open water, and it makes me feel like a kid again. Add a little current or chop to the mix, and it becomes a challenge, and great training for learning how to swim a straight line in varying conditions. I’m not that fast in the pool, but since I have so much open water training, it really pays off on race day. Last August, I wrote a blog about a particularly great open water swimming session. That was the day I realized I was athletic.

Another thing I have always done is to focus on one flaw of my swim stroke at a time. I have many! I just pick one, and find a drill that corrects that flaw. I watch youtube videos of great swimmers. I visualize the great swimmer’s technique while I am trying to correct my own.

I am currently working on the proper timing for setting up the catch phase of my stroke. I have always had a bad habit of pushing straight down with my extended arm when I am breathing to the opposite side…doing this to push my body up for balance. Very bad! I have tried to correct this over the years. I actually thought I was doing it right, extending my arm, and then setting up the catch, all while breathing to the opposite side. But then I watched a youtube of Michael Phelps, and noticed that during the entire time his head is rotated to the side for breathing, his opposite arm is completely extended. He doesn’t start the catch until after the breath is completely over. See – that was really hard to explain, and you all probably don’t have any idea what I am talking about.

Today, I experimented with giving an extra little bit of a kick while my arm was extended to help keep my body gliding during that extension. That seemed to help keep me from feeling the need to start the catch until my breathe was done. It also helps to make sure you have completely exhaled while under water. Another thing I am working on!

Anyway, here’s that youtube video. Hope it helps!

Click image for video: