Bilateral Breathing

I did bilateral... and I liked it!

The feel of symmetrical magic

I did bilateral just to try it

I hope my coach don’t mind it

If felt so wrong

It felt so right

Don’t mean I can swim tonight

I did bilateral and I like it

I liked it!

With apologies to Katy Perry!

Unfortunately I’ve developed “Swimmers Shoulder”. It’s an irritating pain in my right shoulder when I bring my arm over in the recovery position when I’m swimming frontcrawl. As a lifelong swimmer it’s an occupational hazard. I’ve had it before about 6 weeks before my Ironman back in 2008 and was obviously caused then, like now, by a fairly large increase in front crawl swimming. I got through it last time by cutting back a bit on distance which wasn’t a problem as I was close to the event, some quite intense physiotherapy and then some strengthening exercises. It went away with rest after the Ironman. This time I’m going to have to try and manage it all the way through to September whilst trying to maintain some reasonable weekly swim distances.

So I’ve got a physiotherapist consultation booked this week and I’m back to doing all my old strengthening exercises with various flexi bands. I’m also resigned to easing off the frontcrawl for a while. I guess Swimmers Shoulder has not really been too much of an issue for me in the past because, as I’ve previously mentioned, my first and best stroke is breastroke so little chance of the repetitive over arm movement that causes it. However, you really should swim frontcrawl in triathlons if you want to be any good so I’ve been concentrating on this again over the winter training and hence this situation. Swimmers Shoulder revolves around Rotator Cuff issues in the shoulder. When I suffered it before, the physio explained to me it was due to repetitive strain involving the shoulder joint and the associated soft tissues. As you get older you can manage to keep your muscle size and strength up by exercise and a good diet but there’s not a lot you can do to maintain joints and soft tissues. Pah this getting older!  In this case all you can do is to try and strengthen all the associated muscles around the Rotator Cuff that you don’t normally strengthen. This is where all the various exercises come in. As my irritation is on the recovery phase of the arm cycle, rather than the pull through, it’s possible I might be having internal impingement which is a bit of a worry. I know a couple of swimmers who have had this and it just got slowly worse for them over time. Ending in operations, a lengthy rehabilitation and, to be honest, resulting in not being as fast swimmers as they used to be. 

Having an unsymmetrical stroke almost certainly is a big factor in developing swimmers shoulder. I breathe to the same left side but I have a reasonably symmetrical stroke. Better than most who breathe to only to one side. It’s obviously not symmetrical enough! 

Here's a video Terry, my Cardiff Masters swimming coach, took of my frontcrawl a few months ago before the pain.

When I was little I did swim bilaterally (for a number of years actually). However when I started to specialise in breastroke and I only got to do frontcrawl in relays I just drifted to breathing on one side only. Then later in masters swimming it was just too much effort (and no need?). Knowing what I knew, even during my last encounter with this pain, I went to breathing every fourth stoke on the left side, rather than bilateral, because I didn't want to do it.

But, if I’m ever going to keep going through this summer I’m going to have to make an effort to try and recover the situation. I’ve now done a couple of swim sessions and whilst the first one was difficult, I managed to do the whole of the second session breathing bilaterally. And at the end, I even liked it!  You really could feel the symmetry.  Another benefit of bilateral is that you can watch your recovery stoke on both sides. Is your elbow in the right place?  Is your hand entry straight?

So that is the plan. Easy off for a bit, get physio, do strengthening and flexibility exercises and always swim bilaterally in training. But come any race I’m sure I’m going to be back to one sided race breathing. After all these years it’s still going to be faster for me come race time.

Three Month Review

Approaching Easter and once again the weather is absolute rubbish. Heavy rain and winds here in Cardiff but snowing a bit higher up on the mountains. This cold, wet weather is now forecast to last until mid April. I seem to remember no Indian summer for us last autumn and it getting cold last year already in October. So to my mind that’s about six months of winter! How does that work?  Therefore, for everyone, training outside has been challenging to say the least. I suppose I’ve been lucky in that through work I’ve had a few weeks away in warmer climes (Australia, South Africa and Morocco) and probably got a bit more Vitamin D than most. However, as anyone who travels regularly will know, it’s very difficult to do quality training whilst travelling.

 

I got my registration documents and race number this week for the London Marathon, 21^st April. It’s coming far too quickly for me to do it justice. Then again it’s not far enough before the Euro AG Triathlon champs for me to recover. But I’m glad I got in through the ballot. I see that the ballot closed at 125,000 entries and I guess there are no more than 25,000 places for ballot entry so those are quite long odds. London was my first and only marathon (outside of Ironman) which I did ten years ago. This is my third ballot application since then so that’s not too bad. Thinking back to that first marathon, I was so unprepared. I remember I bought a couple of pairs of generic running shoes in the States at a flea market. No doubt they were fakes as I got both for $20. It was only a few years later, and knackered legs, that I found out I was a very heavy over pronator and if I’d kept with that type of shoe I probably wouldn’t be able to walk now, let alone run. These days, with the help of the internet, I’m fully kitted up with the right gear and I know what to do. It’s just a matter of doing it!  For my very long pre marathon run I chose this weekend to enter the San Dominico 20 mile race in Merthyr Tydfil. The current temperature prediction for Merthyr for Sunday is -2C to zero. It will probably be either raining or snowing. Oh what fun!

So to review, like most I guess, I’ve done most of my training indoors in the last three months. In fact, looking at my logs, the last time I was out on the road on a TT bike in anger was at the London Tri back in September. I have tested both my new TREK Triathlon bike and my second hand road training bike out on the flats but not really training. It’s all been on the mountain bike, spin classes and on the turbo trainer. Run and swim training has been ok, but as always, subject to managing little niggles. In the three months I’ve hit both 5km and half marathon PB’s which I’m really happy with. However my swim times are rubbish. I entered a few events at the recent Welsh Masters Swim Championships but bailed out after only two of the events. Although my 400m time was 10 secs better than last year it wasn’t what I was hoping for with the training I’ve been doing (I also wanted to watch the rugby which might have had something to do with it).

I suppose the biggest fear of veteran age groupers is being hampered or fully curtailed by those injuries and conditions that you are more susceptible to getting, and take much longer to recover from, as you get older. I consider myself fit for my age (as you get older you always have to say that –“ I did well in that race for my age”) but the older you get the harder it is to get over any injury. A while back, before I was 50, I had a discussion in a pub with some guys who had already turned 50 and more. They swore that the “tipping point” was 50 years of age.  This is when things really start to go downhill. I didn’t believe them at the time. Now I do.

As an example, I got a new heart rate monitor for Xmas. So the first time I used it after Xmas I got this (after a long run).

 

A very nice rash and graze from the hrm strap.  OK, now I cover the offending bits with a plaster and smother it in Vaseline, but three months later the scar is still very prominent and does not want to go away. 15 - 20 years ago it would have disappeared in a couple of weeks. 25 years or more ago, it would have been gone in a week. That’s the problem as you get older. You just hope you don’t come off your bike as any cuts or grazes will mark you more than an Ironman tattoo. One of the biggest problems for older athletes is that whilst you can generate large, strong muscles with training and the right diet, protein shakes, amino acids etc. there’s not a lot you can do with the supporting soft tissue (tendon’s, ligaments etc.). Which, no matter what you do, basically shrink and get hard with age and struggle to support the muscles you’re trying to develop. Hence my two big problems of swimmers shoulder (rotator cuff injury) and Achilles tendonitis. I know all ages can get these problems it’s just that it’s much harder to manage when you’re older. It requires lots of work on the supporting muscles (around those you are actually using) with strength exercises, physio, and particularly in my case with my Achilles, ice the tendon after every run to get the blood flowing through.

I’ve had a few days off training this week as I’ve had pipes through my nose into my gullet measuring pressure and pH (for 24hrs). Not easy to train like that, especially with a monitor strapped to your side and a cold (but snot’s the issue!). It’s another age related thing, but not directly to exercise and fitness, just age. There’s so many other little things I could go on about (don’t get me started on bone density, mineral deficiency and stress fractures) it becomes boring but worse, very negative. I think you just have to keep going and see what happens. Two things I hope I never get problems with are shingles and inner ear (balance) problems. These are two conditions prevalent in the over 50’s and I know quite a few friends and athletes being knocked for six and out of things for months/years by these. For shingles, it’s estimated that 1 in 4 over 50 year olds, who have had chicken pox will get it to some degree. I don’t think (haha) I’m a hypochondriac, just pro-active in my heath, but when I was offered a vaccine against shingles last year (for money) I jumped at it.

My next goal?  To be able to walk on Monday after the 20 miler.

"A goal without a plan is just a wish"

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”   ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I’ve come to realise that if I’m going to be successful in my goal(s) then 90% of getting there is in the planning.  Probably more accurate would be juggling priorities. I still have the tri champs’, swim champs’ and London marathon goals but the logistics around each are difficult enough let alone doing any sort of training for them.

I’m just about set for the European AG Tri champs in Turkey in June. Luckily the family decided to make it our holiday. So we’ve rented a very nice, but low cost villa on a beach, through AirB&B near Alanya for a couple of weeks either side of the competition. We also got cheap flights with Easyjet, I guess because we are arriving a bit earlier and leaving a bit later than most. Even the in-Laws are coming from Germany. They are going to do their normal trick of cycling around the country for a few weeks before we get there. I’ve even paid the event registration to British Triathlon.

Doing all this made me think more of the planning for the AG World Champs in Hyde Park in September. This is particularly hard as I have no idea if I’ll even qualify. It looks like every aspiring age grouper wants to qualify, seeing how the qualifying races sold out so quickly, so it’s going to be tough. And then the main qualifier for the Olympic distance, the Liverpool Tri, hasn’t even opened for entries yet. Anyway, I happened to see that the official travel agents (Nirvana) were already selling accommodation packages for the event in London. Apart from the “Athletes’ Village” (read student accommodation at Imperial College) they had a few apartments actually on Hyde Park. They looked great (for the family) and quite reasonably priced so I swallowed hard, jumped in and booked them for the 3 nights Thurs thru Sunday.

The apartment looks ok on the website??

 

So we are going whether I qualify or not!  Sprint or Olympic, who knows?  If I don’t qualify it’s probably a waste of money and a bit of an inconvenience but then I saw the organisers had arranged a ballot for an “open to all” AG race on the Saturday (nothing to do with the AG world champs’). At first I wasn’t interested until I saw that they were offering a full refund (less £15 admin of course) if a successful ballotter then did qualify for the world champs. So as “insurance” I’ve now also entered the ballot for the open sprint race with the hope that, if successful, I won’t have to do it!  Planning Planning Planning!

In the pool, on the road and in the gym things seem to be going ok. I’ve had a few days off for the normal flu that everybody seemed to get but it wasn’t so bad for me. I’m about half way through my base training phase.  I did a half marathon at the weekend and surprised myself by taking just under 7 minutes off my PB.  I was happy with that. This weekend is a change of sport and another focus – the Welsh Masters long course swimming championships in Swansea. And I’m going long! 400’s, 800’s and, for some reason, the 400 Individual Medley. Oh well - cross training at its best.