Friday, March 30, 2012

And the results are in!

Dear Swimmers

Thanks for turning up on Wednesday at 9.30am or this morning at 5.30am / 6.30am to retest over the 400m and 200m Time Trials for the culmination of our 10 Week CSS Development Program. Here's my breakdown of our little experiment for your reference (apologies for the length!).

Abstract (for a more detailed description of the 'experiment' and our findings, please read to the end):

127 athletes from the Swim Smooth Perth Squad were tested on 13th January 2012 for their Critical Swim Speed (CSS) pace per 100m using the 400m and 200m Time Trial method first proposed in 1993 by Ginn*. A 10 week CSS Development Program was designed and put in place with the view that it might be possible to improve the swimmer's performance by reducing the CSS time per 25m by 0.5% per week using the Finis Tempo Trainer PRO to help control pacing accuracy for the incremental improvements proposed. The swimmers typically swam 2 to 3 times per week for 2.5km to 4km in a given session. One session per week was set aside to purely work on developing this aspect of their performance by adapting to progressively faster CSS times. By 30th March 2012, 57 of the original 127 athletes had been re-tested and 25 new athletes had also been tested for their current CSS pace.

*Ginn, E. (1993), "The application of the critical power test to swimming and swim training programmes", National Sports Research Centre

Further athletes will be re-tested in the first week of April 2012 (this is a preliminary report, due to be updated). 

The hypothetical goal of an average 4.5% reduction in CSS time per 25m for the squad (0.5% per week compounding over 10 weeks) was not achieved, but an average reduction of 2.59% was observed.

45 out of the 57 athletes re-tested improved their CSS pace with the training intervention, 42 out of the 57 improved their 400m times and 40 out of the 57 improved their 200m times. The greatest improvement was seen by Alen Pezzin dropping his CSS time by an amazing 13.62%! Well done Alen - sensational result!

Other significant improvements above the goal of 4.5% were made by:
  • Alen Pezzin, 13.62%
  • Bill Carmody, 9.92%
  • Lorraine Driscoll, 8.82%
  • Michael Serich, 8.25%
  • Chris Foley, 7.80%
  • Ian Murray, 7.46%
  • Caroline Claydon, 7.05%
  • Trevor Magee, 7.02% (a sensational bounce-back from a horrific shoulder injury from cycling!)
  • Craig Jameson, 6.27%
  • Chris Jameson, 6.11%
  • Nicole Klemm, 5.88%
  • Jess Huston, 5.76%
  • Bill Moody, 5.29%
  • Belinda Bennett, 5.12%
  • Lindsey Shepherd, 4.98%
  • Anne-Marie D'Arcy, 4.63%
  • Amy Callow, 4.58%
Swimmers needing to move up a lane or two (!) are:

5.30am:

Chris Foley - lane 2 to 3
Bill Moody - lane 2 to 3

6.30am:

Jess Huston - lane 4 to 4.5
John Turner - lane 4 to 4.5
Michael Serich - lane 3 to 4.5
Alen Pezzin - lane 3 to 4.5
Amy Callow - lane 1.5 to 2
Caroline Claydon - lane 1.5 to 2

9.30am:

Gillian Evans - lane 1 to 2

Introduction:

If you recall, CSS stands for 'Critical Swim Speed' and closely equates to your continuous 1500m pace in race-like conditions. It's an excellent measure of your current level of aerobic fitness and can be estimated by doing a 400m Time Trial and a 200m Time Trial and comparing the two. Put very simply, the 400m swim assesses the aerobic / endurance component of your current fitness and the 200m swim assesses the anaerobic / sprint component of your current fitness. This is a bit of a gross simplification of what the equation looks for, but essentially allows you to extrapolate out what pace a swimmer should then be able to maintain for longer distances based on the slope of this curve. It has been used in sports science since the early 1990s as a non-invasive way of testing and monitoring for improvements over time and is much easier to get you guys to do than a 1500m Time Trial every 4-6 weeks!

You can read more about the validity of CSS testing at: http://www.topendsports.com/testing/tests/critical-swim-speed.htm and in more simple language at: http://www.swimsmooth.com/training.html

As you know, we've been using the new Finis Tempo Trainer PRO in our Fresh 'n' Fruity CSS sessions for the last five months to accurately gauge pacing over a set distance. Before the Finis unit we were using the Wetronome and have been using this in a similar fashion for the last 4 years in the squad. The beepers are set to beep once every time you should be at each 25m mark, e.g. if you wanted to swim 1'40" per 100m, it should be set to beep every 25 seconds (4 x 25 seconds = 100 seconds = 1'40"). Simple - you either stay with the pace or you don't - a little like the red World Record line at the Olympics overlaid to visually show how close to a new record a swimmer is - just like the red line has a habit of getting in front of the Olympians right in the last moment, so too does the beeper often annoyingly get ahead of you too!

With the new beepers it has been possible to more accurately set the pace to be precise to 1/100th of a second, so as opposed to just full second increments being available (giving steps of 4" per 100m), we've been able to set paces to 0.04" per 100m accuracy! Amazing! This then prompted the idea - how much improvement in someone's threshold pace (a key determinant of their endurance ability over any distance >400m) is possible over a given time frame like 10 weeks?

Hypothetically, coaches have often discussed the potential to improve by ~5% in a whole season (i.e. 9 to 12 months) with a consistent approach to their athlete's training programs. However, not until now has such a device been available in swimming to control the accuracy and performance of a swimmer in a given training set. Given that to make a 5% improvement in a whole season actually requires just incredibly small steps in improvement to be made each session, I proposed that it may be possible to see an average of 0.5% improvement per week over 10 weeks following a very structured program designed specifically to bolster improvement in CSS pace for masters swimmers / triathletes of varying ability typically swimming 2-3 times per week for 2.5 to 3.5km per session. This improvement - when compounded - equates to a goal of 4.5% reduction in CSS time per 25m over the 10 weeks. Given the variety of abilities within the group, this seemed like a reasonable, albeit optimistic, goal to aim for.

Method:

The plan was to use the beepers to set a progressively faster CSS times per 25m by 0.5% each week for a key session every Wednesday or Friday morning. This typically equated to just 0.1" to 0.25" per 25m after the swimmers were all tested in mid-January 2012. Such a small margin was deemed to be barely perceivable by the swimmers and as such the goal of 0.5% improvement per week was set upon. Each week the main set was split up into two parts - the 'pace control set' (a series of 5 to 10 x 100m intervals with a full 25m beep cycle recovery, i.e. ~18 to 30" rest) and the 'maintain over distance set' (a total of 1000m of longer intervals with shorter relative recoveries aiming to stay as close to the set pace as possible). Even up to Week 10, most swimmers found the first set doable (given the 4:1 work to rest ratio) and were encouraged to use this first set to really dial in the pace awareness at the new speed each week with the view of avoiding 'blowing-up' for the second part of the main set. The second part was always kept 'blind' to the swimmers so that they did not hold back in anticipation on the 100m intervals. Sticking to these times after week 5/6 in particular proved to be quite challenging, especially for the faster, more experienced swimmers.

127 athletes were initially tested for their CSS pace and allocated set training groups (lanes) according to their ability within the three Swim Smooth Perth squads at 5.30am, 6.30am and 9.30am. The fastest swimmer in each lane was to use the beeper to control the pace for the whole group and up to 5" difference in CSS pace per 100m was seen within each lane between the fastest swimmers in the lane to the slower swimmers. In theory, every swimmer should have followed the same protocol at their own set CSS pace using their own beeper, but given the drag effect created by in-line lane etiquette (even when the swimmers were 5 to 10 seconds apart) and with up to 10 swimmers per 50m lane, this was seen to be impractical.

Results:

The hypothetical goal of an average 4.5% reduction in CSS time per 25m for the squad (0.5% per week compounding over 10 weeks) was not achieved, but an average reduction of 2.59% was observed 


45 out of the 57 athletes re-tested improved their CSS pace with the training intervention, 42 out of the 57 improved their 400m times and 40 out of the 57 improved their 200m times. The greatest improvement was seen by Alen Pezzin dropping his CSS time by an amazing 13.62%!


NB. swimmers highlighted in purple did not complete the initial test, but were tested along with the rest of the group on 30/3/12 for the ongoing benefit.

Discussion:

CSS closely equates to your continuous 1500m pace in race-like conditions and the calculation (as seen at: http://www.swimsmooth.com/training ) attempts to extrapolate that from the 400m and 200m Time Trial speeds. If a swimmer has a fast 200m time but seems to be much slower relative to other swimmers in his / her lane over 400m an 'Aerobic to Anaerobic Ratio'* of over 4.0% is typically observed. This says he / she is more anaerobic in their physiology and is either naturally suited or has trained (or both) for short distance swims. Other swimmers have a much lower drop-off between his 200m and 400m times and therefore are much more likely to be good distance swimmers. As shown in the chart below, the calculation is predicting this trend will continue and that the pure distance swimmer will start to get progressively faster than the middle distance swimmer over distances of more than 400m.

*this is a super simplified way of describing the drop-off in times between the 200m and 400m swims.


...really this has to be the case or the fastest 100m sprinter in the world would also be the best at 400m and 1500m – when in fact these three distances need different athletes with different physiologies. The sprinter needs pure power and a strong anaerobic system. The middle-distance swimmer needs a compromise between anaerobic and aerobic and the distance swimmer needs a great aerobic system.
The key thing here is that if the middle distance swimmer wants to maximise his distance swimming he / she needs to do more CSS work and not focus on training his anaerobic system with lots of short, sharp sprints. 

Probably the best example of this within the squad is that of Bill Moody. In 2009 Bill trained up for the Australian National Masters Championships in the 50m freestyle sprint event. He's a natural born sprinter with a very good turn of speed. 10 weeks ago his CSS pace was 1'44" per 100m with an 'Aerobic to Anaerobic Ratio' of 6.39%. Bill had a tendency of setting off too quick in interval sessions and during training for the Rottnest Channel Swim Event (20km) performed a 10km training swim which started off at a pace of ~16' per km but by the end had dropped to over 24' per km. Had this happened during the actual event, Bill ran the risk of not even finishing. The CSS intervention training and a lot of work spent at ~8" per 100m slower than CSS pace resulted in Bill dropping his ratio to 3.68% and improving his CSS pace to 1'38" per 100m. This took a lot of trust on Bill's part in my seeming "madness". He didn't get any faster over 200m, but for distance freestyle he didn't need to - his performances above 400m though really improved. A sensational result that ensured that he completed the Rottnest Channel Swim in a very respectable 7h05m - Bill actually got faster by going slower and getting REALLY good at pacing! This is arguably one of my proudest coaching achievements to date given how weird these ideas must have sounded to Bill at the time.

Whilst this protocol primarily looked at trying to improve the swimmer's CSS pace, it was also beneficial to see improvements in the outright performances over 400m and 200m. Given that some 'strange' results can occur (as detailed below), it was good to see that nearly 74% of the squad got faster in both 400m and 200m times.

  • A swimmer's CSS pace can improve despite their 200m speed in particular decreasing due to the slope of the extrapolated line essentially become more gradual. This can show one of two things: 1) more focus has been on CSS and endurance type work (as per the 10 Week Program); 2) the swimmer was too tired from the 400m exertion and correspondingly did not perform well over the 200m. This becomes particularly evident if the 200m time is more than half of the 400m time and can lead to erroneous results as in theory it's impossible for a swimmer's speed to not be at least as fast over 200m as it is over 400m as at some point within the 400m test the swimmer must have swum 200m as fast as (or faster than) half the 400m time. This occurred with 8 out of the 57 swimmers (Jon Turner, Anne Murrell, Suzi Scarff, John Edwards, Sally Steffanoni, Kim Annear, Roxanne Garven and Annette van Hazel). As such, for the purposes of the analysis, their 200m times were doctored to 50% of their 400m time less 2".
  • It is possible for a swimmer to get slightly faster over 400m but a lot faster over 200m and for his / her CSS pace to appear to decrease or be exactly the same as it was at the start of the 'experiment'. This occurred with 3 out of the 57 swimmers (Michael Japp, Adam Wheeler and Sally Howe). It can be explained by either the swimmer not performing as well on the 400m swim (possibly due to pacing) or typically from having some time off, i.e. endurance drops off but freshness increases and over short distances the swimmer is able to knock out a pretty quick time. It can also occur if the swimmer's training has been skewed much more towards shorter, faster intervals well above CSS pace, i.e. sprinting.
Of course, ideally we'd have liked to see everyone improve (that was the aim after all!) but a 79% improvement rate in CSS across the entire group is a pretty good result all round. Some possible suggestions for those who didn't improve or only improved a touch are:

  1. How consistently were you swimming 2-3 times per week and attending the Fresh 'n' Fruity Test Set each week?
  2. Could you have just had an 'off day' (we all have them!) - if you felt like you've been progressively well recently, it would be worth re-testing next week and see if you can have another go at it.
  3. Have you been on holiday during this last 10 week period, or been sick / injured? Obviously the program was cut in half by the Rottnest Channel Swim - some of you would have taken a few weeks off after this - could that explain it?
  4. Are you already swimming pretty quick (i.e. lane 4 or 4.5) - could you already be nearing your ceiling of improvement? Was 0.5% per week simply too much to ask?

Summary:

I do hope you've all found this 10 Week CSS Development Program to be at the very least intriguing! If you're still reading now, firstly, well done (!) and secondly I hope it's helped improve your knowledge and interest of how to improve your efficiency for distance swimming purely from a training / physiology perspective, i.e. irrespective of any specific stroke technique development work we did during this period. It's been a very useful exercise for me personally as I simply didn't know what people were capable of within a 10 week time frame, only that you were all likely to develop at different rates, despite all following a relatively similar program with the hope that you could all attend as consistently as possible. The findings (thus far) show that 2.59% improvement is possible within this time frame as an average, but equally that much more and much less than this amount is equally possible.

I plan to use these results to further develop the squad's fitness training structure to compliment the large amount of technique work that we also conduct.

For the next few weeks at least we'll ensure that we maintain and develop this fitness further, albeit with some new session ideas.

Thanks for reading and thanks for being part of this exciting project!

Cheers

Paul





Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Training is testing and testing is training!

Dear Swimmers

Well, the 10 Week CSS Development program is complete, all that is left now is to re-test and see how everyone did!

If you recall, I hypothetically stated that a good goal for improvement would be 5% over 10 weeks, albeit knowing that some of you would see more than this, and some of you less. The big thing is that it's given us some great structure and something to work towards and that in itself has been very worthwhile.

I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts (good, bad, indifferent) about the program (even if brief) and equally how you found having the goal times to still focus on in my absence this month from the squad. I know the coaches found it useful to have a point of reference for each lane and every swimmer which I hope you could feel whilst in the water.

So we will re-test at the following sessions this week:

Wednesday 9.30am
Friday 5.30am
Friday 6.30am
- within various sessions next week via "appointment" (i.e. for those who can't make it this week but would like to be re-tested).

The test will be exactly the same as before - a 400m time trial and a 200m time trial (separated by ~10 mins of easy swimming / active recovery) - and we shall run waves within the squad if numbers are large to ensure a 10s gap between swimmers as per last time.

I will collate everyone's results and work out your new CSS pace. I'll then be able to work this back and say (for example) if you had a 3s improvement, this would mean that you made it to Week 6 in the program and had ~3% improvement over the 10 weeks. Everyone will be different no doubt - this is not a name or shame exercise, just chance to see how well you did and more globally how effective the whole exercise has been.

If possible have a day off or easy day of training the day before and come set with the view of knocking out a good performance but in a controlled, well paced way. Enjoy!

When I take down your times it'd also be really useful for me to know how many of the 10 weeks you've been able to attend in this last block for my reference against improvement.

Going forwards we'll still be doing a lot of this type of training at these sessions but will probably add in a bit of speed work for something slightly different for the next couple of weeks and certainly won't be asking you to do the monotonous 10 x 100 at the start of every week for a while!

Thanks everyone, see you on the pool deck.

P.S don't panic - just come and do your best, enjoy, and pace yourself out well...if nothing else the 100s at the start of each week should have really shown you how to pace yourself properly!!

Cheers

Paul

Monday, March 26, 2012

Back to business, Easter and a Ladies Cycle Clinic!

Dear Swimmers

Hope you are well. First proper day back on the pool deck today and what a beautiful morning it was!

9.30am sessions this week and next:

I ran my first proper open water session of 2012 down at Cottesloe Beach this morning for the 9.30am session and despite an early sea breeze it all went very well indeed. Just as a reminder, this Friday at 9.30am and next Monday at 9.30am will also both be down at Cottesloe Beach - please pop along if you can, it's a lot of fun! All other sessions are down at Claremont Pool.

Easter:

For the Easter Weekend, there will be no official sessions on Friday 6th April, Saturday 7th April, Sunday 8th April and Monday 9th April. 

All will be back to normal from Tuesday 10th April for our lead-up to the Busselton Half Ironman event. I personally love this time of year for swim coaching - the weather's a bit cooler but still very fine and the volume of swimmers in the pool (including the public and carnivals, school programs etc) is always a bit lower than earlier on in the year. For those waiting for a spot to join the squad, we anticipate space becoming available in all but the 5.30am sessions on Tuesday and Friday. If interested, please reply to this email.

Please note that the 5.30am Wednesday morning session will remain as a feature over the winter at this stage, so anyone keen on getting in a really challenging and satisfying longer swim session in the week, please pop along to this!

Ladies Cycle Clinic:

Short notice this one, but may appeal to quite a few of the ladies in the group:

Garland Cycleworks is in South Perth on the corner of Albany Hwy and Berwick st (parking located behind the store next to Bunnings) is holding a Ladies Cycle Clinic tonight and Saturday. See:


Session #1 Tonight 6:30pm - 8:00pm, Womens Clinic Night, features:

Learn how to maintain your bike, change a tyre and get tips from experts for the road or trail.
Talk to the energy experts from Endura, about using energy products to improve performance and recovery.
Learn about the Specialized women specific bikes, accessories and clothing that are available and how you can benefit from them.
Check which size or type of saddle or what foot bed insert you should be using with our free BG saddle and shoe fits.
Chat to like minded people about all things cycling over a glass of wine and some nibbles at this fun and free women only event!


Session #2 Saturday 6:30am - 9:00am, Womens Group Ride (test our bikes and equipment or bring your own. *limited supply), features:

As a follow up from our clinic night we will be holding a women only group to go out out with our regular Saturday morning group rides. The group will leave last and will be a friendly and social no drop(fast as the slowest rider) ride of around 30km. There will be bikes available to test, saddles to demo and and maybe even a few pairs of shoes to try.We should be back between 8.30 and 9.00 in time for fresh coffee and muffins!

To  Register call Garland Cycleworks on 94701990.


Thursday, March 22, 2012

Homeward Bound!

The team behind the new range of HUUB wetsuits - (L-R): Huub Toussaint, Dean Jackson, Adam Young, Paul Newsome

Dear Swimmers,

I'm just on my way to the airport for the flight back to sunny Perth. It's been a great trip and really worthwhile - sincere thanks for supporting the squad in my absence and making the coaches feel welcome. I look forward to receiving any feedback that you may have (from what I've heard so far, everything has gone very smoothly indeed!). I'll be on the pool deck at 1pm for the Saturday squad session this week and then back to normal next week. 

Please note that the 9.30am Monday Time-4-Me session will be held at Cottesloe Beach this Monday (26th March) due to a carnival at the pool - please pop along - it'll be a really fun session!

Here's Olympic Gold Medallist (Moscow, 1980) and British celebrity Duncan Goodhew with Swim Smooth Coach Julian Nagi at the London Olympic Pool prior to delivering a unique one-off coached swim session to nearly 50 British Gas employees (they sponsor British Swimming):


Duncan Goodhew (left) and Julian Nagi (right)


Access all areas: Julian Nagi coaching the British Gas employees in Swim Smooth techniques



Catching up with coach Steve Casson (right) at one of his three swim training facilities, this being his Endless Pool flume tank

Cheers! See you all soon,

Paul

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

3 more days to go then homeward bound!

Dear Swimmers

I hope all's going well for you over in Perth - just 3 days now until I step back on the plane and head back there to sunny old Perth (I think my 'moon' tan needs some work!).

Since I last wrote we've completed two 3-day Coach Education Courses - one in Stirling, Scotland and the other in Loughborough, England. They each had 12 coaches whom had travelled from as far afield as Israel, Germany, South Africa and Belgium to attend. These 3-day courses are a chance for coaches to learn our video analysis and stroke correction skills for use in their own coaching businesses or within their club environment. Given that the coaches all went through a selection / screening process and were selected from over 120 candidates from around the world, we were optimistic that we'd see some great coaching talent - and we certainly did, in droves!


Loughborough, England 16-18 March 2012


Stirling, Scotland 9-11 March 2012

N.B notice how the pool backgrounds almost look identical - these two pools are carbon copies of each other, save for Stirling being a slightly narrower 6-lane 50m pool and Loughborough an 8-lane 50m pool. Both are brilliant facilities (for the UK!).

On the third day of each course we ran a full 1-day Swim Smooth Clinic where 12 swimmers joined us and the coaches had chance to then utilise their new skills by shadowing the work and direction that myself and Adam were delivering with their own 1-2-1 coach:swimmer. The coaches stated that they all really enjoyed this pragmatic experience.


Coach Lucy with swimmer Clare in Loughborough, England.


Coaches observe 1-2-1 instruction on pool deck at Loughborough University, England.

On the second day in Loughborough we were paid a surprise visit by legendary sports scientist Huub Toussaint (see: http://web.mac.com/htoussaint/SwimSite/Propelling_Efficiency.html ) who is part of our 3-way partnership in the new range of HUUB wetsuits. Having Huub on pool deck with us and seeing what we do and how we translate his (and other biomechanist's) groundbreaking research on propulsive efficiency into easily understandable coaching tidbits for the swimmers and coaches was truly great. Having studied this great man's work at university 12 years ago and to now be part of the same partnership that is bringing high-end sports science into the real world is something really special for me - I have to keep pinching myself! ;-)

Here is Huub (centre) with one of our recently certified Swim Smooth Coaches, Martin Hill (left) and owner Dean Jackson (right) testing the new Archimedes suit:


On day two of the Loughborough course we also invited Harry Wilshire, GB International Triathlete and Olympic hopeful to come and demonstrate his stroke for the coaches. Together with HUUB we are helping Harry with some financial assistance to be able to race in the events around the world that he needs to do to try and secure his chance of being selected for the British team. He's still got a long way to go though and then selection itself can go one of two ways depending upon how the British team decides to support their two young superstars, the Brownlee Brothers. Anything we can do to support Harry in this venture though will be beneficial hopefully and help keep this little sparkle of chance alive. Harry will be racing in Sydney all being well next weekend as one of those qualifiers.

Here's Harry testing the new HUUB wetsuit, immediately after swimming 100m very comfortably in under 58 seconds - not bad for a triathlete!


All smiles after a very quick 100m in the Archimedes 4:4 wetsuit

In between the coaches courses we've also run a 1-day swimmer's clinic in Edinburgh, had dinner with the founder of Finis Inc. (the company that makes most of the pool toys that we use in the squad) who flew in from California to meet us, observed the world's top 2 triathletes (the Brownlee Brothers) in action in Leeds, worked more on the book, and are just ramping up for two more 1-day clinics in Corby, England tomorrow and Wednesday before flying straight back to Perth on Thursday. I will literally be hitting the ground running at about 3am on Saturday and on pool deck by 10am Saturday - phew! Hopefully I'll get a nice easy day on Sunday with Mish and the kids before seeing you all down at the pool next week.


Swim Smooth Coach Steve Casson (left), John Mix (CEO of Finis Inc), Paul & Adam


Until then, a-bientot!

Paul



Tuesday, March 13, 2012


Dear Swimmers

Hope all is well with you. All still crazy busy over here in the UK, but all going exceedingly well which is great! We're going to be meeting the UK's top two triathletes set for Olympic podium places in London tomorrow morning which is very exciting!

Here we are at the British swimming trials:


Finally, here's a note from one of our swimmer's sons about a charity running event at Scotch College soon - hope you can attend / donate for this good cause.

Cheers

Paul

P.S I hope you're still getting Fresh & Fruity on a Wednesday and Friday morning! ;-)


Dear Family and Friends

I am organizing a fun run for my year 10 personal project. It is a 5km event on the 29th of April 2012 at Scotch college playing fields. I hope that you can come down on the day and support the worthy cause. All the profits from the race are going to ICEA, feel free to invite others to come down to the event.

For more information on the event please check out the website:  http://iceafunrun.weebly.com/.  Please register on-line before the race day.

Thanks
Kyle

Thursday, March 8, 2012

VIP access to Olympic Park! Wahoo!

Dear Swimmers

Hope all is well over there in Perth - it's bloomin' freezing over here in the UK right now!

Well we had a real treat yesterday, courtesy of Colin Hill, Swim Smooth fan and event director of the 10km Open Water Swimming Event at the London 2012 Olympics in Hyde Park - VIP access and tour of Olympic Park and the new 50m Olympic Pool! It was sensational!


We attended as Colin's guests for the morning heats of the Olympic Trials and watched some of the Brits knock out some seriously quick 100m freestyle times - Aussies, watch out!


The facility is amazing with polished concrete diving platforms (here's Adam with Colin):


...and here's Adam trying to gain a sense of what it will be like for Michael Phelps / Becky Addlington et al. to be waiting in the Final Call room immediately before heading out onto the pool deck to rapturous applause - we got goose bumps just being in this off-limits room!


...I couldn't contain my excitement, so here's a video clip showing you the pool from the stands:



If you cannot see the video player above, check it out directly at YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvTKr9K-u8k

And if you're keen to see two short video clips on the HUUB wetsuits that we've helped design and test, check out:



If you cannot see the video player above, check it out directly at YouTube:

http://youtu.be/KHAUxJk2nYI

And the female suit at:



If you cannot see the video player above, check it out directly at YouTube:

http://youtu.be/YPHfukQGq4w

We're now up in bonny Scotland and it's just started snowing - lovely!

See you soon!

Paul

Monday, March 5, 2012

Aloha from the UK!



Dear Swimmers

Hope you're all doing well and everything is going smoothly with the new coaches whilst I am away (I'm sure it is and that you're loving having a change from me! LOL!).

So, all is going great over here. I flew in late on Thursday night and was immediately whisked away by Adam to Chessington where we have been staying for the last 3 nights. I've been coping well with the jetlag, but then again I have been up to 3am every night working on our presentations for the Triathlon Show!!

We've had a stand at the show shared with Huub wetsuits (see above) and have delivered two fully booked out seminars to over 300 people each time, making them the most popular technical seminars of the entire show by a good margin. This has been great for us and really exciting to see so many keen people in what we are doing with Swim Smooth and of course Huub wetsuits.

Tomorrow we're meeting up with the London Olympics director for the 10km open water swim and then delivering a mini Swim Smooth Clinic to a private club in central London in the evening. We then need to high-tail it up to Scotland for Thursday where we'll then deliver a 3-day Coaches Education course in Stirling followed by a 1-day swimmer's course in Edinburgh. It's then down to Loughborough University to repeat this same schedule plus another two swimmer's courses in the one of the new satellite Olympic pools in Corby. I can't wait!

It's going to be a crazily busy 3 weeks but then again we wouldn't want it any other way!

Speak soon and please enjoy the hot weather for me - it's pretty chilly over here right now!

Cheers

Paul

P.S that's me with 4 times World Ironman Champion Chrissie Wellington at the show - amazing athlete and the nicest person you're ever likely to meet!