Swim Tips and Article from Heath Thurston (Uber Swimmer)

The Great Misunderstood and Complicated World of Water

Water is and forever will be my element and freedom. Every time I jump or dive into the water to swim it gives me chills and a great sense of thrill. Not just because of the temperature of the water, but because of the amazing quietness and calm feeling I have in that liquid submerged world. I feel empowered as the weight of the world feels lifted from my body and my shoulders and it’s the best feeling ever. The weightlessness is just amazing and I have never felt a sensation equally liberating anywhere else. When I was a young swimmer growing up, one of my favorite things to do was just dive down under the water and swim around looking from one end of the pool to the other. I think that is how it would feel if I could actually fly. The fluid feeling of being able to move any part of my body in any direction and have it impact the rest of my body is unmatched in any other form of motion on earth. It’s fascinating how things can move through the water. Ever since my first experiences submerged in my world of water I have always calculated movement through my eyes under the water. Our body reacts so differently in water. This is why it is such a complicated world for most people. They don’t know how to look at it, understand it, feel it or use it to their advantage.

Swimming and being in water has been a part of my life since I was about three years old. I was unable to go under water until I was five because of having tubes in my ears. But boy, when I got my tubes out and could go under water that was the beginning of the end for me. My mom tells me that the first thing I did when I jumped into the water was the butterfly stoke, which is one of the hardest strokes to learn. I had spent so much time just watching my siblings and other swimmers that I had inadvertently studied the way their bodies moved in the water. How they placed their hands in the water, how their hips moved, how their legs thrusted up and down for propulsion. My brain and body just understood it. I wish other things in my life came as easy as swimming did for me. I just took to swimming like I was made to do it, and I guess I was.

I was always very competitive and fast for my young age. From the very beginning, skipping over swim lessons all together, I went right into racing older kids because there wasn’t an age group to race in. I competed with the high school kids for fun because my mom was the coach and though it would motivate them by trying to swim down the littlest kid on the starting blocks. All through high school I competed for state championship titles and even contemplated a college team but I was so burned out of competing and being in the pool about 4-6 hours a day most of my life, I needed a break. This is were triathlons came into my life. As I started to compete and come out of the water almost always in the lead people wanted to know how I did it. They would ask, “How can you travel through the water so fast and so effortlessly?” So that’s what got me into coaching and trying to take what my body and mind did naturally so I could help others learn to do it as well. So others could be indulged with having there own amazing world and experience water like I have grown so accustomed to and love.

People always talk about having a runner’s high but most will never talk about having a swimmer’s high. Perhaps there isn’t one, but if you ever experience what I describe and what I feel, it can trump and surpass the best of a runner’s high. When you have it and feel it, it is the greatest feeling in the world. It’s not just a sensation or a happy feeling in your head like a runner’s high can be, it’s a high that encompasses your whole body and mind. In the water you only have two main senses that are at work, eyesight and touch. Your body has to heighten those senses for better control. You feel one hundred-fold the power of drag on your body than you do just running through air. Because you are “weightless”, in the sport of swimming all you really have to rely on is how well you float and create momentum. You don’t need to be super ripped or super lean because it doesn’t matter. If you can run a sub 5 minute mile or bike a 40k TT in under an hour it has very little relevance to how one can move effortlessly through the water. Most of the best swimmers around do not appear physically like the best runners or cyclists at all. Swimming is simple, it’s all about floating. In all the swim lessons I do the first thing I do for people is teach them how to float, I mean truly float. Most people think they know how to float but they really don’t. To truly float you need to let yourself go, don’t think about staying right on top of the water. Let your arms sink or float where they may and let your legs do what they do which is sink –come on they’re pure muscle– that’s what they will do! Feel your body in the water and then let your senses be heightened, it’s quiet, it’s peaceful and you are floating, you won’t drown. As long as you let yourself relax and float you will not sink to the bottom. You will not drown!

Once you get floating down, then all you need to do at this point is add some propulsion with a kick then bring the arms into the mix. Kicking is a huge part of better swimming even though your kick is only about 15% of your propulsion through the water. Your kick has to be efficient; otherwise it works against your momentum. Most of the people I work with tend to have a kick that does not work in sync with their arms. Look at it this way, when you run or walk on land your legs do all the work while your arms follow them but they do it naturally. In water it is the exact opposite. Your arms are the primary source of movement and generate the most propulsion. Your legs are there to follow the arms. But if you don’t have a good shallow efficient kick this working together cannot happen.

This is why there are people whose legs sink or who kick too much and it causes their arms to have inefficient power in the pull. The body can only put the power emphasis into one major body group and if the legs take over then the arms become the secondary, not the primary. So get in the pool and learn how to float first then start to do lots and lots of kicking. I don’t mean kicking with fins either. Fins just delay the learning curve of proper kicking efficiency. Get a good long kickboard and kick length after length in the pool. Soon your kick will become better and better. When your kick becomes better and more efficient then your swimming form will gain leaps and bounds. Your speed and endurance will triple. I could spend hours and hours going over proper technique and how to do this and how to do that, but honestly I hate typing and I don’t think Triathlon Edge wants this to be a super long and boring article. The most important thing I want to get across today, in this article, is how great and wonderful swimming can be. Make it your own world. Take the quietness to heart and listen to your body and your breath underwater. If you truly listen and feel yourself in the water you to will be able to feel yourself getting faster with less effort than ever before. Think about your stroke and how your body feels as it travels through the resistant water. Soon you too will feel that swimmer’s high. I don’t ever understand why people say that swimming is so boring. To me it will never be boring because I am in my own underwater world and the only thing I am thinking about is my stroke and my body moving through this great world of my OWN!!

A weekend off!!

I have been feeling much better since leaving St Croix. I had this weekend off of racing but still managed to get in a few long rides with friends. Today was Mothers day and lucky for me I was here - whew! Sundays are great, I try to stay off my feet, relax and evaluate the coming week of training. This coming weekends race is in Orlando Florida. Thanks to Janice Harrington I have a place to stay. She was awesome and book me my hotel off of her frequent travel points. So thank you!!

I found some pictures from the St Croix race and will post them here today.....as you can see I was in pain on the run and I wasn't lying about the hills on the bike.....and yup I'm the only one wearing a wet suit :)

Unique Food, The Beast (again) and Travel

Monday May 3rd.

Today was a lax day where I tried to stay off my feet as much as possible. Ernie and my buddy Peter took off first thing leaving me with a room to myself. After a nice breakfast, prepared by Jennifer, I met up with Bryan and Ryan, the two Xtreme tourist film guys. We headed down to the beach, which was less that 2 min away. They mic-ed me up and interviewed me about In Our Own Quiet Way and the Tri and Give a Dam project. It took about 25 minutes to complete! I drove the two guys to Olympic car rental (which was named this because the owner was in the 1970 something Olympics for shooting... and now he is almost blind)and picked up a car for me as I was going to be on the Island a few more days. I debated whether or not to get a car as funds are tight, but felt that I had better. I picked up a few things from the store to eat throughout the day and literally stayed off my feet the rest of the day. My body must have been tired with how it reacted yesterday, so I thought this would be a good idea.

Tuesday May 4th.

I woke up late (yes) and headed down to breakfast. Lionel was in what seemed to be an important meeting, regarding politics, so I minded my own business and quietly got some food. Jennifer came in wearing some big dark sunglasses and ask Lionel if he could take her to the doctor because there was something wrong with the eye. She had recently had eye surgery. I spoke up and said that I could take her so that Lionel could finish with his meeting. Jennifer was very grateful and this may have been the reason I needed to get that car. I took Jennifer to town and the doc took good care of her. Jennifer was so grateful she helped me gather a few gifts for the kids, bought a hand made pottery plate for Sunny and took me to lunch.

She wanted me to go somewhere “the locals” went so she took me to Tim Duncan’s uncle’s restaurant. I guess good old Tim is from the Islands. It was a small place but she said that this is where the locals eat. So not wanting to disappoint, I said I would give it a try. This is what I ate.....

The drink was made from a plant called Sorrel. It was dark red in color and taste like cinnamon.

goat stew meat, plantain, seasoned potatoes, rice, peas, and macaroni. It was all pretty good... but not delicious. Then I had what is called a delicacy there.... Conch (pronounced konk) meat from a conch shell eaten with Fungi (corn mill and okre) This dish I thought I was going to hate as it smelled very fishy. But it was actually very mild and was fine.

In the evening I was suppose to go for a ocean kayak trip but the winds shifted and it had to be canceled, dang! Instead I went for a nice 6 mile run up and around. The sights at the top were awesome and the pictures simply do not do it justice.

Wednesday May 5th,

Woke up a little earlier today, as I had to get everything packed, return the car and find my way over to the airport. Coach Keena suggested I go for a nice easy ride so indeed I did. I took the Ellsworth out for a quick spin and found myself at the bottom of the beast. “I’m here and I may never be back, so why not climb it one more time for old time sake!” It took me 10 minutes to climb it and only a few minutes less to get down. It is such a steep hill that I needed to really clamp down on the brakes and take it slow. Right as I pulled up to the Arawalk my back tire went flat.... whew! With no cell service on this side of St Croix it would have been a long walk back rushing to get everything done. I packed up my bike and gear, said goodbye to Jennifer and Lionel and was off to the airport. No problems through customs and the only charged me $25 to check my bike. NOW HOW HARD WAS THAT - WHY CAN’T THEY JUST DO THAT EVERY TIME (yes that is me yelling)!!! The flight was delayed for about an hour because they could not get the baggage door to open... maybe I should have paid more to check my bag. :)

WINNER WINNER WINNER

Congrats and way to go!!!
Just wanted to throw out a HUGE congrats to my wife Sunny who destroyed the competition in the Gold's Gym transformation contest. She is very happy and has now moved on to the National finals in Las Vegas later this month. She was super strict and worked extremely hard.

Ernie, Flying Nuns and 80 year old animals

I just chilled around the finish area and watched the rest of the athletes come in....literally all of them. The host of the show Extreme Tourist, Ernie, wanted to have a great experience at his first half-Ironman. He posted a time of 7:59:26. Erni

e managed to just edge out Madonna Buder, the 80 year old flying nun. Unfortunately he was bested by the other 80 year old in the race, Lew Hollander, who beat Ernie by 13 minutes. I would have bet on the guy on the left every time. Another lesson in NOT judging a book by it's cover.

After the race we wanted to get some good bike footage for the episode and some promo footage for my quest. So we headed back to the beast to do some filming. Shockingly I felt great, now that my stomach wasn’t busy being my enemy. The evening finished with eating at the Fort Christian Brew Pub. The service was horrible and the burger was mediocre; but the deep fried pickles and onion rings were off the hook!! It felt good just to go back to the hotel and crash watching the Patriot on TV.

Second lap, throw up and IV's

I had planned to take several extra minutes in transition to gather my wits before what I knew was going to be a long run in the heat and humidity. I headed out on the run course and felt somewhat good, maybe this won’t be too bad after all. About one mile into the run a guy in my age group ran up behind me and asked, “How many more guys in our age were ahead of me?”.... “A ton,” I replied. “Maybe all of them." He continues to say “No way! The guy who qualified for Kona last year is right behind us.” In my head I’m thinking this guy is drunk and the humidity is really kicking his butt. With him about 10 paces ahead of me the light went on.... I shouted out, “Are you on your first or second lap of the run?” He laughs and says, “Sorry, this is my second.” I never saw him again as he ran into the distance. I guess the good news was at this point I must have still looked like an athlete.

I buzzed through the first 2.5 miles under a 7:30 pace, nice and easy! Then things started to go south again. The stomach started to turn and the cramping was back with a vengeance. I arrived at the aid station at mile 3.5 and stopped to take in some Pepsi to see if that would help. At the end of the last table there was little cups of salt that could be chased with water. At this point I figured that it is what my body needed, salt. Down it went and within about 20 steps, I was bent over in the ditch. My body clearly didn’t want any part of that salt. Little did I know, that was that start of a 5 minute episode where my body let me know that it hadn’t been processing ANY of the liquid or nutrition that I had been putting in it for the past 4 hours. I threw up EVERYTHING. A few minutes of throwing up followed by a few more minutes of dry heaving. All the athletes were very nice telling me to hang in there. I stood up and started to walk hoping to keep a straight line. This was the most scenic part of the course situated at the tip of the golf course overlooking the ocean. So, the fact that I was walking gave me time to enjoy that! I started to feel a bit better giving the current situation and managed to start running again. This fourth mile took me 14:03, oops! I managed a few sub 10 min miles with my tank on empty. Mile 7 was a speedy 12:34!

There was a girl running on her first lap that I would pass running, then when I was forced to a walk she would pass me back. This happened several times before I came up with the brilliant idea that it may be easier to finish this thing with a friend. Laura and I are now friends. We mustered a good walk-run together. She got me through miles 9-12 before I said goodbye and maned up for the last mile. I knew the camera crew would be there at the finish so i couldn’t very well be walking. With my guts turning inside out, I did the last half mile close to a 7 min mile.

As I crossed the finish line, the camera man asked me how it was. I said, “It was the hardest race I have ever done, physically and mentally.” At that moment, he said I turned white and my legs went from under me. I made my way over to the medical tent. The instant I tried to lay down my leg started to cramp due to dehydration. It took several of then medical staff to hold my leg down and get pressure on it. Once my leg let go, they hooked me up to an IV and pumped liquids into my body. After about 15 minutes I really started to feel better.

Swim 34:09 Bike 3:09:51 Run 2:20:53 Total 6:04:53

THE BEAST... my stomach or the hill...

I was very happy to rip off my wetsuit and was really looking forward to the bike ride. I took a few extra seconds in transition and made sure to drink a few shots of my water that had my prolytes in it, knowing the water at the aid stations would not have the needed electrolytes in it. Feeling pretty good I set out to conquer the ‘beast’. I looked down at my watched and noticed that my HR was 185 despite not feeling that bad. I realized that I needed to slow down as my body had not recovered from the heat of the swim yet. It took me a few mile but managed to get the HR back down to my normal range. I felt pretty good and took it pretty easy on the bike, wanting to go up the ‘beast’ and achieve my main goal for the race - no walking on the bike course. I pounded up the hill and felt awesome doing it. I didn’t get passed by anyone. The hill was so steep at points that it required us cyclist to ‘zig zag’ or ‘switchback’ to get up it. There was a welcome aid station at the top with a large group of encouraging locals, it was just awesome! The first half of this ride was up, up, up, and on very bendy and mostly rough roads. The entire course was beautiful. When the roads weren’t tree lined, there was an incredible view of the ocean. I tried to drink half of bottle of supplied Gatorade and grab a cold water bottle to dump on my head to keep my body temperature down each time I went through one of the four aid stations. 40 miles into the bike ride, I knew something was wrong. I started to get a wicked side stick and I never get those on the bike. The next sign was when the woman age groupers started going by..... not that these woman weren’t athletes because holy crap they were. At mile 52 there was a long swooping hill with a sharp left hand turn close to the bottom. I am not a great bike handler and slowed down to ensure a safe exit at the bottom. One of those speedy age group woman didn’t have the same fortune. I came around the hard left to see this pour girl sitting in the ditch with blood everywhere. I slowed even more to see that a race official happened to be right there and radioed for help right away. The idea of that nightmare haunts ever cyclist during a race, and this girl happened to be in second place at the time, ouch. The second-half of the bike course took us to the other side of the island, which was a bit more open, and the winds were still brutal. I limped into transition extremely glad for it to be over with a blazing time of 3:09:51.

May 2nd St Croix US Virgin Islands

Sunday May 2nd - RACE DAY ST CROIX US VIRGIN ISLANDS - 70.3 #4

Up at 4:30 and excited! I have been looking forward to this race and the challenge of the beast. I took in my normal breakfast of Rokitfuel and our host/owner of the Arawalk Bay woke up early and put out some extra breakfast for the athletes that were staying here. The owners, Jennifer and her husband Lionel, really have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome here in St Croix. They say that their guest are like family and should be treated as such.

After a smooth transition set up, the announcer of the race announces that wetsuits are optional; however, if you had any intention of competing for age group awards or world champion slots you could not wear them. That didn’t include me so I grabbed my suit and headed to the water. The swim start was 200 meters away on a little island across from transition. I threw on my wetsuit not really paying attention to what others were doing, jumped in the water and swam across to the race start. Once I reached the other side, I notice that there were only about 4 or so athletes wearing a wetsuit. I wonder if that was an indication that I had either made the wrong decision, due to the water temperature, or that there was only 4 of us that thought we were not going to be fast enough to compete. I soon found out that it was the temp of the water - it was hot! I stood water side with my wetsuit on waiting for the pros to go, anxiously waiting for the gun to fire so I could get going. I wanted to get this swim over with and get my already overheating body out of this wetsuit. The water was indeed warm and I could tell instantly that it was going to be a hot swim and I needed to be careful to not go too hard. So I took it easy and enjoyed the swim...turns out to be a decent strategy as I posted a decent personal swim time of 34:09.

Fun Filming and the 'Beast'

Ernie and I headed back to the hotel and met the rest of the film crew. With bike assembled and check-in complete we headed out to the jungle to shoot some final shots for the Extreme Tourist show. It was fun and interesting to see these guys set up the shots. It will be fun to see how they cut the final product for the show. I tried to stay off my feet as much as possible, as I was very tired and had very little sleep last night due to travel. We drove and found the ‘beast’ which is a .7 of a mile climb with grades up to 27%. On the web site they give advise as to special gearing configuration depending on your skill levels just for this .7 of a mile section of the course.

After filming we went back to downtown Christiansted to grab some food and give me a chance to see where transition would be. Get this...it wasn’t even all set up yet and the race was in the morning. There is only about 1/3 of the normal amount of athletes due to the travel difficulties. After some blackened chicken pasta by the ocean, we headed back to the rooms to crash - I was out in less than one minute which is rare the day before a race. I was just hammered!

A late flight equals no sleep.

Saturday May 1st.

Packed and ready to go, but unfortunately my flight didn’t leave till 12:50 am. Quiet Ways Executive Director Holly was kind enough to stay up and give me a ride to the airport. Super nice! That way my wife could get some rest, as the kids still wake up some nights. I managed to get all my gear into my bike case and one carry-on. Two nights before the race is the most important night for a good nights sleep, so I had high hopes of getting some sleep on my first flight to Atlanta...no luck. I ended up getting an isle seat and that doesn’t spell sleep for me. I maybe caught an hour before landing. Plan B was to sleep a few hours on my 3 hour lay over.... I managed to catch another hour on the floor of the Atlanta airport. On my last flight, I sat beside a really nice guy and we ended up chatting for most of the flight. I did catch a 3rd one-hour nap for a total of 3 hours. Not ideal for race rest.... dang it!

Landed in St Croix and right when I stepped off the plane I could feel the humidity. The airport here is very, very small and easy to navigate. Within five minutes of getting my bike, (always a welcome sight) Ernie Harker, host of the Xtreme Tourist TV show, was there to pick me up. With the race being tomorrow, we had to hurry to the hotel, put my bike together quickly and head to race check in. St Croix is very relaxed. Normally at check-in there are lines, wristbands, expo’s and some chaos. In St Croix the check-in was in a small room off of the narrow streets of downtown Christiansted. No lines, no fuss.... picked up my number, timing ship and a cotton T. Sad to announce that they didn't have a sticker.... need to find one on line now.