Swimming, 7th February 2017

Posted on February 8, 2017 by james

Simple swim today: 2,600m front crawl with some turn practice. Had the pool to myself for a fair bit, and a double lane to myself for almost the entire swim.

Total distance for the month: 6,600m
Total distance for this year: 38,800m

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Swimming, 6th February 2017

Posted on February 8, 2017 by james

First full week back after the training course and I thought I’d get back into it with a Swimfit session. This ended up being:

8 lengths front crawl
2 lengths backstroke
2 lengths breaststroke
Rest 1 minute
8 x 1 length backstroke, rest 20 seconds after each length
16 lengths front crawl
Rest until breathing returns to normal
4 lengths kick, 4 lengths pull, 4 lengths swim, all front crawl, 15 seconds rest after each length
20 x 1 length fairly hard front crawl, 20 seconds rest
8 lengths easy front crawl

And I finished off by taking the distance up to 2km practising tumble turns at the deep end.

I found the backstroke very hard. I’m sure that’s due at least in part to poor technique, though I also find I have to kick quite hard to stop my legs from sinking.

Total distance for the month: 4,000m
Total distance for this year: 36,200m

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County Champs start tomorrow

Posted on February 4, 2017 by james

Well, they’ve been taking place for the last couple of weekends in fact, but tomorrow is our first day. Somerset decided to run all events (other than the 800m and 1500m freestyle) both long course and short course this year. As a club we decided only to enter the short course events because hardly any of our swimmers have been near a long course pool in more than six months, and those events start tomorrow. Both my son and daughter will be competing and I’m looking forward to seeing how they get on.

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The mash tun can wait

Posted on February 4, 2017 by james

Time for a brew. Have to have something to drink to celebrate getting the mash tun made after all, so I put as much of my old kit back into service as I needed. This brew was a beer called “Wee Bee”, posted on the Jim’s Beer Kit forum. Quoted from the original posting there, the details are:

Quantities shown are for making 23l or 5 imp gallons.

Pale Malt 4300g – 87.4%
Dingemans Special B – 500g – 10.2%
Torrefied Wheat 120g – 2.5%

CHINOOK hops (quantities shown are for 13% aa)

35g for 60 mins – 47 IBUs
25g for 20 mins – 20 IBUs
20g for 10 mins – 10 IBUs
20g at flame out – 0 IBUs

OG 1.048, FG 1.010, ABV 4.9% (@ 75% brewhouse efficiency)

IBUs = 77

Colour – 56 EBCs

Your choice of yeast, but this Works well with Nottingham/Gervin

Here’s all the (pre-milled) grain in the mash tun:

And to keep the heat in for the mash, it all gets wrapped up:

After 90 minutes mashing I bodged my sparging arm onto the tube connected to the HLT:

I take the first litre or two from the mash tun tap and return it to the top just to allow the wort to run clear into a bin:

I’ve never been able to get this sort of rolling boil going with five gallons in my previous boiler as it would just have overflowed.

And with the lid on, all the steam is piped nicely out of the window so the beer shack doesn’t fill up with condensation.

I had a little more than planned when the boil was finished and the wort run off to cool, so I transferred a little to a demijohn to ferment (and I couldn’t resist a little taste, for quality control, obviously).

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Swimming, 3rd February 2017

Posted on February 3, 2017 by james

Course all done, things can get back to normal now. And first session of the month. I’ll restart the Swimfit sessions next week, but for today I decided I’d just do front crawl and some turn practice.

Total distance for the month: 2,000m
Total distance for this year: 34,200m

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Swimming, 30th January 2017

Posted on February 3, 2017 by james

First session for a week because of the training course. Just swam 2.5km front crawl to keep my hand in.

Total distance for January: 32,200m
Total distance for this year: 32,200m

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And relax…

Posted on February 3, 2017 by james

I’m done. Well, sort of. The face-to-face sessions of my Swimming Coach qualification are now complete, though I still have coursework to complete and session planning and delivery to do at my own club that must be submitted for assessment as part of the qualification.

It’s been a tough course. There was a huge amount of material to get through in the time and in the compressed timescale it turned out to be impossible for me to get through all of the work in time. I think the coaches living closer and those who stayed near the venue may have found it easier, but doing the latter does turn it into a very expensive qualification.

Overall however I’m really pleased with how it has gone and I’m looking forward to applying it in my coaching.

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Ok, so that’s not quite going to plan…

Posted on January 28, 2017 by james

It was my plan to spend a little time writing up how I was finding the Swimming Coach course. As it turns out I’ve had little free time to that. Adding the travelling time on top of the eight hours at the course and all the homework is not leaving very much for anything else. In fact I’m struggling to get all the homework done.

Which explains why I’ve not got anywhere with posting about the course, so I’ll have to do some catching up once things calm down a bit.

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I think I’m all set

Posted on January 23, 2017 by james

About as organised as I’m ever likely to get, I think I’m all set to trog off up to Bristol tomorrow for the first day of my Swimming Coach (what was the Level 2 Coach) course.

Looks like it’s going to be pretty busy — eight days including seven sessions actually coaching swimmers in the evenings. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow I’ll know a lot more about how it is going to pan out.

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And the winner is… Screwfix!

Posted on January 23, 2017 by james

In the competition to deliver the items ordered online in the most ridiculously-sized box, that is. This one knocks anything I’ve had from Amazon into a cocked hat (which you can probably get Amazon to deliver, in an oversize box, no doubt).

The box:

The contents, making up the entire order:

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