By David

About six years ago, I published a book on Lydiard’s training methods as they applied to swimming. The process was amazingly simple. Lydiard wrote a prologue and the manuscript was sent to Meyer & Meyer, a leading German publisher of sports books. Eight months later, the book was selling well and reached number seven on the Amazon’s water sport’s best selling list. “Swim to the Top”, that’s the book’s name, has slipped in the ranking since then but had done well enough that Meyer&Meyer asked if I could put together a second book on swimming training.

A year later, Jane and I completed the manuscript of “Swimming – A Training Program” and sent it off to see what Meyer & Meyer thought. They seemed happy and in 2004 the second book was published. I had the fun of finding the book in our local Barnes and Noble store and telling the shop assistant that I knew the authors. Jane and I are not going to be able to buy a corporate jet with the annual royalties but its fun enough to have the books in print and be part of spreading the Lydiard philosophy.

Flushed with success I decided it was time to write a novel with a swimming theme. 114,000 words later “Thirty Pieces of Silver” was a completed manuscript ready for publication. Since then things have gone from bad to worse. Meyer & Meyer don’t do fiction so I sent the manuscript to three New Zealand publishers, thinking my association with swimming in that fair land might make the manuscript more interesting. It seems not; “unfortunately” they were “too busy with current projects”.

Perhaps, I thought, the United States would be different. I sent the manuscript to five publishers selected scientifically by stabbing my finger at a list on the internet. The response was overwhelming. All five said they’d read it, all five “loved” it, all five said we were “great” writers; the manuscript was just what every passenger on every jet in every state of the United States was waiting to read. All five sent a contract that we should sign and return as soon as possible. Things did seem too good to be true. I decided to investigate.

Dorrance Publishing wanted me to pay them $17,900 to publish the book. Publish America would do it for free, but there were some pretty awful warnings about them on the internet. American Book Publishing appeared respectable but wanted $9000 up front. Clare Smith sent me an acceptance letter dated May 18, 2008 in November 2007. My impression was of an industry with more than its fair share of sharks circling and waiting to take advantage of vanity; to hit on anyone who had written a few thousand words and wanted to see them on a bookshelf. There are honest publishers in the world. Meyer & Meyer are one of them. The problem for the novice is simply finding out who are honest and who aren’t. If anyone can help answer that question we’d love to hear from you.

So, what’s “Thirty Pieces of Silver” about? It tells the story of the escape from East Germany of the National Swimming Coach and his eventual immigration to New Zealand. The East German secret police track him down and execute two assassination attempts. Through these and other difficulties and by employing Lydiard’s training methods the coach eventually wins three gold medals at the Olympic Games.

The book is entirely fiction but like all make-believe does rely on the author’s personal experience. For example the East German connection is based on when I employed the East German National Coach, Mike Regner. One of the assassination attempts is a distant parallel to the Australian based plan to kill one of Toni Jeffs’ sponsors, Brian LeGros. The airplane forced landing is a description of when I had an engine failure and landed my Piper Arrow in a barley field outside of Wanganui. Jane’s description of the Virgin Islands is from two hot summers spent sweltering in that place. Her knowledge of Lydiard’s training is from ten years spent doing nothing else. Sadly many of the “swimming official” stories actually happened.

But first we’ve got to get the thing published. Perhaps we should just serialize it on Swimwatch, or perhaps you know a better idea.

By David

A few years ago, I spent several summers touring the European track series with my wife, Alison. She competed in middle distance events from 800 meters to 3000 meters. She was ranked seventh in the world over 1000 meters. There were some good runners around in those days. From New Zealand, there was John Walker, Olympic Champion and World Record holder, Dick Quax, Olympic silver medalist and World Record holder and Rod Dixon, Olympic bronze medalist and winner of the New York marathon. You may recognize some of the other names on the circuit, Henry Rono, Don Quarry, Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett, Renaldo Nehemiah, Tatyana Kazankina and Irena Szewinska.

One of the best athletes was the American James King. He was ranked fifth in the world at 400 meters hurdles and certainly one of the nicest guys I came across on the circuit. In 1979 we visited the Berlin Wall together. Eager to see what was on the other side we climbed a tree close to the wall. I noticed an East German sentry peering at us through his powerful Weiss binoculars. He seemed to be paying us close attention. I looked at James and was horrified to see my mate giving the East German guard the middle finger.

A notable feature of the track world back then was the number of attractive young ladies who followed the circuit providing home comforts to the world’s best runners. Two of the best known were from London. I even saw them at a World Championships, sitting comfortably in the VIP section of the stadium. One world class athlete told me he knew he’d made it to genuine world class, not when he’d broken his first world record or won his first championship, but when he was propositioned by one of the London ladies.

At the end of the Coke Meet in London’s Crystal Palace I was talking to James King when he was called over by the same young woman. He excused himself and walked over to where she was standing. After a short conversation he wandered back. Now, I have no idea what they discussed. Indeed I am not the slightest bit interested. All I can tell you is he came back to me, smiled and said, “Athletics is a trip.”

There are occasions when swimming too can be a trip. Our team is going through an interesting period. Last weekend we had a junior regional swim meet at our home pool. We had a record number of entries, made 20% more income than expected, had four swimmers qualify for senior competition and enjoyed every minute of it. I’ve mentioned before how well coaches are treated in the United States. Well, if you are a coach, you should have been at this meet. The food was fit for royalty and was served by a senior American Airlines flight attendant. Now that’s got to be hard to beat.

This past weekend, three of our master’s swimmers competed in the YMCA National Championships in Fort Lauderdale. Darcy swam the 1650 yards yesterday and was second. She wasn’t too happy with the swim, but second in the United States is never a bad result. Bonnie and Bob swam today: in five swims, they won a gold, two silvers and two bronze medals. There are two days to go and with an ounce of luck they may well improve their medal tally.

Next weekend, we will once again swim at the Swimming Hall of Fame pool in Fort Lauderdale. This time, the event will be a Florida Gold Coast championship meet. Skuba and Andrew are our best chances of success. They will both swim the men’s 50 and 100 meters freestyle. Skuba’s parents are parking their yacht in the Hall of Fame marina as our accommodation for the weekend. Can you imagine that? Where else in the world can you stroll in one minute from pool to yacht just in time for a steak lunch and a nicely chilled New Zealand Chardonnay? This swimming thing, it’s a tough life.

(From Jane, who edits Swimwatch for the minimal price of nothing: By Christ, that’s a change from the Blue Beast, parked in front of the Flaxmere Aquatic Centre. Can I remind you of how we got to Waipukurau on the day I broke that 200 breaststroke record? I sure as hell don’t remember any yachts ;) In fact, I remember having a can of V in the Blue Beast on the way down from Napier. And true to form, I’m as jealous as all can be! My New Zealand swimming memories are remembered through chlorine burn and the smell of heavy chemicals in the locker rooms. Enjoy yourselves; I’m willing to admit that you deserve it! I’ll just have another martini and look at the Space Needle!)

The Thursday after Fort Lauderdale, Andrew and Skuba head off to Europe for the Mare Nostrum series. They will swim in Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Canet. I’ve been a couple of times before and it is a great series in three wonderful towns. From high up on the French motorway, it is impossible to tire of that first view of Monte Carlo. They call the place a millionaire’s playground and it is a title well earned.

Most of Barcelona, like many of the world’s big cities, is sprawling and ugly. Not as bad as somewhere like Mexico City, but heading in that direction. What Barcelona does have though is a waterfront heart of plazas, arcades, squares, shops and cafes. Barcelona also has a heart of history, reminders of the adventures of Columbus and the struggle of the Catalan people. Canet is one of this world’s truly lovely places. It is a small Mediterranean coastal village, close to Perpignan and the Spanish boarder. Little restaurants sell fantastic French food along a wide sandy beach. It’s just so incredibly French. Old men play boules and smoke pipes and talk about how bad things are in Paris. Young women swim with far too little on for sensitive eyes. Best of all, it’s not on the foreign tourist trail. It’s more a place where the French go to holiday. All this and some of the world’s best swimming. We are looking forward to it.

At the end of all this I am hoping Andrew and Skuba swim well enough in Europe to qualify for the US Trials in Omaha, Nebraska in the first week of July. It is a lofty goal. But that’s a good thing.

So that’s what the next month has in store at our place. James King was right: “Athletics is a trip.”

By Jane and David

David: When we relaunched Swimwatch in 2006, we promised never to abandon it again. Sadly, the past month has been a bit of a fail on our part, as Jane has been traveling the world doing her real job and I’m not good at working the publishing software, as elementary as Jane says it is. To be more accurate, Jane has been in Sydney, Australia, speaking at an SEO and internet marketing conference. She also stopped for a week in Auckland, New Zealand on her way back to Seattle.

Jane: My trip to Australia, whilst having nothing to do with swimming, was an incredible trip down memory lane. The conference I attended (SMX Sydney, for those of you who are into search engine optimisation. What? None of you?) took place in a building at Luna Park. Everyone who’s been swimming in Australia knows that Luna Park is right beside the North Sydney Pool.

In Swimwatch’s opinion, the North Sydney Pool is the greatest swimming pool of all time. I didn’t list it first on my “Best Least Recognised Pools” post, but I would now. I’d forgotten just how fantastic it is. The closest I came to swimming in the pool again was going to dinner at Aqua, a restaurant that now overlooks the pool from the fifty-metre end. As you can see from this picture, taken before the New South Wales swimming championships in early 1996, the restaurant has not always been there. In fact, twelve years ago, it seems that the place was little more than a ratty office. Underneath the white and red striped canopy at the end of the pool now resides one of Sydney’s better restaurants.

This is what is there now.

For anyone else who’s vaguely interested, there are quite a few more of my pictures of the views of the pool on Flickr; this links to the first picture taken at Aqua. One word of warning: it’s probably not good pre-practice food. And don’t drink as much port as I did, either.

David: Jane tells me Auckland has changed in the six years she has been away. Much more impressive, she says, with lots of waterfront cafés selling New Zealand’s increasingly popular wines. Boutique shops are preferred to concrete jungle malls. All that sounds like progress.

Certainly New Zealand’s swimming made progress during the month. They finally won a race that mattered. Moss Burmester won the 200m Butterfly at the World SC Championships in Manchester, England; very well done Moss. Never again will I be able to say that Moss’ coach Jan Cameron has never won a decent championship. The country is still worse off than when Loader, Kingsman, Simcic, Bray, Winter, Langrell and Jeffs were winning medals at similar events, but any win for Cameron is a good win. In his early career, Moss had an excellent coach called Clive Power who clearly laid an important early foundation. Cameron is fortunate to inherit such a well coached product.

I see New Zealand’s sport funding agency, Sparc, hasn’t changed. This time they are writing threatening letters to New Zealand Rugby League telling the sport how to run its affairs. It’s all the usual blackmail, “Do what we say or we will cut off your funding.” They only give the sport about $200,000 a year. I’d tell them to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. It’s hard to have respect for an organisation whose Chief Executive insists on abusing the Queen’s English. His comments on the Rugby League situation include the following gems, “[they need] to put their sport on a proper footing going forwards” and “they need help to move forward by identifying key issues” and, “Sparc would need to consider how justified continuing investment going forward would be.” That “going forward” stuff is all so unnecessary; a sure sign you’re talking to a guy of little substance. The head of New Zealand Rugby League made the issues most telling comment, “They are too powerful to ignore.” Isn’t that the truth? It’s sad though when might replaces right like it has in New Zealand’s sport funding.

While we’ve been away, Swimwatch has continued to receive its share of loony messages. For some reason, one genius decided to have a crack at Jane and wrote the following:

You’re just bitter because you weren’t that fast of a swimmer and are mad at yourself. You could look at the positive things like the amazing work ethic that every swimmer leaves the sport with. Or you could examine yourself and decide whether or not you actually put it all on the line and gave the sport your all. If you had you would have found out things about yourself that you would never find out otherwise.”

Although the comment was “anonymous”, I recognise the writing style and can confirm it is the product of personal failure; a not unusual reaction. For the record, Jane was a four time national open or age group New Zealand record holder, three times national open women’s champion, Division One NCAA Championship qualifier, Caribbean Regional Champion and record holder, Pan Pacific Game’s representative and an Oceania Games silver medalist. In the course of accumulating that record she swam 27,548 kilometers, that’s an average of 53,000 meters every week for 11 years. What sort of insulting, stupid fool says “Or you could examine yourself and decide whether or not you actually put it all on the line and gave the sport your all” to someone who put in that sort of work and achieved those sorts of results? Shame on you, whoever you are.

Here, in Florida, things are pretty normal. The team has just begun their summer racing program. Andrew and Skuba were first and second in the men’s 50m free last weekend at a local meet; a pleasing result for the season’s first race. They will race in four more meets before heading off to the European Mare Nostrum tour and meets in Monte Carlo, Canet and Barcelona. That’s where the big boys come out to play. It will be fun to find out how our two get on. The Americans are an amazingly generous people. They give willingly and without condition. We needed to raise money to help with the cost of going to Europe. The response has been humbling; thank you. Many of the Master’s swimmers are preparing for their triathlon season. Most notably Greg has the Hawaiian Ironman this year. Darcy continues to win her age group in every event she enters. She is an amazing athlete. I guess that’s what 52 looks like these days.

Next weekend our team hosts a Florida Gold Coast Sub JO Meet. That’s the beginning level of competition around here. Through the course of a year all the local clubs share the hosting of one of these events. They are well run and a terrific introduction to swimming competition. The only change I’d like to see are ribbons being given for personal best swims rather than for first, second and third. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against winning and losing. I just think establishing a culture of “I did my best” early in a swimmers career is a good thing.

It’s good to be back.

By David

Swimwatch is a website that primarily concerns itself with swimming matters. Occasionally we have strayed and have discussed the New Zealand All Blacks or world class running. Even more occasionally, we have dabbled in politics and religion. You may recall I wrote a piece supporting Hillary Clinton’s bid to become President. Jane added her support for Barack Obama. However, having now seen more of Obama, I think she may have a point. Certainly the country needs either of them compared to the right wing alternative. The best writing on Swimwatch is the piece Jane did about life in the US Virgin Islands. It’s called Licentious Phoenix. I wish I could write with just a fragment of that feeling and accuracy. But the Swimwatch primary mission is still swimming.

Except this month, when an event occurred that is so despicable, so devoid of all that’s decent; an event so pervasive that its fallout will eventually affect every corner of society, even our watery sphere. Remember this date; on Saturday, March 8 2008, the United States endorsed the use of torture. By signing a veto of the Bill from Congress banning torture President Bush has approved its use. The President brutalized his society.

And it will have an effect. Condoning State violence will eventually affect us all. There will be more murders. More college freshmen will die with a hole in their head. The country that already boasts the world largest prison population will need more cells. “Might is right” has been sanctioned. Someday we will be affected too. Coaches will increasingly accept the philosophy of winning at all costs. If it takes steroids to get it done, why not? Officials with avarice for power will hold hearings and pass verdicts without advising the subject of the hearing. They will disqualify without properly recognizing the right to protest. Parents will punish poor performance. State brutality perverts everyone.

Our State does not call it torture of course, preferring, “Advanced Interrogation Techniques”. I wondered where that abuse of the English language came from. Do you know what I found? This is what I found in Wikipedia.

“The former editor of The New Republic Andrew Sullivan claimed that “enhanced interrogation” bears remarkable resemblance to the techniques the Gestapo called “Verschärfte Vernehmung,” for which some of them faced prosecution after World War II and were “found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death.” Besides the similarity of the practices, the German term “verschärfte Vernehmung” may be translated as “enhanced interrogation”.

A 1948 Norwegian court case described the use of hypothermia identical to the reports from Guantanamo Bay. The defense used by the Nazis for applying the techniques “is almost verbatim that of the Bush administration.” Most notably the concept of unlawful enemy combatant is invoked to justify its implementation on “insurgent prisoners out of uniform”. The now familiar ticking time bomb scenario as a rationale for allowing torture had its precursor in the Gestapo’s “Third degree” measures. But while the Nazis’ interrogative methods were found to be torture, The New York Times writes that the Allies’ methods at the time were far more effective and far less abusive than those the United States uses now.”

It remains to their eternal shame that Clinton and Obama were too busy getting themselves elected, to get back to Washington and vote for the ban-on-torture measure. It goes to show the extent to which our society has already accepted force, pain and evil. But if you think their neglect was bad consider this: John McCain did turn up and voted against the Bill. Six years of being tortured by the citizens of the last country the United States invaded and McCain learned nothing. Whether through their neglect or action, those wanting to guide this nation through the next four years have made a pretty poor start.

But not as bad as the George W. Bush finish. We all know he prides himself on his “Christian” values. It would do him well to read Mathew 7-16: “Ye shall know them by their fruits” or any one of a thousand other New Testament verses counseling mercy ahead of vengeance. Romans 12-19: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, for it is written, Vengeance is mine; saith the Lord.”

Well President Bush, your actions in this event are not Christian or legal. They have brutalized and diminished you and your nation and maybe eventually our sport. For that you are not forgiven. We doubt that St. Peter will be that impressed either.

By Jane

I’ve sort of taking up the position of skeptical retired writer here, and whilst I’m probably perfectly qualified to write about more valuable topics, I quite enjoy bringing the ex-swimmer’s perspective to a blog about swimming commentary.

Yesterday marked the two year anniversary of me quitting swimming. In the first few months afterwards, I began to recognise some things about the sport that are pretty strange, and after having recently attended my first swimming competition (this time as a spectator) since March 2006, I’ve thought of a few more things that are a bit… odd.

1. No surprises here. The cheering.

It’s silly. Very rarely did it get me excited about swimming and most of the time, having to partake in such ridiculous behaviour was just demeaning. And no matter how good of a backside you have, no one looks good doing that. Attending a swim meet recently also proved to me that there’s only one thing worse than being part of these cheers, and that’s watching them. Call me a spoilsport or a bad team member if you will: I’d have rather saved my energy for the 400IM.

2. Warm-up protocol.

Coaches world-wide have the idea that they know how you should warm up for a race. Generally, their ideas are pretty solid, but it’s now beyond me why every swimmer in the world should be able to warm up for a race in some what the same way. The best two races I’ve ever competed in were swum on about 700 meters warm up. I, and my coaches, should have learned something from this.

3. The idea that swimmers never reach the age of 18.

I was 22 when I quit, but plenty of people have carried on swimming far past this age. It’s stunning how swimmers are almost always treated like irresponsible fourteen year olds, well into their twenties and sometimes beyond. It’s a special coach who can treat a team like the adults they often are. If they make childish mistakes, they should have to deal with them like all adults who make childish mistakes.

4. Training camp.

I. Hate. Training camp. Yep, that one is still in the present tense. It will take me a few more years to get over the horror that is training camp. Dress it up any way you like, call it “winter training,” “training trip”, “The University of Randomtown’s Annual Trip to West Palm Beach”, it’s still training camp and it still sucks a lot. I have only ever enjoyed one training camp, and that was when my college team went to Miami.

Miami was made bearable by a few interconnected factors, such as the proximity of Miami to my parents’ house, the training being not quite as deathly hard as during previous years, good weather and the fact that my boyfriend happened to be in town. That was also frowned upon, but contrary to popular belief, my coaches didn’t have any authority over where he spent his holidays.

Training camp was the bane of my existence for my entire swimming career. The above link details some of my objections to it, but I’ll leave you with an image of how damn happy my classmates and I were at the end of training camp, senior year.

5. Making national holidays a living hell.

Following on from training camp nightmares, swimming programmes often take a national holiday (Veterans Day, Queen’s Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, etc) to mean that a miniature training camp should occur. Training will be twice as hard, twice as long and will basically go on all day. Because it’s a national holiday, you’ll be allowed to sleep in until 9am, but practice will take place at 9:30, weights at 12 and another swim workout at 2pm.

Why is this necessary? If it had been up to me, I’d have gone swimming at the usual time (most likely 6am), enjoyed my day off school or work and gone back to the pool at 3:30. As per usual. As opposed to most people, swimmers often dread national holidays. And don’t even get me started on Thanksgiving.

6. Never shaving.

I understand this to a point. It feels great to shave down for a big meet and if you’re a particularly hairy person, the lack of leg hair probably makes a difference when you take it off. I wouldn’t know. But really. Come on. Never shaving your legs is just gross. Upon quitting, I shaved my legs every day for a month, just because I could.

Some coaches and swimmers treat shaving – or not shaving – as a combination of sacrifice, ritual and religious adherence to the groupthink that the team who’s hairy together, wins together. Thinking about shaving your legs for a Christmas party at which you’d love to break out a cute new red cocktail dress? Don’t expect to make your NCAA cut, traitor.

Yuck. Whatever. Give me a razor.

7. Small fins.

Don’t look at me like that. You know the ones. People call them “zoomers.” Those little fins that are barely bigger than your feet:

Some people swear by them, but I can’t stand them. To me, they achieve nothing but negating all feel of the water I have with my feet. Everyone knows about the talent associated with manual feel of the water – the ability to put your hand into the water and just know what to do with it. Feet are the same, and shoving them into zoomers is a sure-fire way to render a functioning pair of legs totally useless. I kicked slower with zoomers.

8. Training for punishment’s sake.

Most swimmers have had this happen. You are given a set with time constraints. If you don’t make certain times for certain intervals, you’re forced to do more and more until you complete the whole set. Obviously, you get tireder and thus reaching the required speeds becomes harder.

This is ridiculous. I don’t know (read: doubt) if any coaches read this, but please, for the love of God, don’t partake in this idiocy. I’ve known swimmers’ entire seasons to be ruined by these sets. Training shouldn’t necessarily be a constant enjoyment, but it should never be a punishment.

9. Long course snobbery.

This isn’t quite the problem in the United States that it is elsewhere, solely due to the high school and NCAA, twenty-five yard system. We get to watch world-beaters take short course swimming very seriously. In various other countries, namely the United Kingdom and Australia, there are people who’d have you believe a short course world record was worth less than a participation ribbon at a long course chocolate fish carnival.

Bite me. There is no good reason why a great swim in a twenty-five meter or yard pool is not as valid as a great swim in a fifty-meter pool. Do not tell me about which prestigious swim meets take place in fifty meter pools; it makes no difference to the legitimacy of good short course performances.

10. The following disqualification rules.

Some race rules baffle me:

1. Thou shalt not kick on one’s front when completing a backstroke turn. This isn’t an NCAA violation, only a FINA rule. Turning onto your front and kicking into a wall during a backstroke race is a fantastic way to slow down. That it’s against the rules in FINA but not banned in NCAA competition speaks to its pointlessness.
2. Thou shalt not move on the blocks. We’ve discussed this one before, questioning whether or not it really is a rule. However, I always found that being unsteady on the blocks was a disadvantage. Not only this, but I could never see my competitors, so it didn’t matter to me whether or not they were moving.

Whether you agree with me or not, I’m sure there are other ridiculous swimming rules, norms, traditions and phenomena that its participants don’t understand. I’d love to know where some of these originated, but at the same time, I’m pretty sure they’ll never change.