Welcome to Perth!

Perth is an insanely clean city. The cleanliness starts at the airport and never seemed to end. That was the impression I had of the city in the midst of Karen and I trying to get back on schedule. As you know from the previous post, Australian Travel, we missed our flight. Everything worked out except for the minor detail that we were supposed to meet the rest of the team at the Perth airport to head to the Stadium to get our credentials. Oh yeah and there was the tiny detail of the room being in Karen's name so they couldn't check in without her.

The two of us caught a cab and rushed to Challenge Stadium with no idea how to find anyone else. Karen had international texting added to her phone, but it wasn't working. Thanks, Sprint! There was no way for us to contact anyone else. As with everything else thus far, God worked it all out.

As we pull into the Stadium, I happened to glance around and who should be standing at the shuttle stop? You got it. The rest of the team. Everybody was there waiting to get the shuttle to the hotel. Karen yelled out the window to catch their attention.

We still had to get our credentials. Jenni ran over to show us where to go in hopes that we'd be finished in the next few minutes to catch the shuttle with everyone else. No such luck. The Aussies are really nice. They're also really chatty. Needless to say, we missed that shuttle.

Lea and Dawn caught it, but left Sylvia behind with Jenni's bags to wait for us. The next shuttle wasn't due for an hour so Jenni and I made the most of it.



This is the sign at the entry. You can see the stadium in the distance.



The other side of the sign with less shadow.




This sculpture is part of the fountain at the entrance.



Jenni seated at the fountain in front of the stadium.



This is the view looking away from the stadium.

So from just these few pictures you can see what I mean about the city. Incredibly clean.

After our mini photo shoot, we headed back to Karen and Sylvia who were trying to figure out how to get to the hotel without waiting for the next shuttle. Jenni, who is simply brilliant, thought to get a map of Perth from the airport so we put our heads together to piece together a travel plan.

We hopped on the next bus with all of our luggage (which caused the bus to leave some folks behind...) and headed off to the train station where we were told we'd be able to take the train to downtown Perth. After only one bus and a train, we'd finally made it into Perth.

Karen made the executive decision to send Jenni and I to the info desk at the train station to figure out where we needed to go from there. After being assured that the next bus we needed would stop, "right over there," Jenni and I headed back upstairs to relay this delightful news to Karen and Sylvia.

Unfortunately, "right over there" never seemed to materialize as we traipsed through the train station, across a glassed in walkway, around a mall (yes, a mall) and back down to the street with all of our luggage. We'd covered two levels of the same block nearly in its entirety.

Down at the street again, we looked up to see the bus stop...on the level we'd just left. With no clear direction regarding how to get back up there, we set off down the block then up a steep hill to the sign. Thankfully, the bus arrived within three minutes and we were able to take a load off for a moment.

Now that we'd found the bus, getting to our hotel was embarrassingly easy. In fact, it stopped right in front of our home for the week. Go figure.

So a mere two and half hours after leaving Challenge Stadium we finally made it to our destination. Thankfully, we were far from disappointed with the Mounts Bay Waters Apartments Hotel.

Australian Travel

At long last, April 16, 2008 arrived and I was all set to head to Perth, Australia for the 2008 World Masters Championships. Well, more or less, anyway.

I got to LAX with plenty of time to check in and make my way through security then on to the gate. Having heard Karen's story about the swimmer whose luggage didn't make it on the plane, I carried all important swim gear on the plane with me. Just in case...

I didn't seem like I was at the gate for very long before the plane started boarding. I don't know how I managed to sit calmly and wait for my section to be called. I was sooo ready to go. Before long, I saw Karen in the line and went to join her. Had no idea we were on the same flight leaving L.A. We chatted until we got on the plane then headed for our separate seats. And sat. And sat.

We were waiting for another passenger to arrive from another flight. I was sitting in the middle. The lady in the window seat and I were getting excited that the aisle seat was still open. No sooner had I moved to it than the woman we'd been waiting for boarded and claimed that space. Oh well.

The flight was just over 14 hours and it didn't bother me at all. I think I was still too excited. I slept a little bit and watched three movies I hadn't seen yet. Before I knew it, we were landing in Brisbane, Australia.

Karen and I cleared customs in Brisbane. Well, Karen cleared them, I got sniffed out by a dog. Qantas had given us a snack pack during the flight. As that had been my sleeping period, I kinda just stuffed it in my backpack without looking inside. Of course there was a pack of dried fruit inside that the dog smelled. They confiscated it and wrote something on my customs card, then sent me on my way.

I was happy to see that my checked bags made it as well. After answering questions about what type of water I'd used my SCUBA gear in previously, the Aussies allowed us into their country.

Karen and I rushed for the train to take us to the domestic terminal. Unfortunately, we were already on the train before Karen learned from another passenger (I swear the woman never meets a stranger) that we could've rechecked our luggage back at customs so we wouldn't have to lug them over to the domestic terminal. This little bit "didn't know" came back to bite us in the butt when we didn't get to the domestic terminal in time to check our bags. We missed our connection to Perth.

Everything worked out fine since Qantas was able to put us on the next flight that left about an hour later. We hung out in the airport and chatted. I was excited to see that my favorite restaurant, Burger King, is Hungry Jacks in Australia. Love the home of the Whopper!

We headed to the gate where Karen worked on her solo without too many strange looks from other passengers wondering what that strange woman is doing in the corner. Before we knew it, we were on the plane and off to Perth.

Y'ouch!!

So, I've taken the plunge (not quite literally) and purchased my plane ticket for the meet today. I was really hoping it would be cheaper, but God made a way for the $1985.69 purchase.

Hotel - done
Ticket - done
Visa - done
Passport - done
Meet Registration - welllll
Food - Hmmmm

Okay, so there's one final important detail to handle. And the registration is due within the next few days. Yippee! Capital One has never gotten so many payments out of me in one month. But They don't charge fees to change international currency so Capital One it is. I gotta save money somewhere.

As for the food, I have another month or so to cross that bridge. Wish me luck that I don't fall off!

Until next time!

Figures: Porpoise

Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations can be found in the appendix of FINA Rule Book.

Now, let’s learn the second required element of the tech routine.

The Porpoise

Unlike the walkover, where you may have another way to begin the figure, you have to start the porpoise from a front layout.

Let’s begin from the canoe scull. As you can see from the illustration below, lay flat on your stomach with your neck arched so your head is above the water. Press up on your heels to keep your feet at the surface. Your hands will be flexed at the wrist like you’re pushing something away. Actually you will be pushing the water away as you scull under your hips with fingertips pointed on an angle to the bottom of the pool. You should travel forward in this position.

To assume the front layout position, extend your neck to gently lay your face in the water. Next, slide your hands forward until they are in front of your head and angling toward the bottom of the pool at about a 45° angle. Cup your hands like cobra heads and scull in and out in what’s called an Alligator or Russian scull. You should look like the below illustration and traveling forward.



To pike, bend only at your hips while reaching forward. Your hands should barrel scull over your head like you’re trying to knock a top hat off as one coach describes it. The scull keeps your momentum going as you pike. This is important because you want your hips to replace your head. Your ending position will look like this:



Notice where your hands end. As you pike, you’ll pull your arms in and down to your sides. Your palms will be up (relative to you) like you’re holding a tray. They will scull in and out in Support Scull.

If you’ve read the walkover post, you’ll note that the take down to the pike position is exactly the same as it is for this figure. Now we’re ready for the difference.

Instead of lifting one leg as you did for the walkover, you’re going to lift both legs at the same time to a vertical position like this:


To hit the vertical, you have to make sure that you start with a good pike. Many people tend to over pike. This means that your hips have passed your head so you’re no longer in an “L” shape, but more of a “V.” If you lift your legs from this position, you’ll end up on your back and you’ll descend at an angle if you’re able to keep from flopping all the way over. This is why you want to hit a good pike position.

To lift your legs, it’s a little easier to start from a paddle scull. Reach your hands in front of you and drop your wrists a little bit. Alternating hands, use a bicycle (or paddle like) motion as you lift your legs by contracting the muscles in your butt.

As your legs get higher, pull your arms in to your sides and begin to support scull. You won’t need too many paddle sculls before you need to switch. Pay attention to your body instead of worrying about timing. When you have the “oh crap” moment, that’s when you switch.

When you hit the top, the moment your body is the highest you can get it and the straightest, all you have to do is descend. If you need a fast descend and you’re not especially buoyant, you can stop sculling. This does not mean that you relax your body. You have to keep your core tight all the way down or the figure will collapse.

If you are really buoyant (like me) turn your hands over and do a head first scull down. The figure is over once your toes are under.



Once your toes are under bring your knees to your chest and tuck out of the vertical and surface. There are a couple reasons for this. First, it gets your legs under you pretty quickly so you can continue swimming the same direction you were before. Second, it stops you from piking out of it and relaxing your core before the figure is finished. You lose major points if you don’t do the complete figure.

And there you have it! Your first porpoise. The complete figure looks like this:










Happy Swimming!!

Basics: Foot First Scull

Now that you’ve learned the Head First Scull, let’s put a twist on it and go Foot First instead.

As you did with the Head First, start in your back layout.



Make sure that your head and hips are all in line on the surface of the water and your toes are pointed. Your chin should be back and your shoulders relaxed. Your elbows are bent slightly and your hands are at your hips.

To scull, flex your wrists so that your palms are slightly cupped from your wrists. Keeping your shoulders relaxed, move your arms gently in and out with your elbows. Your hands should reach slightly under your hips as you scull in and out, this time leading with your fingertips. Again, your hands will make gentle figure eights as you move.

This scull takes a little more work to keep your toes on the surface. As you scull, you might notice that you have the tendency to drop your hips. When you do that you make the scull harder because your butt is literally dragging.

To correct this, squeeze your butt to press your hips back to the surface. You’ll also note that your hands have more room to work when your butt is out of the way.

Another problem you’ll note is that your toes will tend to submerge. Tighten the muscles in your upper thighs to pull them up. Until your body is stronger, you’ll notice that it’s difficult to press your hips up and keep your toes up at the same time. No worries. Just keep working on it until you build the strength in both your core and your thighs.

Before you know it you’ll be skimming across the surface of the water with your toes leading the way! Just be careful when you get to the end of the pool. You don’t want to skin your toes on the pool wall. Trust me. It’s happened before and it’s not fun.

Happy Swimming!!!

Perth Update

Last time, I was beginning the frantic journey to raise $3,000 to go to the swim meet in Perth. Through a combination of magazine sales, article submissions, cookie sales and flat out donations, I've raised a little over 1/6 of the cost. Whoo hoo!!!

That, combined with a slight pay raise, a second job, a tax refund and the grace of God, I'm going to make it. I'm taking everything a step at a time. So far, I've paid for the hotel, renewed my passport and got a visa to enter the country (my first Australian purchase! Yeah!). In the next few weeks, I pray I'll be able to get the plane ticket and I have to register for the meet itself. After that, once I get there, I'll worry about food.

In my research to keep costs down I learned that Visa/Mastercard tend to charge extra fees for currency exchange. So travelers beware. Still, it's cheaper to use a credit card because bank exchange rates tend to be more favorable than ones for consumers. And I found that Capital One does not charge these fees. Still, while I'm there, I'd like to use Australian currency. Since I have checking and savings with Citibank here in the States, I'll be able to use their branch in Perth to get currency without the exorbitant fees changers charge. Who knew being a Citi customer would be so beneficial?

So if you're planning any type of international travel, I highly recommend that you get a credit card from Capital One and open an account with Citibank.

And that's it for now.

Happy swimming!!

Perth, Australia!!!

Okay, so we're back in the water again after a couple months of rest and I find Perth nearly upon us.

The 2008 World Masters Championship is scheduled for Perth this coming April. And boy do I want to go! The finances have been pretty shaky since the fire, but I've got to find a way to make it over there.

Two of my teammates have finally decided to go and of course want to do our Santa Baby Trio. They keep saying that they'll only go if I go. Talk about no pressure! Then there's the whole coach's daughter thing who heard we were thinking of going and got so excited that she scheduled us for extra practice with her!!! Considering she was one duet partner away from the Olympics this is definitely big news.

So in the course of one weekend, my Perth plans snowballed from a tenative "want to go" to "have to go or the world Will ENd AS WE KNOW IT" kind of thing.

Okay, so here's my fundraising plan.

I'm publishing articles on Helium. You can access my Articles page through this link:
http://www.helium.com/user/show_articles/324833

Enjoy the articles and help me get to Perth so the world doesn't end.

No Detergent Please!!

Have you ever wondered why there are always signs posted about wearing proper swim attire when you go to the pool? They even go as far as mentioning that no underwear is allowed beneath your proper swim attire. What gives?

I always assumed that the underwear portion at least was because all undies may not be as clean as desired in a public pool. The rest of it just puzzled me. Until last week!

It’s not a cleanliness issue at all. It’s a pool maintenance issue. Apparently, when you wear regular clothes in a pool, the chemicals react badly with the particles of laundry detergent that are still attached to the fabric. When these chemicals get together, they form another compound that algae love to feed on. When you feed the algae, it naturally grows. Before you know it, algae will take over the pool. Who wants to swim in a pool of algae? Ick!

So don’t wash anything you swim in with laundry detergent. In fact, the detergent is too harsh for most swim wear anyway. I used to hand wash my suits with shampoo as soon as I took them off. Now I’ve gotten lazy and shampoo them in my washing machine then hang them to dry. It works quite well!

Happy swimming!!!

Basics: Head First Scull

Sculls are the foundation of all the figures. Without learning to properly do the sculls that each figure calls for, you’ll find that the figure will be less than successful. So let’s learn some sculls! We’ll start with the Head First Scull.

Start in your back layout.



Make sure that your head and hips are all in line on the surface of the water and your toes are pointed. Your chin should be back and your shoulders relaxed. Your elbows are bent slightly and your hands are at your hips.

To scull, flex your wrists so that your palms point towards your feet. Keeping your shoulders relaxed, move your arms gently in and out with your elbows. Finally, as you move your elbows slightly turn your hands so you lead with your wrists as your arms go in and out. You’ll note that your hands will make gentle figure eights as you move.

It’ll take some getting used to and some flexibility in your wrists, but you’ll note that you’re moving Head First!

Keep working to make the scull as fast as possible. You can do that by doing laps. Keeping a proper body alignment will help the speed with which you'll cross the pool as well as tighten your much needed core muscles. Still, keep working. You need to build the muscles in your arms for when you’re ready to try the ballet leg, flamingo and double ballet leg figures. Without strength built from this scull, you won’t have a chance of holding a leg in the air.

Trust me. I know.

Happy Swimming!!!

Learning Routines

To begin the season this year, our coach sat each team down so we could select completely new music and write new routines. Because the routines were such a work in progress and underwent so many changes on what seemed to be a week to week basis, it was difficult to learn them.

The way our team overcame this obstacle was to designate a secretary. Actually, she kind of designated herself. She wrote out the routines for her own reference then very graciously shared it with the rest of us.

It turned out to be exactly what we needed. By the time we'd hit the fifth revision of the first half of the tech our heads would've been spinning with trying to remember what we changed and what we changed back etc.

The weekly routine draft allowed us to keep everything straight. It had an added benefit of keeping everyone on the right count. It was easier to question and correct counts when you could see them on paper rather than just trying to hear them while land drilling.

There are a couple ways to write out the routine.

First:
Close to front layout 1-2, Pike 3-4, lift left leg to crane 5-6, Open to split 7-8

or:
1 – Rt bent knee
2 – Lft bent knee
3 – Rt bent knee
4 – Hold
5 – Rt ballet leg
6 - Hold

It all depends on what's easier for you to read. I happen to prefer the former, I suspect because that's the first way I ever saw a routine written. I also found that it uses less paper.

If you can get a routine down on no more than two sheets of paper, you can put it in a gallon sized plastic bag and take it to the pool with you without worrying about getting it wet. I've found that the One Zip bags work best because the paper fits inside perfectly.

Happy swimming!!

Figures: Front Walkover

Front Walkover

In routines, you may have another way to begin the walkout, but for our purposes, we’ll start with a Canoe Scull.

As you can see from the illustration below, lay flat on your stomach with your neck arched so your head is above the water. Press up on your heels to keep your feet at the surface. Your hands will be flexed at the wrist like you’re pushing something away. Actually you will be pushing the water away as you scull under your hips with fingertips pointed on an angle to the bottom of the pool. You should travel forward in this position:

To assume the front layout position, extend your neck to gently lay your face in the water. Next, slide your hands forward until they are in front of your head and angling toward the bottom of the pool at about a 45° angle. Cup your hands like cobra heads and scull in and out in what’s called an Alligator or Russian scull. You should look like the below illustration and traveling forward.



To pike, bend only at your hips while reaching forward. Your hands should barrel scull over your head like you’re trying to knock a top hat off as one coach describes it. The scull keeps your momentum going as you pike. This is important because you want your hips to replace your head. Your ending position will look like this:

Notice where your hands end. As you pike, you’ll pull your arms in and down to your sides. Your palms will be up (relative to you) like you’re holding a tray. They will scull in and out in Support Scull.

Now you’re ready to lift your first leg. While in support scull, make sure your toe is pointed and lift the leg up and over your body. There are actually two positions here.

First the crane which you’ll pass through…



…to finish with the split: Notice that your hands never leave support scull. When you’re just beginning, it’s natural to let your hands flail over your head during this figure to regain your balance. Try to control them. Flailing only makes things worse and will cause you to travel when you should be stationary.

Another thing that could happen when you reach this position is that you tip back and forth. This is caused by not extending through your legs. While in the split position, make sure you stretch like you’re trying to touch both walls with your toes.

Something else to be aware of in this position is to make sure that your head is directly under your hips. Your walkout will be much more successful when all you have to worry about is getting the leg into position and not your whole body.

Time to lift the second leg. While still in support scull, stretch the toe on your back leg toward the side of pool a bit harder then lift it up and over your body. This time you’ll have three positions.

First the Knight or Aurora position:



Then the surface arch:

Finally, the back layout:

Note that your hands should still be in support scull while in the Aurora position. After your leg passes vertical, your hands should sweep behind you. Note their position during the surface arch.

While in the surface arch you’ll need to be aware of your leg position. If you’re not super flexible, you will have the tendency to roll the hip of your first leg out a little bit to get more stretch. As you lift the second leg over, be sure to roll your hip back in line or you’ll exit the figure at an angle. Both hips should be flat on the surface once you hit your surface arch position.

From there, you roll your torso up one vertebra at a time until your body is flat on the surface in a back layout. Your hands are over head and flexed like they were in the canoe scull, but this time you’ll be doing a torpedo scull.

And there you have it! Your first front walkover. The complete figure looks like this:

Happy Swimming!!

Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations can be found in the appendix of the FINA Rule Book. http://www.fina.org/rules/english/synchro.php