2019 Open water kickoff - two open water swims this weekend

I texted Chad re: swimming in Pineview last week and he mentioned that it was still a little cold, but he was open to go for it.  I looked up the temp online and it showed 55 degrees!  Woah!  So on Saturday, 6/15/19 I went with Cathi and Oliver up to Pineview to take a temp reading.

It came up as 62 degrees.  Much better.  I tried to convince Oli to swim with me at least out to the first buoy east of Windsurfer beach, but the water was too cold for him.  The water was way high.  It was only a few feet from the bottom stair down from the parking lot.  I set Cathi up with a camp chair and she and Oliver watched (along with about a dozen other people hanging out in that area playing), while I swam.

I went a little bit further, but then realized that I didn't lock the car and the parking lot was a zoo of people.  Didn't want anything to get taken so I called Cathi on my watch and told her to please lock the car.  I figured I had gone enough and turned back.

Once I got about 50 yards from shore, Oliver was there with a big smile on his face and he wanted to race to the shore.  I had to push it faster than my normal pace to beat that little kid. The little stink wasn't even wearing goggles, and was swimming water polo style.  I couldn't help laugh while I was swimming. 

It was a ton of fun and I'm ready to start swimming here on a weekly basis.

I texted Chad and he was at Jordanelle and sent me a pic of his thermometer reading 60 degrees even.

So the plan is to swim together at Jordanelle on Monday morning....

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Jordanelle

Got up at 4:30 to get on the road in time to meet Chad at 6:00am.  Got there and Chad and Josh were there!  Chad brought a friend too, Zack.  I couldn't get over how high the water was.  It was basically at the top of the boat ramp.  Last time I was here it was about 25-30 yard walk down the ramp to get to the water's edge!  We had all agreed to do a 15 minute in and 15 minute back swim. About a mile.

What? My avg heart rate was
104?  Man, I'm sandbagging I guess!

When I got to the water, I started the wade in.  Yes it was cold, but not unbearably so.  I kept on going in to my waist. Didn't stop and got up to my shoulders, neck, and started some breaststroke.  I was a little freaked that I WASN'T affected by the cold. I didn't hyperventilate, and it felt fine. After about a minute of breaststroke I saw the other guys coming in and swimming towards me in freestyle.  That's when I started off. I knew I'd get passed pretty quickly.  I'm still pretty slow. 

Once I got to the red buoy, Josh was there and passed me.  We turned and went along the white buoy line and Chad and Zack passed.  I never felt any kind of numbness from the cold. It felt quite refreshing.  I knew that 15 minutes in and 15 minutes back was gonna be cake.  And it was.

When we got to the turnaround point, we chatted for a bit, and turned around.  I was feeling great and the water quality was awesome!  The recovery was easy.  I hardly did any shaking at all in the drive in to work. I definitely want to come here once a week!

Monument to Lynn Kubasek

Cathi informed me recently, "We should name your pool, you spend so much time in it.  What should we name it?"  I'm not into naming objects, as it just doesn't make sense to me.  Pets, fine. Non living objects?  Not so much.

But in the process of thinking of forcing myself to come up with names, I remembered Lynn Kubasek and the kind of person she was.  I first heard of Lynn via Steven Munatones' openwatersource.com video in April 2011.  Here's the original experience.

Here's the full interview that captured my attention:



When I watched her tell her story and love for swimming, I fell in love with that down to earth sweet personality and had to meet her in person.  I was quite star-struck when I attended Jamie Patrick's swim camp and was able to swim along side her and spend the week at swim camp with her and many other open water legends.

Lynn came out to Salt Lake and raced the Antelope Island to Blackrock races in 2014, and shared in the adventure of swimming an open water marathon distance in the Great Salt Lake!

Then when my time came to swim Catalina, she made an effort to be my observer, which she did.  Her presence there was very reassuring and comforting. And when I finished the swim and got back to the boat she was there to hand me a burrito and make sure that I was comfortable and cared for.

She compiled her own video log of that swim she observed: https://youtu.be/BuJd1Gvz2Dg

When I heard of her cancer diagnosis it was only a few weeks until I heard that she had passed away. My father died of the same type of cancer.
Some of the dearest people in the world are taken far too early from this disease!

When Kelly Gneiting made his Anacapa attempt, Lynn also was the observer for that swim and I was able to spend time with her on that trip as well.

One thing she did during swim camp was bring a Wilson volleyball and put goggles on it and take pictures of it in the open water at some of her swims. Her Facebook page often had other pics of Wilson at various open water locations. It was pretty entertaining to me.

So I'm happy to now have a monument dedicated to her to permanently in my endless pool, to float alongside me in the current & eddies and every time it bumps into me it will push me to keep on going.  Love you Lynn!

2019 GSLOW race

This morning, Lucy, Sam and I went paddling for the swimmers in the 1 mile in the GSLOW race.

It was a little breezy at 7:30 when we got there but by 8 it calmed down pretty good.  It was a nice day for a swim.

Senthil and his daughter helped bring up the rear with the last swimmer. 

Sam is such a good sport. He doesn't complain at this age when I ask him to help me do stuff like this.  What a good kid.  He was a great paddler!

Sam posing from a distance!

Utah Open Water legend, Jim Hubbard rounds the final buoy.

Three young girls did the 1 mile.  That's some hardcore swimmers there. 

Anna-Marie Forest won her category (assisted). She's always up for these open water adventures!









I got my crusty salt fix for the day all over my pants and boots.  Felt good to come home and jump in the hot tub.  I'm ready for a nap and I didn't even swim!  I'm excited to get my own swim in the evening.

Summary of May

Today was my last swim of the month. This month has been fraught with pool leak issues, rainy weather, and tasks with the back yard.

	Total Time In Endless in hours	Total Estimated Distance  in miles
	7.98	16.34
Date	Time Spent in minutes	Estimated Distance in Yards
5/31/2019	40	2400
5/30/2019	10	650
5/29/2019	30	1800
5/28/2019	35	2000
5/27/2019	60	3600
5/25/2019	30	1800
5/24/2019	30	1800
5/23/2019	30	1800
5/22/2019	30	1800
5/20/2019	30	1800
5/15/2019	49	3000
5/6/2019	45	2700
5/2/2019	30	1800
5/1/2019	30	1800

This month I helped 3 up and coming sprint triathletes with some swim technique advice, and helped Oliver, Sam and Isaac as well. So it's been a great month!

Go Pro suction cupped to the floor mirror.

Most of the swims were in sets of 15 minutes, but I had a few that were sprint/distance reps that were programmed into the Fit@Home app.  Here's a summary listing of the various workouts I've got programmed:

Tomorrow morning I head to the GSL to help Josh and Chad with the race.  I have some friends from work coming. Hopefully we get every kayak filled and the race is successful.  Good luck swimmers!

Ferris Bueller - "I Can't Swim"

I remember watching this movie as a kid: Wargames. It was one of my favorites as I was fascinated with computers, and I also appreciated that it included a swimming reference:




It makes me happy to help people get to the point where they feel safe in the water.  And even more when they take their drive beyond into real competence and skilled!

If you, or someone you know would like some lessons and practice time swimming, let me know!  I don't charge anything. Just encourage membership in the Salt Lake Open Water Swim club.

The Pool is complete!

I finished the insulation and skirting around the pool.  The temperature control display is embedded into the front panel. I assembled a lifetime shed for all the pool cleaning gear.  I bought the pavers for the outside edge of the patio.  But the pool itself is 100% Except for the issue with the lights not running while the pool is operating.  Need to follow up on that one.

So far, I've put in 4 1/2 hours swimming in the pool and each time I'm thrilled with the experience.  I just watched this video clip about the amount of pee in the typical community pool.  It's scary.

One thing I don't have to deal with.  I definitely don't pee in MY pool.  I admit when I was in a lap pool, I didn't care. I guess it's a bit of a reflection on socialism. "It really isn't my pool, it's shared, so I don't give a crap." But with my pool, I'm obsessive about it's cleanliness and upkeep, so if I have to pee I'll get out.  I've reminded my kids with the hot tub to do the same. No guarantees with the kids, but at least they know that if they get caught Hell will follow.

Here is a quick time lapse of this morning's 30 minute swim (2 sets of 15 minute swims at 1:30 pace), wrapped up into one minute:



Gonna take the weekend off, to let my shoulders rest. Then Monday I'm gonna go for an hour swim (2 miles). Which will be a new PR for the year.

SLOW Service project and skirting the endless

Today I met Chad, Josh, Gustavo at the marina with their various family members for a trash pickup.  It was rainy this morning, but just overcast for the cleanup.  Which meant the mosquitos came out and they were out for blood.  I had some grabbers which made it easier to get down into the cracks of the big rocks.

It was fun to catch up with Chad a bit.

When I got home I started working on the skirting of the pool and got quite a bit done.  Got about 1/2 the pool skirting completed.  Can't wait to have it completed!

We put round up on the back yard cause we are starting over with fresh sod.  When the backyard is done it'll look profesh!

Boats and Pools

You know what they say about boats right?

Boats are a money pit

Well what is the inverse of a boat?  A Pool

Instead of keeping water out, we're trying to keep water in.  Well this past week I've been dealing with water leaks.  Fortunately I haven't spent a ton of money on figuring it out, but I did get to the bottom of it.

What happened is the installed motor system is attached to the edge of the pool through the liner "above the water line".  Well I took off the shell of the motor system, and sure enough the screws holding it all to the edge of the pool is actually BELOW the water line.  So the installer told me to keep the water line too high.  The water depth needs to be below the top of the system.

At any rate, I've figured out what's causing the leak, so I got everything reassembled and went for swim tonight, keeping the water depth lower than the screws.  More later on how I can prevent water from still making its way through those points in the liner.

But tonight's swim was kinda tough.  I'm definitely not in swimming shape.  I set up a workout on the app where I did 4 sets of 800 with 1 minute rest between each.

Estimated distance: @3000 yards with 49 minutes of swimming

Looking forward to consistent workouts now that I have a functional pool.

My first recorded swim

I'm keeping record of all my endless pools in a separate tab on my recorded swims.  They can't really account for actual mileage since it's just an estimate. But I can record the time spent, and the estimated distance as a separate metric.

My first impressions of Endless Pool

Pros:

• The full length mirror bottom is awesome. The test pool I swam in didn't have that and my vision of what mine would be like was spot on.  The best upgrade by far.
• The swim current feels natural and I was glad I got the upgraded High Performance version. It boasts a max pace of :56/100yds.  Plenty fast for me.  
• I can control the pool with my phone using fit@home app.  
• I can monitor and raise the temp of the pool from anywhere using my Gecko in.touch app.  

Cons:

• The programmable features of the fit@Home app is pretty wimpy.  It doesn't allow me to export/import from XML, which would be sweet! I have to use the app itself to create workouts, and the app doesn't allow me to create "set groups" for me to copy and alter. I have to create every single set from scratch. 
• The endless controller reminds me of a very simple 8th grade electronics student experiment. On/Off and Up and Down buttons.  That's it.  But with me using my phone instead, it doesn't really matter.  But it's not a great first impression looking at that controller.
• The security cover is definitely not a source of significant heat retention.  If the overnight low is below 60, you're better off putting a layer of poly foam to retain the heat.  The heater for the pool isn't super fast.  It takes a while for it raise that temperature.  If I were to do this purchase over, I would have gotten a hard top cover that includes insulation, similar to what I have for my hot tub.
• I'm worried that the middle of summer, the sun will heat the pool too much and it'll be too hot to swim in.  The pool includes a heater, not a cooler.  So I need to get a sun tent to keep the sun off it in the middle of the day, PRONTO!  As you can see, I keep the pool at an ideal 74 (for now), and it's at 79 degrees.  

A couple of unresolved issues as of now.  I will mark these as completed, once I get them fixed:

1. There is a leak. I'm losing about 1/2" of water over 24 hours.  I suspect the lights, but I'll need to troubleshoot this further.  Good thing though is I have an extended warranty, so worst case scenario I get a new liner free of charge.
2. The lights don't work the same time as the current.  What's the point of having lights if I can't swim with them on, only have them on when the current is off?  I called DC, and he claimed I needed a whole new electrical line to operate the heater/light system at the same time as the current.  A call to endless customer support revealed that isn't true.  They asked me to send a picture of the electrical connections and they'll help me get them up and running.  We'll see....

What if...

• Endless Pools should get an Amazon Alexa App integration, so I can yell out "Alexa, tell Endless to slow down!" which I can configure to mean to slow the pace by 5 seconds per 100.
• Apple produced a waterproof version of an iPad.  My phone is waterproof, but iPads currently are not.  I'd love to be able to position an iPad to the edge of the pool for me to see the stats. Get with the program apple! Get those iPads waterproof and I'll get one. Until then, I'm stuck using my waterproof iPhone8 as the controller.