Internal Mono(b)log

This morning, as part 2 of my review (part 1 found here) I wore a Nineteen Wetsuits Frequency suit for my 1.5 hr Monday morning swim. Want to get some odd looks, don a full wetsuit in the YMCA changeroom at 5:45am and head for the pool. You’re guaranteed to get at least 1 snicker, a couple of smirks and several questions 🙂 All good fun!

As with my show-room review, the suit went on well, zipped cleanly and the leash nicely stowed away into the leash pocket. Upon entering the pool, my worst fears of the morning swim were realized: the water was warm, very warm. Fortunately I always bring a bottle with Amino Vital or some other product along, so I’d at least be able to slake my thirst :).

In the water, the suit felt amazing. I put it through every test I could think of short of doggie paddling:

• Did 1.5 hrs of mostly Total Immersion style free-style, but mixed it up with some breast-stroke, back-stroke, butterfly, skulling, treading water, mid-water sprint starts, sighting, and under-water swimming.
• In the 18m YMCA pool, there were also many many turns: did some as flip turns, some as touch turns (my normal) and even threw in some dolphining in the shallow end.
• When I got out of the pool, I did a T1 suit-peal to see how the wet suit comes off. 20ish seconds. Not bad. I was happy with it 🙂

This suit, so far, is the bomb! I haven’t yet found anything negative to report about it, and trust me I’m trying. Ok, perhaps a slight (insignificant item): during touch turns, the suit would occasionally gulp a bit of water around the neck seam. The elasticity of the torso flushed it right away, so it really was a non-issue (in fact in the very warm pool, it was a bit of a relief). I may not have had the neck closed properly at the back and this didn’t happen when swimming, just when I was tap-turning at the ends of the pool (occasionally), so… like I said… non-issue.

Tomorrow I leave for Atlanta for a week. I’ve found a YMCA not far from the hotel to keep my swims in place. I’m taking the suit with me in the hopes that I can get in an OW swim session in some cool water for part 3 of this review series. If you’re in Atlanta and know where I can go to OW swim, please reach out and let me know. You’re also more than welcome to tag along!

Stay tuned. 🙂

Draw cancelled due to lack of interest.

Oh my goodness there’s so much going on right now! It’s awesome, daunting, and massively fun!!!

1st and Foremost! Last night I was up a Nineteen Wetsuits. I met Steve Fleck and picked up an evaluation Frequency wetsuit. I’ll be trying it out over the next couple of weeks and will be posting my thoughts here, so stay tuned. Some initial thoughts below…

2nd: This weekend is the Toronto International Bike show. Thankfully for my bank account, this show, for me, is mostly about window-dressing and window-shopping. I’ll be looking for some small accessory deals, but in terms of bike, wheels, etc. I’m super happy with where I am now, so I won’t be leaving a great deal of cash behind at the show. *phew*! If you want to go drool over some of the nicest and newest bikes on the market, this is the show for you. Maybe I’ll see you there. Definitely will follow-up my visit with a blog post or 2.

3rd: My Finis tempo trainer and a drag chute arrived in the mail this week. Both devices to spice up my swim workouts. The tempo trainer should be an interesting addition for me. I usually listen to music and find my stroke cadence syncs up with whatever I’m listening to (so I tend to listen to 140+ bpm electronic music), so having a waterproof metronome may be a useful way to crank up my stroke cadence for tempo sets. The drag chute may be a solution to the “lane is filled with slow swimmers” problem, that I encounter so often. I’m hopeful that with the chute, I can work on my strength while slowing myself down and not constantly being frustrated by having my hands in their feet and not being given space to pass. We’ll see 😉

Finally: Travel. On Tuesday I leave for Pycon 2011 in Atlanta. The weather there compared to here (mid-teen’s C vs freezing here) makes Atlanta look like a tropical get-away location 🙂 I’ll definitely be running while there. In fact, I’m in the JLA Shamrock 10k run on the 13th. I’m thinking that I may take my road bike to keep my bike base building in play. Definitely taking my Y membership and swim stuff, that’s an easy one – tho finding the closest Y to the hotel may be a challenge. Finally, I’m really hoping to find open water swimming while there. I’m going to take the wetsuit and even if the water is cold (by Atlanta standards) I’d like to get out for an open-water swim or 2. If anyone knows where this could become a reality for me, please leave me a comment and let me know. I’m desperate to get out of the pool for a while.

Ok, enough blather.

Nineteen Wetsuits: Frequency 1st Impressions

Fit and Finish:
This is one well assembled piece of equipment! The seams are smooth and clean without any visible weaknesses or poor glue jobs. I’m an interesting test case for the suit as I fall right on the size boundary for 2 different sizes. Steve says they recommend smaller in this case and so we went with the medium-small. It fit like it was made for me. The 1.5mm material of the upper has good elasticity and the wingspan material is different from that of the arms giving it even more stretch. Nineteen has added a zipper-cord-pocket at the top and rear of the collar so there’s a place to store the leash and not just have it flapping around behind you for others to snag on. The pocket is a great idea as you’ll always know where the leash is when you finish the swim and are running toward T1.

Comfort:
So far I’ve only been able to judge this from the Nineteen office and my living room, but from what I can tell without yet having the suit in the water for a long period of time, it is very comfortable. The choices of material let the suit stretch (and recover) in all the right ways such that your stroke is not interfered with at all.

Clearly, in water testing will provide much more info on this suit. So far, I have to say, I’m very impressed.
Stay tuned.

Hrm… I’m surprised that there have been no donations/tickets-sold for the Cirq raffle. Makes me wonder if the paypal link is broken…

If you have tried and been denied, or tried and thought you were successful (but I don’t know about anyone), please email me at rick-at-internalmonoblog-dot-com so I can know where things are breaking. I unfortunately cannot test with my own paypal account or credit cards 🙁

I guess it’s possible that nobody wants the tickets or to participate in the raffle, but I’m holding out hope that it’s just a technical glitch 😉

Raffle cancelled due to lack of interest.

8 Cooking Oil Facts Everyone Must Be Aware Of | Small Bites.

Very informative, worth the read!

After my LSD run this morning, I came home desiring pancakes. I didn’t really want to go out because all the store/restaurant pancakes are so… well.. gummy, bland and uninteresting. So Kim and I made Coconut-Quinoa Blueberry Pancakes. Oh my this is a keeper!

Coconut-Quinoa Blueberry Pancakes

• 1 cup quinoa (uncooked)
• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1/4 cup rice flour
• 1/4 cup coconut shredded
• tablespoon baking powder
• teaspoon salt
• 3 tbsp grapeseed oil
• 1 tbsp agave nectar
• 12 egg whites
• 1.5 cup skim milk
• cup frozen blueberries

Makes 18 3″ pancakes.

1. pre-cook quinoa
2. mix dry ingredients add dry spices to taste (we used cinnamon and nutmeg)
3. mix wet ingredients
4. add wet to dry and mix thoroughly
5. let stand
6. make pancakes and enjoy

Super yummy! Enjoy!!!

Per pancake: 107 calories, 4g fat, 14g carbs (2g fiber, 4g sugars), 5g (complete) protein.

The link to nutritiondata.com where I uploaded the ingredients and did a nutrition analysis is here.

Since I’ve had 0 (zero, zip, nada) interest in the Cirque raffle, I’m cancelling it.

🙁 Oh well.

@SteveFleck from Nineteen Wetsuits posted this link on twitter today. Awesome find! Definitely worth the read!

Thanks Steve!

Steering Levers – Slowtwitch.com.

Dave Scott’s Guide to Swimming Form – Road ID posterous.

Great tips – stuff to keep in mind for sure!