Archive
May 2009
May 30th, 2009
First oceanswim of the season.
Today I had my first oceanswim of the season in Hellerup, just outside of Copenhagen. Just fantastic! There is a beautiful beach there, close to the amusementpark “Bakken” and the weather was sunny skies and not a cloud in sight. Ok, the water is not exactly boiling…. 13 degrees Celcius makes you wake up when you put your toes in the water. But seeing that my son Noe, 4 share the same enthusiasm as myself to get in to the water we both ran in to the cold waves screaming with excitment and joy.
Swimming in the ocean is one of the most wonderful things there is to do in the world. The ocean is exciting, open, powerful, wild, extremly large and has a “mind” of its own. The ocean does what it wants. You cannot tame it. You can only learn to work with it, like a wild animal. It is a great feeling of freedom to swim in its endless waves. If you haven´t discovered the beauty of swimming in the ocean, try it. But be careful; I have almost drowned a couple of times, it is usually good swimmers who drown who under-estimates the power of the ocean and over-estimates the power of themselves. If you are a “beginner” in ocean swimming, start with swimming close to the shore, in warm waters and with a wet-suit.
But the real kick comes from swimming “nude” in the Atlantics cold water almost losing your breath as you jump in. Feeling alive. Feeling clean. Feeling one with nature.
Copenhagen is a great place for this with its clean beaches close to the city (15 minute drive today) and the two pools (50 meters and 75 meters long) built in the harbour of Copenhagen. The harbour water is clean, cold ( after all it is Scandinavia) and free of charge! That is life-quality! At least for someone like myself. And maybe for Noe, seeing that he didn´t want to get out of the cold water today despite blue lips and body shivering. Maybe a future ocean swimmer? Anyway I´m glad that I can introduce the beauty of swimming in the ocean to him. And that he liked it as much as I do. He doesn´t need to be a competitor (like his crazy father) but if he keeps on loving the water I will be happy. It is a fantastic element to move in. Especially the wild ocean.
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May 23rd, 2009
Jochen Lenz in action.
Swam with one of my favourite trainingpartners Jochen Lenz yesterday. Jochen is a very good friend and is maybe the most allround talent I ever met. The man can do anything and is great in everything he tries. He was the German Junior National Champion in the 200 breast as I was the headcoach at the Olympic training center. But he developed shoulder problems and only swims for fun now a days. Still he qualifies for the German Championships every other year with mininal training. Jochen born in the year of the Moscow Olympic Games plays ukulele, guitar, drums, skies, surfs, snowboards, teaches adults and children swimming, is a surfteacher, just took his Masters in Information and Computer science last year and the decided to study Medicin! Did I mention that he is a party-animal too…..? And a great friend…..
Anyway, Jochen and myself have a similar attitude to swimming and loves to train together whenever our busy schedule allows. Those periods when we have been able to train 1-2 times a week together we have both swum really well (fast). Anyway yesterday we met up at the pool in the Club an der Alster for a session together. Before that I was invited as a VIP guest at the German Junior Nationals in Hamburg, it is always nice to meet my old friends from the Hamburg swimming days again. There I met another excellent swimmer and good friend; Peter Bermel, 42 years young, world master record holder in medley and a great guy. He was just swimming a 6000 meter workout in the break of the meet. 6000 meters…long course! But the guy wants to swim a 2.10 200 medley this year.
Anyway, inspired by the kids fast swimming and Peters disciplined training Jochen and I swam one of our favourite training programs;
200m warmup mixed strokes
2 x 50m. breaststroke pull under water
2 x 50m breaststroke kick under water
8 x 50m. (start every 1.10″) Every other breaststroke 90% effort, every other freestyle 75% effort Times breaststroke 34″-35″, freestyle 34″
100 breaststroke kick; 1,35″
4 x 25m breaststroke pull with fly kick and paddles (45″)
50m swim down, 50m under water swimming.
Afterwards we felt very satisfied and decided to meet soon again for a training session together. This can turn out to be a good season.
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May 20th, 2009
200 freestyle breath every 3-5-7-9, 8 x 50m. (25m sculling+25m accelerateing swim) Rest 20″, 4 x 75m kick (first 25m no breath, second 25m easy, third 25m sprint) Rest 30″, 4 x 25m. All out sprint Main stroke. Rest 90″.
400 freestyle medium pace, rest 40″ + 8 x 50m Main stroke (1.00″),+300 backstroke/freestyle rest 30″, + 6 x 50m. Main stroke (1.10″), + 200 breaststroke/freestyle, rest 20″, + 4 x 50 Main stroke (1.20″), + 100 Fly/free, rest 60″, + 2 x50 Main stroke, (1.30″) 100 easy.
400 kick (25m easy/25m. fast), 200 swimdown
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May 18th, 2009
USG
USG, the Copenhagen university swim team showed a very solid and strong performance at the Danish Masters Long Course Championships in Ishöj, 30 minute drive outside of the danish capital. The championships held very early in the season, with most swimmers not having had any long course training and only over one day had swimmers from all of Denmark and swimmers from Sweden coming to the 6 lane indoor pool in Ishöj. USg swam strong, as always, in the younger age-groups and the relays. But it was in the mens 400 freestyle agegroup 60-64 that the 61 year old Professor Fin Biering-Sörensen broke the scandinavian record with 17 seconds swimming a 5.13,42. Fin took the record from the swedish Hellas swimmer Bo Ljungberg. USG´s Ebbe Rasmussen matched the feat in the 100 and 200 backstroke in the same age group.
Jacob Carstensen the World Champion in 400 freestyle from 1997 loves to swim at Masters meets. The now 31 year old swimmers swims almost every event when he attends the danish Masters Championships and he still swims fast. I asked him why he swims the the masters championships and why so many events; “ I have fun and it keeps me in shape. I need a goal with my training and to have these meets keeps me training”, says the popular athlete. Alone swimming 10 races or so in a day must keep him in great shape!
43 year old Henrik Jeppesen with his twins.
Jacob Carstensen
Prof. Fin Biering-Sörensen
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May 16th, 2009
We swimmers, especially in our younger years, train for hours and hours and hours… And we race a very short time (at least that is our aim…to race as short as possible, race as fast as possible, to finish as fast as we can…) of the total time we swim. The whole idea with the training is the racing (ok, I know many do it for fitness, social contacts, experiences, traveling, friendship….but lets assume we like to improve, swim (personal-) records, win…). Do we spend too much time training and not enough time racing? Well, some masters swimmers probably spend as much time training as swimming competitions but that is mostly due to that they hardly train at all!!!
But my point is; are we focusing enough on the racing as we train? Are we thinking of the racing as we train? And what are we thinking of as we race? What do you think of as you swim that race? Some swimmers speak of swimming in “the zone” as they do a perfect race. But how do you get to that “zone”? Do our coaches teach us how to use our brains as we race or do they only prepare our bodies? A favourite (not) comments from one of my coaches was; “Take it out hard and bring it back strong”… That really didn´t stimulate my intellect enough and I soon changed to a coach who were more sensitive to how to race. Or how to talk to a swimmer about his race. We worked more on stroke counts, timing and technique. And we raced a lot in training. I, and surely many others, learned how to put that race together to a really good one. That didn´t mean that he was too sensitive or overanalyzing. My favourite comment from him was after swimming finals in the 200 breaststroke at the US National Championships ending up 8th after taking it out as fast as I could; “You pussied out Christiansen” Don´t give me that bullshit again”. He was true ofcourse because after taking it out close to personal best the first 100m I saw that I wasn´t even close to the top and kind of gave up. Well, his analyze helped me brake a swedish record in the 100m the next day and an American record in the 400 medley relay the last day of the meet. Sometimes it doesn´t have to be more complicated than that but the work has to be done before the raceday comes. Not only the aerob, anaerob, sprint and technique work but the race work. The preparations how to race. And that doesn´t start one week before the Big Meet. That is an ongoing progress the whole season. So, what do you think of when you race? I know what I think, especially what I should think when I race. I would like to share that with you but before that I am eager to hear from you and your thoughts and experiences on this subject. So write me a comment and tell me what YOU think!
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May 12th, 2009
The first promotion camp gathered an enthusiastic group of masters swimmers from Sweden and Åland who all came to Göteborg to swim together, exchange swimexperiences, laugh and inspect the arena of the World Masters Swimming Championships in 2010. We were able to swim four times in the beautiful long course pool of Valhallabadet, rewarding and worthwile training and experiences for this season and next years. Already in August the Swedish Open Masters Chps´ (LC) will take place here, as a “testrun” for the WM next year and several in the group decided to come again in August to also try racing in the 10 lane indoor pool. Also that week a camp will take palace in the days leading up to the competition, a great opportunity to get long course training before this meet and the European Masters in Spain. Already now swimmers from Germany, England and Sweden has entered the camp which only has 15 places left. These camps are organized to inspire swimmers from all over the world to come to Göteborg and discover this beautiful city, its friendly people and swim the World Masters Swimming Championships in 2010.
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May 8th, 2009
Finally, after almost 5 years of “Törnrosa” sleep I am relaunching my website in a new more fuctional and hopefully more interesting way! Gone are the static pages with too much information and new is that you can find new information on a weekly basis about training, results, camps, workshops, photos and advices. It is my wish and hope that the new site will be one that YOU are participating in together with me! So welcome! Be my guest and join me in the world of glen-christiansen.com
Category: News | Comments: 2
May 8th, 2009
Workout of the week:
300m Freestyle Hypoxic 3-5-7, 6 x 50 Kick without kickboard (1.10”), 3 x 50 Catchup freestyle (1.00”), 3 x 50 Sprint the turns! (1.00”), 2 x (4 x 100 Main stroke.) (2.00”) 1.) 25 fast 75 easy. 2.) 25 easy 25 fast 50 easy. 3.) 50 easy 25 fast 25 easy. 4.) 50 easy 25 fast 25 easy. 100 easy. 3 x (200+2 x 100 Freestyle) Rest 25” and 15”
Swim easy…
Category: Training Tips | Comments: Comments Off
May 8th, 2009
Glen Christiansen, 52, beats swedish youth champion Patric Ridell SK Neptun , in a challenge swim during training! The young talented swimmer wanted to get a chance to beat the former national champion (1974-78) when he recently visited the training. The old champ managed to take an early lead and was almost 1 second ahead at the 25 m mark(13,6) and managed to keep the lead despite Patrics strong finish winning with a tenth of a second in 32,4 in the 50 meter pool. Coach Niko Martikanen was very pleased.
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May 8th, 2009
På Dansk Svømmeunions generalforsamling i dag, lørdag, den 25. april, er fire nyindstiftede priser blevet overrakt til en række personer, der, på hver sin vis, har gjort en særlig forskel for dansk svømning.
Årets åbent vand-pris gik til de tre USG-svømmere Ann Sophie Lønnberg, Peter Schultz og Bo Steenhus i anledning af deres imponerende bedrift i september 2007. Her lykkedes det for de tre svømmere at krydse Den Engelske Kanal – en strækning på 34 kilometer.
De tre svømmere har haft udfordringen som et fælles projekt, og har således støttet hinanden i den lange forberedelsesperiode frem til selve begivenheden,
som tog sit udgangspunkt i engelske Dover og med mål i franske Calais. De tre svømmere tilbagelagde den lange seje strækning i følgende flotte tider: 11 timer 53 minutter (Bo), 12 timer 31 minutter (Ann) og 12 timer 46 minutter (Peter). OCH nu satsar vi på at svömme fra Danmark (Rödby) til Tyskland (Puttgarten) i september, en lille strecke på 19 km.
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