Sunday, May 29th

The Lowry pool opened this last week, and I had the pleasure of being one of the first to swim in it for the season.  On Monday, the pool was bit cold at 76-degrees.  On Wednesday, it had warmed up nicely to 78.  On Thursday and Friday, I think it was up the to the summer's temperature at 80-degrees.  That will make for nice "cooling off" from the summer's heat.  I am looking forward to Monday's practice with the Swim Dogs!

I also had my first open water practice of the season out at the Chatfield Gravel Pond on Saturday.  The reported temperature was 56, and I was not too enthusiastic about my swim or how far I'd get.  But, what a great experience!  I did my first 20-30 strokes fast to get my heart going, and then I concentrated on getting my breathing under control.  It's didn't take too long to acclimatize to the cold water, and I loved it!  I actually made it all the way across and back for about 2,000 yards.

If that wasn't enough excitement for the week, I was also named the DPS Coach of the Year for Swimming:  That's Two years in a row!  It's nice to be recognized by my peers.

Finally, the highlight of the week had to be the phone call I received from DPS Athletics on Friday:  They have approved and are helping to fund our starting block project!  Look to have new blocks in place by the end of the summer!  Our new timing system, scoreboard, and blocks will make us one of the best facilities in the city!

Thursday, May 12th

Summer Swim Dogs is now under way, and I am really liking the smaller practice group.  With the smaller group comes better focus and more improvement...I can see it!

We have also been working on SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Oriented).  They should also be positive.

"I will break 1-Minute in the 100 Free by the end of May," is a good example.

Goals can be results-, process-(100% flip turns), and socially-oriented (I will know everyone's name in my lane by the end of practice).

Everyone should have short-, medium, and long-term goals.

Goal-setting helps you stay focused during practice and gives you a reason to keep coming to practice.  I must admit that it has been difficult for me to find my zone after competing and coaching at the World Masters Championships in Sweden last summer...it was pretty much the pinnacle of my career.

Your goals help me, as the coach, put together season plans and even individual workouts.

I have my own swimming goals (usually) and goals for the team.  To achieve success, the team goals should be in alignment with the swimmers.

Ask me (or any of the coaches) if you need help with setting some goals!

Monday, May 2nd

Just got back from the USMS National Championships in Mesa, AZ where I had a pretty good meet.  100+ traveled from Colorado with a few of my mid-day training partners including Rich, Heidi, Chris, and Tricia.

It was HOT down there...and windy.

The team from Colorado came in 2nd to the local Arizona team.  It was fun to see several Olympians swim including Rowdy Gaines and Ed Moses.

Summer Swim Dogs starts today.  It will be nice to have a more manageable team.

Thursday, April 14th

The indoor season is winding down, and our numbers are starting to dwindle as swimmer move to spring sports and outdoors.  I'm ready for swimming outside, myself.

Coach Ryan competed in the CanAm paralympic meet this last weekend in Minnesota and had give PRs in five events including a first-time-ever 200IM.  She did great!

We also had several athletes compete in the USA-Swimming IMX Challenge:

This is what happens after swimming the Long Course Pentathlon!

11 Swim Dogs participated in the Suburban League Pentathlon last weekend and completed the USA-Swimming IM X-Treme Challenge!  Look for more information soon, but congratulations to: Claire B. Mallory L. Carolyn M. Chloe B. Dylan K. Cami S. Caroline K. Jack K. Cole D. Lindsay D. Mila K.

Tuesday, March 29th

Thursday, March 17th

Lots of excitement around the pool lately!

1.  Four generations of swimmers took down the Boy's 200 Free Relay Pool Record on Monday, March 14th as Chris O'Sullivan (36), Rich Abrahams (66), Mark Johnston (50), and Dan Jurgs (18) swam to a 1:33.37 to better the previous record of 1:34.83.

2.  Coach Ryan was selected as the Colorado Sportswoman of the Year for Swimming and she was featured on the Channel 9 News.  Click here to see the feature: RYAN.  Her "spot" is at 2-minutes and 54-seconds.

Friday, March 11th

The Swim Dogs are really starting to get pretty good as we have an increasing number of swimmers participating in Silver State, and we even scored 80 points at the 14 & Under State Championships!  It's been a long few weeks, but the improvements has been nothing short of amazing.

Mable, Kai, Johan, and Isabelle all did great at the State Meet in Ft. Collins, and three of them even made it into the Top 10 with Mable getting as high as 7th place.  All four swimmers set Top Dog records in the process.

In addition to all the meet stuff, Coach Mark also put together a "Super Sessions" coaching clinic at GW for 24 local master's swimmers and coaches.  "Super" masters swimmers Rich Abrahams and Bob Strand led the group.

Monday, February 21st

25 Swim Dogs participated in this weekend's Last Chance meet in Arvada, and it was exciting to see all the new qualifiers for next weekend's Silver State meet.  We also had several State Meet Qualifying times.  Click here to read more:  North Jeffco Recap.

Friday, February 18th

Update From Coach Lindsay:  I moved to El Paso in November and am contracting with the Army and am currently at Fort Bliss working for the Army Center for Enhanced Performance (ACEP). In simple terms, what I am doing is taking skills from sport psychology and applying them to the Army. More specifically, we work with Soldiers, DA civilians, and families gain a mental edge. The Army trains Soldiers to be physically, technically, and tactically strong so we step in and train their minds like they already train their bodies. We teach them tools to perform better and more accurately in high pressure or, in the case of families, stressful situations. We teach them how to concentrate on the appropriate targets, have confidence going into new situations, think effectively, set and achieve goals, and control their physiology in order to act (perform) on a dime. The goal of the program is to develop mental strength for life. Because of this, the skills that we teach and work with are generalizable to not just the Soldiers and the training they do, but to their family life as well.  Hope all is well!!

Sunday, January 23rd

80 local masters swimmers participated in the Inaugural Colorado Swimming Hall of Fame Pentathlon & 2.4-mile Ironman Swim on Saturday:  Proceeds of the meet will go toward establishing The Hall.

Click here to read more about the HALL OF FAME meet.

The meet was really fun, but we have to get more Swim Dogs involved in the future!  This is a great way to measure your improvement in the pool.

Thanks to the GW Girls for stepping up as meet hosts!

Sunday, January 16th

Has it really been three weeks since I last blogged?  That's hard to believe, but it's true.

The middle of the high school season is very taxing.  In order to accommodate everyones' schedules, Dana and I seem to coach nearly every hour of the day.  If there's no school, we have one practice from 9 to 11:00, another from noon to 1:30, 4:00 to 5:30...and then it's Swim Dogs!  They make for very long days.

As the winter season has started, we've begun letting some new swimmers into our program.  Many of the newbies are from our neighborhood summer club, Virginia Vale.  It's great to have the support from the local community.

We're looking at some new meets this winter.  Our next meet, a Suburban League Qualifier, was cancelled, so I am looking through the meet calendar to set up some other meets.  Looks for updates soon.

Wednesday, December 23rd

The holiday break is just getting underway, and we've had a couple of really fun practices thanks to Coach Dana!

Dana's practices were "12-Days of Christmas" oriented with the culmination being the sleigh-ride relay (shown above).  Everyone wants to be Santa!

Thanks to everyone for bring lots of special holiday treats to the Swim Dogs coaching staff!  We all appreciate the goodies.

Tuesday, December 14th

The pool has really been hopping lately with all the GW girls and Swim Dogs teams competing for water time.  It's exhausting...but fun most of the time.

This last weekend, several older kids competed in the Golden-Phoenix meet at the School of Mines.  Most of our swims were PRs, which was pretty cool.  Click here to read more: MEET RECAP.

After the weekend, we were all ready to get back into the pool and were welcomed by 74-degree water, so we had to cancel Monday's practice.  This does not happen too often, but it does happen to 40-year-old pools.  Things should be back up to normal by Tuesday.

I am not sure how many of you are reading this blog...so if you are, please send me an e-mail and give me your comments about the blog and the website in general.  What more would you like to see here?

Sunday, December 5th

The Swim Dogs are back from their holiday vacations, and we are swimming fast again with this weekend's Winter Sprinter and Eliminator:

About 50 Swim Dogs participated in the meet with 35 of them swimming in THE ELIMINATOR to determine the true Top Dog.

In the Men's Division, Seth took on his dad (Sam) and Jackson for the title.  In the Women's Division, Teri edged out Julia for the crown.  Seth then beat Teri for the overall title.

The rest of the Swim Dogs are swimming fast, too, as 20 Top Dog Records were set in the meet. 

Coach Ryan did a great job.  It was cool to see her swim.  She's off to Toronto on Wednesday to compete in internationally. 

Practices continue going well, and I finally think we have our numbers figured out.

Sunday, November 14th

This was a very fun week for me as I turned 50-years-old and got to celebrate my birthday with my favorite people:  the Swim Dogs!  Thanks for the birthday cake and the song on Wednesday and also thanks to all of those who surprised me at PF Changs on Thursday!

It was really a double celebration as I also got surprised by the GW Girl's team with a great cake and song.  Thanks everyone!

On Tuesday, we had a special guest at practice, Pete Alfino, Head Coach of Mile High Multisports.  Pete is a local coach of elite-level triathletes, and he talked to us about the sport of triathlons:  Swimming, Bicycle Riding, and Running.  Pete's wife recently took 3rd place in the Hawaii Ironman event!  Pete also showed off his wife's $5,000 bike and gear.  OMG...that a lot of money for a bike!

We also got to work on some open-water swimming skills:  Swim through a group of people who are splashing you as much as they can with kick boards!

We also got a much-needed day off on Thursday in honor of Veterans Day.

Monday, November 8th

A fun week culminated by the Suburban League Qualifier on Sunday at DU.  These League meets are really fun and perfect for the Swim Dogs!

In addition to having lots of fun, we had some pretty good performances too with 19 Top Dogs, 9 Silver State, and four State Qualifiers.  Quite amazing!

The practice week was good too as we are transitioning from straight conditioning into a more race-focused part of the season with race strategy taking a bigger role in practice.  Here are some basic race strategies by event:

• 50:  All-Out, Controlled Chaos...kick as much as you can

• 100:  Relaxed-fast first 50 (within 1-second of best 50) build the energy in the second 50

• 200:  50 with energy, relaxed 2nd 50, descend 3rd to 4th 50

• 200 IM:  Relaxed fly, descend back and breast by 25, build 25 free, last 25 all out

Hope this helps?  I've gotten lots of good feedback on the race strategies.

Tuesday, November 2nd

It has been a couple of weeks since I last posted...busy, busy, busy, I guess.  The GW Girl's season is underway with lots of new girls swimming this year, and I went on my annual fall vacation to Mexico to hang out on the beach with my parents.  It was a nice vacation, but I don't feel refreshed at all!

I also learned what I'll be doing once I retire.  The picture below was taken inside Senor Frogs in Mazatlan, Mexico.  A DJ converted his VW bus into his dj-booth!  I suppose I will do the same!

Unfortunately, while I was gone, I missed the Suburban League Relay Meet (click to see the meet recap).  It sounds like it was TONS of fun even though it was rather hectic.  Thanks to everyone who help organize our newest and youngest swimmers!

Coach Dana also put on a lifeguard training class while I was gone and several Swim Dogs received their Red Cross certifications and will be looking for employment next summer.

We also said goodbye to Coach Andy who's moving over to the MACS team.  Good luck to him!

As his replacement, we've hired Ryan McLean who many of you know from her visit to Swim Dogs a few years ago.  She's already started working with us, and she's going to swim with us too!  Ryan recently set a few National Records in category in Paralympic swimming.  Please welcome Ryan to the team when you get the chance!

Monday, October 18th

A couple of cool events this last week at Swim Dogs:  USMS Postal Swim and Fun Friday with Swim Baseball!  We also had our first "accident" at the pool (story below).

USMS 3K & 6K Postal Swim:  Six masters swimmers participated in the event, a choice of a 3,000 or 6,000 yard timed swim, at our pool on Saturday.  Among them was our own Kristen B., who swam the 6K...way to go Kristin.  She's the first Swim Dog EVER to complete the event as she also did the 3K a month ago.  To stay away from boredom, she swam to her favorite music with a water resistant MP3 player.

Thanks to all of the Swim Dogs (Madeleine, Sonja, Danny, Annika, and Tate) for helping out with counting and timing.

Fun Friday and Swim Baseball:  We had a new treat on Fun Friday, Swim Baseball, which we had never played before.  After ironing out some of the details, we got things figured out and had a great time.

Eva Claire's Fall:  As mentioned above, we had our first major accident at the pool last week, too, as Eva Claire slipped in the stands, fell, and broke her leg.  The good news:  She chose Swim Dog's Green for her cast color:

Friday, October 8th

Believe it or not, things have already begun to settle down and practices aren't nearly as chaotic as they were the first week.  Thanks to those who moved to the later practice group and to the Tuesday/Thursday/Friday group.  That was a HUGE help!

We finished up our "technique" month in September and now we are moving into the conditioning phase of our training  plan.  This will take us through the month of October and into the winter months.  We will never be one of those big yardage teams, but I think you'll notice the difference in the amount of yards in each practice group.

We kicked the month off with a test set early this week where everyone was required to swim for 20 minutes straight.  I was VERY pleased with how everyone did.  We perform this set about once every three or four months.  It's not only a test of your swimming ability but your mental focus to hang in there for so long.  Pretty much EVERY swimmer completed more than 500 yards which is the longest event in high school swimming.  Even our 6-year-olds went over 500 yards.  That's amazing!  I will be tracking result over the season and you can see how you improve next time.  I will post the results shortly.

Monday, September 27th

The Swim & Bowl Biathlon was a great success with 65 swimmers (31 new Swim Dogs) and over 50 bowlers.  To read more about the event, click: Results and Meet Recap.

This last week wasn't too crazy as we began to manage our Practice Group numbers.  I don't think we ever had more than six in a lane which is perfect.  Thanks for your patience!

We also had our Parent Meeting this week, and I thought that went very well.  Click here to read the Parent Meeting Minutes.  Please let me know if you have any questions.  I will be reaching out to those who did not attend the meeting.

Our team gear is a hit, too, and we're taking orders NOW.  Make sure you try on the gear at the pool and get your order in to Coach Dana early.  Our bulk order will save you some $$$.

We've had a couple of fun practices lately too.  During one practice, the electricity went out, and we had to practice in the dark!

Personally, I have been trying to cross-train a bit which led me to the benches at Red Rocks last weekend.  I happened to be there during the 9-11 Tribute.  A group of about 750 walked around the seating area about 10 times...equivalent to the number of steps at the World Trade Center.

As always, the end of the summer season means DOGS GET TO SWIM, and we were able to get Jessie out a couple of times.  I could take her swimming every day...it's a blast!

Sunday, September 12th

What a week!

We had things under control until Friday when all of our new swimmers and many of our returning swimmers decided to show up for "Fun Friday."  I thought we were even doing pretty well on Friday until we had at least 10 late-comers.  Please come to practice on time!

As expected, the Tuesday-Thursday-Friday group is very manageable, and the Monday-Wednesday-Friday group is large and a bit unwieldy.  But I am confident that we'll be able to figure it out.

While the late group was crowded, it went very smoothly.  Friday was a piece of cake with them.

September is the month for drills, so on Tuesday/Wednesday, we did lots of freestyle drills.  Coach Andy worked on sculling and getting a feel for the water with his swimmers.  On Thursday and Friday, we worked on backstroke (Friday, we also did starts).  It was fun watching Coach Dana work with the water bottles and quiet head position (see below).

Monday, September 6th

It's been a long three-day weekend, and I am ready to get back to coaching!  You know, it's nice to take a break, but I must say that I miss everyone.  It's kind of a letdown when I don't see all the kids and adults in the water...I don't get much person-to-person interaction otherwise.

Look for some new things this season:

• 5:30 start times on Tuesdays and Thursdays

• 90-minute practice option on Tuesdays and Thursdays

• More home meet DUE TO OUR NEW SCOREBOARD!

The Tuesday / Thursday schedule is a test until the GWHS girl's season starts in Mid-November.  If people like the time, then we'll continue it.  We'll also keep the 90-minute practices if we get enough participation.

For the last day of the summer season, we took advantage of the new scoreboard and set up the WIDTH of the pool to practice our breakouts and underwater dolphin kicking.  It was pretty fun seeing how quickly everyone could make it across the pool.  Cami S. and Teri M. seemed to be consistently the best.  Taylor H. did great, too.

Goodbye to a GREAT SUMMER!

Click on the Blogs below for past years and event re-caps: