Quinn’s Brain, aka QBrain

LAC Masters swim team will be no more as of March 20th, 2009.

This kinda sucks, because it is one week before Zones, but I am already training on my own once or twice a week. The question is, can I train hard on my own all the time, or do I need the team practices to keep my consistency.

I have the following options. The CAC pool has a team that trains there 3 times a week, and if we joined there, it would eliminate the need for our Lifetime Fitness membership. Lifetime has a team, but the setup Lifetime has for the team is so pathetic it isn’t even a consideration. The final team option, and by far the best option as far as teams go, is to join DAM and swim at their Southlake practices.

DAM has a very large team, and the Southlake practices typically have 8 lanes with about 3 people a lane. That is 24 people regularly showing up to practice compared to LACs 5 people. The downside to swimming at Southlake? It is more than 30 minutes away, and the practice is at 5:15. I already am used to getting up at 4:30, but what I am not used to is having to get ready in a gym locker room for work and not being able to cook a hot breakfast for myself. Spoiled am I.

The alternative, and likely choice at least initially, is to workout at Lifetime from 4:30 until 5:45 every morning. No one is using the pool at that hour, so lane space is not a problem, and I can get out and get back to the house to shower for work and eat a hot breakfast and still make it to work by 7am.

Brook and I would really like to swim with a team, and Brook is strongly considering CAC. I have kind of already discarded it because I don’t think the intensity will be there, but this is an area where more research would easily change my mind.

As for Southlake. Next Saturday I am planning on swimming with DAM in Southlake (next Friday is my last LAC practice), and that will determine if I think it is feasible. If it is, I will probably check out a Sunday practice at SMU, just for fun, and then finish out the month practicing in Southlake in the mornings and getting ready there to gage if I think I can tolerate doing that on a regular basis. Practice is over at 6:30, and Southlake pool is only about 10 minutes from work, so I would not be adding to my commute.

Now if I could afford a nice house close to the Southlake pool, it would be a done deal. Brook would become a full time trophy wife, and living in Southlake would decrease her commute to the salon and spa, and I could train 5x/week and still enjoy a hot breakfast and a nice shower before work.

Since afford and Southlake don’t go well together at this current time, Brook will continue to be a full time veterinarian and a part time trophy wife and the most likely scenerio will be that I train at Lifetime for a while.

Lotto Texas is at $28 million, maybe I will invest a dollar.

March 14th, 2009 | Category: Swimming | Leave a comment

I got first place in catching a cold division.

Here are the full meet results: http://www.damswim.com/meet_results/2009_dam_scy_spring_meet.pdf

Here are my results:
100fr: 55.86
splits: 27.42, 28.44

50fr: 25.30

200fr: 2:04.54
100 splits: 1:00.04, 1:04.50
50 splits: 28.61, 31.43, 32.41, 32.09

The meet went 500, 100, 50, 200, with the 500 being the 3rd event and the 200 being second to last. There was less than an hour between events, which was fine, but the heat was not turned on until an hour after the meet started, so it was very cold on deck. Pool temp was fine.

I ate my goggles on the start of the 500, so I stopped, put them on, and swam a pretty easy 6:20, with 200 being back. Swam just fast enough so I didn’t get last

I am happy with my 100 time and my 50 time, but I think my 200 should have been 1:57ish. I think I have the speed, just not the endurance. My last season US times were 25.x, 55.x and 1:55.x consistently in season SCY.

Outdoor pool was not open, but I did head to Lifetime and do 900 cool down after the meet. Felt pretty good until I couldn’t breath through my nose anymore later that night.

March 3rd, 2009 | Category: Swimming | Leave a comment

Baby Mop from Chris Milk on Vimeo.

February 19th, 2009 | Category: General | Leave a comment

I have been thinking about how to insure a portfolio and have been attacking the problem with options.

My thought process was that I wanted to risk no more than 10% loss from the price in January, and in January I would buy PUT options with a strike price 10% the current price, with an expiration one year away. This would insure that my portfolio would be worth no less than 90% what it was worth in January.

Good idea, and I am sure we all would have liked to do that last January.

The problem is that the cost to do this would be about 10%/year. No one can afford to give up 10% a year and still come out ahead over time. Even selling covered calls to offset the cost of the insurance, it seems like a lot of risk.

What I noticed, but have not fully researched, is that in the money calls might be cheaper long term, but more expensive short term. In the money options always cost more than out of money options, because they have intrinsic value. If they were executed immediately, the executor would be on the favorable side of the transaction. An in the money call option has a underlying stock price worth more than the strike price, so executing immediately would allow you to follow up with a sale for a positive return. It makes sense that an in the money option costs more than an out of money option.

So how does in the money options work for insurance? You would buy a PUT option with a strike price higher than the current trading price of a stock. For example, SPY is about $83 right now, and a PUT with a strike price of 100 is $17 in the money. If I bought a PUT with a strike price of $100, I could execute it immediately, and someone would pay me $100 for my $83 SPY. Now the PUT will cost more than $17, and the difference between the $17 and the real price of the option is the time value of the option. For a option that expires in a year, that time value should be quite a bit.

The question is, if I buy in the money PUTs, will the time value be cheap enough that I can afford to insure my portfolio?

February 8th, 2009 | Category: Finance | Leave a comment

When I got up this morning, I didn’t think it was going to happen. I didn’t sleep well last night, which has become a little too common, slept in this morning and when I did finally get up my back was sore, so I planned on skipping practice.

Around 10am, when I finally decided it was time to take a shower, I turned on the water and said, “I feel fine now, maybe I will swim later.” Realized how stupid that was, turned the water off and headed directly to the gym.

I am focusing on going fast on the weekend, and not really worrying about yardage. Saturday, I hopped in and did a 200m warm up (very short warm up for me) and then immediately did a 200m free for time. This will be very similar to a meet, where I will have a shorter than usual warm up and than an all out sprint. I actually swam faster from a push (not off the blocks), than I did in the November meet. The bad news is, I am still 20+ seconds off my goal time and 10 seconds off what I need to be able to go from a push to realistically hit my goal time (1:49.99 yards).

Today, instead of doing a fast 200, I did 8×50 all out on a minute. My goal currently on this set is to swim 50s on a 30 and this morning is was swimming 32-33. Not where I need to be yet.

I am happy that I finally got to swim 5 days out of 7, and hopefully I can maintain that. I am moving in the right direction toward my goal, and it will be obvious in a couple weeks if I am progressing fast enough to achieve it by the end of March.

I might go to a meet at the end of the month by myself so I can get a real race in before Zones. Entries are due on the 25th, so I will probably wait until the last minute to enter. Don’t really like the pool hosting the meet

February 8th, 2009 | Category: Swimming | Leave a comment

I am feeling much better, probably at 90% right now.

This was my yoga-swim workout at Lifetime.

• 600m free warm up
• 4×100m back on 2:00 working on long stroke with solid kick
• 10×50m flutter kick on 1:30 odds down on left side back on right side, evens on back
• 2×50m dolphin kick on 1:30
• 4×100m back on 2:00 same as above
• 12×50m IM on 1:00 1st 50 fly drill, 2nd 50 back, 3rd 50 breast, 4 times through
• 8×50m free on 1:00 odds catchup drill, focus on early vertical forearm, both with strong kick
• 1×200m for time 2:35
• 300m cool down 200 back, 100 free

A 2:35 in meters converts to a 2:18 high in yards. I would like to get the 2:35 down to a 2:10 from a push. For comparison, my 200m free from the November meet was a 2:26.44, but a 2:10 is where I need to be to break 1:50 in yards, if not a little faster.

Back to normal practice and weights tomorrow. Hopefully I did not lose too much aerobic ground this week.

February 1st, 2009 | Category: Swimming | Leave a comment

No swimming, no lifting, no breathing through my nose for the last 5 days. Sucks, but I think it is almost over. I think I will do what the USMS forum calls a yoga practice tomorrow. It is a swim practice that is slow and easy focusing on loosening up more than anything.

January 31st, 2009 | Category: Swimming | Leave a comment

Woke up last night at 2:30am with a horrible headache, drank a glass of water, took a tylenol and went back to sleep. Woke up at 3:55am with a horrible headache, drank a glass of water and went back to sleep. Woke up at 6:00am drank a glass of water and went back to sleep. Woke up at 7:30am, felt so bad I didn’t even want to move. I still had a headache, my mouth was dry and I was burning up.

Dehydration sucks. Pretty much I was a goddamned retard yesterday, and paid for it today. Usually at work I drink about 10oz of water every hour, and more if practice was hard. Yesterday, I must have worked out harder than I thought, but I probably only drank 3 16 oz glasses of water and a bunch of wine.

There is a big difference between the 48 oz of water I drank, and the 90+ oz I should have drank. Obviously hydrating with wine is not helpful, but I think the key problem is that I don’t have the habits in place around the house that I need.

Even now, writing this post, I am sitting here thirsty. Thirst is a delayed response, so I needed to be drinking water hours ago.

Because of the dehydration this morning, I skipped my Sunday practice. I will have to do a better job in the future of maintaining my hydration.

I am off to down a glass of water right now.

January 25th, 2009 | Category: Swimming | Leave a comment

I joined Lifetime again last night. It only cost $15 to be added back onto my wife’s plan, which is not what I thought it cost last time. Next month, it will be an additional $50/month for me.

This morning we left at normal time, 4:40am, to head out for a swim at Lifetime. Lifetime is a 24×7 gym, but they don’t have anyone working the front desk in the middle of the night, so you have to ring the door bell. One of the staff who is prepping the building for normal hours comes out and opens the door. This took about 3 minutes, which was fine because we were all bundled up against the cold and the front vestibule was protecting us from the worst of the cold anyway, but I wasn’t sure whoever it was that was supposed to unlock the door actually heard the bell. It was my first time this early, so I waited patiently.

I need not have worried about the bell. About 30 minutes later, while swimming I hear the front bell ring. It is not so much that it is really loud, but it must chime from every speaker in the entire building.

Swimming that early on the weekend was cool it was not until I was getting out at 6:10 that someone else was finally getting in. I like having the pool to myself but I am sure during the week it picks up earlier.

I got in 3800 meters, or a little less than 2.5 miles.

This morning I did 400 free, 300 back, 200 free, 100 back as a warmup. Originally I thought I would 200s, starting at 3:00 and dropping 5 seconds until I couldn’t make one. But I wanted to do at least 5 200s, so I did 5×200 on 3:00. This ended up being more aerobic than I wanted, but oh well. Following that with 5×100 back on 1:50 to loosen up for my sprint set. The sprint set was 10×50s on a 1:00 holding 35, which ended up being too easy. It got me breathing hard, but I should have tried holding 32s. The rest of the workout was supposed to be aerobic pace, and was 12×25 kick on side, down right, back left and a 300 cool down.

The goals for Saturdays are to do some hard 200s, and some short sprints with Sundays being purely aerobic longer distance stuff. Both days will have kick components and shoot for more than 4k meters.

January 24th, 2009 | Category: Swimming | Leave a comment