Swimmer's Daily

  • Olympian Missy Franklin took time out of her 2014 holiday break from Cal to visit with some inspirational children at Seacrest Studios at Children’s Hospital Colorado.

    Courtesy of USA Swimming on YouTube

  • Anticipation isn’t keeping Jack Bauerle up all night.

    Instead, a shoulder on the mend has the legendary Georgia swim coach in constant search of a comfortable place to rest his head.

    “Sleeping in a recliner doesn’t work real well,” said Bauerle, who had surgery in December to correct “about three things” in his right shoulder.

    Wearing a bulky sling and showing no signs of sleep deprivation, Bauerle was his usual upbeat self while discussing the upcoming competitions with Texas prior to practice on Monday.

    For as much as he tried to deflect the significance — Bauerle kept circling back to the elite challenge the Longhorns present — this weekend’s competitions mean a great deal, for both Bauerle and the program he’s been in charge of for more than three decades.

    Bauerle will lead his squads Saturday for the first time since NCAA violations pushed him off the deck last spring.

    “A lot of people had a lot of different thoughts on what would happen,” senior Maddie Locus said of the wait for Bauerle’s return. “I honestly had no idea.”

    Now — Jack is back.

    See OnlineAthens

  • Diego the cat casually strides into the surf and goes for a swim. He’s calm and collected. His humans, though, are going crazy with delight over the sight of their swimming kitten. “He’s swimming! He’s swimming! He’s swimming in the water!”

    See Neatorama

  • Why do some people struggle more than others to keep off the pounds? Social psychologist Emily Balcetis shows research that addresses one of the many factors: Vision. In an informative talk, she shows how when it comes to fitness, some people quite literally see the world differently from others — and offers a surprisingly simple solution to overcome these differences.

  • “Pitch lakes” represent surface deposits of oil bubbled up from subterranean reservoirs through faults or fissures, often formed when the layers of sedimentary rock that contain hydrocarbons are folded or squashed in tectonic upheaval. Evaporation removes the oil’s lighter elements to produce mucky ponds of asphalt, colloquially called pitch or tar, and technically referred to as bitumen.

    Such seeps are widely scattered across the planet, both on land and in the oceans. One of the world’s biggest is Pitch Lake along Trinidad’s western coast, visited by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595. A bizarre tract of semisolid asphalt strung with oily channels and pools, the lake — a popular tourist attraction — spans some 100 acres and plunges to 250 feet deep.

    See Atlas Obscura

    5308162890_9ce0d33ab5_b_pitch-lake

    Photo by shri_ram_r

    Featured photo by shri_ram_r

  • People have been taking dips in ice cold water for generations, both for pleasure and for generations-touted health benefits. It may seem crazy to plunge into freezing water for any length of time, but this video from the folks at DNews runs down some of the benefits—and sets the record straight on the dangers.

    See lifehacker

  • 200 days are left to go to the 16th FINA World Championships 2015. To mark this occasion, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) offered a congratulatory message to all aquatic sports fans. As we previously reported, the symbol of the 16th FINA World Championships is currently aboard the ISS. It was launched into space on September 26, 2014.

    The symbol of the 16th FINA World Championships is a special barrel filled with water from the Kazanka River where the open water swimming and high diving tournaments will take place. Together with the Soyuz TMA-14M crew, the barrel travelled to the International Space Station aboard the space capsule. Currently, there are six astronauts on the ISS. All of them are part of the 41/42 long-term expedition crew led by Barry Wilmore. Three of them are Russians: Alexander Samokutyaev, Elena Serova and Anton Shkaplerov. Today they took time away from their research to congratulate all fans of aquatic sports on a special occasion – 200 days to go to the 2015 FINA World Championships in Kazan.

    “Our country has kicked off a series of major international sporting events – we’ve already hosted the best Summer Universiade and fantastic Olympic Games. There are just several months left before the FINA World Championships, which is yet another mega sporting event.

    We are pleased to also make our own contribution to the preparation of the upcoming event and to remind once again that the symbol of the 16th FINA World Championships is here with us in space.

    Russia is famous for its brilliant athletic accomplishments and now we are listed among the best organisers of major sporting events. Busy and important days of preparation lie ahead and we wish the Championships organisers to complete their task without strain and strictly according to plan. As for athletes who are currently gearing for the Championships at all corners of the globe, we would like to wish them to reach their peak form so that these competitions will be not only the most well-organised but also most dramatic and action-packed!” the message says.

    See Kazan 2015, where you can see the video greeting also (in Russian)

    iss-greeting-kazan-2015

  • “Take off your clothes,” a foreign voice said over the loudspeaker – slowly, rhythmically, emphasising each syllable. “Get into the water.”

    It was not the kind of voice you disobey. So although I was on the Arctic circle, surrounded by ice and snow on all sides, I got in. Technically, the 25-metre pool was in a river, although even at a time of year when temperatures rise and daylight increases, the ice it was cut into was thick enough to drive snowmobiles across. This was the moment I had been training for the past six months: the 50-metre men’s freestyle event at the World Winter Swimming Championships (WWSC) in Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland.

    Read The Guardian

    http://youtu.be/LOjqVdMKBfk

  • Who needs coffee as a pick me up when you can jump into freezing cold water?

    That was the case at the annual Polar Plunge in Peoria at Sunrise Pool Saturday morning.

    It’s more than just about swimming in a pool that hasn’t been heated since November.

    Everyone at the event donated money to go toward free swimming lessons for city youth.

    That’s important for a state where drowning is the number one cause of death for kids under the age of four.

    See abc15