Don Macdonald of the USA and France blogs his aquatic journey swimming, hosting swims around the world, one body of water at a time.
Those who aspire to this life goal please join and share.
#onestrokeatatime
Showing posts with label Barrington Swim Club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barrington Swim Club. Show all posts
On the evening of Saturday August 4, 2012, 17 year-old Missy Franklin won her fourth Gold medal of the London Olympic Games when she swam the backstroke leg of the women’s 4×100 medley relay. It was Missy’s second world record of the Olympic games; it was her 5th Olympic medal.
It was a crowning moment for swimming’s brightest new star and end of a chapter of her marvelous journey.
That Saturday was also the end of her teammate Kara Lynn Joyce’s long and productive Olympic career. And though she finished with four Silver medals, just making it to her third Olympics was her greatest accomplishment.
The fortunes of Missy and Kara – and that of their coach, Todd Schmitz – are the stories of Touch the Wall.
Missy’s story is becoming known – an all-American teenager who, when she’s not dominating her competition in the pool can be found doing her homework, hanging out with her friends, or just having fun at whatever she’s doing. And she possibly might just be the nicest person on the planet.
As for Kara, she finished her college career as one of the most decorated female swimmers. She has long had the reputation as one of the sport’s hardest workers … and most respected athletes.
Somewhat unexpectedly, they both made the Olympics, and Missy had a phenomenal start to her Olympic career as she won 4 golds and a bronze.
Touch the Wall is the story of how these two amazing women and their coach got to where they are. It’s a story of winning and losing, of commitment, and of triumph through adversity. It’s also a story of family, of loving what you do, and having fun with the people around you.
In a world starved for heroes, Missy and Kara stand tall in Touch the Wall.
Event:Touch
the Wall movie screening
Place:Barrington
Area Library – Meeting Room
505 N. Northwest
highway
Barrington, IL 60010
Dates:Friday,
January 30, at 6:30 p.m.
Saturday,
January 31, at 9:00 a.m.
Admission:$5 per person
donation to the BAM and BSC
The 28.5 kayaking trip around the Island of Manhattan will be both grueling and scenic and more importantly bringing awareness to Two important Causes (literally near and dear to my heart) - Cardiac Arrhythmia Prevention and Doug McConnell's ALS charity efforts. Doug’s swim will be accompanied by an escort boat with two crew members (Susan and Cliff Wilson I believe) as well as the support of a kayak manned by his long-time training partner, Don Macdonald. Bob Lee and others will be biking around the Island as well all supporting the cause and friend in the quest for raising money and awareness.
Here is a short video clip of the perspective from the kayaker and support crew for Manhattan Island.
Don's Journey since the English Channel has taken a twisted path.
While starting my training for a second attempt the English Channel that was planned for this fall (2014) I had a sudden cardiac arrhythmia event, collapsed, received life saving help. I was found to have arrhythmia problems perhaps brought on by high intensity exercise, that had gone undetected perhaps for years despite years of grueling training and hours submerged in ice cold water and distances.
Well I survived and now find myself with an implanted ICD to prevent such future events. I was running, which I jokingly say was the problem, instead of swimming. "I think ICD stands for I Can't Die".
However my experience now takes me down a path relatively untraveled since only about 1% of such incidents leave survivor's. So onto the next chapter of my swimming journey just One Stroke At A Time and Advocate Health System, Cardiac Care Services.
I am hopeful to return to the pool in the near future. But until then kayaking for Doug and his cause is great. We been at his for five years and like open water swimming, you have to adapt. As Dori says...just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, or in my case kayaking, kayaking, and kayaking.
Doug's ALS Challenge:
After another long year of training, the A Long Swim Team is planning for the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, a 28.5-mile circumnavigation of the most prominent island that makes up New York City, in June 2014. In the unique world of marathon swimming, successfully completing swims across the English Channel, The Catalina Channel and around Manhattan Island is considered the “Triple Crown.” If he completes the third leg of that challenge, Doug will be in a select club of fewer than 100 swimmers with that honor.
This will be the first of several posts from the same blog article. Offers great advice for those open water swimmers and athletes looking for alternate and healthful food energy sources beyond Gu's, maltodextrins and energy drinks.
First things first, a carbohydrate is a sugar is a carbohydrate. The term carbohydrate refers to organic compounds with only carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms and sugar, or sucrose, is just one of many. Each has their own distinct structure, hormonal response and health impact, but for the point of this discussion it is important to remember that:
Refined sugar and excess fructose are highly inflammatory, which from an athletic point of view is the enemy to recovery and subsequent performance.
Excess carbohydrate consumption can inhibit our body’s ability to burn fat, which is the limiting factor in endurance events.
And because I know you’re now curious, to increase your fat burning ability and therefore your endurance capacity:
Make refined sugar free eating a priority.
Reduce your fructose intake.
Rely less on starchy processed carbohydrates. Fact. You definitely don’t need to be following our traditional (and now almost obsolete) food pyramid, or guidelines of up to ten times your body weight in grams per day (i.e. 10g/kg BW/day). I promise.
Train on an empty stomach a couple of times a week. More on this to come.
Carbohydrates: friend or foe?
A day-to-day intake heavily reliant on starchy carbohydrates (e.g. breads, rice, cereals, potatoes, sugary sports drinks and lollies) will not only limit your fat burning ability, but may also result in an inadequate protein intake and a diet lacking in many essential trace nutrients, vitamins and minerals. This most certainly will have a negative effect on your recovery and performance.
To increase performance and recovery however, the right types of carbohydrates can be extremely beneficial. Here’s why:
Firstly, carbohydrates are more oxygen-efficient than fat. Put simply, more energy is produced from the same amount of oxygen when carbohydrates are broken down. Why is this important? Oxygen availability is limited and determined by your own individual maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max). The consumption of carbohydrates during exercise of extended duration therefore, tops up your individual supply and acts to extend performance. Without this, your body will simply run of fuel and eventually come to a complete stop, otherwise known as “hitting the wall”.
Secondly, carbohydrates are the only macronutrient that can also be broken down rapidly without oxygen, to provide large amounts of extra energy during intense exercise. This anaerobic metabolism is vital to maximal performance for bouts between fifteen seconds and three minutes in duration. It is for this reason that athletes such as sprinters and weight lifters should consume carbohydrates prior to exercise, in order to supply adequate fuel for the following exercise effort.
Lastly, carbohydrates act to optimise muscle and liver glycogen stores (basically the carbohydrate you eat stored in your body) and enhance recovery from longer training sessions and endurance events. So the key to carbohydrate intkae is nutrient timing – when you eat them and why.
McDonald’s (and other's) has a pretty unsavory reputation when it comes to public health. Lately the company has taken some steps to improve its image, launching vegetarian restaurants in India and putting fresh apples into Happy Meals. But there’s something at the core of its business that has at least the potential to do some good for both our waistlines and a different kind of waste: our waste of food. McDonald’s offers flexible portions.
In american not only food content and additives but portion size is killing us, literally from within.
Walk through those golden arches and you have your choice of a cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, quarter pounder with cheese, or double quarter pounder with cheese. Chicken nuggets? Do you want four, six, nine, or 20? Fries with that or no? It’s choice, and we Americans love choice. But it also means only ordering (and only spending money on) the food we actually intend to eat.
Of course, simply providing choice is not the whole picture. How many people actually opt for the plain single hamburger when the double is just a few cents more expensive? Turns out, not many.
In 1955, McDonald’s introduced a new product line — french fries. The original portion weighed 2.4 ounces (and had 210 calories). Today, that product is known as a small order of french fries, and is normally overlooked for the super size, at 7.1 ounces (and 610 calories). What’s more, the largest order of french fries in the United States is a whopping 37 percent larger than the largest size available in the United Kingdom. That’s a lot of fried potato.
Consider how portion sizes of some other common foods have grown over the past 40 or so years:
Our plates have grown to hold all those portions, too. The surface area of the average dinner plate expanded by 36 percent between 1960 and 2007.
This has meant a lot of additional calories that we’re routinely eating but probably don’t need to be. But it’s also meant a pretty shocking increase in the amount of food we’re discarding. Today, we waste 50 percent more calories than we did in the ’70s. The average American today wastes 10 times as much food as their counterpart in Southeast Asia.
Food waste is a complex issue with many drivers, but ever-expanding portion sizes are undoubtedly one of them. But while much attention has been paid to the resulting impacts on obesity, there has been relatively less focus on the ways in which increased portion sizes have contributed to the growing amount of food that gets wasted.
“Plate waste,” the food left on the plate after a meal is finished, is a significant contributor to food waste in restaurants. On average, diners leave 17 percent of meals uneaten, and 55 percent of these potential leftovers are not taken home. At the heart of the problem is the fact that for restaurants and cafeterias, food costs represent a relatively low portion of operating costs when compared to things like labor and rent. Put simply, they need to make a certain amount of money per customer to stay afloat, and since throwing more food on the plate makes the value go up in most people’s eyes, that’s exactly what they do. From a business perspective, this makes perfect sense. From a social or environmental perspective, the costs are pretty staggering.
Consider that we use 50 percent of our land and 80 percent of our fresh water every year to grow food, 40 percent of which never gets eaten. That’s a lot of resources going to waste. And when that wasted food ends up in landfills, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide and a major contributor to global warming. Consider also that this is all happening at a time when one in six Americans today is food insecure, meaning that at any given time, they might not have the means to get enough food. Just a 15 percent reduction in food waste could free up enough food to feed 25 million people.
And it’s not just restaurants.
Homes are not exempt from the large-portion trend. The Cornell Food and Brand Lab reports that serving sizes in the Joy of Cooking cookbook have increased 33.2 percent since 1996 alone. That is, a recipe that used to “serve 10” now “serves seven” (or the ingredient amounts are greater for the same number of servings). In some cases, this leads to overeating. In others, it simply leads to extra food that ends up in the trash.
So what’s the fix? Well, for starters, more restaurants can take a page from McDonald’s book and start offering half orders and a la carte options. Popular restaurants and cafes like T.G.I. Friday’s, Au Bon Pain, and Cheesecake Factory already offer smaller portion options. Now the rest of the industry should follow suit. Restaurants can also do away with “split plate” charges, which actually penalize customers for only ordering what they’ll eat and eating what they order.
For McDonald’s part, offering a small portion but highly incentivizing purchase of something twice the size is still problematic. If the restaurant is going to truly be a partner in this public health crisis, it needs to use all its persuasive techniques to truly help people eat better, not just list the option on the menu.
As consumers, we should know that many restaurants offer half orders at a reduced price even if it’s not on the menu. And if they don’t, just take home the leftovers. And then remember to eat them. When you’re at home, be realistic about what you’ll eat, save leftovers, and consider replacing your plates. Simply switching to a smaller plate could mean eating fewer calories, bringing with it important health benefits and the potential to waste less food and save more money.
And to top it off, these processed foods are destroying our cardiovascular systemsBy Dana Gunders
Dana is a food and agriculture-focused project scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), based in San Francisco. She blogs regularly about food waste here.
My Journey to Swim the English Channel has taken a bit of a detour, as this seasons attempt was washed out by bad weather, but now reflecting on my three year Journey am today announcing that I have launched an even larger and ambitious goal that will take me around the world, back to the English channel at some point, swimming one body of water at a time.
As part of this Journey I have committed myself to teaching kids and parents about being or becoming more resilient through the lens of my experiences. This is a multi-year perhaps decade Journey.
I am speaking at schools (just completed a 1000 student Junior High), business events and social clubs using a short video montage of swim experiences to communicate the Journey and to entertain subliminally linking the ups and downs, the success and failure, the day-to-day challenges to myself, family and friends to the message of resiliency.
I am a teacher, just an ordinary Joe, but strongly feel these skills are essential to changing our society from the sometimes over coddled, under parented/over parented issues that now grip our kids and families.
Barrington Swim Club (BSC) and Masters Club (BAM) participate in annual Village parade walking to honor our country and also in support of our community.
220 Foundation and 'One Stroke at a Time' teamed up again handing our swim bracelets
Club participants, kids and families lining up for the parade
The Barrington Swim Club, whom Doug and I have supported for many years as swimmer parents and volunteers are pleased to announce that an age group competition has been established to benefit the charities and social & emotional educational programming in 220 District.
Thank you to everyone for your donations and warm thoughts that will carry us across the cold English channel.
Week one results!
1st place - Colts $ 57.64
2nd place - MUSTANGS
3rd place - PONIES/PRE-TEAM
4th place - SENIORS
RESULTS ARE VERY CLOSE!
Only 2 more weeks!
Check under the couch, in the car, duffle bags, etc. and bring in your spare change on Mondaythru Thursday!
Funds are to help our Master swimmers Don McDonald and Doug McConnell as they train hard to swim the "English Channel" this fall with funds being donated to support Mental Awareness in the Barrington Community.
