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As I sit here writing this entry I feel like I have been hit by a truck! Why…adventure racing! More about that in a minute, but first, I wanted to catch everybody up on this weeks training.
This week I really started getting in some serious lake swims. I am really a proponent of swimming in the environment that you will be competing in if you have that opportunity. I am very fortunate that I can walk out my back door in the morning and jump into Lake Norman and start swimming.
There are several reasons why I like my swim sessions in the lake, but before I explain those reasons, I would like to insert a note about safety. I do swim alone in the lake and I swim early in the morning when there is no lake traffic. I stay close to shore in my cove where we have very little traffic (no traffic in the mornings) and I always wear my swim safe belt. The Swim Safe belt is made by triads (http://www.triaids.com/) and it is a belt that you strap around your waist and it contains a flotation device that can be inflated by a CO2 cartridge if you pull the handle. This is a very streamlined piece of equipment and does not get in your way while swimming and I actually don’t notice it while swimming. Wearing this is about being safe if you catch severe cramping or if anything else goes wrong that could impede your swimming. For weaker swimmers or swimmers not comfortable in open water, these are USAT certified for triathlons
The first reason I like lake swimming is that you get great practice in swimming in a straight line. This may sound odd to you non-swimmers, but this is something you constantly have to work on in a race by “sighting” the race buoys every few strokes. For those of you who have never swam in open water before, everyone has a tenancy to veer to the left or right when trying to swim in a straight line. To keep in a straight line as much as possible you constantly have to pick your head up in the swim (ever so slightly) to see if you’re on course or not, make adjustments, and then swim for the next several strokes and check again.
Another reason I like swimming in a lake is that I feel fresh water swimming with no wetsuit is the most challenging. Salt Water provides much more buoyancy than fresh water when swimming so if you have any inefficiencies in swimming, such as body alignment in the water (body staying parallel to the surface of the water…most efficient position) then salt water can help. Most people have problems with legs dropping in the water causing drag, thus slowing you down and salt water helps buoy them up (making you more efficient…faster). To take this one-step further if you wear a wet suit (especially in salt water) it’s like wearing a flotation device. A good example of this was the St. Anthony’s Tri in Florida this year I raced in. It was wet suit legal and in the swim on several occasions, I could feel my feet coming out of the water when I was kicking because I was so buoyant.
So my thinking is swimming in fresh water with no wetsuit forces you to practice good form in the water so when you hit a salt water swim it will be much easier to maintain the good form. One last advantage I like about open water swim workouts is I don’t have to stop every 25 yards to flip turn. I like getting into a rhythm, uninterrupted, so I can concentrate on form, speed and sighting.
Very quickly, on the run side, I would like to talk about the “new running” session Coach Sonni has me doing. Many people know about the run/walk pacing in marathon races….well it’s apparently no different in training either. Obviously after a the 2.4 mile swim in Kona and the 112 mile bike ride, I really don’t plan on running 26 miles non-stop. The plan now is to run 10 minutes and walk 1 minute to reset my heart rate and this will give me much more endurance for the 26 miles I have to run. So my training has started to reflect my racing this week…from here on, my long runs on Wed. morning will consists of running 10 minutes and walking 1 minute. This past Wednesday I was only scheduled to run 7 miles, I usually do this with speed work intertwined, but now it’s 10 minutes on, 1 minute off no speed work at all. It felt strange to stop and start walking after 10 minutes but it’s something that will certainly help me out on the run.
Now, why am I so sore after an adventure race?
Here’s why, it started with a 1 hour, 15 minute mountain bike (gravel road and technical trails), 4 hours of trail running, over 4,000 ft elevation mountains (plural as in more than one of those), back on the mountain bike and over two hours of the nastiest mountain biking trails I have ever been on in my life (not sure If they were really trails now that I think about it), and then a 2 mile run to a rock cliff to do a 120 foot repel and then 1 mile run back to the finish line. Oh, did I fail to mention I had to carry a backpack this whole time (on the run, bike and repel) that included all the water and food needed for the entire race and, helmets (biking and repelling), biking and running shoes, climbing harness, maps, compasses, first aid packs and other smaller items. I’m really not sure how much this all weighed but it was probably 25 lbs.
SOAR Highlands Adventure race ( http://www.soarhighlands.org/ ) is the name of the race and it’s a race I do every year with my business partner, Jeff. We raced this last year and came in 1st in the masters team division. (Masters meaning over 40). Our time last year was 6 hours 23 minutes, not bad and we were one of the top ten teams last year overall. With the competition this race has, I felt pretty good about that placement overall. So this year Jeff and I were planning on moving up in the overall rankings a few slots which we knew we could because we had made a 30 minute mistake last year.
This year was no different except the course being different every year was a much, much harder course this year and the lead pack which we were part of for the first 90 minutes ended up going off course. There were six of us in the lead pack and time lost going off course was about 60 minutes and it was on the run so we got an extra 5-6 miles added to our race. Nice eh?
The long and short of it was that after wrecks on the bikes (Jeff over the handle bars on one occasion and me slamming into a tree) torrential rain downpours during the race, numerous 2000’ + elevation changes throughout the course, we made up the time and both Jeff and I finished strong with a time of 8 hours and 19 minutes to defend our Masters team 1st place spot.
Afterwards we joined the rest of the finishers for a hamburger feast at the VFW lodge and while eating, Kristine Crane from the Charlotte Observer was going from table to table asking people where she could find me. I overheard her asking at the table I had just gotten up from and went over to introduce myself.
Stay tuned…I will explain the rest of this story next week.
This week I really started getting in some serious lake swims. I am really a proponent of swimming in the environment that you will be competing in if you have that opportunity. I am very fortunate that I can walk out my back door in the morning and jump into Lake Norman and start swimming.
There are several reasons why I like my swim sessions in the lake, but before I explain those reasons, I would like to insert a note about safety. I do swim alone in the lake and I swim early in the morning when there is no lake traffic. I stay close to shore in my cove where we have very little traffic (no traffic in the mornings) and I always wear my swim safe belt. The Swim Safe belt is made by triads (http://www.triaids.com/) and it is a belt that you strap around your waist and it contains a flotation device that can be inflated by a CO2 cartridge if you pull the handle. This is a very streamlined piece of equipment and does not get in your way while swimming and I actually don’t notice it while swimming. Wearing this is about being safe if you catch severe cramping or if anything else goes wrong that could impede your swimming. For weaker swimmers or swimmers not comfortable in open water, these are USAT certified for triathlons
The first reason I like lake swimming is that you get great practice in swimming in a straight line. This may sound odd to you non-swimmers, but this is something you constantly have to work on in a race by “sighting” the race buoys every few strokes. For those of you who have never swam in open water before, everyone has a tenancy to veer to the left or right when trying to swim in a straight line. To keep in a straight line as much as possible you constantly have to pick your head up in the swim (ever so slightly) to see if you’re on course or not, make adjustments, and then swim for the next several strokes and check again.
Another reason I like swimming in a lake is that I feel fresh water swimming with no wetsuit is the most challenging. Salt Water provides much more buoyancy than fresh water when swimming so if you have any inefficiencies in swimming, such as body alignment in the water (body staying parallel to the surface of the water…most efficient position) then salt water can help. Most people have problems with legs dropping in the water causing drag, thus slowing you down and salt water helps buoy them up (making you more efficient…faster). To take this one-step further if you wear a wet suit (especially in salt water) it’s like wearing a flotation device. A good example of this was the St. Anthony’s Tri in Florida this year I raced in. It was wet suit legal and in the swim on several occasions, I could feel my feet coming out of the water when I was kicking because I was so buoyant.
So my thinking is swimming in fresh water with no wetsuit forces you to practice good form in the water so when you hit a salt water swim it will be much easier to maintain the good form. One last advantage I like about open water swim workouts is I don’t have to stop every 25 yards to flip turn. I like getting into a rhythm, uninterrupted, so I can concentrate on form, speed and sighting.
Very quickly, on the run side, I would like to talk about the “new running” session Coach Sonni has me doing. Many people know about the run/walk pacing in marathon races….well it’s apparently no different in training either. Obviously after a the 2.4 mile swim in Kona and the 112 mile bike ride, I really don’t plan on running 26 miles non-stop. The plan now is to run 10 minutes and walk 1 minute to reset my heart rate and this will give me much more endurance for the 26 miles I have to run. So my training has started to reflect my racing this week…from here on, my long runs on Wed. morning will consists of running 10 minutes and walking 1 minute. This past Wednesday I was only scheduled to run 7 miles, I usually do this with speed work intertwined, but now it’s 10 minutes on, 1 minute off no speed work at all. It felt strange to stop and start walking after 10 minutes but it’s something that will certainly help me out on the run.
Now, why am I so sore after an adventure race?
Here’s why, it started with a 1 hour, 15 minute mountain bike (gravel road and technical trails), 4 hours of trail running, over 4,000 ft elevation mountains (plural as in more than one of those), back on the mountain bike and over two hours of the nastiest mountain biking trails I have ever been on in my life (not sure If they were really trails now that I think about it), and then a 2 mile run to a rock cliff to do a 120 foot repel and then 1 mile run back to the finish line. Oh, did I fail to mention I had to carry a backpack this whole time (on the run, bike and repel) that included all the water and food needed for the entire race and, helmets (biking and repelling), biking and running shoes, climbing harness, maps, compasses, first aid packs and other smaller items. I’m really not sure how much this all weighed but it was probably 25 lbs.
SOAR Highlands Adventure race ( http://www.soarhighlands.org/ ) is the name of the race and it’s a race I do every year with my business partner, Jeff. We raced this last year and came in 1st in the masters team division. (Masters meaning over 40). Our time last year was 6 hours 23 minutes, not bad and we were one of the top ten teams last year overall. With the competition this race has, I felt pretty good about that placement overall. So this year Jeff and I were planning on moving up in the overall rankings a few slots which we knew we could because we had made a 30 minute mistake last year.
This year was no different except the course being different every year was a much, much harder course this year and the lead pack which we were part of for the first 90 minutes ended up going off course. There were six of us in the lead pack and time lost going off course was about 60 minutes and it was on the run so we got an extra 5-6 miles added to our race. Nice eh?
The long and short of it was that after wrecks on the bikes (Jeff over the handle bars on one occasion and me slamming into a tree) torrential rain downpours during the race, numerous 2000’ + elevation changes throughout the course, we made up the time and both Jeff and I finished strong with a time of 8 hours and 19 minutes to defend our Masters team 1st place spot.
Afterwards we joined the rest of the finishers for a hamburger feast at the VFW lodge and while eating, Kristine Crane from the Charlotte Observer was going from table to table asking people where she could find me. I overheard her asking at the table I had just gotten up from and went over to introduce myself.
Stay tuned…I will explain the rest of this story next week.
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