What the heck was I thinking? Roman throws out this B-Fit Birthday Challenge and it all SOUNDS well and good. Then I see that being 44 this year, I have to swim the first number in miles (that would be 4 miles, Nytro...) then bike the total number of years in miles (44, duh) and then follow that up with an easy run of 4 miles, the last number in my age. The swim, in a word, sucked.
My longest swim ever prior to this was 3500 meters. This one would be 6500 meters. Smart? No. Especially on a diet of 2k to 4k meters per WEEK of swimming up to this point. But, I figure I'll just take it slow and steady, plus....I had my new fangled swimming I-Pod setup to keep me company. For 3 hrs. Sort of.
Quick product review. In the Birthday spirit - Di got me the Nano...Dad got me the Earphones, and Mom got me the case. Thanks, everyone, for my birthday gifts! The H2Audio waterproof gear (case and headphones) for the Ipod Nano worked like a charm. Nano is easy to operate in the case. Easy to see, and most importantly, it stayed dry. I have a set of tri-shorts with a big pocket in the back for nutrition....and for I-pods it turns out. The waterproof headset also worked great. Well, actually - I don't have a big noggin - but I had to have the headset pushed out to it's max settings to get the buds in position for my ears.
The headset comes with these black ear "inserts" that cup around the buds and then insert into the ear, in an effort to seal the ear of water. These work...not so much. Probably a function of the shape of the ear canal, but I could not get a good seal, and as a result, could hear when I turned my head to breathe and my one ear drained, but as soon as that ear went back in the water, the ear would fill and the sound would go away. Well, not totally away, but it was very muffled. The directions suggest using swimmers' ear wax and form some sort of cone-dealy...I'm willing to try it for good tunes while swimming. I'd adjust during breaks and get a few laps of good clean sound in - I'll tell ya, it really made the laps go by faster! Good rocking songs with plenty of Base worked the best. Folk music with girly tunes could barely be heard (sorry Trimama)
And I had 3 hrs to mess with it.
I read, a little too late, that a "swimmer's mile" is 1500 meters or 1650 yards. I should have swam 6000 meters, but I did 6500 meters or 7108 yards 'cause I did the math, and that's what it came up to for 4 miles. I don't know...towards the end I did one set of 500m in 13:09, so if I take that off of my total swim time, I'll have 6000 meters in 2:38:24. With 17:12 in total breaks. If you keep the other 500 in, just add that time and another 1:28 break. Good grief. About 2:20 per 100 yards. Did I mention I started slowly?
T1: 1:16:00 - time to eat a hearty lunch at Boston Market (mmmm...1/2 rotisserie chicken, green beans and potatoes...) and drive the 23 miles to Flatwoods, my training loop.
Everything else was fairly uneventful. I was thoroughly smoked from that self-imposed Chinese water torture and had nothing to give to the 44 mile bike other than some easy turning of the crank. I could tell my ass was still sore from the Century only 2 days prior - wearing the still damp tri-shorts was probably not the best idea. I went 2:21:43 for 44 miles; an average of 18.63 mph. Winds were steady at around 12 mph with gusts approaching 30mph. Nice.
T2: 3:15:00 - yes, that's 3 hrs and 15 minutes. I thought I had to work at 5pm, so I didn't brick that last little run. Turns out, no work, so before American Idol started and my Chinese food got delivered, I knocked out the neighborhood lap times 4.
Oh yea, I tore it up! 41:23 for 4 miles; yes, yes, that's only a 10:20 per mile pace - hey - absolutely NO records were harmed in the completion of this Challenge! And for everyone wondering, yes, the next day, my shoulders are like rusty gates. I'll see tomorrow if I can still do a swim-motion. After a day of lawn work, they really feel much better then they did when I woke up. At least my perception of swim distance has taken a paradigm shift to the extreme. 4k ain't shit anymore!
0 Comments
A huge congrats and Happy B-Day to Shannon and Javamom who both successfully completed the raceAthlete B-Fit B-Day Challenge.
This week the new team raceAthlete B-Fit B-Day Challenge was featured in the Active.com newsletter and Blog. Take a look HERE. It generated lots of great feedback and some really interesting comments. The most interesting comment came from Neil who wrote, "this challenge is definitely age discriminating!" and he went on to write, "My swim distances are twice those of people half my age. Are you serious about that? Let's see, as a 30 year old I swim for 3 miles, but as a 60 year old I swim for 6 miles! Okay, I can swim six miles and still do other things. Wait, run 4 miles - piece of cake, poor person at the end of their decade or just starting a new decade! But, cycle 30 miles as a 30 year old and cycle 60 miles as a 60 year old? Again, age discrimination. Creating a challenge for your b-day is a great idea. But, this formula will not encourage those that need this the most - us older endurance athletes - to take up the challenge. Instead, start with a base of 100. Subtract your age and then use your formula - 60 year old cycles for 40 miles (100 minus 60), runs for 10 miles (okay, decades remain tough!) and swims for 4 miles. Much more reasonable, and not very complicated." Since I created the B-Fit B-Day Challenge I’ve had dozens of people suggest dozens of different formulas for the Challenge that would best suit their age. You know...take your age and multiply it by dog years, subtract your street address, add your phone number, divided by your car’s horsepower, and take the number of fish you’ve owned, and subtract the color blue. But I can't help but feel that these different formulas completely miss the point of the Challenge. Let me explain to all of the type A triathlete who might be reading this. And of course that would be all of us ;-) The B-Fit B-Day Challenge, while it may be based on a triathlon, has very little to do with the actual sport of triathlon. It is not a race, but instead a personal celebration of health and fitness on your birthday. And best of all since it is not a race you CAN take the challenge and: Swim, bike, run or The not so fine point being that you can break it up into as many segments as you want, and just have fun with it. It is your Birthday after all! And since transitions don't count, and you have the choice to go for Bronze, Silver, or Gold, the current formula allows for plenty of time to swim, bike, and run your age, plus eat plenty of cake no matter how many candles you have to blow out. And sure it gets harder as you get older, but hopefully when we get to our golden years we have a bit more time on our hands. I completely agree with Neil, six or even seven miles of swimming may be a lot, but it is certainly doable if you break it up over a week. I'll be happy to let you know when I get there Neil. FYI: So far over 130 athletes have signed up to take the Challenge, and almost a dozen athletes have completed it with the youngest being 9-years-old. We've have some terrific sponsors who are providing some really great premiums to anyone who completes the Challenge. We've already given away heaps of brand new Rudy Project sunglasses, helmets, and now free Hornet Juice just for joining the growing community at B-Fit B-Day.com. The rest of the year we'll be giving away great gear from 2XU and really nice hats from Headsweats to the lucky B-Day boys and girls who go for Bronze, Silver or Gold What are you waiting for? If not now, when? Accidents have been on my mind lately. Non-Fiction by Trigreyhound It started feeling like an electric shock.Every time she lowered her chin she’d fell the *bang* and tingle in her feet and hands like she had been shocked.“Odd,” she thought.“Maybe I strained something in my neck or back having the baby.” The results are in and congrats to all of you who took on the B-Fit B-Day Challenge last month. I made it another year! I was born under a bad omen (on Friday the 13th), but that hasn’t slowed me down yet. Today, to celebrate my birthday, I did the B-Fit B-Day Challenge. If you haven’t read my post from Tuesday where I give the details of the challenge, here’s what you need to know: That’s right folks! Last week, Pharmie, her sister Steph, and myself officially started training for Grandmas Marathon. We are trying this program called “FIRST” which only has you run 3 days a week (which is great for triathletes). Each week, there’s a long run, a tempo run, and an interval day. The program emphasizes getting the most out of every workout: for example, our long runs for the week shouldn’t just be a run to “go the distance.” They should be relatively hard (at half-marathon pace). I think I’m going to like this program. It’s the way I normally like to run. And then on our days off, we’re supposed to cross-train relatively hard (lift, swim, bike, etc). Well, that’s what we’d normally be doing anyway, so I think it will be a good fit. I never thought I’d be so excited to start training for a marathon! We’ll see if this excitement lasts... Yesterday the GEEKGRL and I went to the Sports Physiology lab at the University of New Mexico to begin the testing that I got for Christmas this year. We are getting all kinds of stuff done and it is all top of the line. As a matter of fact this is the same lab where the elite Kenyans and Ethiopians who live in New Mexico come. This week we had power and VO2max tested. |
team raceAthleteWe are just like you. fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, friends, confidants. Together and individually, we will make our way to healthy lifestyle. Archives
September 2008
Categories
All
|