Monday, May 30, 2011

river swim done

before the swim - one last ditch effort b/c why not ?? please take the time to vote for me http://www.circleofmoms.com/blogger/trifitmom please - please - just once. will i beat suar ? NO but maybe in some way it will enable me to meet her and run with her !!

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So I did it, I swam 1.2 miles. actually i swam it twice. Friday night I went to practice. They have practice swims there every friday. I have done it before but never made it to the turn around point for the full mile. This time I wasn't planning on it, but a friend of mine who swims same speed at me was there and we went for it. You hit a sandbar and can stand up before you start your way back. It was quite a feat. I was very glad i did it friday night.

Sunday was the race. I was nervous but I knew i could do it. I forged on, the start was a bit crazed and there was alot of swimming on top and hitting. Then once that thinned out I was able to get comfortable in a stroke, then it took me time to keep straight. My normal problems of foggy goggles was not present. which was great, so my sighting was much easier and i did better. but it was taken over by the fact that anytime i got into a bit of a crowd i got nervous and would pop up and breast stroke to get my bearings. I looked at my watch at the turn around and it said 22. We were walking on the sandbar around the buoy and i asked "is this cheating ?" i knew that they way back would be easier b/c of the current. Not so much b/c on the way back the men from the 2.4 swim started catching up to me and swam over me. i also got stuck with a bunch of folks my speed and we just crowded up together. I kept pushing on trying to not pop up and breast stroke, and just swim forward, i tried to rotate, pull, and palm up when out of water. the end felt like forever.and i was starting to give up a bit, but i just kept trying and trying. finally i made it out of the water and my watch said 42.xx. i was pumped. granted i was 200 out of 265 but honestly, i was happy that i did it, and i was happy with my time. the olympic will be a .9m swim so i feel confident i can do it and hopefully work on my time. now i just need to read 25+miles. yikes.

ran a mile today, i was getting stronger by mile 3 and then somewhere after that i died a bit. but i had hills on the end of the course and was feeling strong pushing up them.

i am curious what a long workout will be for an olympic tri ?

beach, waves, all good

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like you are getting into a good swimming groove! keep it up.

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  2. hey, great job on the swim! i wanted to answer your question about the bike thing. I do not profess to be an expert and can only relay what I have learned or been told and by my experience.

    obviously you will get more power from the big ring in front and with more power can come more speed. However, you do want to keep a steady cadence around 90 rpm give or take. You need to shift to stay in that zone depending on hills, etc. I was told to look for the 'sweet spot' in my gears. Essentially what that means for me is staying in the middle range of gears in the rear cassette and using the front large and small ring to stay in that middle zone of gears. Going to any extreme on the gearing will stress your chain and you want to try to avoid that big crossover of gears (for instance, having your chain in the front big ring and then in the largest ring in the back). Does this make any sense? I just kind of shift around in that middle zone mostly.

    as for your question for a long workout for an Olympic, I just did a 1:30 ride and a :40 run off the bike the week before my Oly. You could go based on that...maybe more in the weeks prior and less as you come off that to taper. I had A LOT of bike training though leading up to this...my run is going to stink like dog crap though...

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what are you triing

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