I'm always looking for things to do to distract me. I think that's why a few years ago I picked up triathlons. This is the 6th season I have been doing Tri's if you don't count the 
4 years before that I just did swim and run races in college. I love Tri's. In an odd way they remind me that I'm mortal (mostly from the soreness and pain) but they also give me a feeling of immortality (like my body is a well oiled, high performance, high octane machine. Like a jet fighter plane, Ferrari...or in my case, a Datsun.).
When I started racing 6 years ago, I would do it alone. When I would cross the finish line people would cheer, "Good job #143!". Seemed pretty impersonal, so I decided I needed "Tri friends" and began recruiting anyone of my friends who would listen (Come on Rachelle, let's do one in 2009!). They would think of the Ironman and say, "No way! You are crazy for doing those. I could never do them." It kind of made me feel superhuman, which I liked. Since the sport has become popular through the years, races that were once just me and 250 other people are now sold out with over 1,000 people racing. Those same friends say, "Yeah, my uncle does those. He was morbidly obese and 62." Needless to say, comments like those took the edge off my superhuman image.
Luckily I was able to convince a good group of friends to do them with me. We train together and race together. It's a lot more fun when people cheer your name and not just number.
Swimming is my favorite part of it and I'm a pretty good swimmer. I usually finish in the top 5% of the swimmers and have even finished in the top 5 of one big race. Possibly feeling a little overly confident of this, I decided that this year I would do a 10k swim race.
I will just go ahead and do the metric-to-standard conversion for you. A 10k race is 6.2 miles of swimming or about 199 laps in a 25 meter pool. The race was an open water race so it was held in Deer Creek Reservoir where you had to have a person follow you in a paddleboat the entire time (Thank you Christy). So in my Tri races I do a mile in about 22 minutes. Simple math meant I should have been able to finish this race in about 2 hours 16 minutes add a few minutes of buffer, and lets just say about 2.5 hours.
Before the race I didn't have much time to train for the longer distance b
esides my twice a week swim workout which never totaled to more than 2 miles. A week before the race I headed up to the lake one early morning to try a longer distance and swam across the length of the lake and back. When I got back to my stuff on the shore, there was a fisherman who had been fishing there since I left. He said (G rated version applied here) "Heck-uv-a long swim!" I replied, "Heck-uv-a morning."
To make a long story short, here is what I learned about doing a 10k swim race:
1) 10k is a really, really, really long distance to swim.
2) Ski boat wakes can nearly drown a tired swimmer.
3) Training for a 10k race is preferred and possibly even essential.
The race took me 3 hours and 28 minutes to finish and I got tendonitis in my shoulder from it. It's like running a marathon...with your arms. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Impressive enough, I took 3rd place...overall...out of 5 people. I'm looking forward to next year and doing a bigger race.
4 years before that I just did swim and run races in college. I love Tri's. In an odd way they remind me that I'm mortal (mostly from the soreness and pain) but they also give me a feeling of immortality (like my body is a well oiled, high performance, high octane machine. Like a jet fighter plane, Ferrari...or in my case, a Datsun.).When I started racing 6 years ago, I would do it alone. When I would cross the finish line people would cheer, "Good job #143!". Seemed pretty impersonal, so I decided I needed "Tri friends" and began recruiting anyone of my friends who would listen (Come on Rachelle, let's do one in 2009!). They would think of the Ironman and say, "No way! You are crazy for doing those. I could never do them." It kind of made me feel superhuman, which I liked. Since the sport has become popular through the years, races that were once just me and 250 other people are now sold out with over 1,000 people racing. Those same friends say, "Yeah, my uncle does those. He was morbidly obese and 62." Needless to say, comments like those took the edge off my superhuman image.
Luckily I was able to convince a good group of friends to do them with me. We train together and race together. It's a lot more fun when people cheer your name and not just number.
Swimming is my favorite part of it and I'm a pretty good swimmer. I usually finish in the top 5% of the swimmers and have even finished in the top 5 of one big race. Possibly feeling a little overly confident of this, I decided that this year I would do a 10k swim race.
I will just go ahead and do the metric-to-standard conversion for you. A 10k race is 6.2 miles of swimming or about 199 laps in a 25 meter pool. The race was an open water race so it was held in Deer Creek Reservoir where you had to have a person follow you in a paddleboat the entire time (Thank you Christy). So in my Tri races I do a mile in about 22 minutes. Simple math meant I should have been able to finish this race in about 2 hours 16 minutes add a few minutes of buffer, and lets just say about 2.5 hours.
Before the race I didn't have much time to train for the longer distance b
esides my twice a week swim workout which never totaled to more than 2 miles. A week before the race I headed up to the lake one early morning to try a longer distance and swam across the length of the lake and back. When I got back to my stuff on the shore, there was a fisherman who had been fishing there since I left. He said (G rated version applied here) "Heck-uv-a long swim!" I replied, "Heck-uv-a morning."To make a long story short, here is what I learned about doing a 10k swim race:
1) 10k is a really, really, really long distance to swim.
2) Ski boat wakes can nearly drown a tired swimmer.
3) Training for a 10k race is preferred and possibly even essential.
The race took me 3 hours and 28 minutes to finish and I got tendonitis in my shoulder from it. It's like running a marathon...with your arms. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Impressive enough, I took 3rd place...overall...out of 5 people. I'm looking forward to next year and doing a bigger race.
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