Monday, May 5, 2008

Whale of a good time

Building base is good for the body but it’s bad for the blog.

I’ve got very little to say. There are no ground breaking records to break; there are no lung busting runs or rides.

It’s slow and steady from here.

That said, it’s not all boring turtles and naps. There is the occasional hare too. Or in this case perhaps a whale is a better example.

This weekend, the Mrs. and I met up with Stef. She had already done her swim workout but I joined her on the run. We ran for about an hour at a good pace and worked on the Rage course.

Let me just say that the ‘sand pit’ sucks! I watched my HR climb through the zones right through the roof! I was running on fresh legs. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to run that beast after a long swim and longer bike. Whew! Stef was doing it today after swimming for 45+ minutes. Impressive!


After the run, it was on to my swim. Mainly it my chance to see if the wetsuit was my demise or if the open water was my form of kryptonite.

I realized (or rather the Mrs. did) that the wetsuit was too low and lifting my arms up was like trying to use the stretchy rubberbandthings at the gym. No wonder the swim was so tiring! It was my own private bootcamp from hell!

I yanked, I pulled, I stretched, grunted, moaned, farted and gasped all in an effort to get my wetsuit WAY up! I had so many folds of neoprene around my shoulders that I could store food in there. I looked kind of like



Yeah! Something like that!

Long story short…it worked! I was able to get some long yards in. All open water. Man it was great.

1 hour = 2800 yards.

Thanks for the suggestion IronTriTim

4 comments:

SWTrigal said...

I am having bad flashbacks reading your post..:)
Great swim!Has it warmed up any?

Anonymous said...

Oh, I love that picture!!

I've had to pull my wetsuit up like that, too...it's like trying to pull the skin on a grape.

Great workout. Training on that course will make you tough as nails for sure!!

Unknown said...

Nothing boring about base building. All of Lydiard's runners did huge chunks of base building and they won more medals and broke more records than any other group in that era. That base will make everything else much easier.

Formulaic said...

The water has warmed up a lot! At least I think so. It seemed to be in the about 63 which is a big difference from the RAGE.

Chad - The lydiard guys are always so impressive. Mike always impressed me and Lucho is so good that I wait eagerly to read his blog. Man! a 120 HR at 7min/miles!