Sunday, February 26, 2006
Swimming and biking brings week 4 to a close
Ok...
I'm pretty wiped out...
After waking up at the crack of dawn, desperately scrounging the 10 million things that you need to support a swim/bike, and then picking up Josh and Katie, we wound up making it into the pool on time. Before talking about the workout, let me rant about how much freaking stuff you need to do a triathlon. Just for today's workout, I needed to bring: Sneakers, Bike Shoes, Bike Helmet, Sweat Pants, Hat, Sweat Shirt, Biking shirt, Dry Shirt (for after the bike ride), Biking Shorts/Swimsuit (fortunately the same shorts work for both), biking socks, dry socks, heart monitor, two water bottles (one filled with water and one filled with Gatorade), a package of Cliff Shot Blocks, A Cliff Bar, Gloves, Windbreaker, Sunglasses, Wallet, Keys, Cellphone, Bike, Bike Rack, Towel, and a cup of coffee. I had to somehow find a way to transport all of these things without losing them, and figure out in which order they needed to be used and what could and couldn't be in the trunk given that the trunk couldn't be opened once the bike rack was in place. Needless to say, everything did not go quite as planned, but I managed to get through everything. You can now see, why making it to the pool on time was an accomplishment in itself. Clearly this is part of the reason we practice this stuff. If you were brave enough to read all that... I'm sorry.
The nice thing about being one of the slowest people in the pool last time, is that they put me in with the slow people. There were 25ish lanes in the pool (it was a huge pool) and they put the slowest people in lane 1 and the fastest in lane 25. Due to my stellar performance last time, I was placed in lane 2 :)
It was remarkable to see how much I had improved, and I certainly no longer felt like a swimming loser. I was able to complete 1400 yards in just 45 minutes! The same distance (ok, I suppose this is a little less distance than the 1400 meters that I did the other day) took me 63 minutes on Tuesday. Definitely fun to see yourself improving so quickly!
After the swim, chaos ensued again while everyone rushed around to shower, change and eat/drink in order to have some calories in them for the bike. I found that people were gradually clustering in one particular part of the parking lot, with bikes so I joined them. The route turned out to be the exact same as the week before. Despite being tired from the swim and the long run yesterday, I was able to finish the ride in 7 minutes less than the week before! Again, nice to see noticible improvement.
Finally we came back and had a big potluck picnic thingy. Thankfully there was lots of food because a) I forgot to bring .5lb of lunch meat like I was supposed to, and b) 90 people who have been awake since 6AM and have just done 3 hours of exercise devour food like a pack of piranas. After everyone could speak again some of the cancer survivors came up and spoke. It was very touching and reminded me that we are not only working hard for ourselves, but for those who's lives have or will be touched by blood cancers. If you haven't donated yet, please do now by clicking here. Every little bit helps!
For those of you who have donated, thanks so much for your support! It means a lot to me, and to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
A summary for anyone interested:
I'm pretty wiped out...
After waking up at the crack of dawn, desperately scrounging the 10 million things that you need to support a swim/bike, and then picking up Josh and Katie, we wound up making it into the pool on time. Before talking about the workout, let me rant about how much freaking stuff you need to do a triathlon. Just for today's workout, I needed to bring: Sneakers, Bike Shoes, Bike Helmet, Sweat Pants, Hat, Sweat Shirt, Biking shirt, Dry Shirt (for after the bike ride), Biking Shorts/Swimsuit (fortunately the same shorts work for both), biking socks, dry socks, heart monitor, two water bottles (one filled with water and one filled with Gatorade), a package of Cliff Shot Blocks, A Cliff Bar, Gloves, Windbreaker, Sunglasses, Wallet, Keys, Cellphone, Bike, Bike Rack, Towel, and a cup of coffee. I had to somehow find a way to transport all of these things without losing them, and figure out in which order they needed to be used and what could and couldn't be in the trunk given that the trunk couldn't be opened once the bike rack was in place. Needless to say, everything did not go quite as planned, but I managed to get through everything. You can now see, why making it to the pool on time was an accomplishment in itself. Clearly this is part of the reason we practice this stuff. If you were brave enough to read all that... I'm sorry.
The nice thing about being one of the slowest people in the pool last time, is that they put me in with the slow people. There were 25ish lanes in the pool (it was a huge pool) and they put the slowest people in lane 1 and the fastest in lane 25. Due to my stellar performance last time, I was placed in lane 2 :)
It was remarkable to see how much I had improved, and I certainly no longer felt like a swimming loser. I was able to complete 1400 yards in just 45 minutes! The same distance (ok, I suppose this is a little less distance than the 1400 meters that I did the other day) took me 63 minutes on Tuesday. Definitely fun to see yourself improving so quickly!
After the swim, chaos ensued again while everyone rushed around to shower, change and eat/drink in order to have some calories in them for the bike. I found that people were gradually clustering in one particular part of the parking lot, with bikes so I joined them. The route turned out to be the exact same as the week before. Despite being tired from the swim and the long run yesterday, I was able to finish the ride in 7 minutes less than the week before! Again, nice to see noticible improvement.
Finally we came back and had a big potluck picnic thingy. Thankfully there was lots of food because a) I forgot to bring .5lb of lunch meat like I was supposed to, and b) 90 people who have been awake since 6AM and have just done 3 hours of exercise devour food like a pack of piranas. After everyone could speak again some of the cancer survivors came up and spoke. It was very touching and reminded me that we are not only working hard for ourselves, but for those who's lives have or will be touched by blood cancers. If you haven't donated yet, please do now by clicking here. Every little bit helps!
For those of you who have donated, thanks so much for your support! It means a lot to me, and to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
A summary for anyone interested:
| Duration (Min) | Distance | Calories | |
| Swimming | 148 | 2.42 | 933 |
| Biking | 144 | 31.5 | 1346 |
| Running | 150 | 12 | 1470 |
| TOTAL | 442 | 45.92 | 3749 |
// posted by Zack @ 2:19 PM 
