Zack's Triathlon Blog

So, today we swam in the pool at IVC and while I'm probably the only one that is pissed off about this, why oh why do we have to follow the totally illogical imperial measurement system? Let me explain... the pool at IVC measures 25 yards across, while the one in the YMCA is 25 meters. For a while I was pleasantly surprised each time I finished a lap (in what seemed to be my personal best) until I realized that I wasn't swimming as far as I was in the Y pool. I had to convert the units to Meters to get a fair comparison.

While researching this conversion, I decided to find out why a mile is such a screwy measurement (5280 feet) in the first place. The answer according to Wikipedia (and several other internet sources) was that "the international mile is equivalent to 8 furlongs, 80 chains or 5280 international feet". Well... apparently, the mile was 5000 feet during the rule of the Romans, but went to furlongs after the decline of the Roman Empire. See, all of the land holdings in England were measured in terms of furlongs (which is the distance a team of oxen can pull a plow before needing rest). In order to keep all the paperwork simple, Queen Elizabeth I decided to change the definition of a mile to 8 furlongs.

Now, it occurs to me that the physical fitness of the team of oxen probably varied significantly and while imagining a bunch of English farmers lining up their teams of oxen while the scientists were measuring the distances and finding an overall average is quite amusing, I'm guessing that the process for determining this distance involved much less research.

In the end, I have decided to resort to the old (and completely useless) mantra "if you can't beat them, join them". Clearly the precedent has been set for me to name a new unit - the swimlong. Henceforth, the swimlong is defined as the distance a human (namely Zack) can travel by means of swimming (in highly chlorinated water) over the course of one hour. In order to avoid any future disputes, hostile takeovers, or other attempts to change the unit, we will fix the swimlong as the distance Zack traveled in an hour during today's workout, which included a wide variety of drills, water swallowing, coughing fits and other humbling events.

You see, leading up to today, I was beginning to think that my swimming was pretty good. The problem is that I'm really a one-trick pony when it comes to swimming. In my haste to swim distance, I have neglected all other (apparently important) swimming skills. Up until now, I have just been following phrases on our training calendar that say things like "back - kicking only". As a result, I developed a "back" swimming method that involved having my arms at my sides and kicking my feet. That worked fairly well, until today, when one of the coaches told me that I was doing it wrong. I am supposed to hold my hands straight over my head. Attempt after attempt, this resulted in my head going under water, which in turned meant that I was either swallowing water, or blowing clouds of water out my nose and/or mouth. Right about the time I was able to complete a lap without this unpleasantness it was time to move on to the next drill "spotting".

Spotting requires you to raise your head out of the water and actually look at where you are going. You see, in open water (which we will encounter for the first time next Saturday) there are no lines for you to follow on the bottom of the pool and you have to take the time to occasionally make sure you are going in the right direction. While spotting seemed to come to others naturally (I keep telling myself that they had done it before to make myself feel better), every time I attempted to "spot" I began to sink, flail and drown. Picture a person who has fallen into the water, splashing their arms wildly and yelling "Help! I can't swim!" and you should have a fairly good impression of what I looked like while "spotting". In the end, I was able to complete 1500Y or 1 swimlong.

After getting out of the water and a quick transition, we headed out on the bikes. It was a beautiful day with shorts and short sleeves. Compared to last weekend's snow and freezing cold, it was a nice surprise. I wish I had some good stories about the ride, but it was fairly routine. We went further than I have ever gone before, and I ended up drinking all of the water and gatorade from both of my water bottles and I even finished the refill I got at a water stop. I also had a power bar, a power gel, and numerous cliff shot blocks. In the end I felt that I was just about right on carb consumption, but I could have used even more water. I'll have to keep that in mind for the Wildflower, because it will be even hotter there than it was today.

In summary week 7 was quite a record breaking week. I set new personal records for average bike speed, total bike distance, average run speed, total swim distance and total calories burned. If you are impressed, or at least entertained - please donate! I'm still well under my minimum.

// posted by Zack @ 5:45 PM