Single Sport Training - Swim

Swim Route - Turn around off end of third dock

I started officially training and keeping a log about a week and a half ago. For the first two weeks I am focusing on single sport training. I'm working one sport each day alternating between swim, bike and walk so that they all get equal time.

Today was a swim day. I view this as my most challenging of the three sports. Now that Joe has decided on the course and the rules, I was able to swim the distance and route that I will do for the triathlon. Fortunately, the route goes past 3 of our neighbors' docks so feels more secure with places to stop if needed.

So far, I haven't needed to use the docks. I did the swim today in 15 minutes which surprised me. It felt a lot longer than that.

Here's how I'm doing on the swim challenges:

Water temperature - I lucked out here as we are having very warm weather. Water temperatures have been running at about 80 degrees in the lake. Very comfortable. I know I like to get wet gradually before I swim. No problem there as we will be having an "in water" start.

Oogieness of lake swimming - Surprisingly this hasn't bothered me much. It seems that once I decided to give this a try I subconsciously also accepted that there would be some oogieness. I've been swimming through patches of vegetation, putting my feet down into gushy bottoms and pushing away floating gobs of algae without feeling at all distressed. As lakes go, ours is pretty clean, the water is clear and it has a relatively sandy bottom. The algae was only there on a really windy day so may not be a factor on race day.

Working on my Breast Stroke

Swim strokes - I'm a bit worried about bumping into other swimmers when I do the back stroke. I'm trying to increase my distance with the breast stroke and minimize the amount of back stroke. I doubt if I can do the whole thing with breast stroke as my neck and shoulders get tight. Also, I need the change of postion to manage another challenge - foot cramps (see below). So I'm hoping that the other swimmers will get far enough ahead of me that I won't be too close to them.  If necessary I plan to steer a course farther out into the lake on the outbound portion to avoid congestion. I figure by the time I turn and head back I'll have the lake all to myself!

Working on my Back Stroke

Foot cramps - I pretty much get at least mild foot cramps if I swim more than a couple of laps. This is a bit frightening in open water. So far, the alternating between the frog kick of breast stroke and the flutter kick of back stroke helps minimize the cramps.  When I've gotten cramps during my training swims I've just floated on my back flexing my feet until they go away. Worst case scenario: If I get a severe cramp that won't go away I'll swim in toward shore until I can touch bottom and walk it off. Since we're never that far from the shore and/or a dock I'm not too worried about this.

Stamina - This is something else about which I'm pleasantly surprised. I thought it would be a big stretch for me to swim this far all at once. Actually, I'm doing okay with it. I haven't been able to get through the full distance without a few rests floating on my back. But I've needed fewer of those than I anticipated and, hopefully, will need them less and less as I continue my training.

In conclusion, I'm feeling really good about my swimming. One realization that has come to me is that I am now thinking of ways to manage the triathlon adapting to what works (or doesn't work) with my body. Its accepting my limitations but not letting them stop me from making progress and achieving a challenging goal. It feels a lot better than my past "I could never do that" thinking. Way cool!

First Ever Ackley Lake Invitational Triathlon

Ackley Lake from our Dock

Never in my life have I ever thought of myself as a triathlete. In fact, quite the opposite, I have considered myself a different species from those folks who do them (like my husband Joe). You know, I'm from Venus; triathletes are from Mars type of thing. Watching triathlons and even helping to conduct them occasionally has always seemed a fascinating glimpse into the lives of those other beings who thrive on physical challenges. Me, well any thrive I ever had (probably not much) was totally suppressed in school PE where I was the last picked for just about every sport.

Lucky for me I have a husband who finds ways to entice me into physical activities I would never choose myself. Through observing his pleasure in such things and wanting to spend time with him I've found myself (over the almost 45 years of marriage) backpacking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, seeing places like the top of Mt.Lassen and the bottom of the Grand Canyon, taking up bicyling again, etc.

Still a triathlon was the farthest thing from my thoughts until Joe came up with the idea for the First Annual Ackley Lake Invitational Triathlon. He has planned it for family and friends who live near us in Paw Paw and defined the distances to be about 20% of an Olympic triathlon. The routes for the three sports are all right around our house on Ackley Lake. His thinking is to make it attainable and fun for all while still being an opportunity to stretch a bit.

When he sent out the invites the younger generation immediately responded enthusiastically. Those of us in the older generation of the Byrne family took it under advisement and said very little. My immediate thought was: "I'm just now getting pretty comfortable with my biking, I could do the bike leg on a relay team. I'll talk my two sisters into doing it with me." That met with mild resistance. The primary problem was that none of the three of us wanted to do the swim leg. We seemed to view open water swimming as oogie and/or life threatening.

Okay, I thought, I can probably do the swim even if I don't really want to. That way it would encourage my sisters to participate and we'd have fun together. To start out I talked with Joe about the distances and how they map out in the lake. While swimming in the salt water pool at our Tuscany B&B (nice vacation but a different story) we paced out how many laps of that pool it would take to add up to a 200 yard swim. Turned out to be about 12 -  6 going away from our dock and 6 coming back. I counted my strokes and figured out that I could probably do it with some practice.

When we got back to Paw Paw I got myself into the lake and started swimming. Not too bad! I didn't panic about being in open water since I could swim parallel to the shore so was never far from shallow enough water to put my feet down if I needed to.  Okay, so I wasn't thrilled about that as I couldn't tell whether the bottom would be gooshey. But, at least, I wouldn't drown if I got a panic attack.

Our Dock - Start for the Swim Leg

I gave up on swimming a crawl years ago when I couldn't get goggles to fit right and couldn't take getting water in my eyes. My swimming since then has consistented of a few laps of breast and/or back stroke alternating with some water aerobics. So the lake swim would have to be the strokes I was used to. I successfully swam what I thought was the triathlon distance in the lake with a combination of the two strokes and a few rest stops of floating on my back. So far so good.

Wow, I thought, I just might be able to do this swim leg after all. But, wait a minute, the swimming is my worst skill of the three. I already do some regular biking and lots of walking. (I'd already decided that running was unattainable in the time I have to train so I'd settle for walking if I did that leg,) And then it happened, the thought I never dreamed I would ever have. I actually found myself thinking that maybe I could do the whole thing myself.

Well, things have snowballed since that thought broke the dam (to mix a few metaphors). Pretty soon I was timing my workouts and planning how I'd handle transitions. Meanwhile, I opened the topic of a sisters relay team again and one sister said she wanted to be a volunteer this time and not a participant. When I mentioned that I might do it all myself, the other sister said she was thinking of that too.

So here I am, in training for a triathlon. It's gonna take place on August 5th at 9 am EDT. I'll keep  you posted about how things are going along the way.