September 2007 Archives

There's no white line on the bottom of the lake, and you don't often get a rope to guide you, so I always have trouble swimming in a straight line in open water.  Bearing that in mind here are my top tips for how to swim in a straight line:

1. Bi-lateral breathing
   When I learnt to swim at school, I was taught to swim every 4th stroke, and always breathe to the right hand side.  This makes for an inherently uneven swim stroke, and can tend to drag you to one side.   Learning to breathe every 3 strokes, and breathe on the right and the left can help you go straighter.
   
2. Look where you're going
   If you're swimming breastroke, you'll tend to go in a straight line, but because your head is underwater 90% of the time with front crawl, you'll find yourself swimming in circles unless you learn a technique known as sighting.  Before you start off in the direction of the next buoy, work out where it is in relation to something large and obvious in the landscape - a large tree or electricity pylon is good. Then  aim to look up every 10-15 strokes, either as part of your breathing motion, or by just slightly bringing your eyes to the surface, and see where your point of reference is.  Make small adjustments if you go off track rather than large movements which can be the start of a wild zig-zagging motion which can significantly increase the distance you end up swimming!

Last Saturday, 15th September, I competed in the Oxford tri club championships for the first time. I joined 22 other people at the lake with a good crowd of supporters and marshals at around 9.30am.

I'd been nervous in the run up to this event because it's longer than any I've done before.  At 1100m the swim was 50% longer than Blenheim, the bike was 18miles rather than 18k of Eynsham, and the run was 7km or so, not the typical 5km (or 4.5km of Newbury).  I'd only run over 5km for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and definitely wasn't confident that I could do it after a long swim and bike.

I'd been preparing for the event since Newbury - concentrating mainly on my running.  I'd also been down the lake with the tri club a few times to check that I could cope with the longer swim, and I was confident I could cope with the two lap course.

The weather on the day was fantastic: still and dry, with the sun coming through more and more as the morning progressed.  I usually get very hot when I run, so I was a bit worried that I would overheat but in the end the temperature was just right.

The race briefing at 9.50 was very brief.  I like to know a course in detail, and there wasn't really enough of that for my liking at the briefing, but there was a promise of lots of marshalls and signs on the way.  No time for butterflies though anyway, as we were in the water 2 minutes later and ready to go...

I've made a "Natural Language" BMI calculator which understands Imperial and Metric values for height and weight.  Go and try it out.  Edit: The styling doesn't work well in IE6 or IE7 - sorry, as a Linux user I find it harder to test in these but I will try to make it work better soon because I know most people use Windows. Now works in IE6 and 7 too!

Or rather OMG ipod Touch! How exciting is this gadget? (very).  And how much do I want one? (very)

As you may know, I've wanted an ipod nano and Nike+ training kit for a little while now, assuming that the extremely small and clever gadget will make me go faster (isn't it obvious?!).  But now I'm torn.... I doubt the ipod touch is going to work with the Nike+ in it's current form, so should I go for the nano and Nike+ combo, or go for the super-super-cool ipod touch instead?

And whichever one I go for, how do I avoid losing it, scratching it or just accidentally taking it apart and not knowing how to put it together again?

Maybe best to wait until we've got our new kitchen, then decide.

Update 11/11/2007: I now know that the iPod touch has Wifi built in, which is fantastic. I also know it definitely won't work with the Nike+ transmitter, and anyway because it's got a standard hard disk inside it (unlike the solid-state disk in the nano), it's probably best not to run with it...  Yoiks - maybe I need one of each? ;-D

The Oxford Tri club's event is on next Saturday morning, starting at Cassington Lake and involving a 1200m swim, 29km ride and 7.2km run.  This is about half-way between a sprint and an olympic distance, so will be an interesting extra challenge for me.

I decided to give it a try today to make sure it wasn't going to completely kill me next weekend. 

The results are up now for Newbury Triathlon, and I'm reasonably happy.  The winner came in a full 5 minutes faster than me on the bike and the run!

Final results
103 out of roughly 400
Swim: About 6:12
T1: 1:12
Bike: 40:54
T2: 01:05
Run: 22:50

You can also see everyone's results here

Went to bed at 9.45 last night but didn't manage to drop
off until around 11 when Sophie came to bed, then I had a bit of restless night with my mind refusing to give up on the idea that I'd forgotten to pack something.  If only I had some sort of list...

An early start
Woke up just before 6 then managed to get a few more minutes kip before the alarm screamed at me at 6.15.  I'm lucky that I can force myself out of bed even when very tired - years of getting up at 6 in the morning to trek half-way across Manchester to school, I imagine.

The weather report had said clouds, some sun and light winds.  I hate wind (parp), but 13mph or so was manageable and at least the cloud would stop me overheating on the run.  As it turned out the event was sunnier than expected, but still cool enough for me.

Newbury tomorrow, organised by Team Kennet.  It was my second triathlon ever, around 1 year ago, so it'll be interesting to see if I've progressed.

I've had a reasonably hard week, despite the bank holiday on Monday,and have run and swum a lot (still neglecting the bike I fear...), so today I've taken it easy. I did a relatively easy 1500m swim at Cassington with Oxford Tri and have then basically just sat on my bum spodding, eating and drinking.  I had a nap for an hour this afternoon and have just had a lovely plate of pink pasta prepared by t'wife.  I'm raring to go!

I've mostly packed my box but now I've run out of brain power to work out what else I need to get ready.  I race tomorrow at 9:30am, so I'll be up around 7 to finish off packing, load the bike rack and get on my way to Newbury, which is about 45 minutes to an hour away.

Now it's about 9:15pm and I'm ready for bed.