Freestyle Swimming

The National Duathlon Festival’s Off-Road Sport race was my first multisport event.  The event I raced consisted of trail running, mountain biking and more trail running.  I have become very aware of my abilities (or lack thereof) and limitations in both trail running and mountain biking.  I spent a lot of time on the trails to prepare for the race and my hard work paid off.  I was very happy with how I did in the race and I had a blast.  I’m now hooked on multisports.

Now I’m getting ready for the XTERRA Sport triathlon.  If I maintain what I have with running and kick up my mountain biking a bit, I will be good-to-go with those. Swimming, however, is a big unknown. So I spent some time in the pool at my gym recently to get a feel for my ability.

I’ve found that I’m terrible at swimming.  I’m honestly surprised by how much I suck at it.  None of the cardio benefits from biking and running seem to have transferred to swimming and I definitely feel like I’m starting from ground zero.  My race is a month away and I don’t know how I’m going to pull this off.

The swim portion of the race is 500 meters of open water in the James River.  I think that if I can finish 750 meters non-stop in the pool, I’ll be able to deal with the current and getting kicked in the face by other swimmers.  And I don’t need to be able to swim it fast.  Getting the swim done in a certain amount of time is something I will worry about next year.  This year I want to focus on not getting hauled out of the river by a rescue boat.  750 meters may not seem like much, but currently the most I can swim without needing to rest (gasp desperately for air) is 50 meters.

My brute force approach of just getting to the other end of the pool seems to be wasting more energy that I have to spare.  And no amount of conditioning will make up for my complete lack of technique. Watching other swimmers glide though the water lap after lap makes me realize that I’m missing some key pieces of information that would make my life a lot easier.  Some quick googling gave me the answer:

I am doing everything wrong.  This is just one of the guy’s videos. Click here to see more. He does a great job of explaining it so simply that a complete newbie like me can understand. I have a lot of work to do.

Hopefully I can remember all of these pointers when I’m in the pool.  As long as I keep finding time to train (spring is such a busy time of the year) and get this swimming thing down, my first triathlon will be a success.

RIP Blue Collar MTB

I was checking my RSS feeds this morning and I saw this when I clicked on the feed for Blue Collar Mountain Biking:

“Thanks For Reading!” can only mean one of two things.  The optimist in me wants to think that they’re giving away free gear to all of their faithful readers.  The realist in me knows that the site is a goner.  So I click on the link to find out who’s right.

What a sad day.  When I first got my bike and started riding I quickly needed pointers.  This blog became my favorite.  The authors were cool and each had their own style.  The tips and advice they gave was down-to-earth and perfect for a beginner like me.  The most helpful to me as I was starting out were the post about when to go clipless and the post about which pedals people prefer.  I ended up getting a pair of  Shimano shoes and Time ATAC pedals and I love them both.

Their archives have so much valuable information for beginners that I hope they keep the site up for a long time.  I definitely recommend checking them out if you ever need mountain biking advice or knowledge.

I’ve already added their RSS feed for their new site to my favorites and I wish them well.