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.

2007/2008 XTERRA East Championship Highlights

From 2007

Also from 2007. Longer video. Shows a lot of the Urban Assault mountain bike race, which is now part of Dominion Riverrock instead of XTERRA.

From 2008

It’s nice to see such experienced riders working so hard to ride our local trails. Watching these videos is getting me pumped up for the XTERRA and Dominion Riverrock races.

Belle Isle vehical bridge reopened

River District News is reporting that the vehicle bridge on the south side of Belle Isle has been reopened.

The article quotes a press release from the city that mentions that the re-opening of the bridge “provides a safe method of travel for emergency vehicles”.  Emergency vehicle access is really important as the weather improves and more people spend hot days sunning on the rocks and playing in the water.  But more importantly, the re-opening of the bridge will allow a vehicle to drive down to drain the port-o-poty.

I made the mistake of entering the port-o-poty back in February and it was one of the most disgusting things I had ever seen.  A park employee told me that no one had been able to drive down to change it out since the bridge was closed.  I imagine that the guy that ended up changing it out was either the new guy, or someone that lost a bet with his coworkers.

The re-opening of the bridge is good news for anyone interested in the XTERRA races, the Urban Assault or next year’s Duathlon.  It’s also good for people riding the Buttermilk/Northbank loop.  We’ve had to resort to throwing our bikes over the barricade and climbing over to avoid a detour over the rocks or the Lee Bridge.

Here’s an article that talks about the initial closing of the bridge and has a picture of the barricade.

Confirmed! XTERRA Races in Richmond

It’s official.  The XTERRA Races will be held in Richmond the weekend of June 12-14.  I have yet to hear how the funding issue played out between the city of Richmond and XTERRA, but the important thing is that the races are a go.  Here’s a link to their race schedule.

The Sport Race registration details haven’t been completed, but I spoke with Dave “Big Kahuna” Nicholas, the XTERRA Managing Director, over e-mail and he told me that it will be the same as last year.  Here is the details page from last year.

The swim course is near Browns Island in the James River in downtown Richmond.  The biking course covers the Buttermilk Heights and Northbank trails – both of which are pretty technical.  And the running course seems to take the best parts of the James River Scramble 10k, which includes running on top of the floodwall, up the “Mayan Ruins”, and a scramble across the rocks on the south side of Belle Isle.

Each of these three parts of this triathlon would be an exciting and challenging event by itself.  Having them all combined in to one event provides participants with a good feel for what Richmond has to offer.

XTERRA East Coast Championship

For a while it has been assumed that the XTERRA East Coast Championship wasn’t going to take place in Richmond this year.  An article in the local Richmond Paper discusses the reasons that it might not happen.

This was pretty disappointing because I wanted it to be my first triathlon.  Last year I participated in the XTERRA 10k Trail Run and it was a blast.  The year before I hung out on the Northbank trail to watch the mountain bike section of the pro race.  The races are cool, the vendors (both local and non-local) are cool, and having an event of that caliber in the center of our city is pretty awesome.

So I’m happy to report that there are rumors floating around saying that the XTERRA East Coast Championship will take place in Richmond after all.  One specific rumor I heard was that everything was done except the press release.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.