anti-social media guru

Melanie Price's completion of her 42 km Lake Ontario crossing yesterday morning in Coronation Park must have been fresh on my mind, because that's where I drove to first this morning. It was about ten minutes out from the race start, so I got to pass the exit point of our swim. The 4 km felt like a really long drive. By the time I got there, conditions were absolutely perfect. You couldn't have asked for a better morning for the start of the fourth annual L.O.S.T. Race. 

Registration was quick, got a water bottle, and...

...numbers on the hands. I got a power of two!

Rob Kent with the pre-race meeting.

This time I actually remembered the Vaseline and applied it generously to my shoulders and jawline. 

I managed to snag a photo with Melanie Price. She looked so fresh I would have no idea she just spent over 18 hours swimming yesterday. YESTERDAY! She's my new hero. 

The race its self was great for me. Since the last two weekends I've been going sans-wetsuit, I figured it wouldn't be much of a challenge to put it on for this. I was going to debate whether I'd enter the naked class or not on the way down, but since I forgot my wetsuit anyway that decision was made for me. I'm glad it worked out that way.

The start was pretty relaxed. No pushing and shoving, and there were no restrictions on drafting. I didn't find many people to draft behind, but when I did it was a welcome relief. I set the auto-lap timer on my GPS for 500m this time, which is probably the ideal distance for me. Since I swim near 2:00, that makes it very simple when the beep goes off. If I'm right on 10 minutes I'm right on pace. It worked perfectly.

I started off fairly easily, and tried a few different things out. This time I kicked MUCH more. It felt right, and I could feel my feet wanting to come out of the water. It might not have helped much with propulsion, but I was much flatter. I credit the one swim I had during the week. Last Wednesday I made it in to an early-morning session with Ayesha, and it helped me find my form again. At the beginning of the session I was struggling to push 2:00, and by the end I was doing solid 1:50s. Still slower than the 1:42s I was hitting at my peak earlier this year, but for one hour that's a great improvement.

Sighting was a little tough, but checking out the GPS track it looks like I was actually really straight!

My 500m splits worked out really well. Every time the lap timer went off it looked like I was getting faster and faster. I lost a bit of time by stopping to check my watch, but it was well worth the help it provided with pacing. I think we had a bit of a current helping us. It felt much faster than usual. My splits broke down like this:

1: 9:57 (1:59 per 100)
2: 9:52 (1:58)
3: 9:57 (1:59)
4: 9:28 (1:53)
5: 9:27 (1:53)
6: 9:16 (1:51)
7: 9:04 (1:48)
8: 5:15 (1:45 (over 300m))

For the last 700 m I was experimenting with a totally different breathing pattern that I picked up by watching someone as she was completing the 10k race last week. She was taking two breaths on the same side, then took three strokes and took two breaths on the other side. Every second or third sequence of three strokes she would sight. When I watched her she looked very mechanical and structured, so it appealed to me. It worked awesomely for me. I was in need of more air because of all the extra kicking I was doing, and that definitely supplied it. It was a bit harder to maintain a straight line, but I think with a bit more practice it might be a good strategy for me. Considering my last splits I think it's something worth exploring!

My final (official) time of 1:12:25 may be slightly misleading though. Aside from the perceived current pushing us ahead, I think my sighting was a little too good. I may have cut the course slightly short, by swimming directly to the pier instead of following the shoreline. There were a few times one of the kayaks was nudging me over toward the shore. I definitely stayed inside where she was pointing, but... When I overlapped my GPS track with a straight line in Google Earth, it showed that the actual distance I covered was 3.7 km. Not a huge difference, but I technically still haven't completed a full Ironman distance swim.

This was a super fun event with a huge turnout. For the final results and a full writeup, check out the latest post on the L.O.S.T site. I'm going to join them as soon as I can, they really seem like a great bunch of people to swim with. Two of the people I spoke to often come from Barrie and Ottawa to swim with these guys. I need to HTFU with the drive—it's really only a half hour from downtown. Even Wilcox and Musselman Lake take that long.

After the race I got a ride back to the car from Steve, who I had just met on the way to pick up our bags. He was at the event last week and entered the 10k race. He wasn't able to finish it before the thunder (he was only 1000m from the finish), but I learned a lot about some of the swims he's been doing this year, and what he has planned in the future. He's been doing a lot of swimming in the NYC area, and this year he's going to swim from New Jersey to Manhattan. Awesome. He went from not being able to swim not so long ago to this.

Before this chat I was thinking about only entering the 5k swim in Welland next year. Now I'm thinking 10k might not be out of reach at all. Today I felt like I could have gone forever. Maybe I actually can! With 10k open water swim being in the Olympics it's actually quite an approachable distance. Almost like the swimming equivalent of a marathon.

After yesterday's epic 101k loop of the Muskoka half-iron course I felt like I could use a day to recover. So I packed my speedos and headed down to Welland for the Under the Four Bridges MSO Open Water Provincial Championship race. Well at least I got to sleep in a bit, since it was an 11:30 start.

Because last week's outer ear infection hasn't completely cleared up yet, I brought an ear plug for the right side. On the drive down I tried a test fit, but I couldn't make a seal. Heating it up on the windshield heater vent worked surprisingly well—not unlike what I imagine a hot ear waxing might feel like.

I got there just in time for the start of the 10k race.

Someone was actually crazy enough to attempt the entire race doing butterfly.

I picked up my race package, and packaged my other package into my butter speedo. It's getting close to retirement for this one. I do feel slightly awkward around little kids. The hot pink swim cap didn't help either (second pink cap in a row)!

We boarded the bus for the pre-race meeting, then were driven to the start 3km out. I was surprised to hear that there is no drafting or contact allowed.

The entrance into the canal.

As I was setting my auto lap settings on my GPS, I overheard someone asking if a stroke timer would be allowed in the race. It clicks or beeps every 1.3 seconds so that the swimmer could keep steady. The official radio'd the question in and it was okay'd. I asked him if GPSes would be allowed, and he "doubted" it. 

I'm sure I could have made an argument that it's not really an aid during the race, particularly if I hadn't set the auto lap. But there's really no harm in just swimming for the sake of swimming. Someone involved with the event said the third bridge we went under was about 1 km away from the finish, so I'd just pull a split off that. Watches were still allowed, so why not?

My race was pretty good. A little slow, but good. I wasn't there to sprint, I just wanted to finish relatively strongly. I passed a few people in the beginning and then for the next hour I was all alone. I passed time by switching from my usual bilateral breathing to a different count (I'm not sure what it's called, but it's three strokes breathing every second stroke, then five strokes without breathing). It was fun to play around a bit and see how my body would respond. I played around with head positioning, twisting my mouth. It was just relaxed and fun. 

Under the second bridge I made a mental note that I was around 34 minutes, and I hit the third bridge at exactly 40 minutes. If the third bridge was 1k from the finish that would have meant that I was on track for a 1 hour finish (at 2:00/100m). I used that info to calculate the approximate distance I was from the finish, so at 52 minutes I knew that I was exactly 400m away. It looked a little bit further, but I picked up my pace anyway. 

When I finshed the race I checked my watch and saw that I finished in 1:09. Where did the extra nine minutes come from? A quick gmap-pedometer revealed that the bridge was actually 1.2 k from the finish. That sprint that I thought was 400m from the finish was actually more like 700m. It makes sense why I ran out of steam earlier than I would have liked.

Here you can see the marks on the front of my shoulders from my stubble rubbing it. I forgot to bring vaseline to prevent that. What you probably can't see in this picture is the irritation from the level #1 armpit trim. Mental note for next time—that's too short!

I was still a little disappointed with a finish of 2:20/100m. I know I've never done that distance before, and I'm really happy about that, but I was hoping to get under 2:00. That's a big difference. Last weekend I was swimming at 2:00 naked, so I should have been able to keep in that range. So I'm really not sure why. Plus without the GPS track I can't see how bad my navigation was (although it was a very easy course to sight, being right in the canal). At least it's a good prep for next weekend's 3.8k L.O.S.T. race.

About ten minutes after I finished my swim there were reports of thunder on the other end. They ended up pulling everyone in, then the wind picked up and it started pouring. If you can't tell, hot pink was the theme for the day. Here I am hanging out with Ken, who was first place in my class and the overall winner of the 3k race.

I think about half the 10k racers finished, but none of the 5k swimmers were able to before being pulled. Standing in front of me in the last picture was a woman who was pulled from the 10k when she was only 500m from the finish. 

Here's Ken accepting his award...

...and me in second place with my medal!

This is where I leave out the fact that there were only two competitors in my class, which really is too bad. The distances might be a little longer than most triathlons, but it's a really nice, laid back event. There's no pushing and shoving at the start (in fact contact is not allowed at all), the course is well marked, the water is warm, and you're pretty much guaranteed to go home with hardware (if you care for it). I'll definitely be coming back next year.