Squirrel!

[hozn]

Not sure why the hatred toward triathletes here.

I think God said it best: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. Cyclists are a little wary of people that would willingly interfere with a perfectly nice ride with running and swimming activities.

That and the whole sleeveless jersey with arm warmers thing.

(But, yes, obviously this was a joke … if lost on those that don’t keep up with Pixar.)

[Dickie]

The article certainly plays on our fears and sells add space for it, but it isn’t entirely wrong. Sadly it focusses too much on the final straw being broken and the dramatic terminal event at the conclusion of a heart related episode, but what it neglects to point out is how the training and exertion prior to the attack are far more of a factor than the temperature of the water, or the inability to rest while swimming. Perhaps this is why triathlons are targeted more than other sports…. someone dies during the event.

Having a congenital heart defect I get regular screenings but nothing can truly put my mind at ease. There comes a point when you are stressing the heart more than helping it. Do this repetitively and you slowly and permanently damage the heart muscle. Unfortunately you rarely get a warning sign unless you are very in-tune with your body. I can also hear all of you saying; “but I don’t have a heart condition”… sure, good enough, but even a healthy heart, a healthy muscle can be over-worked. We have all gone to the gym and over-worked a muscle. The next day you can’t lift the milk carton for your cereal, or put on your shirt. This is also true of your heart, but you don’t feel it. Do it again, and again, and again…. you get the point. The harder your heart works the quicker it wears out….. obvious! This is why I am permitted to do centuries at a moderate pace and ride everyday within my zones but not permitted to do Kill Bill or try to conquer the Alps. Although I might not die at the top of Military Road, it is almost certain I am not doing my heart any good by racing up it out out of my comfort zone.

Again, this line is on a sliding scale. For many of you the level of “good” exertion might be much higher, your hearts much stronger requiring greater efforts to exercise, but how do you know? You can’t see the size of your heart, feel the damage to the muscle, or distinguish between breathlessness and angina.

The big question then is: How can you distinguish between normal suffering and actual symptoms? I mean really, on a hard effort who isn’t out of breath, or struggling? Sadly there isn’t a really good answer but regardless of what the article mentioned everyone who exercises regularly and is over the age of 35 should be screened or at least get a physical. It might not tell you everything, but it can certainly locate some issues. This is a good starting point. Read about the signs, do a little research on your lunch, find out from people who have suffered from angina what it ACTUALLY feels like. I had no idea of my condition until I felt something different one day while riding, a feeling I could not explain. It was not severe, it did not effect my performance, it went away quickly, and it didn’t register on my heart monitor. It wasn’t obvious, it wasn’t dramatic, it was very subtle, but being born into a family riddled with bad hearts it was enough of a sign to get checked out. At that point I was riding 150 miles a week and felt VERY fit… it didn’t matter.

I continue to ride the same way, the same miles, the same effort, and I trust I have dialed in a regiment that balances my desire to train and ride hard with what is healthy for my heart, but I still can’t be positive.

Conclusion: Be smart, get checked out, be humble, don’t assume, and don’t go swimming with 1500 people in cold water before you ride your bike

[NicDiesel]

Like Dickie I have a CHD that I was completely unaware of until it was too late and I had a myocardial ischemia episode 10 years ago. I was relatively healthy at the time (~250lbs and active) and had absolutely no idea that anything was wrong until I started having left shoulder and went to the ER. I’m pretty fortunate that after everything I’ve put my body through (years of being 450-500lbs, H1N1, kidney failure, coma) I’m still relatively healthy and have a really good shot of making it to 50 and possibly 60 if I can stay active and keep bringing my weight down. That said, the heart, as the ER cardiologist 10 years ago so bluntly told me, can be a ticking time bomb that will give you no warning before it up and dies. Be careful, get screened, stay healthy, and listen to your body

Just to show I’m practicing what I preach – after my last screening I finally wised up and got a Heart Rate Monitor so I know when I’m hammering it “too hard” for my heart instead of “just hammering it”. My resting heart rate is in the 55-60 range and my heart, based on my last heart scan, is showing signs of strengthening after years of abuse.

TL;DR – get checked out, do your screenings, get plenty of rest, and listen to your body. The health of your heart isn’t something to gamble on.

[PotomacCyclist]

@acc 56021 wrote:

Triathlons are great, seriously. They are a tremendous challenge and require a lot of thinking and strategy.

But you can die. On a bike, you have the option of stopping. You can catch your breath, seek shade, get something to drink.

750 meters offshore in the middle of a dark body of water you don’t have many options. And you still are only halfway done with the swim.

It’s a different kind of animal. It’s the boyfriend you hate but can’t stay away from. And the danger is what makes the whole thing interesting.

I happened to read this before the race. Probably not the most encouraging note I’ve ever read pre-race.

***
Anyway, now that I’m mentally free to post (after the stress of the weekend, which didn’t quite go as intended), it’s true that most deaths in triathlon occur during the swim, probably more than 90%. But I did read a post from a triathlon swim website pointing out a different perspective. While the swim is the most problematic during triathlon races, he pointed out that cycling is probably the most dangerous overall, when you take into account training hours. When you think about it, anyone who trains for and competes in triathlons will spend 99 percent of the active hours in training and 1 percent of the active yearly hours in racing. (The numbers change depending on how much one trains and how frequently one races, but the general idea is the same, that the vast majority of active hours will be spent in training, not racing.)

Deaths from swim training are extremely rare. (Even deaths in triathlons are relatively rare, although obviously the risk is greater than zero percent.) Even for open water competitors, much of the training is done in a pool. For cycling, while many triathletes (and road cyclists) use indoor trainers over the winter or in bad weather, much of the training is done outside, often on public roads. While the overall risk of death isn’t high, it’s something to consider. Bike training on roads carries a much greater risk of serious traumatic injury than swim training in a pool (which accounts for most of the swim hours for most triathletes).

Is one demonstrably more risky than the other sport? Frankly, I have no idea. There are risks with any active outdoor endeavor, whether it’s cycling, swimming, running, rowing, mountain climbing, roller blading and so on. Even with walking, there’s the risk of getting hit by a car, even if you remain on the sidewalks most of the time. But with all activities, there are ways to reduce (but not eliminate) risk. For example, riding safer greatly reduces the risk for a cyclist. (Those people who zip through busy intersections on red lights are not riding safely. It’s safe to say that if one engages in behavior like that often enough, you will have a much greater risk of serious injury than someone who rides more sensibly.) With swimming, preparation and training can greatly reduce (but not eliminate) the risk. That includes physical training as well as preparatory items like developing open water skills (many pool swimmers do not fare well in open water because of the different environment and challenges), scouting the course, learning as much as you can about possible conditions and environmental challenges, et al. The same goes with all other outdoor activities. The risk can be decreased to an extent (although some activities will always be very dangerous, such as climbing up Mt. Everest or skydiving).

I don’t think of amateur cycling or amateur non-draft triathlons as high-risk activities. (I’m not including pro road cycling, which I think is a fairly risky sport. Cycling in triathlons is much different, at least in most U.S. races, because of the rules against drafting.) With triathlons, you can help to manage risk by preparing and also by choosing races that you can probably handle. Some venues are more difficult than others. There isn’t a precise guide to determine which locales are appropriate for which athletes, but you can make educated guesses, based on scouting reports, previous race reports, local expertise and so on. I think the risk of amateur cycling and non-draft triathlons is low enough that I don’t think of them as reckless activities. Challenging? Yes (in many situations), but not so extreme that one’s life is in danger, not the way it would be for jumping out of planes on a regular basis or walking across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope.

***
There are recent articles that point out that more is not always better. But what is too much for one person may not be that much to another person. No matter what level of activity someone pursues, having a smart approach makes the overall risk of the activity lower. Some elements of smart training: only increase training loads or activity loads gradually over extended periods of time; incorporate cutback weeks, mid-year and off-season breaks; listening to your body and backing off the gas pedal when your body needs extra rest or recovery; and so on. I’m getting a sense of what I feel is a good challenge for me personally. So far cycling and triathlon have not pushed me to the extreme breaking point, partly because I try to be smart about it and not go for broke on a constant basis. I also know that some activities might be unreasonable for me. For example, I don’t even have the slightest motivation to try something like the Race Across America-Individual category. I don’t have the slightest desire to train for and race those double and triple-Ironmans that some people do now. I don’t have a desire to do any 24-hr. races (whether in running or mountain biking or something else).

[PotomacCyclist]

DON’T READ IF YOU DON’T WANT TO, (or if you are allergic to long posts)

As for the race, it didn’t quite go as planned. While I don’t spend as much time on swimming as I do on cycling or running, I thought that I was reasonably prepared. I’ve done several open water triathlons in the past few years. I did specific training for this race for the entire year, starting in mid-December or January, although I did skip several swim workouts throughout the year.

I’m still gathering info on what happened out there during the race. I’m not sure how much I could have done to prevent the outcome of the race. Anyway, the beach start had everyone walking through the water out to the first buoy. Not difficult, although it actually takes a fair amount of energy to walk through water. I didn’t do any dolphin dives because I felt some rocks in the water with my feet, so I didn’t want to be putting my hands down there at full speed. The first part of the race was OK. I was slower than most, which I fully expected, but I wasn’t experiencing any difficulties other than some fogging up of my goggles.

As we got close to the middle of the river and then turned (either against the current or with the current — I’m still not sure), that’s when it happened. I was swimming along, a little tired but in good shape. I saw a woman start waving her hand back and forth, the signal that she needed assistance from the rescue craft. (In properly managed triathlons, there are boats and kayaks out on the water within close range of the swimmers so they can assist when necessary.) She was near a large red buoy, which marked a turn of the course back toward shore.

I didn’t think too much of it, but then I noticed that my arms were getting heavy. That has never happened to me before, in any of my open water swims (OWS). I’m slow, but I’ve never had any difficulty with actually finishing a swim. But this was the worst water that I’ve ever been in. On the stretch near the middle of the river, we suddenly got hit with significant waves. My guess is that they were about a foot high, or even higher. That’s fairly significant when you’re trying to swim.

Then when I neared the red buoy, I tried to make a close pass, to cut off a bit of distance from the turn. So far so good… except that the next time I looked up to sight, the red buoy was still next to me. And again, when I sighted several strokes later, the red buoy was still RIGHT NEXT TO ME. I started thinking that the buoy had come loose and was trailing me in the current. My shoulders were getting more tired than usual. Actually more tired than they ever have in any swim I’ve ever done before.

For the first time ever, I swam over to a boat and asked if I could hang on for a second. (You are allowed to hang onto the support craft as long as you do not advance while hanging on. If you climb on or advance from the power of the boat, you are disqualified.) The guy said that I was not allowed to use that boat (maybe because it was a rescue boat and not a kayak) so I let go. I felt better though, so I started swimming again.

I looked up shortly afterward and saw that the entire boat was full — of swimmers who were bailing out and dropping out of the race! I’ve never seen that before. I later heard that all of the rescue boats filled up with swimmers who were quitting and all of the boats headed back to shore at the same time. Only problem is that I was kind of bull-headed about it and decided that I would keep swimming. I didn’t feel like I was in trouble, although I started to recognize that this was much tougher than I had anticipated.

I think it took me almost 10 minutes to get past that red buoy, meaning that I advanced about 5 feet or so in that entire time. I’m slow, but not THAT slow. Once I cleared whatever was holding me back there, I decided to sight at a permanent steel buoy off in the distance, not far from one of the inflatable yellow race buoys. My goggles were no longer fogged up, so that helped. But every time, I sighted, I found myself turned around in the wrong direction. I started sighting every 2 or 3 strokes, which helped matters slightly. But I was still not making any headway. Perhaps another 10 minutes went by and I probably only came 50 meters closer to the steel buoy. Again, I’m slow, but not THAT slow. That’s a pace of about 20 minutes per 100 meters, which is probably slower than a snail could do. (Pro athletes swim closer to 1:10 per 100m. Some of the slower amateurs are back in the 1:40 to 2:15/100m range or slower, which some here will consider slow, but it’s more than enough to make the cutoff times at almost every amateur race.)

The current had to be pushing me back. I fully intended to finish the swim, even though I knew my time would be dreadful. But the boats finally returned. All of the faster swimmers had finished, while many of the other swimmers had already bailed out on the race altogether. That left me. I asked about the time and they tried to convince me that since I had barely made any progress in 20 minutes, that there wasn’t much point in continuing. I didn’t want to quit, but I think they were telling me that I probably should. So I went ahead and climbed on the boat. Then I transferred to a watercraft and rode that back to shore, where they took the timing chip, thereby officially dropping me out of the race.

***
It goes without saying that I was disappointed in the result. Since this had never happened to me before, I didn’t know what the next step was supposed to be. For some reason, I was asking about how to get my bike back to the other transition area. (This race had separate T1 and T2 transitions.) Well, of course, I could just… ride over there, but I wasn’t thinking that clearly. Not because of fatigue, but merely because this was not a situation I had even thought about.

But after a couple minutes, I decided to make the most of the situation. For you see, the swim was taking place right next to the historic Jamestown settlement and archaeological site. The bike race course went up to the northwest, on regular modern roads. But now that I was out of the race, I took advantage of the situation and opportunity to ride around the old Jamestown area. I’m actually glad I did. The route is spectacular, in terms of the natural beauty. I saw the old glassmaking house but I missed the actual Jamestown settlement. (I think you had to pay an admission fee and I didn’t have my wallet with me.) I rode around the Colonial Parkway and in and around the other roads in the old Jamestown area. The concrete road was a bit rough, which caused my bike to rattle the entire time. I didn’t really know where I was going (since I hadn’t pre-planned this ride) so I didn’t ride too far or too fast. (I guess I was a bit fatigued from the swim after all.)

Some people thought I was lost, but I explained that I was out of the race so I was just doing my own thing and going for a scenic ride. I returned to the other transition area and watched other athletes on the run and at the finish.

***
I spoke to and overheard various people regarding the swim. One person said that a friend had bailed out, saying the swim was a terrible experience. Apparently he is a good swimmer too, in training for an upcoming Ironman race. I overheard someone else (who finished the race) say that it was one of the most difficult swims he had ever done. I saw several other people riding around casually because they had also dropped out. I spoke with people at transition. I overheard others saying that they had also dropped out. When the pro winners were interviewed on the stage, the first thing that the female winner said was that the swim conditions were very tough. That the pros were getting blown around off-course and getting turned sideways in the water. And these are among the best endurance athletes in the world saying this and getting affected by those conditions.

I wasn’t sure what was going on with the current and why the water conditions were so bad. Someone had posted on the official Facebook page that the current was going against the swimmers when they were closest to the center of the river (where the current is usually strongest). He questioned why the course was set up like this. And he wrote this two days before the race even began.

But then I spoke with someone at a local bar (after the race was over) who is a local resident. He is an experienced lifeguard, a frequent open water swimmer in the James River as well as a casual cyclist on the local roads. He said that he has done 2-mile open water races in the past, so he is fairly capable. He told me that the current actually switches directions, because of the tides and the full Moon, or something like that. (Sunday was the closest full Moon of this year, where the Moon was closest to Earth during a full Moon.) He said that the current would have been heading to the northwest at the time of the race, which would have made the race swim heading WITH the current during that difficult part near the middle of the river. That confused me, because something was holding me back when I got stuck at the red buoy for 10 minutes. I thought it was the current.

Then I saw a post on someone’s Facebook page, stating that a large tugboat and a large barge had passed down the river during the race. That would explain the 1-foot waves that appeared suddenly, during the middle of my swim. That could also explain the “current” going in the other direction, i.e., against the swimmers, even if the river was actually flowing in the other direction at that hour. (I’m not an environmental scientist, so I’m not sure about how all these variables affect water flow. I just know that the waves were very bad at one point and some sort of current or tow was pushing back against everyone very suddenly.)

[PotomacCyclist]

LONG RACE REPORT – PART II (don’t read if you don’t want to!)

I thought that maybe I wasn’t prepared enough for the swim. But then why did perhaps a dozen or two dozen people have to quit almost simultaneously, namely all the people around me at that point? I also read that one competitor ended up being pushed by the river to the SE of a large dock, even though the entire course took place well to the NW of that dock. That meant that he was at least a couple hundred meters off course. I don’t think poor sighting would explain that. I’ve had races where I’ve sighted poorly and even I have never been that far off course. I also overheard some race volunteers saying that someone had been pushed so far off course that he swam an estimated 2 miles on the day. (The longer course was supposed to be 1.2 miles. The shorter course, for the separate race that day, was 0.9 mile.)

I’m still gathering information, which I’ll do more diligently tomorrow. But if it turns out that the barge and the tugboat caused the problems, I’m not sure what I could have done about it. I do know that I should devote more time to swim training (although it’s difficult when I’m also trying to balance the swim against bike and run training too). But maybe this is one of those situations where some significant factors were simply beyond my control.

I’m not crushed by the results. Disappointed, yes. But despondent? No. Triathlons are a big part of my life these days, but I also recognize that race results do not determine my fate (since I’m not a pro athlete). Bad races will happen. I can live with that. I also got a chance to bike around the Jamestown/Williamsburg area. That was a huge positive, and my route was probably more scenic than the race route was. Certainly it was a more historically significant area than the race route. And I’m definitely NOT done with open water triathlons. I’ll step up the swim training, but I don’t think that explains what happened completely. I’ll never be a match against a massive tugboat. Even if I trained 10 hrs. a week on swimming, I still wouldn’t be a match for a tugboat. But extra swim training will help me to move a bit closer to the middle of the pack on the swim.

[acc]

When was this? I was out there two weeks ago doing an International Distance Tri. The James River is notoriously rough. The first 250 meters are deceptively easy and then you get into the middle of that river only to get hit with waves, chop, and swells. I ended up swimming almost due north in order to catch the turning buoy. I have never been so happy to see that waving man at the beach in my life. Fifteen hundred meters is a hell of a long way out there. I swam at a 15% angle the entire way in to shore. I can tell you honestly, the first transition I was just glad to be alive and didn’t care how fast I came out of it.

The bike course is flat and fast. It’s my favorite bike course of the Virginia triathlons. I keep meaning to extend a day to ride the Colonial Parkway but every time I’m just so glad to be done I pack up my gear, hit Pierce’s BBQ, and drive home.

I laugh when I hear people say, “Oh, I don’t worry about the swim, you can’t win on it.” Yeah, maybe so. But you can die. As a rule of thumb, I make sure I can go hard for twice the distance I’m competing at in the swim. That means 3,000 or so yards. I’ve been in trouble and had to be rescued. I have nothing but respect for the swim.

[PotomacCyclist]

Yesterday (Sunday, June 23). It was the inaugural Rev3 Williamsburg Half and Olympic race. I was (trying to) do the Half Rev (same distance as a Half Ironman but without the trademarked label).

It wasn’t so much the distance as that current, and the wake from the tugboat and barge, that was the problem. I’ve been slowed by currents in other OWS races but it never seemed to be much of a problem in terms of effort. It would just take me a little longer but it never felt that I had to swim harder than usual. But that wasn’t the case yesterday. Maybe it was those waves. I’ve never had to swim in 1-ft. waves before.

***

I found a race report from an experienced triathlete (Ironman finisher, 70.3 PR of 5:18, so a very solid triathlete). The title of his blog post says it all: “The Swim from Hell”. He said that the announcer told everyone that the current was moving from right to left, which would make that long section of the course against the current after all. (I was wearing big fat silicone ear plugs so I could barely hear what the announcer was saying.)

He says that after he got out past the dock (which apparently was acting as a backstop for the current that was running into it), he got slammed by the current in the middle of the river too. Interesting that he had the same exact experience at the first red buoy that I had at the 2nd red (turn) buoy:

“By the time I got close to the first turn buoy, I was much farther out than I had wanted to be since the current was pushing me. Now I had to swim against the current to get to the buoy. In fact, the longest stretch of the race course was against a very strong current. As I got closer and closer to the red buoy (which felt like an eternity for me), the crowds began to pick back up. I don’t know how many times someone bumped into me or hit me. At one point someone almost knocked off my goggles. The frustrating part was that I kept swimming and still wasn’t passing the stupid buoy. I swear the thing was actually following me; I wasn’t sure if the buoy had come loose or what. I also had two different times when I actually had to stop swimming as volunteers in the canoes had to cut across our path to get to swimmers who were in distress. The first time it happened I started to get really irked until I saw that they were going to save someone.”

In a previous 70.3 race, he had posted a swim time around 48 minutes. He was thinking about 45 minutes for this race. But his time ended up being over 1:20:00, not far from twice as slow as he had been expecting to swim!

His description of that red buoy is exactly what I was thinking during the race. My first thought was that the buoy was following me. And then I thought that maybe it had come loose and was getting pulled toward me by the current. And that’s also when I started seeing people waving for help and piling onto the rescue boats en masse.

The person who had posted on the Facebook page a few days ago is an engineer. He calculated from the water flow data (from government monitoring sites) that the current in the river was about as fast as or faster than a 1:50/100m swimmer. He said that someone swimming against that current would take 2 times as long as they normally would take to cover a particular distance. But actually, it was worse than that. If you are a 1:50/100m swimmer and you are swimming in that current, you won’t go half as fast. You won’t go forward at all. Not until you somehow manage to break through that current. The person who wrote the blog post managed to do that. It took me a very long time to do that and even after that point, I could only creep ahead very slowly. The rescue personnel basically asked me to quit the race before I had a chance to get back to the downstream part of the course. (But to be fair, I probably wouldn’t have made the swim cutoff time anyway, not with the problems I had with the current.)

[KLizotte]

You worked hard to be prepared both mentally and physically.

You trained smart.

You showed up for the race ready to give it everything you had.

You challenged yourself to complete the swim, didn’t panic when things went pear shaped, and didn’t put yourself or others at undue risk.

You didn’t sulk, instead you went for a bike ride.

You learned something from the experience and will be better prepared next time.

Sounds like a winner to me!!!

[thucydides]

Wow, PotomacCyclist, I’m really sorry for your experience. I concur with KLizotte’s sentiments below.

This race is getting chewed over big time on slowtwitch due to the swim and a long line of other issues. That was definitely the most epic swim I’ve been involved in and I’m so grateful that no one was seriously injured because it was a dangerous situation. The course was more or less a triangle with red buoys marking the two turns. My experience was that the current pushed me out a bit to the left on the first leg so when I turned to go to the red buoy I ended up in an endless pool. Like you and lots of others I didn’t realize it for a while. “Gee that red buoy just isn’t getting any closer.” Then, of course, the waves started colliding as everyone was stuck. I was in the green-cap wave so my group collided with blue caps in front and then we eventually got hammered by the pink caps from behind. So we’re all stuck in an endless-pool washing-machine situation. I saw a few people on boats and heard a yell for help or two, but fortunately for me I managed to get through past the red buoy and into open water on the second leg. I’m sure I was in a situation where it took me at least 5 minutes to go 50 yards past that first red buoy. The second leg of course took forever as it was against the current and lots and lots of people cut the course during this second leg. Several times I thought that I had to be off course but it turns out I really wasn’t by much. I made it to the far red buoy and then turned for home. I normally do 1.2 in about 35 minutes (so I’m definitely not a top swimmer), but this took me 54 minutes. I think a combination of a year of very hard work in the pool and my own ignorance about what was really happening got me through it. Two years ago there’s no way in the world I make it past the first red buoy.

But…I think the initial run in the water plus the swim sapped a lot of my energy as I ended up having a pretty miserable day that included walking almost all the hills on the (really really hot) run. Oh well. It was definitely memorable that’s for sure. Half way through that sucker I was absolutely convinced that there was no way I was ever doing a half (let alone longer distance) ever again. But I’m already wavering.

[PotomacCyclist]

I wasn’t able to park in the nearby lots that morning, so I was stuck with parking at the lot near the School of Education “about 1/3 mile walk to T2” or so they said. With a loaded triathlon backpack with me, I could tell that I was using a bit of glycogen even before getting to T2 (and then the bus to T1).

But I think my slower swim speed explains most of my problems. While the wake from the barge certainly was unpleasant, I wouldn’t say that it wiped me out. Even with the swim treadmill, I wasn’t wiped out, once I regained my composure after that momentary lapse. (I think the effect of swimming in place was as much mental as it was physical.) Since most of the people in the Half seemed to have finished, I guess that if I were a faster swimmer, I probably could have made it through the swim by the cutoff. But I was just not fast enough to counteract that current.

While I plan to take it very easy, physically, for the rest of the week, my mind is already starting to go back into planning mode. My only other triathlon this year will be the Nation’s Tri in Sept. That’s a relatively calm swim and the long part of the course is with the current. So no anticipated problems there. (In 2011, when there were heavy rain storms during the week of the race, they canceled the swim altogether, because of the sewage overflow and also because the river was moving much faster than usual from the extra rainfall.) I don’t need to be doing super-long bike rides to prepare for an Oly. I’m already comfortable with the bike distance, so maybe I can cut back on bike volume (while ramping up the intensity a bit, for the faster speeds of an Olympic) and ensure that I spend more time on the swim over the next 2 months. That will be more about getting faster and improving, than anything else, since the swim should be much easier than Williamsburg.

***
Then over the late fall and winter, I will try to focus on the swim. I don’t ride as much over the winter, which gives me that much more time to work on my swimming. I had planned to do this last winter, but I sprained a finger (from the Marine Corps Marathon, no less) and skinned both of my knees when I slipped on a treadmill belt while wearing slightly wet shoes (from walking to the fitness room in the snow, while I was out of town). So I didn’t swim much at all from Nov. to mid-January.

As for next year, well, first we’ll have to see if Williamsburg allows the Rev3 race to go on again. I’ve heard that the traffic backups in town were pretty bad because of the race. If Rev3 can alter the course to reduce the impact on non-race traffic, then maybe the race will return. If so, I would like to sign up again. However, I will make some adjustments. I won’t register right away. I’ll wait to see what the swim course is like, whether it’s with the current or not. (For someone like me, that’s going to matter.) I’ll also see how well I stick to a better swim program over the winter and into next spring. If I’m a much better swimmer and/or the course is changed to go with the current, then I think I could sign up for the Half again. But if I haven’t made too much progress and the course is against the current, then I should probably switch to the Olympic distance. The Oly swim didn’t go nearly as far out into the river, meaning that the current had less of an effect on those swimmers.

I really did like the Williamsburg setting. More interesting than other “local”-but-not-D.C. races I’ve traveled to: Ellicott City MD, Cambridge MD. So I wouldn’t mind at all if I do the Williamsburg Olympic next year.

[PotomacCyclist]

While strong swim currents bother me, I’m much more adaptable to the heat. I handle heat much better than I do cold (even though you can always bundle up in cold weather).

Another item: To add insult to injury, I discovered that they messed up my Green Screen photo. (For those not at the race, they had a green screen set up. Then after taking a picture, they would put you in a Revolutionary War battle scene, with British redcoats firing muskets at you. A lot of people hammed it up in the pictures. I tried to do that too, but in my pictures, my image has been shrunken down to near-microscopic size, as though I were standing 500 ft. away in the field in the superimposed image.

I don’t know who this guy is, but his pictures are hilarious:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152957540180092&set=a.10152955401875092.1073741833.339986125091&type=3&permPage=1

(Click to the Next picture too.)

EDIT: I think this guy is one of the race-day announcers, Sean English.

[PotomacCyclist]

To get back to the original article in the thread for a moment, some people on Slowtwitch pointed out something interesting. The first example in the article of a middle-aged MAMIL dying was the executive who died EIGHT MONTHS after finishing his first triathlon. Huh? What does that have to do with the risk of sudden death in a triathlon?

Plus a British triathlete seems to have died in a one-bike crash during an Ironman race in France this past weekend:

http://www.slowtwitch.com/News/Tragedy_strikes_in_Nice_3720.html

[thucydides]

Somehow I missed all the stuff with the pictures. I’ll see if I can find mine. The traffic tieups were extraordinary, way beyond anything I’ve ever seen in a race before. I received a whole lot of death stares to the point where I stopped looking at the folks in cars after a while. The cops put up with a lot of people storming out their cars to yell and scream and I had at least one other participant mention to me that she got flipped off and cussed at. So…yeah I’m a little dubious that this race happens again. We’ll see.

On swimming one thing I did this year was to take a several-week clinic put on by Wave One. It’s geared towards open water though occurs in pools (the sessions were at Yorktown (Arlington) and the Lab School (Georgetown). It’s the first time I’ve ever had any swim coaching and I personally found it useful. They also do Thursday night swims out at National Harbor. BTW on the foggy goggles front. I use to suffer mightily from this and had a couple of real bad experiences due to simply not being able to see buoys. The owner of Wave One (Denis Crean) told me to put baby shampoo inside my goggles and let it set for a while (say the night before a race). Then rinse and wear. I’ve not had a single problem with fogging ever since.

[PotomacCyclist]

Hmm, thanks for the tip about the goggles. I’ll have to try that. I’ve used baby shampoo before, but I never let it sit. I would only leave the baby shampoo there for a couple minutes before rinsing them out.

I’ve been to a couple training seminars over the years, one in the pool and another talk-only seminar with Dave “The Man” Scott, who showed me some helpful technique tips for my swim stroke. I’ve looked at the Wave One events and thought about doing them at some point. But I’ve never gotten around to it. I’ve did attend a talk with the Wave One coach at the Tri-Mania triathlon expo back in March, over in North Bethesda MD. That was another talk-only session where he went over a lot of details about open water swimming, but obviously no hands-on drill work or technique correction that day.

I’m also looking at the Harbor Swims next month at National Harbor, which I think is run by Wave One. Even if I don’t do that, I think just swimming more (with the usual structured approach) will help a lot. I follow Joe Friel’s training guidelines and plans. For the bike and run, I usually do most of the workouts. But on the swim, my training gets inconsistent. Sometimes I take off a week from swimming because of schedule problems or whatever. That almost never happens to me on the bike or run, because I can go outside to ride or run at any time of the day or night. With the swim, I can only practice when the pool is open. (I’d love to have a 24-hr. pool nearby. That would be awesome.) I will make a greater effort to stick to the swim schedule this summer. And do entire workouts, instead of cutting swims short because I didn’t get to the pool early enough before closing time.

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