Rest Day
A handful of us set out to do an un-organized sprint triathlon yesterday up at Folsom Lake. For those of you who don’t know, sprint triathlon is:
750m Swim (~.5mi)
20k Bike (12.5mi)
5k Run (3.1mi)
We went out to the lake thinking we had the course decided by making routes on Google Earth, but with a few changes around the area we had to re-design on the fly. The swim was difficult to judge as it was too shallow to swim along shoe, so we swam out around a buoy floating in the middle of the lake, which was not the original plan.
Donna showed up with little time to workout, but she jumped in the water ahead of us all and swum about 200-300m along the swim area rope but couldn’t go further due to shallow water and had to leave early.
Brogan managed to swim about 100m out into the lake before deciding to head to shallow waters where he swam a few hundred more meters.
Tony and Matt went full on freestyle the full distance, while Sabrina and I mixed it up with different swim styles that looked like survival techniques I think there may have even been some doggy paddles thrown in there. Judging from Google Earth later, our swim was probably about 600m vs the Rx’ed 750 🙁 Not on purpose, but glad I didn’t have to go out any farther from the shore without a rescue boat.
There was about a 400m run in light sand back up to where we had the bikes, I got a calf cramp half way trying to jog, and just hiked out the second half. The bike ride went down the bike trail from Beal’s Point and most of the way down the side of Lake Natoma. Our distance on the bike should have been fairly accurate at 12.5 as we used odometers to track.. Starting at Beal’s and heading down stream means we started with a couple miles of pretty good down hills, and therefor finished by climbing back up those hills. The hills on the bike trail are easy for biking regulars, but if you hadn’t been riding consistently, the hills can be pretty challenging.
The run course that I had planned was closed off, so we had to eyeball a new 5k course which was later measured to be 5015m. The run was almost totally flat as it was all along the top of the damn. Estimating that course so closely to a 5k was probably our groups best performance of the day.
For me personally, I had been looking forward to this challenge since last Sunday when I programmed workouts for the week. I have personally been almost strictly doing a powerlifting program for over 2 months now and am weighing just over 200# which is considered clinically obese for a 5’9″ male. I had just taken 8 days completely off from exercising while attending the CrossFit Games. Body was a bit achy from sleeping in various beds on the road, but I felt rested. I decided to jump back in on a week of Performance Rx programming and see how I could hold up for a heavy week with a short Triathlon at the end of that week. I felt strong Monday Tuesday and Wednesday, took Thursday off, and had an rough day on Friday as I was still not recovered from the first 3 days of the week. The mock triathlon was Saturday and I felt pretty good for having done zero endurance training for months (if not years) and finished in 1 hour and 39 minutes. I don’t know how that measures up, but I was able to keep moving with some intensity for the entire race and I am pretty sure that would have beaten at least 20% of athletes in an organized race of the same distance. I will take it.
Matt P and Tony had done actual organized triathlons before, but Brogan, Sabrina and myself were weekend warrior winging it for our first time. It felt good to go out there and test ourselves in that way. Matt P did pretty well. He was strong on the bike, and you all know he can still run hard at the end of that. His time is disqualified because he cheated and wore a wetsuit on the swim. Tony was strong in the water and on the bike, but decided to throw the towel in before the run due to a hurt knee. Sabrina also did very well, riding a hybrid mountain bike and running well for 2500m of the 5k run. Brogan was solid on the bike and surprisingly strong on the run. If Brogan could swim, he’d probably be a pretty solid triathlete.
Matt P 1:16 (crushed it!)
Matt B 1:33 (short swim)
Justin 1:39
Sabrina 1:40 (2.5k run)
It was a great experience to go out and give that a shot. I have run in the past and cycled in organized event’s but have never swam and have never attempted a triathlon. I have only worked out that long once before in my life. Doing that for a training day and a test of my endurance gave me a new found respect for triathletes. No I am not saying I am going to get into that type of thing, or that you should either, or that you shouldn’t. Just that people who are good at that sport, are in fact bad asses.
And now I will go back to lifting heavy stuff a few days a week.
