One Clydesdale’s Journey

This weekend ended up being a tale of two training extremes.

Well, I’ve tapered back up after my race and this coming week I’ll be back at full training insanity. Or at least as much as I can anyway.

The next race that Shelly and I both have planned is the Bigfoot triathlon down in Lake Geneva. A few weekends ago we checked out the bike course by driving, but we decided that it was time to ride it and see what it was really like.

We also wanted to get in an open water swim, so we figured why not combine them into a brick.

The beach area for Bigfoot state park is in a pretty nice area of the lake for a nice long straightaway swim. According to the car as we drove along the shore line, it is about .4 to .5 miles of a stretch.

So we put on the wetsuits and headed out for a nice long swim. We figure we came close to putting in a mile. I have to say that I’m getting more comfortable in the open water with each swim that I do.

I can’t say the same thing for Shelly though. Neither one of us can figure out why, but in the open water (or with the wetsuit on) she gets far more winded than she ever does in the pool. No matter how far or fast she swims when she is in the pool.

Seems to me we have a little research as well as maybe some trial and error to try and figure that one out. More on that at a later date if we ever figure it out.

From there (and only after the longest transition ever due to a long walk back to the car) we headed out on the bike course. We did the Olympic route since that is the race that Shelly is planning on doing.

Although I have to say that after doing the swim and the bike I’ve been thinking long and hard about possibly doing the Olympic distance for that race as well. I still haven’t fully made up my mind yet, but I’ll probably do the sprint distance so that I can use that as an indicator as to how well I’ll do at Tri-ing for Children’s.

I really want to pull out all the stops for that race and try to finish in the top 3 for the Clydesdale division. And I think that the Bigfoot race will give me a good indication of where I may need to focus my training for the next month.

So back to my wild weekend; so today I meet up with Shelly’s uncle Dave and we both went down to do the Locust Street Beer Run.

For those that aren’t familiar with that race; it is a 1.8 mile run with 4 mandatory beer stops along the way. You must make all 4 beer stops and have your cups when you cross the finish line in order to be eligible for any prizes.

I didn’t win any prizes, but I did manage to complete the race in 16 minutes flat with all four of my beer cups. And yes, all beer was properly consumed on the course. From there we stayed for a few more which pretty much undid at least some of the training from the weekend.

But hey, it was some good beer!

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training