Monthly Archives: October 2010

Is there anything more terrifying and thrilling than committing to a new challenge? It’s why we sign up for marathons after tackling halves, or look into triathlons after taking up cycling. New challenges expand our concept of what we can accomplish, and keep us motivated to head out the door to work out when we’d rather curl up under a blanket.

I didn’t exactly commit to a new challenge this week. But I did commit to think about committing to one by registering for a lottery spot for the 4.4-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim.

This A. Aubrey Bodine photo of the Bay Bridge captures how I feel during peaceful moments of the Bay Bridge Swim.

I’ve done the Chesapeake Bay Bridge 1-Mile Challenge, derisively called the “Baby Bay,” twice, and placed in my age group both times. The distance and course are comfortable, but I can always work on the challenge of defending my “title” (ha!) or besting my previous time. Still, the 4.4-miler, a terrifying journey from one shore to the other, with a terrifying registration cost of $250, has my attention, and I’m at least thinking about committing to it.

Psychologists call this the “contemplation” stage of goal-setting or behavior-changing, and say it’s marked by ambivalence and conflicted emotions (yep), with a stark understanding of what’s at stake (my “fun” budget for the next two months thanks to the $250 registration, my Saturday mornings thanks to long swims). The lottery-selection process might decide for me. Even if I do get picked, I’ve got some time to continue contemplating before I start the next phases of goal-setting: preparation, followed by action.

What’s your style when it comes to registering for races? Do you ponder and contemplate, or just take the plunge and sign up?

When it comes to working out, I know what I like.

I like running. When I can’t run, or need to cross-train, I like swimming. If I don’t have enough time to swim, I like the recumbent stationary bike, and I like supplementing all of these by lifting, and by doing a wide variety of hip and core strengtheners (check out my favorites here and here).

If you’d told me before last weekend that I would also like a workout that involve a canoe, a paddle and a mosquito jacket, I would have declared you insane.

Insane ... but also correct.

I’m one of those people who gets weird, phantom mosquito bites in January, and can put up with about 30 minutes on the rowing machine at the gym before boredom hits. But an opportunity to write about a camping trip to Assateague Island, off Maryland’s Eastern Shore, led me to purchase a mosquito jacket (park rangers warned that the bayside campsites are buggy all year round), rent a canoe and paddle six miles to a back-country campsite.

Marketing photo for the mosquito jacket I bought, and conveniently forgot to get photos of myself wearing.

And guess what? It was fun!

Breaking out of my comfort zone let me paddle into a gorgeous sunset on the Chincoteague Bay …

… camp alongside a beautiful (if buggy) marsh …

… see a sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean …

… and get a killer upper-body workout decidedly more exciting than the rowing machine at the gym.

I’ll post the link to the full story about the camping trip when it runs next year. I mention it now because it offered a powerful reminder that even when we think we’ve got our perfect workout lineup, we can challenge our minds, bodies and spirits by daring to mix things up.

When’s the last time you broke out of your workout comfort zone? How did that work out for you?

Swimming’s been called the “sport of last resort” — no matter what your injury, it’s likely you’ll be able to swim through it. I came (back) to swimming a few years ago because of an injury myself, and relied on a pull buoy to immobilize my legs through a brutal hip injury in 2007.

Wait. Using a what to immobilize my legs?

I’m sure you’ve seen pull buoys in the buckets of swim toys at public pools, though you may or may not have seen someone use one. They’re not sexy and exciting and fun like a kickboard and flippers, which everyone seems to be an expert in using (why, oh why, do people insist on using flippers when there are more than five people sharing a lane?). But the humble pull buoy, just a figure-8-shaped piece of foam, can help you work on your pull and alignment, not to mention give you a kick-butt arms workout.More importantly, when you’ve got a lower body injury that even swimming aggravates, it can keep your hurt parts in place while you swim.

My trusty pull buoy.

My pull buoy had been gathering dust in the closet for months until this past week, when I started using it again thanks to a dinged-up toe (again, long story, big bruise). I was truly shocked at how challenging my first pull-only workout was, so I thought I’d share it as a workout tool here.

Here’s how to use it: Insert the skinny part of the figure-8-shaped pull buoy between your thighs. Swim. Need further instruction? Check out these detailed instructions, videos and photos from GoSwim!

My favorite pull set? Five X 200 freestyle, pull. If your shoulders aren’t throbbing by the end, throw in a few 50 freestyle sprints.

Every so often, while I’m working on a story, I’ll stumble across a piece of information—a poignant quote or powerful anecdote—that seems tailor-made for me, not just as a journalist, but as a runner and a human.

This week, that came courtesy of a Women’s Running story I’m working on, for which I got to talk to Janet Hamilton, an Atlanta-area running coach and registered clinical exercise physiologist. Hamilton told me that the biggest mistake people make is trying to “bludgeon their bodies into fitness,” a strategy that leads to burnout and injury.

“If you tune in to your body’s little whispers, it will never have to shout at you,” she said.

This is counter to everything we believe about hard work and effort, and decidedly less exciting than the workout montages in our favorite movies about physical triumph. But in real life, Rocky would most likely have to stop and stretch his IT band after charging up those steps.

For me, this means laying off my runs for a few days while I wait for an annoying toe injury (long story, giant bruise) to calm down. Though I’m tempted to just run through it, Hamilton’s advice reminded me that listening to this particular whisper could mean avoiding a big, loud shout down the road in the form of a stress fracture in my foot, or something equally awful.

What have you been doing to tune into your body’s whispers?

It’s rare that a race that sounds too good to be true lives up to its expectations.The Daiquiri Deck Tropical Splash Open Water 5K Swim in Siesta Key, Fla., on Oct. 2 was one of those rare, wonderful races.

I swam the 5K (there are also 1K and 2.5K options), and finished in 1:31:58.6, or 29:40-minute mile pace—a good time for me, and good enough to win my age group. Here’s why I loved the swim, and why I’ll be back for it next year:

Can you imagine a prettier place for an open-water swim?

Natural beauty. Dr. Beach, a Florida professor who releases an annual ranking of the country’s beaches, ranks Siesta Key as the No. 2 beach in the country, touting its fine white sand, wide, pretty beach and clear, clean water. If there’s a better way to nix pre-race nerves than wiggling your toes in powdered-sugar sand, I don’t know it. Plus, it’s lots easier to drag your support crew out of bed at 4:30 a.m. when you know they get to hang out on that beach while they watch you.

Me and my loyal, generous “support crew,” otherwise known as Steve and my parents.

A great post-race spread. The race doesn’t actually finish at the title sponsor, the Daiquiri Deck. But offerings at the finish festival at a lovely, shaded beachside pavilion made up for it. Options include rice and bean burritos from Clayton’s Grill and wraps from The Broken Egg, both local eateries. A volunteer also brought homemade bread, which she told us had “all sorts of good whole grains” as she sliced it and dished it up. I can confirm it was all sorts of good, and love that this is the kind of hometown race where people bring homemade bread.

The super-cool post-race party.

Great organization. The event, which is sanctioned by U.S. Masters Swimming and put on by the Sarasota YMCA Sharks Masters, was amazingly well-organized, from the quick, easy registration and check-in to the many volunteer kayakers on the course.

The race was well-organized and fun from the start …

… to the finish.

My only complaints:

Sea lice. I spent the first quarter of the swim thinking that I’d been stung by a jellyfish (these were present on race day, too), and that the sting had sent me into anaphylactic shock, as the horrible itchy-ouchie sensation had spread to my whole body. Other swimmers informed me I was among many participants to have a bathing suit full of sea lice. I don’t know what these are, or how to prevent them, but I can confirm they’re not cool. Nothing race organizers could have done about this, and not a reason to not do the race—just something worth mentioning.

A looong awards ceremony, which organizers promise will be shorter next year.

Me posing geekily with my age-group award.

Overall results can be found here, and age-group results here.

Have you done this swim? What did you think? Let me know by posting a comment below.

I’m all packed up and ready to go to the Daiquiri Deck Tropical Splash Open Water 5K Swim in Sarasota, Fla., tomorrow!

This time tomorrow, I'll be doing this.

I had a nice, easy swim yesterday to loosen up my muscles. I’m taking today off, which makes sense for traveling, anyway. I’ll leave my parents’ house in (relatively) nearby New Port Richey, Fla., by 5 a.m. (gulp) for the start tomorrow, shortly after 7 a.m. I haven’t quite put in the training yardage/meterage I’d hoped to for a number of reasons, including a week or two off for a tweaked shoulder, so I’m treating this as a catered open-water workout at which my sweet, kind husband and parents happen to be cheering for me from the sidelines.

The course starts and finishes on the beach. The 5K race (there’s also a 1K and 2.5K, whose competitors are undoubtedly saner souls) follows the shoreline out and back, then repeats the same 2.5K course. Last year’s results show that a whopping 10 women competed the race, with times ranging from 1:16 to 2:06. I’ve swum close to 30-minute miles in previous open-water swims, but I’ve been better-trained for those, and am promising not to beat myself up if this race time includes a little bit of double-arm backstroke.

I’ll post race updates and photos as soon as possible (read: once I’ve spent some well-deserved time relaxing on the Daiquiri Deck). Wish me luck!