First up this morning I was out on my bike. Being outside on the bike was reason enough to celebrate ,but I will get to that later on. The reason I was out on the bike was to go and watch these zany folk get up to zany stuff.
The impressive people in this clip are a rather exclusive collection of WA athletes, Gary Couanis (Sports Dr extraordinaire), Paul Newsome (Mr Swim Smooth to his friends), Brad Hoskings (WA Ironman Legend) and Emily Loughnan (2016 70.3 Age Group World Champion, 3rd in Age Group at 2-16 Kona, fastest Ironwoman in WA and all around legend). And what they are doing is training for the Rottnest SwimRun event, which is on in a couple of weeks.
For those unfamiliar SwimRun events are a phenomenon that has been growing rapidly in popularity in Europe for a few years now and is starting to turn up in other parts of the world. The name of a SwimRun sort of gives away the crux of the event, but it is more than simply an aquathon. In SwimRun events you compete in teams of two and you must always be in close proximity, how close depends on the event, but it is usually 10 feet or so. In the events you traverse a course made up of a number of swimming and running legs. In the swim legs you can use any sort of swim aid you like, paddles, pull buoy, wetsuit etc, but the trick is that whatever you use, you must carry/wear on the run. The opposite holds true for the swim, you are obviously going to run in shoes, but whatever shoes you use they are going to be with you on the swim. As a result the standard swimrun kit is a strange mix of swimming gear and running gear and it is why in clip above everyone seems to be running while wearing swim caps, goggles and paddles.
Bizarre for sure, but by all accounts a bunch of fun.
While it sounds like the SwimRun should be some sort of strange novelty event, they really aren't to be sneezed at. The event on Rottnest is made up of 28km of running and 4km of swimming across a number legs. Chunks of the running are cross country too. Sound like a fair old way? Yep I would have to agree. Not to be taken lightly. Some of the races in Europe are even further too. Anyone who has tried to swim after running will know just how much these races would hurt.
One of the things that I suspect would make it more painful is that none of the legs are particularly long. For the Rottnest event the longest swim is 600m and I think most of the runs are under 4km. That sounds awesome on the surface, but the danger of short legs is that it can make pacing hard as can sometimes struggle to keep yourself under control, attacking the leg like a 4km run, rather than part of a 28km run. Pacing. That was certainly happening in the first clip where the guys were motoring along despite already being 9km of running and 3.5km of swimming into the training session.
A training session which looked like this by the way.
Which would have to be one of the strangest, but most fun looking training logs I think I have ever seen. Very impressive.
I may not be able to take part in this sort of thing anymore, but it was awesome to get out there and watch some very talented people doing so.
Watching these guys had the added benefit of getting me out on my bike. I have avoided riding my bike outside since going in for surgery since riding on the road is much harder to control. However, after riding down and watching these guys I figured I might as well stay out and have a bit of an easy spin. I am glad I did. Riding out on the road today demonstrated to me that I can ride outside and keep my heart rate under control. Being on the Kickr is still the safer option, but today showed me that it is not my only option. When I get to the point where I can't stand the thought of another ride on the trainer, I now know that I can head out and have a comfy ride outside while staying within my limits of my heart.
Good stuff to know.
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