The Stoker and the Captain

Post by Randi Strunk

First and foremost, riding a tandem bike, particularly in the stoker's seat (the back) is completely different than riding a traditional bike. I said in my earlier post if you're supposed to be able to go years without riding and then pick it right back up again I wasn't worried about the biking portion of the triathlon. However, whoever coined that saying "it's like riding a bike" wasn't going from riding a bike to riding a tandem bike. That's not to say it is hard, but it is very different.

Jenny and I are fortunate enough to be able to borrow a tandem from a lovely couple she knows and I was pumped to start riding. I had my shiny new helmet and was ready to go. We found a large, mostly vacant parking lot to get a feel for things before taking the bike on the road. Jenny took a spin on her own first, to get a feel for the bike, the turning radius, etc. Then it was time to begin. We were able to balance quite quickly and the push-off wasn't very difficult to coordinate. We had to establish a procedure for stopping, always an important thing to get right, and we chose to lean to the left when stopping. So whenever Jenny tells me we're slowing down to stop we get our left legs ready because we'll lean to the left before getting off the bike.

The most important thing to note when learning to ride a tandem with somebody is communication. The person in the front, the captain, is responsible for communicating the course ahead. Turns, peddling or stopping peddling, and potentially changes in terrain are all things that need to be communicated to the stoker. You have to work together as a team. You start and stop together, you have to coordinate leans into the turns, and you need to coordinate peddling for maximum efficiency and speed.

I think we were both pretty nervous to get going. I was particularly worried about moving around too much, how that would effect Jenny’s ability to steer and how it would translate into the turns. I think the best piece of advice I got from the folks we’re borrowing the bike from was that the stoker should essentially stay sitting straight up in the turns. If you focus on this, it will counteract your natural instinct to lean away from the turn. I could definitely feel myself wanting to lean the opposite direction we were turning.

For me, the lack of control during the turns was very unnerving. The handlebars on the back of the bike is locked in with no movement at all, and it’s really strange to feel yourself turning and to have absolutely no control over that turn. It’s an exercise in trust for sure. Draw your own conclusions from the fact that I had a death grip on my handlebars most of that first ride. I think I have the easy part though. I just sit back and provide half of the muscle.

I was happy with the first ride, just getting on the bike for the first time was good to get under our belts. I think my previous bike riding experience helped a lot, particularly with balance on the bike and understanding the mechanics of the turns. We’ll see what happens when we get out on the road. We were barely peddling in that parking lot and could pick up speed without even trying so I’m excited to see how things progress as we get more comfortable riding together.

Big thanks to Drew and Janell Frakes for the tandem bike loaner! Drew also works at Gear West Bike and Triathlon in Long Lake, MN - the best triathlon store anywhere. These folks are excellent at outfitting everyone from the novice to professional athlete.

Don't Panic in the Pool

It was about six years ago that I did my first triathlon, and six years feels like a really long time ago. For me I thought that the swim would be the easy part of training, but I learned all too quickly that having grown up swimming in lakes and open water was a heck of a lot different than swimming in a pool. My first swim in an indoor pool was a total disaster. I had a panic attack. Swim cap, goggles, walls in the pool, chlorine, no way out! I thought I was going to die. It took a lot of practice for me to get comfortable in a pool and couldn't wait to get outside and into open water. I do realize that I'm in the minority of triathletes that feel this way.

Pete working on stroke entry with Randi

For Randi and I, the challenge would be different. The little vision she has is limited shadows and color, limited vision means in what and in what terms? Would she be able to see the lines at the bottom of the pool? I had no idea. Would she be able to distinguish the end of the swim lane? Who knows?! Just navigating the maze that is the downtown YWCA locker room was going to be hilarious. Then we were to get in the pool and figure out how to swim knowing that we'd eventually be tethered in some way? Screw that?! I mean, hell yeah! But for someone like me, her tether - what does that mean? It means nothing! I'm not blind. I have absolutely no concept of what she's experiencing.

While Randi said she could be tossed in a pool and not drown, she gave little credit to herself as to  how much she could actually swim. The first attempt was going to tell me everything. We started simple, down and back with the kick-board. It went great. No one died. Keep in mind that I'm not a swim instructor. What I learned about swimming was from an expert, but how teach swimming is not my forte. But as a personal trainer I can break down the motions into basics, and since Randi and I have run together, why couldn't we swim together?

Before we got into the logistics of how we'd tether ourselves together, she just needed to get from one end of the pool to the other, and be able to repeat that a million times. So twice a week for the next few weeks and her stroke-form and efficiency skyrocketed.  And no one drowned. What she was able to command her body to do in the pool had taken me months all those years ago. Her body awareness is that of any athlete, excellent, once she knew what queues to take. However, the very unexpected struggle she's had has been endurance. Swimming takes charge of the whole body as a system, unlike any other sport. Our swims have been shorter and her endurance is catching up. The strength is there. Her form improves every time we get in the pool. And thank goodness she's patient.

The issue of how we'd connect to each other during the race has been the big question. Think about this: we swimming about a mile in open water with a hundred other people, they don't know that we're tied together. We've
done some laps where I would swim in front and she'd tap my feet with each stroke. That seemed reasonable, but we still needed a string or some mechanism to connect us. The open water chaos of a triathlon swim means we MUST be connected or we WILL lose each other. The toe-tap technique was fine, but it limited our ability to actually get our workout completed. For the time being we're swimming back and forth independently, warmup, kick board, pull buoy, sprints, the whole 9 (or rather 50) yards. The great part is, Randi has never panicked, not once. Panicking in the water really sucks. She's trusted that I woke let her drown or at least trusts that the lifeguard at the YW won't her drown.

I think that our first attempt at a tether might be around the ankle. That's right. The ankle. But this seems to make the most sense. This week, our work will be to swim side by side and get our rhythm down, before we tether. We've got about 14-weeks, we'll figure it out.... right?

Who Me? An Athlete?

Post by Randi Strunk

I’ve always been interested in sports, maybe even borderline obsessive over my favorite team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, but I never considered myself an athlete. Sure I spent summers as a kid riding my bike on the 3/4 mile stretch of gravel road between our house and my grandparent’s house. My younger brother and I played whatever was in season baseball, basketball, football. However, my pursuit of athletics never got far past the front yard. I’ve been blind since birth with a little bit of residual vision so when I tried sports that were available in my small town school such as volleyball, basketball, and track I was terrible at them, so I just figured I wasn’t an athlete, no big deal some people just don’t have that sort of talent, right?

 Fast forward to 2012 when a friend of mine said she had started running and she knew a lady who taught Learn to Run workshops. She thought we should take a class together. So four of us got together and contacted Magna Health & Fitness owner Jenny Halstead. We weren’t sure how she would react to the thought of teaching four blind people how to run, or if she’d even consider the idea. There was no hesitation from her though. She said an enthusiastic "yes!", found us volunteer guide runners, and brought lengths of rope we could use as our first running tethers.

When you’re used to a world full of "watch out!", "be careful", and "you can’t", the class and Jenny’s attitude were truly a refreshing experience. Throughout the class Jenny would make comments about my running form, how it was really good, and how I should run a marathon someday. Naturally I thought she was nuts and after a lifetime of thinking I was a terrible athlete I didn’t really believe her, I thought she was probably just being nice.

Randi and Dr. Tara running the TC10 October 2014

Then about six months later I got the urge to train for a marathon. Of course, Jenny was all for the idea. I didn’t end up finishing the marathon due to injury but I did run the TC 10 mile last year. I liked training for a goal. I enjoyed the energy of race day, and the thrill of accomplishment when it was all over. For the first time I set out on a quest for an athletic goal and I achieved it. Over a couple of months training with Jenny, she mentioned how she did triathlons and she bet I would enjoy them as well. Again, I thought she was OUT OF HER MIND. It’s not like running, you’d have to have somebody to guide in the swim portion, you’d need a tandem bike, and then a guide for the run. On top of that, I still wasn’t quite sure I could ever be fit or strong enough to do a triathlon, people don’t just do those on a whim. Somewhere in the back of my mind though, there was a little spark, a tiny thought that I could even when 99% of my brain said it would never happen. Over time training with Jenny she’d make comments about how I was an athlete. Every time that happened, I felt like I’d just aced a test or won an award. Slowly I began to believe her.

It’s a humbling experience to have somebody believe in you enough and with such conviction that you start to believe in yourself. I think great teachers, mentors, and great coaches can inspire that in an individual and I’ve felt that in my time training with everyone at Magna. On a random evening in February I texted Jenny “So when are we going to start training for a triathlon” I also included a winking smiley face so maybe she’d think I was kidding because I was enthusiastic and terrified at the prospect. Naturally, she didn’t think I was joking and responded with a resounding “Hell yeah!” and here we are training for a triathlon. We’re not going for the short sprint distance either, it’s Olympic or bust. I felt good about the running part, and figured if picking up on something you haven’t done in a while is “like riding a bike” I could pick that up again pretty quickly. The swimming part however, was going to be my biggest challenge.

I could save myself should I be thrown in water, but beyond that I had no technique to speak of and breathing properly was something I’d never done...

Swimming in the Blind

"I know how to not drown." That's what I heard Randi say. Taking what I knew to be an already athletic person and turning her into a swimmer was going to be a new challenge for me, especially since I really only learned proper swim strokes about six years ago. In no way am I an expert swimmer. But I am a great coach, but swimming was a different beast that I was excited to take on. Of course that was with the help of my able-bodied partner Pete who swam in high school, college  and has completed countless triathlons and some distance swimming in Lake Superior. He knows his sh*t and is a great coach himself. My swimming experience was from pool to triathlon and back again. Nothing fancier than that.

We don't need another bulls*t inspirational story of how some kick ass blind chick overcame obstacles and trained for a triathlon, what we need is HOW she did it. Completing a triathlon is inspiring on it's own, no matter who accomplishes it. When Randi decided, in her freakish state of overachievement that she wanted to do a triathlon, my only response was, "Ok." 

The research began. Unfortunately, the our resources were limited. The wide world of the internet didn't lend itself to much guidance, for both her, the blind athlete and me, the guide. Being that we're both type-A pains in the asses, we just decided to figure this out on our own. And dog-gone-it we're going to document it so that maybe someone else can benefit from our experience/mistakes/wins/f*ups and more.