Having mastered the pool over the last few months, Randi and I were anxious to get into open water. Anyone that’s ever done a triathlon will likely agree that the sooner you can start open water training, the more comfortable you’ll be on race day. Swimming in open water is nothing like swimming in a pool.
One of my favorite areas to swim and ride is
Square Lake, MN, not far from Stillwater. It’s absolutely stunning up there. The lake itself is amazing, super clean and clear, used often by divers and swimmers for training of all kinds. The bike course that we ride is the same one that the
Square Lake Half Iron Man uses for it’s race. It gets us out of the city and on to roads where we can open up and haul ass. Of course I’ve never “hauled ass” on a tandem, or with somebody else’s life in my hands. But, whatever.
Randi explains, "This was a series of firsts, the first time I have ever worn a wet suit, and frankly people just deserve an award for getting those things on at all. It felt restrictive at first, but once we got in the water I didn't notice it much anymore. The water was cold, and that combined with the wet suit, the tether, and the fact I wasn't in a pool anymore led to me instantly forgetting everything about swimming. After taking the first couple of strokes we stopped and I could no longer touch the bottom, not going to lie I panicked a bit. I tried to get my mind under control and from then on we swam along the beach where I could stand when we stopped swimming.
I appreciated the tether in the open water it gave me a sense of comfort knowing somebody else was
right there with me. I thought about making the tether longer, but I think after our experience in the water a shorter tether will allow for us to stay closer together and it decreases the chances of people swimming in between us. It increases the chances we’ll clock each other while swimming, but as the taller one of the pair I feel like the positives outweigh the negatives, seriously though I try hard not to give Jenny a concussion. We didn't get much of a swimming workout, but I consider yesterday's ventures into the lake to be a victory because I never got out and it will never be the "first time" again. Swimming is still my weakest of the three disciplines but I'll be doing open water work a couple of times a week now, so hopefully there will be nothing but progress from here."
What Randi didn't mention about the swim was that we were almost eaten alive by a giant snapping turtle. We were swimming along and I saw this head poking out of the water. He looked right at me. I grabbed Randi and yanked her in the opposite direction. Pete of course approached the turtle with absolute fearlessness, looked under water and determined that he was probably a good 15-20 inches long and probably 30-40lbs. Would have eaten us. True story.
After our swim we headed out to ride the bike course. Again, this tandem thing scares the sh*t out of me. We can get moving at a pretty serious clip, and boy, did we! The first turn out of the parking lot is down a decent sized hill, within seconds I realized we were topping out at about 27 mph – and we were coasting. This is not a speed that I’d hit on my own little bike just coasting. We were moving. Randi says to me "Wow, it's really windy out." I laughed. "No, it's not, that's us going really fast!"
Riding this hilly course was an excellent lesson in communication, for both of us. I'd have to tell her every time I shifting, up or down. I've really had no idea how often I shifted until now, it’s second nature at this point for me. But not any more. I need to be fully aware of every move I’m about to make. The shoulder was wide and relatively even, so that made riding next to the two-lane highway less of a worry. Cars and trucks out there are always respectful of riders despite whizzing by us at 60 mph. So down hill, we hit our top speed quickly and are forced not to peddle because we'd easily over rotate.
Uphill is where we need to work. I’m so accustomed to having my feet locked to the peddles, that I struggled not to pull up. My feet bounced around the pedals a bit and we never figured out if we could stand up going up hill, I was afraid to try. That’s for another day. In the meantime, we muscled through the hills at a slow 10-13 mph pace which felt like mud. This we will fix. We both have strong legs and while we might be driving a tank, we can still put some power behind it. Pete is kind enough to put my clipless pedals on the bike today so that I can lock me feet in. That will immediately give us more efficiency. I think I’ll also put cages on Randi’s pedals to give her some more efficiency too.
Randi said "Yesterday was also our first time out on the bike riding in a hilly area. I'm starting to feel more comfortable and we're continuing to work on our communication. Jenny would tell me when we were shifting to another gear, but yesterday I suggested she start calling out either "easier" or "harder" to indicate which way she was shifting rather than just calling out "shifting." This helped me a lot because I knew what to expect and I could adjust my peddling accordingly. We did 20 miles the first week out on relatively flat trails and 19 with a bunch of hills. I feel like our time was good and we
were working together well. I think we'll be totally fine for this portion of the triathlon especially since we have 10 weeks of training left."
All said and done, it was a really strong workout. I was stoked to get home and download the data from my Garmin. But of course I downloaded it wrong and lost all of the data. ARGH! I love the Garmin because it will give me distance; speed, elevation, all kinds of great data to geek out about and I wanted to share it here. Oh well, next time. All in all we are both feeling stronger and more confident.
