It's not courage, it's my life.

Post by Randi Strunk

I'm always a bit hesitant when approached with a pitch for any sort of media, particularly where I'm in the spotlight (it’s not like that happens every day, but it’s happened occasionally). First, because I'm not very comfortable in that position, but secondly and more importantly I'm always worried about how I will be portrayed in the story. I never want to be a part of a story that extolls my courage for even getting out of bed in the morning, because it just must be so hard being blind, and sadly those types of stories are more common than I'd like to admit. I'm also a bit wary about the "inspiration" angle, because to me what I do isn't inspiring at all, it's normal, it's my life, and it’s all I’ve ever known.

On the other hand I feel like I need to get over that for a couple of reasons, and when Jenny approached me with the opportunity to have a piece done on our triathlon training by local station KARE11 I wanted to do it in hopes that it would not paint me as being inspiring as an individual, but it might inspire somebody who didn’t think they could do physical activities to give it a try. Everybody knows about the staggering statistics of obesity in our country, but not everybody knows that those numbers increase even more among our nation’s disabled population.

Statistics from an article published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, July 2013 issue state that nearly 42% of American adults with disabilities are obese and 9% are extremely obese. In comparison, about 29% of adults without disabilities were found to be obese and 3.9% were identified as extremely obese. This is a statistically significant difference, one I attribute to expectations. I’ve heard countless stories of blind kids who weren’t allowed to participate in physical education classes in school due to “liability reasons.” When children aren’t allowed or encouraged to be physically active there’s a good chance they won’t grow into physically active adults.

I also agreed to the story to hopefully encourage more non-disabled athletes to consider being guides for disabled athletes. I literally could not do a triathlon, or snow ski, or a myriad of other physical activities without somebody to act as a guide for me. I can’t even explain how grateful I am that Jenny and others have given of their time to allow me to pursue my own athletic goals. It’s not only a time commitment for me to train, but it’s also a time commitment for guides, and I’d hope that every disabled athlete who relies on a guide in some capacity would agree that our appreciation for your selflessness and time is immeasurable and I’m forever trying to figure out a way to pay it forward… maybe this is the way, by encouraging people with disabilities to find a physical activity they’re passionate about and give it a go, or think about sharing your passion for your given sport with a disabled athlete.  

Watch the segment and tell us what you think!

Are you interested in becoming a guide for a disabled athlete? Email MAGNA at ask@magnausa.com for more information. 

And The Wetsuit Award Goes To...

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.

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?