B-Fit Birthday Challenge

What the heck was I thinking? Roman throws out this B-Fit Birthday Challenge and it all SOUNDS well and good. Then I see that being 44 this year, I have to swim the first number in miles (that would be 4 miles, Nytro...) then bike the total number of years in miles (44, duh) and



then follow that up with an easy run of 4 miles, the last number in my age. The swim, in a word, sucked.

My longest swim ever prior to this was 3500 meters. This one would be 6500 meters. Smart? No. Especially on a diet of 2k to 4k meters per WEEK of swimming up to this point. But, I figure I'll just take it slow and steady, plus....I had my new fangled swimming I-Pod setup to keep me company. For 3 hrs. Sort of.

Quick product review. In the Birthday spirit - Di got me the Nano...Dad got me the Earphones, and Mom got me the case. Thanks, everyone, for my birthday gifts! The H2Audio waterproof gear (case and headphones) for the Ipod Nano worked like a charm. Nano is easy to operate in the case. Easy to see, and most importantly, it stayed dry. I have a set of tri-shorts with a big pocket in the back for nutrition....and for I-pods it turns out. The waterproof headset also worked great. Well, actually - I don't have a big noggin - but I had to have the headset pushed out to it's max settings to get the buds in position for my ears.

The headset comes with these black ear "inserts" that cup around the buds and then insert into the ear, in an effort to seal the ear of water. These work...not so much. Probably a function of the shape of the ear canal, but I could not get a good seal, and as a result, could hear when I turned my head to breathe and my one ear drained, but as soon as that ear went back in the water, the ear would fill and the sound would go away. Well, not totally away, but it was very muffled. The directions suggest using swimmers' ear wax and form some sort of cone-dealy...I'm willing to try it for good tunes while swimming. I'd adjust during breaks and get a few laps of good clean sound in - I'll tell ya, it really made the laps go by faster! Good rocking songs with plenty of Base worked the best. Folk music with girly tunes could barely be heard (sorry Trimama)

And I had 3 hrs to mess with it.

I read, a little too late, that a "swimmer's mile" is 1500 meters or 1650 yards. I should have swam 6000 meters, but I did 6500 meters or 7108 yards 'cause I did the math, and that's what it came up to for 4 miles. I don't know...towards the end I did one set of 500m in 13:09, so if I take that off of my total swim time, I'll have 6000 meters in 2:38:24. With 17:12 in total breaks. If you keep the other 500 in, just add that time and another 1:28 break. Good grief. About 2:20 per 100 yards. Did I mention I started slowly?

T1: 1:16:00 - time to eat a hearty lunch at Boston Market (mmmm...1/2 rotisserie chicken, green beans and potatoes...) and drive the 23 miles to Flatwoods, my training loop.

Everything else was fairly uneventful. I was thoroughly smoked from that self-imposed Chinese water torture and had nothing to give to the 44 mile bike other than some easy turning of the crank. I could tell my ass was still sore from the Century only 2 days prior - wearing the still damp tri-shorts was probably not the best idea. I went 2:21:43 for 44 miles; an average of 18.63 mph. Winds were steady at around 12 mph with gusts approaching 30mph. Nice.

T2: 3:15:00 - yes, that's 3 hrs and 15 minutes. I thought I had to work at 5pm, so I didn't brick that last little run. Turns out, no work, so before American Idol started and my Chinese food got delivered, I knocked out the neighborhood lap times 4.

Oh yea, I tore it up! 41:23 for 4 miles; yes, yes, that's only a 10:20 per mile pace - hey - absolutely NO records were harmed in the completion of this Challenge!

And for everyone wondering, yes, the next day, my shoulders are like rusty gates. I'll see tomorrow if I can still do a swim-motion. After a day of lawn work, they really feel much better then they did when I woke up. At least my perception of swim distance has taken a paradigm shift to the extreme. 4k ain't shit anymore!