- I'm literally distraught that it's over.
(whoosh)
I got in that pool lane's face.
(whoosh)
I am just on a rah-rah triathlon endurance kick here, folks.
(whoosh)
Morning Train-iacs, it's just a short get-wet,
do-anything, be-here kind of pool morning today.
Which is great because I could use a nap.
Unrelated completely non-triathlon news,
if you aren't watching West World yet
what are you doing with your life?
Kim and I crushed the entire first season
of West World in about four days
and now I'm literally distraught that it's over.
Black kickboard: fastest of all kickboards.
(splashing)
7,000, fast, continuous, what do you say?
(hushed conversation)
- Going to shoot for about 2,000 of whatever now.
Nearly decapitated my pinky finger
with a butter knife this morning.
Probably make me faster.
(splashing)
After messing myself up yesterday with nearly a 7K swim
with 2,100 yards, today I got in that pool lane's face.
Didn't take any crap today.
(water dripping)
Okay, so I talk a lot
about learning how to bring your legs up to the surface
of the water in floating.
These tools: Pull Buoy and a band
are the best ways to do that.
Okay, so a Pull Buoy comes in a lot of different forms,
the more common ones that you'd see
are like this, made of foam.
I use this one, nice big and thick on one end,
because I am Scottish and made for Caber tossing,
and my legs are like tree trunks.
So I need a little bit of extra flotation.
Smaller one is going to be more common.
The trick to this is that you do not use this
and kick at the same time.
You put this in between your legs,
typically up just above the knees, and you don't kick.
How you get your legs to the surface of the water
is by using the little bit of buoyancy with this,
and then you tighten your core
so that your legs drift out closer to the water.
Alright, so now where you start getting super advanced
on getting your legs up to the surface of the water,
is when you pair this with this.
This makes your legs float.
This makes your legs sink.
It's just an old inner tube.
You can get a fancier one
that's a little bit softer on the ankles from Finesse,
just a few bucks.
You wrap this around your ankles,
and I wouldn't recommend starting without this.
Because as you'd expect, you wrap this around your ankles,
you're going to want to sink.
So start off with a band, a Pull Buoy and a band,
and do just one length of the pool.
A 50, a 25, start with small little bits
to really get your body in the habit
of bringing your legs up close to the water.
You're going to have to pick up your cadence,
so strokes are going to be a lot faster.
You're going to have to force your core
to hold your legs up close to the water.
And eventually it's going to become a fair bit easier
to have this paired with this,
and then that goes away, and then you just have the band.
And you gotta build up the same way that you did
when you added the band to the Pull Buoy.
This is not really going to allow you to kick,
just teeny tiny maybe little dolphin kicks,
but that's going to be the best way for you to learn
how to get your legs close to the surface of the water
while not kicking a whole lot, so you can conserve oxygen
and still feel fresh for the bike.
You're going to hate me when you start,
I guarantee it.
Alright, feeling good, ready for the office.
Ready for a day.
Over the last couple weeks I feel like I've been on
a little bit of a rah-rah triathlon motivation slant,
and I'm feeling very motivation-y with the marathon swim.
Even though last week and the last few days
I've felt like a bag of trash
because I got beat up in the boot camp workout.
Sticking your face in water and staring at a black line
gives you a lot of time to think
about how you're going to motivate yourself to train.
Something that comes up basically every time people ask me
why we're swimming for three hours Monday morning,
obviously I answer well, we're going for a long swim.
And then they say how long is long?
And I tell them 37 kilometers through the Red River.
And right then, almost without fail,
there's a look on their face
that's about a second of processing, it goes to "why."
Why would you do that?
And this is where we're going to get deep on this now.
Occasionally, that "why" becomes fairly dismissive.
And occasionally it becomes dismissive
from people who are close to you.
Particularly in our case,
because the Red River is kind of known to be very dirty,
silty, you can't see your hand when you're in it.
There's a thought that it's extremely polluted.
There's been some testing done, it's not.
And if the question isn't
why would you do that, just for clarification,
it sometimes does get into
oh my god, you shouldn't be doing that,
and dismissing us from wanting to do it.
Which is kind of what a lot of you will go through
if you don't yet have a community of like-minded triathletes
and endurance athletes around you.
Your family, your friends, your coworkers,
the people around you are going to wonder
why you want to take on these new challenges in your life.
And I think the reason for that, they themselves are scared
to do those challenges in their life.
So they want to put that fear onto you.
And even if you're not scared,
and you know that you can do it,
they are reacting to their fear, not yours.
There's no reason that you shouldn't be able
to do a triathlon, run a half marathon,
run a marathon, an ultramarathon.
All of these things are done by thousands of people
all around the world, so that fear is completely unfounded,
and you don't need to listen to it.
The reason that it's happening is because they're afraid
themselves, they're not doing it because
they're afraid for you.
So you, keep on going.
And then when you end up doing it,
typically what ends up happening is those same people
that were dismissive of why you should do it,
they are going to want to then do the things that you did.
They are going to celebrate in your success.
Which is kind of why I look at it, and I say you know what,
they're thinking about their own fears.
When they see that you can do it,
they themselves know that it's something that they could do.
So don't pay attention to those fears,
know that you can do it, go out and do it,
and then yeah, let them celebrate with you
and understand that these challenges
that you're overcoming are doable for them.
Be that motivation in their life.
I am just on a rah-rah triathlon endurance kick here, folks.
Go do it. Alright.