Karen writes: Stroke and Stride
With a bit of complicated organisation Kate and me managed to get in to Mission Bay after work on Wednesday to try out one of the long running 'Stroke and Stride' series. These are regular events through summer, with differing length swim and run distances. This week we got the 750m swim straight out into the harbour, and a 4km run along the waterfront towards St Helliers. We had looked at the times for previous events and decided they were all far too fast, pessimistically setting our own targets to be right at the back of the pack. We also wondered what to wear? Was it the sort of place you turned up letting it all hang out in a tri-suit, could you strip down to bra and tri-pants getting out of your wetsuit, or were conservative togs/shorts/t-shirt the norm? Turned out it was all of those, lots of people wonderfully confident in their bodies of all shapes and sizes but as a friend who observed the event did comment afterwards (referring to a popular TV icecream ad)...there were some "togs...togs... undies" moments.
Anyway, we clustered on the beach with a lot of people in wetsuits and red hats for girls and blue hats for boys, and there was an atmosphere of twitchy anticipation waiting for the gun. I put on my favourite purple goggles and recalled belatedly that as was often the case they had been used earlier in the week in the shower by the kids, unfortunately this time it was for treatment of nits with some insecticide which smelled bad enough to destroy entire rainforest insect populations, I observed that it seemed to have made the lenses slightly opaque...sigh.
The swim was very pleasant, I never hurry to get in the water preferring to avoid the washing machine effect of all those bodies, and when I struck out at a steady pace it was in my own nice space, mostly, there was one woman who was a fraction faster but as she tended to veer to the left into me as she passed she then had to re-correct by striking off right and then then she would do it all again, she must have swum a lot longer distance than I did, never quite getting ahead. I couldn't see the buoys on the way out what with the goggles and all the heads in the way, but it wasn't a problem on the way back with much the field already out of the water by the time I turned around and there were huge orange buoys and a bright light on the beach to aim for. Got to the beach, Kate was ahead of me and I trotted to the transition area and what do you know, the new wetsuit lubricant I had sneakily put round my ankles and wrists made getting out of the wetsuit a breeze and I was off and running leaving Kate still battling the neoprene...any advantage will do!
The speed of the run was high, as expected. What wasn't expected was my desire to run fast too, I just don't do that sort of thing. Everyone was running hard out, you could see the strain on their faces (and the inability to smile) and it was quite amazingly infectious. The Nike sportband gave up tracking the pace reliably as is often the case (I'm out of love with it) so it didn't tell me much, but I could feel the pace was up, and ended up doing the 4km with an average of just off 5 minutes/km which is unheard of for me.
Hot chips with fish and sand with the whanau afterwards on a lovely Auckland evening, didn't win any of the very tempting spot prizes but it was an impressive array for a relatively small event, and I would be keen to have another go and try to beat my 41 minutes sometime soon. Thoroughly recommend Stroke and Stride for a pleasant summer challenge, if you normally just cruise along like me you might need to be prepared to work though.
Anyway, we clustered on the beach with a lot of people in wetsuits and red hats for girls and blue hats for boys, and there was an atmosphere of twitchy anticipation waiting for the gun. I put on my favourite purple goggles and recalled belatedly that as was often the case they had been used earlier in the week in the shower by the kids, unfortunately this time it was for treatment of nits with some insecticide which smelled bad enough to destroy entire rainforest insect populations, I observed that it seemed to have made the lenses slightly opaque...sigh.
The swim was very pleasant, I never hurry to get in the water preferring to avoid the washing machine effect of all those bodies, and when I struck out at a steady pace it was in my own nice space, mostly, there was one woman who was a fraction faster but as she tended to veer to the left into me as she passed she then had to re-correct by striking off right and then then she would do it all again, she must have swum a lot longer distance than I did, never quite getting ahead. I couldn't see the buoys on the way out what with the goggles and all the heads in the way, but it wasn't a problem on the way back with much the field already out of the water by the time I turned around and there were huge orange buoys and a bright light on the beach to aim for. Got to the beach, Kate was ahead of me and I trotted to the transition area and what do you know, the new wetsuit lubricant I had sneakily put round my ankles and wrists made getting out of the wetsuit a breeze and I was off and running leaving Kate still battling the neoprene...any advantage will do!
The speed of the run was high, as expected. What wasn't expected was my desire to run fast too, I just don't do that sort of thing. Everyone was running hard out, you could see the strain on their faces (and the inability to smile) and it was quite amazingly infectious. The Nike sportband gave up tracking the pace reliably as is often the case (I'm out of love with it) so it didn't tell me much, but I could feel the pace was up, and ended up doing the 4km with an average of just off 5 minutes/km which is unheard of for me.
Hot chips with fish and sand with the whanau afterwards on a lovely Auckland evening, didn't win any of the very tempting spot prizes but it was an impressive array for a relatively small event, and I would be keen to have another go and try to beat my 41 minutes sometime soon. Thoroughly recommend Stroke and Stride for a pleasant summer challenge, if you normally just cruise along like me you might need to be prepared to work though.
Comments