normalsdotheolympics

[normalsdotheolympics]

Flight of the Shuttlecock

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post (sorry). In that time, Katy and I have been working diligently on our triathlon training. I've still been rehabbing my knee, walking on the treadmill four days a week, trying to steadily increase my time by 5-10% each week. Katy has been making great strides though in that regard. A couple of months ago, she wasn't able to really jog at all, but as of this week, she was able to jog for 2 miles! Such a huge improvement over the last month or so. For the triathlon, we'll need to get up to 6.2 miles or 10km. I'm hoping that by my next PT session in a few weeks, I can start some light jogging again. I've been doing a lot of strength training for my quads and hamstrings to try and strengthen the knee enough to be able to handle the running load.

In the meantime, we've been continuing with our cycling and swimming goals. I'm up to 35km on the bike and trying to get Katy back on the bike more. We took another swim lesson this weekend, working on some new drills. The past few weeks, I'd been working on some side swimming with the flippers, so I was pleased to hear that the instructor thought I was doing much better with my rotation and balance in the water. For some reason, I've been having more trouble with my flip turns the last couple of weeks. I think there are just too many things on my mind in the water, and the additional rotation on my strokes is leading to some rotational issues on my turns. Something to work on over the coming weeks. I've also been experimenting with some new goggles, since I've been having issues with eczema around my eyes, which I thought might be related to the latex in the goggles. I've been testing out what are called "Swedish" goggles, which are entirely plastic and without latex. They seemed like they'd be super uncomfortable, but actually they've been pretty nice. I kept expecting them to dig into my eyes since they're just plastic. The nice thing about them is that they have much more range of vision, which is why they're recommended for open water swimming such as a triathlon. However, I'm having a little trouble with keeping them on properly when doing my flip turns - they seem to get dislodged a little. During this week's swim lesson, we got some new drills. The most torturous one is called sculling, in which you somehow attempt to propel yourself through the water by essentially flapping your hands about in a back and forth sideways motion. It is brutal on the arms and lats, and it is SLOOOOOW. It's like I'm barely moving. But Katy told me she had the same experience last month, and now she's moving much more efficiently with it. So I'll push on.

And now to the biggest news of the day! Today, Katy and I ventured to the gym to try our hands at badminton. Our local rec center has one of the biggest and most organized badminton clubs in the state coincidentally. They meet twice a week and while most of the folks are paying members of the club, they do allow for drop-ins and newcomers. They have some sort of peg system in which you get a clothespin with your name (or a number if you're not a club member), and you put the pin on the board in a queue. As games finish on the six courts in the gym, you move along the queue. If you're next up, you become the "picker", and you can pick which other people in the queue you want to play with. It moves fairly efficiently really, but was a little hard to understand for newbies like us. We paid a $5 fee, which apparently goes to replacing the shuttlecocks, as they go through A TON of them every day. I couldn't believe how beat up they get just from one game. They also have to buy some sort of premium shuttlecocks to account for altitude. We borrowed racquets from the club and put our names in the queue. As we moved along, we were paired up with two very friendly young guys, who graciously showed the both of us how to play. We were inept to say the least. I figured out the service motion pretty well, but beyond that, it was ROUGH. I don't think I had properly appreciated how hard badminton is. I mean, forget playing at the high level that some of the folks were in the courts around us, but just making contact with the damned birdie was such a chore. It's like I couldn't quite figure out the length and size of the racquet. So many swings and misses at shots right there on the forehand. It was painful. After one game, we thanked the poor souls paired up with us for their tutelage, and we went into one of the nearby racquetball courts to practice a bit and get more comfortable with the game. It was fun though. We will definitely be back at it in the next week or two to practice more! It's a fun, fast paced game, and hopefully something that we can get better at over the next few months. The goal is to be able to play a proper game by the end of the year, or maybe in January depending on how often we can get out to play.

Otherwise, over the next few weeks, we'll just keep working on our triathlon training and strength training. We'll probably book another swim lesson in 2 weeks. Once we've gotten to a good place with our swimming, we need to start on the other strokes. We were supposed to have done so already really, but I think we sort of decided to postpone that a bit to make further progress on our freestyle. We'll also have a month break from curling for the holidays which will free up time for some of our other activities. I'll update again soon!

[normalsdotheolympics]

More PT

I went and saw PT again this week and have some new recommendations. As discussed at my last session, my quads are just too weak to be able to tolerate running right now. I have a lot of work to do in strengthening them, and I've been working at it the last few weeks. He recommended some further exercises towards that end, so I've been reworking my exercise routine and stretches. He also recommended that I do more fast-paced walking, as he felt that I need to increase my body's tolerance for the impact, meaning I should be on the treadmill 4-5 days a week. That of course would mean decreasing my time swimming and cycling, but I think that may just be what I need to do since I really need to get over the hump and get back to running.

A lot of our exercise this week consisted of lifting a couple of hundred heavy boxes as we've been in the process of moving. That definitely delayed some of our other workouts, but we were able to get to the pool a couple of times. I'll just say that we were definitely worn out, and it showed in our endurance. Through all this, I did manage to push myself on my cycling, and I hit 30km for the first time, which was the October goal. The goal for swimming is 500m, and I'll see if I can reach that over the next week, but it may take just a little longer. Of course the running goals are sort of on the back burner for the time being, though Katy is doing some jogging on the treadmill.

One of the other benefits of this endeavor has been overall fitness. I've lost about 8 lbs since July and Katy about 16lbs, so we're definitely seeing the progress there! Of course, we're putting on a decent amount of muscle with our weight training, so that has to factor in as well.

Things have settled down now that we're moved, so we can get back to our routine in a more meaningful way this week. I think I'll work towards 500m swimming and keep working on quad strengthening and get on the treadmill more frequently, and Katy can work towards 1km jogging and the 30km goal on the bike. Until next week!

[normalsdotheolympics]

Getting Back to the Routine

Katy and I were out of town quite a bit the last couple of weeks, and so we sort of fell behind in our training routines. It's amazing how quickly you can fall out of a routine, and how hard it is to get back to it. Getting up at 6AM before work has been really tough. I used to get up earlier than that for work, but it's different when there's nothing forcing you out of bed in the morning. I'm sure this will not be made easier by the later sunrise and the colder temperatures. So we worked hard to get back to it this week, and we were mostly successful.

We have finally figured out the right time to go to the pool, which apparently is mid-day on the weekends, apparently not a popular lap swimming time, and there are no swim classes being held. We got back to our drills, and we'll have to schedule another lesson in the next week or two. I've been working diligently on my PT exercises, and maybe my knee has been feeling better? Hard to say. It definitely is sore at times, but I've also been putting it through quite a bit. I wonder how it would feel if I just took a break from all of this. I did attempt to jog a little bit on the treadmill this week, and so far, I haven't had much pain, so that's a plus. I have another PT session upcoming, so we'll see if they have any further suggestions.

I think we'll try and go to the badminton club this week to learn to play. I believe they're there on Sundays, so we'll check it out in a few days. Otherwise, we're just going to keep powering forward. We're starting to think about picking our triathlon race for the spring. We'll need to schedule a sprint race before then as well, and practice some open water swimming, so we need to plan that out a little bit. We're eagerly awaiting the opening of the other nearby swim center, which should have a 50m pool, which we will ideally use for our actual swim events. Not too much else to update today so I'll post again next week!

[normalsdotheolympics]

The First Roadblock - The Knee

I'm going to be honest - the last week or so has been a little hectic for us. We haven't been doing as great a job sticking to our workout schedules. Katy was out of town for a little bit, then we were both out of town for a few days. It's really hard to stick to a routine when you're away from home. Nevertheless, we've been trying to do as much as we can.

As I mentioned last week, curling season is back! We're playing twice a week, and we've started participating in some more competitive curling leagues than we've done in the past. For those of you who have never tried it, curling is actually a great workout. It works on your core strength and leg strength to balance on the ice, you do a couple of dozen deep lunges, and it's a great upper body workout with the sweeping. So, we're not doing any other workouts on those days. In the meantime, we've been trying to stick to swimming 2-3 times per week and biking as well. Our new rec center pool is perhaps no optimal. The pool itself is actually great, with a bunch of lap lanes, good water temperature, open at reasonable hours. But they seem to rent it out to tons of local swim teams, who use the lap lanes every evening for 3-4 hours, making it hard to find a good time to go. Apparently the bigger swim complex in the county over is being rebuilt and is supposed to re-open in another few weeks, so hopefully things will improve once that's up and running. I've been working with the flippers to train on balance on my sides in the water, and Katy has been working on some drills of her own. Distance-wise, I got up to 1,400m this week for the first time, albeit with 500m of that using the flippers, which is much less exhausting though pretty tough on the ankles and calves.

The biggest thing for the week has been dealing with my knee. I think I mentioned my left knee pain in the last post, which started up after a few sessions on the treadmill. I finally went to see a PT this past week, and had a very painful hour of her probing my knee joint in ways that I didn't think possible. Ultimately, the question is always: What is runner's knee? Nobody seems to really know, which is pretty frustrating, particularly to a doctor. Is it some sort of inflammation of the patellar tendon? The quadriceps tendon? Tibial irritation? Arthritis in the joint itself? Some combination of all of these I suspect... After palpating the knee for seemingly ages, she decided on a number of issues that she felt were contributing to the problem. She determined that I have very tight hamstrings (shocker) and calves (also shocker). She determined that my glute strength is inadequate to support my running and my IT band was tight. Most importantly, she noticed that my patella migrates laterally when I walk and is not well supported in the center of the knee joint. She felt that I needed to strengthen the more medial quadriceps muscles to pull the patella in to the center of the knee and provide better support. Even as a doctor, it was a little overwhelming. I'm not even going to pretend I remembered the names of the quadriceps muscles, and could not have told you what the vastus medialis was... something we would have learned in medical school, and have never used in my life since. I came away from that session with a number of exercises and stretches to do, things to strengthen the quadriceps and glutes in a less threatening way than squats, which put a lot of weight on the knees. So, I've been working on those for a few days, and in the meantime, I've been going to the gym and doing some fast-paced walking on the treadmill, at a pace of 5.5km/hr. The goal is certainly to get back to running, but I figure I'll try to work on my strengthening for a few weeks first. I'm really hoping this works!

We have on the schedule for this month to start with badminton. I think we'll probably start towards the end of the month, as we have to find a good day to go to the rec center and try playing with the group there. Hopefully someone will teach us a thing or two. I had e-mailed the club to see if someone was willing to give us lessons, but sadly with no response. The other scheduled activity is to start working on backstroke. We'll probably book a lesson in a couple of weeks to start working on that, and then we'll incorporate a couple hundred meters of backstroke into our swim routine. The cycling goal for this month is 30km, which I think at the current rate, would take about 1h18. Hopefully, we can keep building up to increase our speed and drop our time closer to an hour on that. We have a 500m freestyle goal for this month, which I think I'm at least close to (Katy is well beyond that), but I need to keep working on being able to go consistently without stopping every 300-400m, and I need to drop the buoy at some point. The instructor thinks that the balance exercises will make a big difference. There is a theoretical running goal that was supposed to be 1km this month, but I think it's clear that isn't going to happen just yet, so we'll have to push that one back a little and then catch up later once my knee can handle it. Katy is starting to do a little more running, so hopefully she can work towards that goal!

I'll try and update again in another week or so!

[normalsdotheolympics]

The Journey So Far - One Month In

In the inaugural post, I spoke about our grand plan - to complete all 150+ summer Olympic events over the next 4 years. Today, I'll talk a little about what the planned schedule looks like, what we're working on now, and what we've been doing over the past 6 weeks or so since the plan was born. When we started this, we quickly realized it would take a tremendous amount of coordination and planning. With so many events, many of which can only be done outdoors in warm weather, we'd need to really take advantage of all the time we had and to ensure we figured out how we could maximize our winters. In case you hadn't guessed, we don't live in an area where you can do these things all year round! With so many outdoor team sports, we'd have to ensure we were working on one of the sports really at all times, and we wouldn't be able to take a few months away from that. I guess I'll start with a list of sports that are on the Olympic schedule: -Aquatics: Artistic (Synchronized) Swimming, Diving, Marathon Swimming, Swimming, Water Polo -Athletics (Track & Field) -Breaking -Modern Pentahlon -Triathlon -Cycling: BMX Freestyle, BMX Racing, Mountain Bike, Road Cycling, Track Cycling -Equestrian -Golf -Gymnastics: Artistic Gymnastics, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Trampoline -Martial Arts: Boxing, Judo, Taekwondo, Wrestling -Sailing -Surfing -Racquet Sports: Badminton, Squash, Table Tennis, Tennis -Rowing: Canoe Sprint, Canoe Slalom, Rowing, Coastal Rowing -Skateboarding -Sport Climbing -Team Sports: Baseball & Softball, Basketball, Cricket, Field Hockey, Flag Football, Football, Handball, Lacrosse, Rugby -Volleyball: Beach, Indoor -Archery -Fencing -Shooting -Weightlifting Our schedule is designed to prioritize training on strength and endurance for the first portion, and to tackle events that require a little less skill and fitness early on, and to build up to the (seemingly) most challenging events later in the program. The events that we decided would be the most challenging included diving, gymnastics, and slalom canoe. We also had to ensure that we learned some skills like fencing, equestrian and shooting around a similar time so that we could complete the very obscure modern pentathlon.

So what are we doing now? Well, for the last month or two, we've been working on a few things. Running, swimming, cycling and some weights. For swimming, we started at our community pool in the summer, and since have migrated to our local rec center. As I detailed in the first post, I really have never swam, and it's been a real eye opening experience. I started out managing only about 100-200m total over 30-40 minutes, having to stop for air each length of the pool. It's really amazing how far I've been able to come in just a short time, now able to go about 1,250m over 40 minutes. It's helped a lot since we moved to the indoor pool, as the lap lanes are great and there's so much less disruption from the surrounding swimmers. We took a couple of lessons at a local swim center, and I've finally been able to achieve some flip turns! I've been still struggling to achieve the distance without breathing difficulties without using the supportive buoy, but I'm getting better all the time. At our last swim lesson, the instructor introduced me to flippers, which have led to some new drills and things to work on. Katy, in the meantime, is really excelling here, able to get up to about 1,500m with only a stop or two to rest. Remember that aside from the ridiculous 10km marathon swim, 1,500m is the longest swim distance, so we're well on our way to achieving that already in a short time. Of course, when we attempt the triathlon (targeted for July 2025), we will need to navigate the open water, which will present some additional challenges.

In the meantime, we've been training on the Peloton, working on increasing our endurance and distance. I think that so far, we're around the 20-25km distance over an hour. Our cycling distance are 32km for the time trial, 40km for the triathlon, and then there's the 158km for the most recent road race. I think I'm just going to accept defeat on attempting the men's distance of 273km and go for the women's distance on this one. Of course we have a lot of work to do to cut our time down - it would be great to be able to achieve the 32km time trial in close to an hour.

Then, about 3-4 weeks ago, we started trying to get to running. This has gone less well. Neither of us have ever been runners, and while cycling and swimming are "low impact" activities, running is...well...not. My knees have definitely not enjoyed the early returns here, even doing some very light jogging on the treadmill for short periods, so this has definitely been a barrier thus far. I'm actually going to start seeing some PT to try and work on strengthening my knees and quads, because there's definitely going to be a lot of strain on the joints throughout this process, and certainly as we try and ramp up our running schedule. I'm hoping that I can figure out a way to do this without causing an injury, so more to come. It's been a little discouraging early on for sure.

Lastly, we've been doing some weightlifting, stretching, yoga and the like to work on strength and flexibility. We've done a little at the rec center gym, as well as some weights at home, and Katy has done some yoga classes at the rec center.

What you probably are wondering most about is what our first events will be! So here's the schedule to come. We'll be continuing to work on these four activities, and then this month (now at the beginning of October), we're going to try and pick up badminton. They have a club at our rec center, and I'm hoping we can find some generous soul to teach us how to play. They're there twice a week, so we're hoping we can go once a week or so to work on it through the end of December. And that's where we will hopefully have our first events! We will aim to complete our 3 badminton events (singles, doubles, and mixed doubles), as well as the 50m, 100m, and 200m freestyle swims by the end of the year. There's a new huge pool complex opening up nearby that we think MIGHT have a 50m pool, which would be great to use for these swims. It will definitely be a different experience than the 25m pools we're generally using for practice. Before then, we'll need to learn our dives for pool entry. We'll also start working on the other swim strokes, as we'll eventually need to do our backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and medley events. The swimming events will run through about May 2025, and we'll be planning to learn squash in the new year. A lot more to come after that!

Of course, we couldn't give up curling, and the season just started, so we've got that a couple of nights a week, on top of just regular life stuff, so we've got quite a full schedule. The plan will be to post maybe once a week with an update. We're still hoping we might get a video channel up and running on Youtube, though we've been a little reluctant, mostly because we feel a little uncomfortable filming training at the pool, gym, etc... Let us know if you have any thoughts or suggestions on that front. Also, if you actually do any of these sports and want to help us out either by teaching us something or if you know someone that would be able to help, please reach out!

[normalsdotheolympics]

The Slightly Unhinged Plan

Here we are, about a month after the Paris Olympic Games, and a though occurred to me: "Wouldn't it be fun to try some of these sports?" And so the plan takes shape. Let's introduce ourselves. I'm Avi, and my wife Katy and I are in our early 30's. We're both sort of your average Americans. We don't exercise much and we're both out of shape, probably a good 15-20% over our ideal body weight. We don't eat super healthy, and struggle to find the time to cook at home as much as we would like, both of us working full-time jobs. I'd guess that description would hold true for the vast majority of Americans.

About two months ago, we decided to try to make some changes. We decided to focus a little on cooking more at home and tracking our calorie intake, with the goal of losing some weight. We started to use our long-forgotten Peloton, riding once or twice a week, and we decided to check out our community pool. Now, Katy grew up swimming, having competed on her high school swim team. That was many years ago, however. I really have never swam - I mean, I can swim around, but never learned the technique of swimming laps. So learning to swim was going to be a bit of an adventure, and it was certainly slow going. The first time we went out, I only managed to swim 6 laps of our 20m community pool before I got tired out. So for a few weeks, we worked on some of these goals, cycling a bit, swimming a little as well, tracking our calories, lifting some weights at home, and the results were showing. But this isn't a fitness blog! So, to business, and where things got a little out of hand.

Katy and I love the Olympics. We get really into it. To a degree, it's when my Canadian pride comes out most, but I think we just love the competition and the spirit of the events. Watching Duplantis dominate the pole vault while his competitors cheered him on as he set the world record. Seeing the two competitors decide to share the gold instead of fighting for supremacy in the high jump in the prior games. Surprise champions, and devastating losses. Back in 2018, while dating, we bonded while watching a four screen split screen of the curling tournament at the Winter games, and I knew she was the one. So suffice to say, we get really into the Olympics every 2 years when they come around, even when the time zones make it challenging to watch everything we'd like. We particularly enjoy watching some of the more obscure events - this year, we found some new favorites in synchronized swimming, modern pentathlon, and rugby sevens. Four years ago, we became quite enamored with archery and fencing. I perhaps didn't mention that Katy and I are avid curlers, so we certainly appreciate how engaging some of these more obscure sports can be. On the surface, watching on TV, you maybe don't appreciate it, but once you really understand them, learn them, you realize how challenging they can be. I mean, race walking is just...walking right? Well sure, but very few people can even RUN at their 2:40 marathon pace - and they do that while - walking? So many fascinating events, and how incredible would it be to really experience them, learn how challenging they can be?

I sometimes have a tendency to get grand ideas, maybe to get a little overambitious. So here we are, having just watched a few weeks of Olympic sports, and it occurred to me that maybe we could motivate ourselves to achieve our fitness goals in a unique way. And so the plan was born. The Plan Katy and I, over the next four years, prior to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, will attempt to complete every summer Olympic event. Now, when I say complete, I don't mean that we're going to find a ping pong table at a bar and play a round or go swim a couple of laps in the pool. The goal will be to really learn and practice these sports, and to achieve some basic level of proficiency. So, for example, it would not be sufficient to go to a gym and hang off of the rings, or stand on a balance beam. The goal would be to practice for a few months in order to be able to do some basic routines. There are 156 events (158 for women) across 50 sports and the plan is to complete each and every one of them. For the sake of this exercise, we're going to include any sport/event that was in the 2024 Paris games and those being added for the 2028 Los Angeles games. The new events being added in 2028 include cricket, squash, coastal rowing, flag football, baseball/softball and lacrosse. Breaking is going away after its one-time inclusion, but we'll keep that on the docket. We won't plan to include events such as karate, which took place in Tokyo but weren't in the last games, nor in the upcoming games. The Challenges You can imagine there are quite a few challenges we face here. The first and most obvious is physical limitations. We're not a young as we once were and certainly not in the best shape either. This will require a ton of training and exercise. Some of the endurance events will probably be the most daunting for us to have any hope of completing; the marathon for example, the cycling road race (which is a whopping 160km for the women, and an absurd 273km for the men), and the 10km marathon swim jump our as particular challenges that I'm not sure how we'll be able to achieve. Then, there are some very technical events that require a lot of skill and precision, flexibility and balance, such as trampoline, gymnastics, and diving. Frankly, the thought of doing a 10m dive sounds terrifying. Then there's the question of access - how do we even find some of these sports and gain access to some sort of training and facilities? We've struggled to find some in our area, specifically lacrosse, handball, slalom canoe, and we can't find a 10m diving platform in the area. Some things we'll have to work out as we get further along in this, but we may need to recruit help for access, even for simple things such as getting someone to agree to set up hurdles, pole vault bars, etc... Some of these events we can't even do here in our landlocked state. We'll need to do a few trips to work on sailing, surfing, and a few others. The last big challenge we're anticipating is cost. We'll need to hire some trainers and pay for lessons for many of these things, enroll in leagues for many of the team sports, and there will be some equipment we'll need. I'm sure we'll come across further unexpected challenges along the way. The Rationale Why do this? Why push ourselves into this insane endeavor? I think for one, it would be great to have something to work towards to push ourselves in our fitness goals. It's so easy to just skip a few days of exercise, to eat poorly, to go for fast food. If we have clear goals, perhaps we'll be more likely to stick to our routines. It would certainly help us be healthier and if we even achieve a small portion of these goals, we'll be in the best shape of our lives.

Secondly, it sounds like fun. I mean, who wouldn't want to try some of these sports? Pole vault? Yes! Learning to ride a horse? Sign me up. Fencing, rowing, gymnastics....not only that, but maybe we'll even like a few of them and find a few we'd want to continue with when all is said and done.

So, where do we go from here? Well I'm writing this in mid-September and I'll provide an update on our current progress in the next post. But, more generally, I've designed a schedule that encompasses the next four years and every event, to try and map out how we could best approach these tasks. The first steps are to work on running, cycling, and swimming, as these will help us with our fitness, endurance, and move us towards a triathlon and a total of 34 events just using those 3 skills. We have some specific monthly goals as we move towards triathlon distances, trying to slowly increase our endurance. Because of time constraints, we will need to pick up a new sport every 3 months or so, and our first will be badminton in the fall.

And one last thing before I wrap up this inaugural post. We're thinking we want to plan to do a video blog as well and record as much of our training as we can, and certainly to record all of the events as we complete them. I'll post the link if we get it up and running!