Bodyflying fun in Zurich

Last Saturday I found myself at Bodyflying Rümlang in Zürich along with some friends of mine.  It was a really great way to spend a couple of hours, so much so that I have booked to go again in a couple of weeks time.

For those who have never heard of bodyflying, bodyflying is a fairly new and trendy sport.  It is not only fun, but also also affords parachute jumpers extra training possibilities.

For those who like the idea of parachute jumping, but have no particular desire to jump out of a perfectly good aeroplane, bodyflying could be a great alternative.

Participants enter a vertical wind tunnel where a specially designed propellor provides the vertical lift needed to fly on the generated air stream.  If you maintain a position similar to the one I am demonstrating in the photo you can achieve stable flight, and hover on the air stream.  By moving various parts of your body you can then move backwards or forwards, up or down.

Advanced bodyflyers can even do tricks like somersaults and spins and a whole host of other artistic movements.  Saturday was the first time for everyone in our group though, so achieving stable flight was in itself challenging at times.  We had two short flights in total.  The first was led completely by the instructor, with him moving us in whichever direction he chose.  The second was designed to let us see how we coped with minimal help.

Most of us managed a few short hovers by ourselves, but the second flight was certainly more challenging than the first.  My main mistake was being too tense and looking down rather than forward.  I am hoping that with the benefit of knowing some of the things I did wrong last time, my next bodyflying session will allow me to feel much more in control of my movement in the air stream.

One thing I know for certain though is that is going to be another fun day!

26km endurance swim planned for August

As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to participate in  a long distance swimming event this year.  That event has now arrived in the form of the Int. Self-Transcendence Marathon Swim, from Rapperswil to Zurich, organised by the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team.  The event takes place on Sunday 4th August this year, and I am now signed up for it.

Never wanted to do things by half, I initially entered the non-wetsuit category.  However, after a few words from my other half I have decided to tone things down and enter the wetsuit category.  The swim is 26.4k in length, and as I could be in the water for up to 12 hours, I may as well maximise my chances of completing it by wearing a wetsuit if the water temperature is low.

As my regular readers will know, I am fairly new to swimming.  Yes I swam as kid, but that was too long ago to remember.  However, I am now comfortably able to swim 3k in one go in the pool (using a mixture of breaststroke and front crawl) with no significant aches the next day, and am currently swimming 10k per week (well since last week at least).

With 4 months to go till the event itself, my plan is to add 1k per week to my training.  That will have me swimming 26k per week shortly before the event itself.  The general consensus and advise on offer on the internet suggests that if necessary you can swim as far in one day as you train regularly in one week.  I will also have to attempt some longer open water swims once the lake warms up a bit.  My longest open water swim before the event itself will probably be around 15k.

I have no idea if I can get myself in the kind of shape I need to be in before the 4th August without suffering any injuries, but I am optimistic based on what I have seen so far.  I have been going for several runs per week, and I have noticed I feel the runs a lot more the next day than I do my swims.  I reckon that my body can tolerate quite a lot of swimming, with swimming being very low impact.  The kind of overuse injuries I will have to watch out for are mainly centred around the shoulders.

Whilst upping my weekly training distances, I will also continue to take 2 lessons per week in an effort to improve my technique in both front crawl and breaststroke.  The more efficient I can be in the water, the more I will enjoy the event itself.

If anyone reading this is living in the Zurich area and fancies going out for an open water swim in the lake with me, let me know.

The Border to Border Cross Country Ski Challenge Ends and New Challenges Begin

Standing at the finish line

Hello everyone,

I am now back in Zurich after almost 1 month of travelling around Scandinavia.  The trip started out in St Petersburg, Russia on the 28th February and ended yesterday in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The main purpose of the trip was the Border to Border Cross Country Ski Challenge, skiing across Finnish Lapland (classic style) from the border with Russia to the border with Sweden.  Those who follow my blog regularly will know that I suffered a major setback to my trip preparations when I partly tore my calf muscle whilst running on the track about 5 weeks before the trip was due to start.  That meant I was not able to get in the kind of shape that I wanted to be in, and went to Finland rather unprepared.  The only training I was able to do in the month before the trip was swimming.

The total distance of the Border to Border route is around 440km.  Knowing that I would not be able to do the full distance, I decided my aim would be to cover at least half the total distance.  Each day a bus was waiting at intermediate points along the route, allowing people like myself to do part days.

My daily distances were as follows:

Day 1 - 41km
Day 2 - 30km
Day 3 - 26km
Day 4 - 23km
Day 5 - 50km
Day 6 - 22.5km
Day 7 - 41km

In the end I managed a total distance of 233.5km, so I was happy to have achieved my aim.  Even more so, considering my complete lack of experience with classic cross country skiing.  I could seriously count on one hand the number of times that I have been cross country skiing classic style in my life.

The best way to improve your technique in anything is to practise, practise and practise some more.  The Border to Border trip was a perfect chance therefore to improve my xc skiing technique.  Just before leaving for the trip I took a classic xc ski lesson in Studen.  So I knew what I was supposed to do in theory.

On day 1 it was very tough for me.  There were quite a few downhills and some even ended in a sharp turn.  Lacking the balance that comes with practise I fell over many times that first day.  I also found that I was slowest in the group, which meant being followed by a snowmobile all day long.  There is always one snowmobile in front of the skiers and one following at the back, for safety reasons.

As the days went on, I felt my technique improving and I was able to glide longer after each kick.  It was clear to see the improvement when I looked at my Garmin stats.  On day 1 my average speed was a mere 6.5km/h.  As the week went on it went up to around 8.5km/h, and I was no longer the slowest in the group by any means.  I wonder how long it would have continued improving for, as 10km/h is a very reasonable speed for long distances on waxless skis on varied, undulating terrain.

The longest distance I covered in one day was 50km.  That day seemed very long to me, and I was very glad to arrive at the finish line.  Considering all but one of the days were meant to be over 50km, it clearly demonstrated that I was not in the right form to be attempting the whole route for this year at least.  More than half the group were Finnish, and had prepared for the trip by skiing hundreds or thousands of kilometres.  Those from countries such as Germany and the UK were a little less prepared, but nonetheless I did not find anyone like myself that had barely skied before.

What impressed me most was the average age of the skiers on the trip.  Many of them were in their 60s, 70s and even 80s.  One of them even had a pacemaker fitted, although for obvious reasons he did not attempt the full route.  They were a great example to demonstrate that ageing does not have to mean becoming sedentary and resigning oneself to a rocking chair.

Now with the xc ski challenge out of the way, I am returning to my original aim of running a sub 3 hour marathon.  At the same time though I will be training myself to swim long distances, and I may quite possibly try a long distance swim event this summer.  I will keep you all posted.

In the meantime have a very happy Easter everyone.