Slurp the ‘Nog… and don’t burp on the Jog

Rules:
You must drink 2 liters of full fat egg nog. The calorie count for the carton must exceed 2500 calories. Light egg nog therefore will not be permitted. The full carton must be brought unopened and un-tampered with to the start of the race. It must then be completely consumed, you may pour your egg nog into glasses or cups if you prefer but you must provide your own cups. Drinking from the carton is also permitted. Straws are not permitted.

When you complete your carton of egg nog you must exit the house, put on your shoes (no shoes inside) and run around the entire block that our house is on. The length of the run is approximately 720 meters. Running on the sidewalk or the road is permitted. Running will be completed in a counter-clockwise fashion, this permits maximal visibility during the finishing straightaway. It also provides an empty alleyway only one lot down the road for individuals who wish to remove themselves from formal competition after the first 10 steps of the run.

The winner will be selected as follows:
The first person to consume all egg-nog and run around the block with all of the egg nog in their stomach wins.

In the (extremely unlikely) event that no-one can complete the run with all of the egg-nog in their stomach, there will not be a winner, but the person who leaves the house first may be considered to have beat all of his/her competition.

Lore:

• The first running of the ‘Nog Jog occurred following a mandarin orange swallowing contest. The result of the race proved that Reuben had indeed swallowed multiple segments of the orange without chewing.
• The second running of the ‘Nog Jog resulted in egg-nog being ejected from a nose within the first five seconds.
• Despite failing to complete the ‘Nog Jog in it’s proper format, all competitors of all previous years have continued on to pay their dues by encircling the block with a partial stomach of ‘Nog. If there is any etiquette in this tradition it is to respect the race, and making your way to the finish line is an honorable form of paying respect.

This year’s race occurred on the evening of December 23. 16 individuals arrived with their egg-nog in hand and competed in the race. The kitchen was more than full, as more spectators arrived than competitors. Racing began at 10:37pm. The first complete 2 liters was consumed 63 seconds later and the first egg-nog was ejected from a stomach less than a minute after that. The race was completed by only 4 individuals of the 16 competing.

Results:

1. Josh*
2. Reuben
3. Jacob**

*Fastest chug (1:03) and fastest run (3:03) of the evening.
**Jacob was making his ‘Nog Jog debut, as was 4th place Trenton. Andrew was awarded an honorable mention for fastest unofficial finisher, completing with less than two liters contained in his stomach.

The footage follows:

This is for Dave Roberts:

68:19 for 4000yds. This is pace for a 72 minute Ironman swim. Not a lot else to say, -0.2% decoupling is not bad. Effort certainly did drift up. Started out paying attention to Jan in the next lane, not bad to start out a bit hard, that’s how it goes on race day too so I don’t mind doing it in practice. My watch wasn’t running correct so I needed to fix it after 500m. I felt quite smooth from 750m through about 2000 and then needed to concentrate quite hard. Variability in pace reflects this, dialed in well early on, gets a bit shaky and then control is regained once I switched counting “up” to counting “down” and pace is excellent to finish off.

The trendline is a per-kilometer average pace.

The swimgame concluded this afternoon even though technically I could score two more points if I made it to a pool tomorrow and swam 4000. I’ve got an MRI scheduled though and one of the stipulations is that I’m not allowed to have exercised earlier in the day. So be it, I certainly met my goal of scoring 20 points and am content to leave it at that. Plus I don’t want to make it too tough on myself to break my record if I decide to follow through and actually do do another swim camp sometime later this winter.

The totals were 38.8k and 13hours 27minutes in the pool over the course of two weeks. Those totals occurred over 6 days each week and the second was larger than the first: 18750 & 20050. At the moment I’m ranked 11th in the competition out of 34 people. I think I’ll get passed yet by one or two people. Only two people will have scored all 41 points available. I could actually imagine doing that now, I certainly couldn’t two weeks ago but I’ve definitely brought my swimming to a new level with this camp. Hopefully I’m diligent in keeping the volume up and with one or two more real surges in swimming focus over the winter I can imagine making a few more breakthroughs and might end up placing better in the swim than on the run at a triathlon next summer. That would really be cool.

I tried the twitter thing for the past two weeks and it still seems just about as dumb as before I started. It’s a great way to waste time though. In any case, here are my swimgame tweets outlining progress through the camp…

• @EnduranceCorner – I’ll be playing the #swimgame starting Nov 23. I’m setting the goal today = to score 20 points.
• Finished first swim of the #swimgame 2600 for 1 point. Club swim so no bonus pts: 12×125 as 50drill&75swim with 15sec rest as mainset.
• #swimgame Day 2. 2000TT today, 34:46 & split of 17:32 so -ve split to boot! Count as 2×1000 descend on 0sec rest? Don’t think so. 3 pts tot
• #swimgame D3 2100 as 6×200 on 3:29 3:30 3:23 3:29 3:26: 3:28 then 300 suicide set w/ p-ups and s-ups each 25. tot 4 pts: swim yet tonight.
• Second swim of D3 for #swimgame. 10×200 broken as 4/3/2/1 descending, range 3:35 to 3:23 last sprint in 3:04. 2 pts & 6 tot
• #swimgame is killing me and I love it. I surpassed my biggest weekly distance ever today with 2×1000 on 17:50 & 17:04. 8pts tot.
• Actually 9 pts tot, that was my 5th swim of the week, I’ll do at least two more this week so the #swimgame scoresheet will display correct.
• two more #swimgame points, longest swim ever, 4000! Depending how I feel I might do it again tomorrow. Fastest of 7×300 in 4:19. 11pts tot
• #Swimgame Day6. 4000 conts in 1:13:30. Outside-tops of shoulders ache, never ached there before, I didn’t know I could?! 14 pts total.
• Week 2 of #swimgame kicked off with longest swim of my life. 4200 and 30×100 as main set. On pace for bonus set until last 5. 3 pts:17 tot!
• #swimgame D9, 5×400 on 7:01, 7:00, 6:54, 6:44, 6:16. 2 pts today, 19 tot. Feel for water improving, 4th 400 felt awesome, normally I’d fade.
• #Swimgame Day 10, 1500 drills for 0 points. Moving too slow and ran out of time to score.
• 2600 for #swimgame as 5x(300pull 200swim). Focus on breathing from hip, coach’s orders! 21pts tot
• 2000 band/buoy for #swimgame: 24 pts. First swim with band, found it difficult to swim with much effort- I realize my balance is quite poor.
• 3750 for #swimgame, main set racing Ben 1/2/3/4/5/4/3/1 (00s). Final sprint deeply anaerobic, 7 people cheering on deck, called as a tie.
• #swimgame last bonus: 8x(25flykick 25 sidekick 100swim 100pull) Mrs. Physio said fly-arms are no go. +1000band took all I’ve got. 4000tot.
• #swimgame is over for me: no exercise prior to the MRI is allowed tomorrow. 38800 swum. 31/41 points scored. Certainly made my goal of 20!

So what changed? After 4 days of daily swimming I showed up for tri-club practice on Friday and felt ready to hammer. I was feeling quick in the pool and stuck on the tail end of the train a lane up from where I would normally swim. I really felt like I had developed a feel for what makes a good catch and what doesn’t. I had worked all week on making my long arms work to my advantage by taking a really long reach. Erin even noticed, I was reaching better – focus and dedication was paying off with muscle memory. I took a day off mid-way and the constant ache that I had developed in my shoulders and back had started to wane. Week two was all about developing strength, once I had a better catch I was far from strong enough to pull on it with any speed. To say that I managed to get strong during week two is totally bogus, but I continued to benefit from the volume by putting good muscle memory into my arms. I also identified that I was cheating on good balance by swimming with wide feet. The two band-swims that I’ve done really highlighted that I don’t have very good balance in the water. I need to really work on that to maintain a streamlined position in the water, and part of that is improving core strength. So, 13.5 hours in the pool basically gave me good reason to keep swimming, and concrete tasks to work on. I’m totally pleased with this endeavor, even though it may have turned into a make-work project.

I’ll conclude with a plot of my weekly distance over the period of when I started shoulder rehabilitation last fall up until the present. The past two weeks both doubled my longest distance in any week prior to that. [click it for larger]

Episode #1

I am acting as race director of the 2010 edition of the race. If you are at all interested or capable please contact me. If you’re interested in racing and not volunteering please at least consider volunteering… and then if you decide that you cannot volunteer but do want to race, then maybe check out the “Spring Thaw Triathlon” page at www.ualberta.ca/~tri for more information. Registration is not open yet and it will not be until March 2010.