• 212F Water Boils
• 95F Hot Bath/Shower
• 80F Swimming Pool
• 63F San Francisco Bay Water Temperature (Summer)
• 47F San Francisco Bay Water Temperature (Winter)
• 32F Water Freezes

When folks ask me why I swim in cold water without a wetsuit I answer like this.

5 Reasons Not to Wear a Wetsuit

1. Because we can’t… Swim competitions and Official channel crossings forbid wetsuits because they add buoyancy and give an unfair advantage compared to swimmers who swam prior to the existance of wetsuit technology.
2. Because we don’t want to… Wetsuits are constricting and uncomfortable to wear.
3. Wetsuits are a drag to put on a take off.
4. Sauna feels better the colder we get.
5. When you gotta go, you gotta go, but not in a wetsuit.

  

  

A shout-out to my high school friend Michelle Macy who posted a similar post on her blog.

  

  

Last night I swam in black glass. We jumped into the San Francisco Bay ocean water after dark. It was so darn peaceful as the light of the Ghirardelli Chocholate Factory shone across the black glassy water. These are the nights that can make any workday worth living. It was a wonderful cold water training swim. My buddy Dave joined us for the apres-swim sauna then we all went back to a French place and talked about adventures past and adventures future. These are the days worth remembering.

Adam has been training these days too in Denver, where the temperatures have dropped down at night to the 40s, so I suspect most of his training has been on the Wilier cycles (shameless plug, sorry, but we love these guys).

Hope everyone’s training is going awesome. Take care.

There is lots of advice out there on how to build a logo. One of the best blog posts I’ve read on the subject is on David Airey’s blog. 

To help kick off this logo I decided to have some fun with the images below. Thought it might make you all chuckle. If you want to do this to your own images I recommend checking out Dumpr.

• 80 miles
• Ingelmunster, Belgium to Fin, France
• Gorgeous countryside, 15 mph headwind
• 4 baguettes in rear pockets, 3 weddings, 7 barets

Holy smokes was it blowing out there today, but we pushed through. The French countryside was gorgeous, which made it easier. We started in Belgium and crossed the border into France during our ride. Belgium was industrial. France was filled with agrarian villages … and WEDDINGS.

Just by chance, we got to be a part of three French wedding motorcades. The cars were decorated and driving the same speed as we were biking. Everyone was happy and honking. We said “Bonjour” with our best frenchy accents. It was awesome.

Here are some pictures from the day. Time for us to rest up now, tomorrow is a 130 mile day.

This blog post is dedicated to our friends at Zipp Speed Weaponry, especially our friend Greg Kopecky, Sponsorship Coordinator. Our bicycles have a 808 rear wheel, and 404 front wheel. This configuration is becoming the sine qua non for triathletes worldwide. The aerodynamic dimples in the carbon rim are the same as golf balls and race cars.

A shout-out to Best Western Hotel Les Beaux Arts in downtown Compiegne, France. Special thanks to managers Talvay and Ouidade for making us feel so at home. The rooms were the biggest we’ve had yet and the location was right along our route and on the river. Best Western Hotel Les Beaux Arts. +33 3 44922626. 33 Cours Guynemer, Compiègne, France.

In this blog post we wanted to give a SHOUT-OUT to all the folks out there who are reading us:

• Katie/Holly/Greg/Matt/Marie & all our sponsors who make our adventures possible
• AlexF/Mark/AmyF/Amber/DavidH/Karah & all our athlete friends
• Jim/Betty/Karen/Jessie/Isaac/Tom/Chris and the rest of my wonderful family
• Mark/Tina, Chad/Kylie, Tim/Megan & so many of Adam’s/Amy’s close friends and family
• Lindy/Ben/Jac/Dan/Anthony/Carla/Jonathan & all our bullish Wharton Friends
• Paul/Chad/Steve/Bruce/Barney/Richard and the highly valued Powerset gang (now MSFT)
• Joe/Mike/Maggie/Wendy/Tracy & everyone else in Edina, Minnesota
• Camile, Isaac/Nicole and so many other of my friends from Chaska, Minnesota
• Brandon/LateralLine
• And of course Zoe (with the two dots) who is busily greening our world so 10 Degrees Latitude can continue for centuries more.

Thanks for your support and warm vibes. Stay tuned.

Before, during and after the swim we met lots of fellow channel swimmers. We finally put a name to a face with Mark Robson.  We also met some new folks from New Jersey and California — folks I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of during our upcoming North America swims. Some of the folks we met have blogs:

• Mark Robson (congrats on your 6 hr swim today mate!)
  
• Karah Nazor (always nice to see a fellow San Franciscan, good luck tomorrow!)
  

We are close to GO-TIME here in Dover. Tomorrow there is a chance we’ll swim. Our pilot (Dave Whyte) will call us tonight at 7PM to let us know. So, keep us in your thoughts tonight, hopefully we’ll swim the channel tomorrow.

Here are some pictures that we grafted from other folk’s blogs. Enjoy. Hope you’re all well.

1. Never Let Your Tread Wear Out: Replace your tires frequently. With fresher rubber, you’ll have fewer flats and also a better-handling bike.

2. Regularly Inspect Your Tires: Sometimes you’ll come back from a ride with small bits of glass or debris embedded in the outer casing. If you habitually clean this stuff off, it won’t have a chance to work through the tire.

3. Same Goes for Your Chain: Keep it clean and lubed and your bike will shift, and look, better. And if you replace your chain before it gets too worn out, you’ll save the expense of having to fix or replace pricier items like cassettes and chainrings, which suffer increased wear and tear from old chains.

4. Buy a Torque Wrench: Modern bike components are made of expensive materials like carbon and titanium and highly engineered to save weight. But that also means they can be damaged by overtightening. Manufacturers test their products and provide torque recommendations. Make sure you follow them.

5. Find a Good Local Bike Shop and Mechanic, and Be Loyal: The more familiar they become with your bike and your riding style, the more able they’ll be to keep everything working to your liking.

1. Bad bike fit
2. Poor nutrition regimen (racing and training)
3. Bought products based on price/brand.  Paid little attention to catering to my race needs.

Last but not least — pictures from our rest day in Nottingham. We visited the Nottingham Castle, and the local bike shop Freewheel where the head mechanic rebuilt Neal’s bottom bracket and tightened Adam’s rear cassette. Thanks guys!

• Perth to Edinburg
• 60 miles
• 3000 feet climbed
• 1 huge bridge
• 1500 sheep

Our blog today will come in the form of 3 videos.  We’re too tired to blog.  Short version…Ride today was scheduled to be 40 miles.  Arrived at Edinburgh bridge (5 miles to hotel) at 2 PM.  Arrived at hotel just after 4 PM.  We saw a lot of Edinburgh.  It’s a beautiful city.  I would have rather seen it on foot.

Tomorrow is a rest day in the capital city of Edinburgh.  We’re looking forward to it.

A shout-out to Bellwether Clothing Line, especially the awesome and honest Barry Smith, Marketing Director. The weather here is extremely temperamental. Just today we went from cold (50′s) to rain to warm (70′s). The gear has been fantastic. The chamois technology is layered and padded perfectly (FYI: chamois = butt pad) and the jerseys have awesome finishing touches like rubber gussets on the sleeves and waist to keep it from slipping. It’s gorgeous stuff, and it’s all we wear.

We rode down the A836, a narrow two-lane road that is windy, rolling and gorgeous. There was a lot of climbing today; we rode up and down 4000 feet of vertical over 58 miles. It was amazing how much the terrain changed as we rode; changing from sparse and rocky on the coast to lush and moist to the south. The road was empty, just us and the sheep, so we had ample opportunity to look around and soak up the beautiful countryside.

The strong head winds and rain kept our average speed down today, but we planned the first few days to be a bit shorter specifically for these types of eventualities. Our legs were fresh and our spirits high so the rain had little effect on our morale. It was tough to be down when the ride was so pretty.

A shout-out to our logistics van: the driver is Bob (Adam’s pop) and the navigator is Flora (my Gram). It was awesome to have them on our heels today. They were there when I had a sudden hankering for a ham sandwich, and when we needed our raincoats. It’s awesome to have them around, and they are having a ball doing it.

On to Inverness tomorrow and a dip in Loch Ness following the ride. If we don’t blog tomorrow it is because we got eaten by Nessy.

A shout-out to the Bridge Hotel in Bonar Bridge Scotland, especially John who operates this historic hotel in northern Scotland. There is a picture of us with John above. The hotel is under construction and there is room for considerable expansion in the back area to accomodate musical performances and large gatherings. This family operated hotel was located right on our route and John’s homemade lasagna was exquisite.

I moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco. I’m new here, and one of the big parts of moving for me is finding a new place to workout. I know about the Dolphin Swim Club in San Francisco, so I went there to check on their latest activities. While I was at the Dolphin Club I heard about two upcoming open water swims.

Both swims are open water swims. Both are relatively short (1-2 miles). And I’ll be doing both with my friend Paul who works at Facebook. I’m super stoked about both! It will be a fun way for us to mix-up workouts, and a good way for me to get in the race mindset prior to the English Channel, which is coming up SOON!

	Wind Direction (WDIR):	SSW ( 210 deg true )
	Wind Speed (WSPD):	15.9 kts
	Wave Height (WVHT):	3.3 ft
	Air Temperature (ATMP):	50.2 °F
	Water Temperature (WTMP):	50.2 °F
	Wind Chill (CHILL):	44.2 °F

[UPDATE] Another online service provides a color map of sea temperatures.

Special thanks for Mark Robson (fellow blogger and Channel aspirant) for clueing us in on the NOAA website and the color map.

As part of my acclimitization I swam in the 45-degree Atlantic Ocean this weekend. You see, my two good friends Rick and Carla live smack-dab on the ocean, so my training was a great excuse to visit and spend some time with them in their home. I was the only swimmer on the beach and the fisherman thought I was bonkers. Truth be told, with the wetsuit it wasn’t all that bad. My core stayed warm and my cognition was clear (cold water sometimes prevents us humans from thinking straight). Here are some pictures of me and my good friends.

Next weekend I will try the same swims without the wetsuit — such swims have been done by our friend (Mark Robson) for several weeks. He is also training for the English Channel swim.

Step 1: Organize a fan base.
20 minutes on the telephone.
Lauren asked her good friend MacLean to run with her. My Ironman friend Jonathan volunteered to ride bikes with me to setup refreshment stations and guide the runners.

Step 2: Buy supplies.
20 minutes shopping time.
1- Cap gun & noise makers
2- GU hydration/gels & dixie cups. 1 gel + 2 cups per 45-minutes
3- Face sponges (not from the sink!) in discarded Chinese delivery food container
4- Chalk for making sidewalk cheers
5- Knee brace, just in case
6- Finish line: orange crape paper, collapsible tent pole, 72 balloons, scotch tape
7- Map of event, printed using Google Pedometer. Here’s our link.
8- Ice cream for post-race party
9- Replica runner “chips”, to mimic the RFID tracking chips used at organized races

Step 3: Build finish line
2 hours assembly time.
Blow-up balloons. Find a flexible pole that works (I used a tent pole from a Mountain Hardwear tent because it is light and has a natural bend at the top). Scotch tape balloons to the pole. The result is pretty fabulous and eye-catching.

Step 4: Start runners, guide runners, refresh runners and CHEER!
2 hours during the race.
The race began with a cap gun and a crape paper. Jonathan and I biked ahead and every mile or so offered refreshments and cheers. We had water and GU hydration juices. At mile 8 we offered GU and sponges to wash the salt from their faces. At the end of the race we held the balloon finish line and they broke through the crepe paper. It was all pretty rad.

Good Cheers: “Yeaaah Lauren & MacLean!”, “Looking good!”, “Yippee!”. The louder the better.

Bad Cheers (aka. cheers to avoid): “You are almost there!”, “Right around the corner!”, “Just about finished!”, “You are not going to make it!”, and booing, hissing, or cursing.

Step 5: Host post-race party
We kicked it Ben & Jerry’s style.
—————–

In the end… Lauren and McLean finished the half-mile with 9:24 minute miles, which is pretty fast! The whole thing cost around $20 ($35 including the ice cream), which is less than the entrance price for most half-marathons.

Do different… If I had it to do over again I’d involve music from a boom box and bib numbers.

Upside… It was almost more fun to host our own event than to participate in an organized event. Organizing our own meant we could pick the best route and the best weather day.

Full resolution images are here.

One hundred 100s Workout
10 x 100 (400 warm-up, 6x 25 IM)
5 x 200 (crawl, back, breast, back, crawl)
4 x 300 (pull)
2 x 400 (kick)
4 x 500 (crawl)
2 x 400 (kick)
4 x 300 (pull)
5 x 200 (crawl, back, breast, back, crawl)
10 x 100 (6x 25 IM, 400 cool-down)
= 10,000 meters (6.2 miles)

Adam and I will leave notes in the comments when we do this workout. Meantime, a question for the comments: What are your favorite swim workouts?

In mid/late December we finally got everything sorted out with a great sponsor – Gu Sports. We met one of their superstars, Holly Bennett at Interbike, and she’s been nothing but fantastic ever since. I have been a fan of Gu energy gels since I first started in triathlons almost 10 years ago, so Neal and I made a concerted effort at the trade show to seek them out and try and get them onboard. Gu has been extremely generous to us, and we couldn’t be happier to have them as a sponsor. Most people know them for their gels, but you have to try the GU2O. It’s got a much lighter and less syrupy flavor than Gatorade or Powerade, which is why I like it. It goes down much easier during a long workout. I’m normally a lemon-lime guy, but to be honest, not so much with GU2O. Although it’s growing on me. Right now Raspberry is what gets me through.

What’s your brand/flavor of choice? Post a comment and let us know!

Read the NPR article
Listen to NPR audio

Or better yet, listen to it right here.

In other (more germane) news. Adam and I swam some nice yardage today and tried out our brand-new Tyr swim trunks and Tyr Mentor hand paddles. Tip to all you swimmers out there — hand paddles make you feel like Phelps. I recommend them to anyone. They turn any swimmer into a rock star. And boy do they make your shoulders hurt.

The past couple of weeks I’ve had more free time than usual, and my goal was to use that time to put some heavy yardage under my belt. Overall I guess it was a success, and I felt pretty good about myself. That is until I read Mark Robson’s blog (see below). I punished my body a bit and I feel pretty strong coming into the final six months of training.

Now, here’s what a real athlete does during Christmas. A while ago I found this guy, Mark Robson, through some English Channel swimming avenues, but he got my attention because he has a similar background as a triathlete and is training for a 2008 Channel attempt. We’ve been chatting back and forth behind the scenes for a little while, but I wanted to draw everyone’s attention to his blog. It’s very well put together, and he’s much better at being interesting. Check it out when you get a chance.

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Speed = a measure of the velocity of the bike, measured in mph or kph. Speed is not a good measure of exertion or intensity while cycling because it is greatly affected by opposing forces such as wind, grade, road surface, drafting, gravity (body & bike weight), aerodynamic profile and friction (drivetrain efficiency) as well as power. It is important to remember though, that races are won by the fastest rider, not the rider with the most power. Speed = Power – Opposing Forces (aerodynamic, gravity, rolling resistance) so in the end a rider must optimize this equation by increasing power and decreasing opposing forces as much as possible to produce maximum speed.

Intensity Factor (IF) = the normalized power for a ride with respect to the functional threshold of the rider = NP/FT. Therefore an effort at 100% of threshold should equal an IF of 1.0. If the rider has an IF of over 1.05 for over an hour, their functional threshold may have increased since the last test (or their power meter needs to be calibrated)

Functional Threshold (FT) = the maximum power a rider can produce for a period of 60 minutes. This can be estimated by completing a 60 minute time trial, a 60 minute “race-type effort” with a high normalized power (commonly a difficult criterium or fast group ride), by taking 95% of the power produced in a 20 minute time trial, 90% of the power produced in an 8 minute time trial or by completing a lactate threshold test in the lab.

Normalized Power (NP) = calculated power over a given duration that better takes into account non-steady state efforts. Average power will decrease if there are significant recovery periods during warmup, cooldown or in between efforts but the stress of the ride does not necessarily decrease (think of driving a car… you can average under the speed limit but it doesn’t mean you won’t get a ticket). Therefore, average power is not a good measure of exertion for non steady state efforts such as races, hilly rides and many group rides. Normalized power should reflect the actual intensity of the effort. It is calculated by taking a 30 second rolling average of the power values, taking these values to the 4th power, averaging these values and taking the 4th route of this number. Therefore, when the power spikes very high, these spikes will be given exponential weighting. For example, a criterium may produce an average power of only 160 watts (due to the regular periods of coasting) but the same race might yield a normalized power of 280 watts (due to the many accelerations). Though normalized power is a very good measure of true exertion, because NP works on a 30 second rolling average, rides with power spikes of less than 30 seconds may not be weighted as highly as expected and likewise other rides that contain maximal efforts of 30-60 seconds may be weighted more highly than expected.

Exciting news, Adam is back from his recruiting trips in Seattle and Denver. The dude can’t stop raving about Denver. I’m just glad he’s back. While he was gone I was without a regular training partner. Now that he’s back the problem is solved, but… I’ll poke fun at him anyways.

I saw this video from Chris Prouse and it really made me laugh. I’m like Chris, in that my bicycle has been my training partner for the past days while Adam way away.

Hope your autumn training is going well out there. Enjoy the video, hope it makes you all laugh too.

This is the most innovative idea we saw. A belt driven chain. Lower weight, less grime, and feasibly less expensive components. Check it out:

Your can read more about it here.

Most of the questions surround our swim of the English Channel. Here are some interesting facts that we’ve found out.

• 21 miles from England to France, but most do a zigzag path of 26 miles.
• 811 people have swim the English Channel since 1875. This is not a lot of people. By comparison, Mount Everest has been climbed 2049 times
• 6 people died swimming the Channel, zero of which are Americans. I think this number is small given the cold water (see next fact). By comparison, 8 people died on Mount Everest during the 1996 tragedy
• 10% success rate. Is that a lot or a little? You decide
• No sharks – occasional threat of jellyfish and oil spills
• Wetsuits frowned upon – they add too much buoyancy
• 
• 59-62 degrees is the average water temp of the Channel. To be This is warmer than the springtime 52-degree San Francisco Bay water where I’ve been training. Temp map at right.
• 13 hours is the average time to swim the channel
• August is the most popular month to swim the Channel. Here are the percentages of successful channel crossings: 20% in July, 59% in August, 19% in September
• 30 is the median age to swim the Channel. This is pretty cool since Adam will be 31 and I will be 30 when we swim it. I know what ya’ll are thinking — you’re probably thinking this looks a bit like a mid-life crisis thing. Well, it’s not. Because I plan to live to be 100 years old. So it is a quarter-life crisis

Data sources:
http://www.doverlife.co.uk/channelswimming/fatalities.php
http://home2.btconnect.com/critchlow/ChannelSwimDatabase.htm

We are headed to Las Vegas to attend the world’s largest bicycle trade show. The conference is called Interbike.These trade shows are amazing, 22,000 attendees, 9000 brands, all under one roof. They are a critical event for those seeking sponsorship (like us) and a lot of fun too.

Both of us are going. We will be in Las Vegas for about 18 hours, so it’s all about the time management.

Goals
1. Find a bike frame sponsor.
2. Lay groundwork to raise $30,000.
3. Meet some nice people.

Wish us luck!

What Motivates Us

We asked each other what we wanted from an adventure:

• I said I wanted it to have a defined goal, which basically meant it couldn’t just be a hike. I like things that are measurable and have defined ends. I like the sense of accomplishment that comes from finishing a project. Mountains are pretty good that way. The summit is the goal, so you know when you’re done. And you know when to celebrate.

• Adam said he wanted a project that let him see the world at his own pace. I got the sense that his travels with our nation’s military allowed him to see the world, but he didn’t get to choose when he came and went (and I’m projecting here, so it might not be totally accurate). I’ll addend this blog story after I ask him if this is how he actually feels about his military travels.

Swimming the English Channel

We both liked the idea of swimming the English Channel. It is a 21 mile swim in 56-degree water. Swimming the channel traces its history back to 1875 when Matthew Webb (a naval captain). Wearing a wetsuit is considered “unclassy”, as is taking more than 20 hours to complete the swim. Only 811 people have swum the channel.

Biking 1000 Miles

Somehow we got to thinking that swimming the channel was a good start, but couldn’t be the whole adventure. Firstly, it’s only 20 hours. Secondly, it didn’t fulfill Adam’s desire to “see the world”.

I’ve always had a personal fascination with Edinburgh. It is such a green city, and the home of the world’s first medical school. I knew I wanted to visit it again. So I asked Adam if adding a hugely long bicycle tour to our expedition would be a clever idea. He thought it sounded crazy, and fun.

We were almost all the way there…

Naming Our Baby

Adam noticed that the northern most part of Scotland was at the 58th Latitude, and Paris was at the 48th Latitude. That was 10 Degrees of Latitude. We thought to ourselves, wow that is pretty cool.
Together we decided to name our expedition 10 Degrees of Latitude. The name stuck.

10 Degrees of Latitude visits the 7 Continents

As some of you might know I set out a number of years ago to climb the tallest mountain on all seven continents. I finished this goal in 2005, after climbing Mount Everest. It was an amazing journey, and one that I would love to repeat, with a twist (and with Adam).

Every year 10 Degrees of Latitude will be visiting a new continent. Our first continent is Europe in 2008. Every year we will invite more participants to join us in our journey. We will raise money for important causes on each continent, visit with locals, and experience the world’s cultures first hand. Join us!

One Last Thought

It is fascinating to think we will be traversing distances that are so vast that they are visible on a map. Makes me shiver.