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Photos from 10 Degrees Europe

Team — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:55:52 +0000

We did it man, and here are the photographs to show you our journey.

A shout-out to Best Western, especially Marie Yarroll, Senior Manager of Public Relations. Best Western sponsored 10 Degrees Latitude and asked Neal to contribute content for their newly launched blog called “You Must Be Trippin”. The latest one is Healthy Continental Breakfasting. Give it a read and tell us what you think.

Designing Our Logo

neal — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 02:53:59 +0000

Hey sports fans. Not sure if you noticed, but we have a logo now. It’s at the top of the blog. We made the logo in Photoshop. We wanted a logo to symbolize the globe trotting journey that we call 10 Degrees Latitude. We are still working it; and you can expect to see new versions in the header over the next weeks.

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.

Day 18 – 5th training swim in Dover

neal — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:37:25 +0000

Met at Dover Harbor today for the regular weekend CS&PF Swim. There were heaps of swimmers (at least 50) there at 9AM. Adam and I swam for 1 hour in the harbor just to loosen up. We were joined by our families, and after the swim the kids decided to stick their feet in the water. Lots of fun. Adam and I wanted to give another SHOUT-OUT to our support crew again: Michelle, Bob, Amy, Laura, Flora, Tricia, Andrew, Joshua, and Princess Ava. They are always ready with fluffy towels, GU nutrition, hot water, and loving praise. They rock.

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.

Day 10 – 5 Tips to ensure your bike never slows you down

Team — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:19:30 +0000

Today is a scheduled rest day in Nottingham. We’ve got beautiful weather here and it’s a great little town to enjoy. Since we don’t have any ride stories from today, I thought I’d share a short article that I came across in Outside Magazine. Here is a link to the web version of the article. The original can be found in this year’s “Summer 2008 Buyer’s Guide.” It’s written by Levi Leipheimer, America’s top cyclist.

An Ounce of Prevention: 5 Tips to ensure your bike never slows you down

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.

The final tip is one that I can’t emphasize enough. It’s one of those things that until you experience it, you don’t know how disadvantaged you are. We’ve mentioned Cadence Cycling on this blog several times. One of my most valuable relationships that has come from 10 Degrees Latitude has been through Cadence. I have learned more about cycling/multisport from the coaches and staff here than I ever could have imagined. Cadence has been a great supporter of ours but they’ve given us no money. Our promotion of them comes out of respect. I wish every serious athlete could have a top tier bike shop in their area. Any bike retailer can sell you a bike. Most of them can even put together a 30 minute bike fit for you. But in order to make the step from recreational athlete to competitor you absolutely must plug yourself in to a first rate knowledge base. Cadence Cycling squared me away, and put me on a course to ensure a successful event this summer. Here were just a few of my problem areas that I never knew I had:

Bad bike fit
Poor nutrition regimen (racing and training)
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!

English Channel temps rise above 50F, hurray!

neal — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:53:32 +0000

The water temp in the English Channel has begun to rise above 50F. This is the natural spring-time tendency of the channel and it’s great news for us swimmers. NOAA shows us water temps, conditions and neat little graphs that I wish had a longer time-scale.

	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.

Swimming the Schuylkill River

neal — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:45:24 +0000

He who wants to find the sea should take a river for his guide.

We are training in the Schuylkill River! We’ve done it 3 of last 4 days. Today we swam for 80 minutes. And after doing those miles we plan to swim more and more. Here’s why we love it…

It’s cold. Cold is important for us to acclimatize our bodies. The water temps in the Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River has been 58-64F, which is pretty close to the water temps that we’ll see in the English Channel which is 56-58F. So far the cold is treating us well and only our toes are cold during the swim.
It’s beautiful. And a fun change of pace from the pool. Keeping the mind busy lets us forget about our shoulders and biceps.
It’s clean. Despite popular belief it’s a very clean river. The Philadelphia Department of Water has a website with daily coliform/bacteria counts, water flow, and water temp. These three together form a proxy for water quality. Nothing instills confidence that the river is safe like that big green banner on the Rivercast website!

The green banner means the water is safe.

From behind the camera the river is idealistically beautiful! Up close there tends to be more duck weed and gunk. But we still like it.

5 Steps To Organize and Cheer Your Own Half-Marathon

neal — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:46:48 +0000

Lauren wanted a goal to motivate her training, but there were no running events near her at a time that worked for her. So we hosted our own half-marathon for her! This post is about how we organized our own super-classy half-marathon race for less money than it would have cost to enter an organized event.

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.

Neal on NPR – 1/18/2008

neal — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 01:40:16 +0000

In December NPR called me and asked me to review the newest IMAX advenure movie. It is a movie called “The Alps”. It has nothing to do with swimming or biking (the primary subjects of this blog), but rather my other hobby — mountain climbing. Below are some links so you can access it in case you didn’t hear it on “All Things Considered” today.

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.

Video of a fellow Minnesotan’s English Channel Swim

neal — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:33:51 +0000

I come from Minnesota, so when I see Minnesotans doing great stuff I get pretty proud. Here is a video of a Minnesota swim coach swimming the channel. I think you’ll like it. The swimmer’s name is Dave Cameron. He also offered to help us logistically prepare for the swim, which is great! Gotta love Minnesota nice! More information about Dave at his website. The video of his swim is below:

About our project

neal — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:09:48 +0000

A few months ago Adam and I locked ourselves in a room for like an hour and talked about what adventures we wanted to go on. We came up with 10 Degrees of Latitude. The challenge is to traverse 10 Degrees of Latitude by human power on all seven continents. Keeping reading to find out how we came up with this crazy notion.

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.