Youtube swim sensation Shinji Takeuchi

Wow is all I can say after watching youtube swimming sensation Shinji Takeuchi's Total Immersion video. He swims effortlessly and it seems like his head barely comes out of the water to breathe. His video "The Most Graceful Freestyle" (2008) is now ranked number one worldwide among swimmers. He really makes swimming  look easy, just gliding in the water for 2:48. Right now it has been viewed 3.9 million times (note though that Psy's gangnam sytle is still #1 with 1.6 billion views).

















I was able to meet him up close and personal last weekend with effervescent Tessa P. who hosted the

Coach Shinji Takeuchi with TI Philippines' Ria 

closing ceremony of  'Smart, Speed and Open Water Skills Camp". Total Immersion Philippines' Ria Macay  invited coach Shinji of Total Swimming West in Japan to hold the open water skills clinic, a 3-day weekend class in Batangas.

The participants were mostly triathletes who would like to  learn how to swim the distance without getting tired and  master open water skills such as sighting, swimming straight and drafting to maintain speed. The highlight was his 'perpetual motion freestyle', four key stroke habits for tireless swimming. This is to swim with ease and flow to go the distance or a hundred untinerrupted strokes.

before the race with Coach Ria

Coach Shinji said "when you submerge your head, a vow wave is created and the level of the surface gets lower. I do not roll my head so much since the surface is 8-10 inches(20-25cm) lower than the original one."

The culminating activity was an open water race 500m for kids and for adults - a choice of 1km or 2km distance. Luckily, it was sunny and the water was calm and no stingers. I crazily joined the 1-km swim and managed to finish without cramping. Mind you, I haven't been training at all.  Tessa, on the other hand,  joined the 2-km distance and finished third! She could've finished first if she didn't stop before and after transitions to pose for her fans. LOL!

The cost of the 3-day swimming clinic  was pegged at  USD550 for international participants and USD450 for Philippine residents. The  private tutorial was pegged at  USD120 for 35-minutes. Coach Ria said that he'll be back this third quarter for a longer distance openwater clinic.

what a beautiful day, the venue

at the finish line

Tessa wins 3rd place at 40 mins, 1-min behind the 1st 

group shot

must've mishap to be a bike warrior

Major reality check yesterday! Raeanna and I decided to simulate the upcoming Tri-event this weekend in Subic by doing the sprint distance swim-bike-run yesterday. It was pathetic! We did the whole thing in 4 hours!!! Well, it's a bit of an exaggeration… minus the mishaps and loooong transition times, maybe the total time is three hours (?).
We started off with the swim with coach Ria Langit present at Polo Club. We finished the 750m leg in 22:47 and Rae timed ~26 min. Note that we had to do a 600m warm up swim before the time trial (so the total swim was 1400m). It took some time for us to transition to biking. We said hello to Ninfa and Ricky who joined us for the bike/run leg and then trodded off to the parking lot to switch to bike gear (total of 30mins). When we were finally ready, Rae crossed over a rope and fell on her left side! So, we had to stop and attend to her abrasions (knee, elbow)….
Afterwhich we started our bike ride – entered Flame Tree (South Forbes) and biked the baby hills for 7-8km then crossed to Dasma to North Forbes. At around 10km, I flew off my bike on Cambridge Circle since I didn't see the hump on the left turn. I scraped my left knee (the icky photo) and my right leg has a long chain marking on the calf. We spent another ten minutes or so to do first aid. The scrape was bad and my wound kept bleeding throughout the ride.
We continued biking for another 10km around Dasma. Then headed off to Baby's house where we parked our bikes. She gawked upon seeing the blood trailing down my knee…. We then proceeded to run 5km. Well, more like pretended to run the 5km. At that time, it was already 11am. My right calf was cramping, Rae's heel hurt (she has plantar faciatis) and both Ninfa and Ricky sped off but recounted later that they were dehydrated and decided to drop by a friend house for a cool glass of water. Total run (more like Walk) distance was only 4.75 km.
After the run, we hopped on our bikes to go back to Polo around noon and stopped by the clinic to treat our wounds… we were starving then and dehydrated. It was absolutely hot at 32 degrees!! We're now thinking of doing a relay instead in the upcoming Bali Triathalon this end-June (instead of the individual Olympic) if we don't improve our pathetic time of 3-4 hours. Anyway, we've got warrior scars now so we're officially certified to be tri-candidates?
Ninfa has now posted a poll on who's wound is grosser. She got the bear-claw injury the other weekend in Anilao (right photo) ...