Don't Get Beat With Beetroot

Some studies indicate that beetroot may be good for endurance athletes.

A beetroot juice study conducted by Exeter University in the U.K. found that cyclists who drank a half liter of beetroot juice several hours before workout were able to ride 20% longer than those who drank a placebo blackcurrent juice.

Kathleen Doheny reported in WebMD on research of the whole vegetable by Margaret Murphy, MS, RD, ACSM, a Clinical Dietitian at St. Alexius Hospital in Chicago. Murphy's research showed that eating beetroot compared to cranberry relish before a workout gave runners an edge in speed (41 seconds) in a 5K run.

The study was presented at the American Dietetic Association's Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo this week in San Diego, California.

Murphy tested 11 male and female recreational athletes (average age of 25) to eat the 200 grams of beetroot or the cranberry relish 45 minutes before a 5K run. After the beetroot consumption, the runners achieved times that were 3% faster compared to their times after eating cranberry relish with a significant 5% faster closing over the last mile.

Beetroot is rich in nitrates that are converted into nitric oxide by the body. The nitric oxide dilates blood vessels which results in improved oxygen delivery for sustained aerobic capacity.

Copyright © 2011 by Open Water Source

A Swirling Of Activity In The Ocean

A gyre is any large system of rotating ocean currents, particularly those involved with large wind movements.

Gyres are caused by the Coriolis Effect; planetary vorticity along with horizontal and vertical friction, which determine the circulation patterns from the wind curl (torque).

The term gyre can be used to refer to any type of vortex in the air or the sea, even one that is man-made, but it is most commonly used in oceanography to refer to the major ocean systems.

The diagram on the left shows the world's five most notable gyres: Indian Ocean Gyre, North Atlantic Gyre, North Pacific Gyre, South Atlantic Gyre and South Pacific Gyre. The diagram on the right shows all the world's gyres.

Copyright © 2011 by Open Water Source

Diana Nyad And The Xtreme Dream In Her Own Words

Diana Nyad will visit the Open Water Source studio to tell about what went into her Xtreme Dream, what happened out there between Cuba and Florida, and what she learned along the way.

This webinar is free and will certainly prove to be an enlightening, entertaining hour hour full of inspiration, hope and courage. Diana Nyad and the Xtreme Dream - In Her Own Words is broadcast Tuesday, October 4th, 11 am - 12 pm Los Angeles time, 2-3 pm New York time, 7-8 pm London time.


Copyright © 2011 by Open Water Source

What To Do With Blue Bottles?

Different swimmers do different things to deal with the dreaded blue bottles, box jellyfish, sea wasps, stingers, Portuguese man o war and moon jellyfish. Stings from these and a few other species (Chironex fleckeri, Carukia barnesi and Malo kingi) are extremely painful and can be sometimes fatal to humans.

While the countermeasures used by swimmers are not allowed under sanctioned swims conducted under English Channel or Catalina Channel rules, individuals attempting adventure swims in other bodies of water are not bound by such rules in their individual attempts.

Stings from these notoriously dangerous marine creatures that swimmers are increasingly running into are unforgettable. It is very rare for a person to be able to withstand over 200 stings as Anne Marie Ward did in the North Channel or dozens of Portuguese man o war stings that Michael Spalding and Linda Kaiser endure in the Kauai Channel. More likely, the stings are debilitating and lead to toxic shock like when Penny Palfrey and Diana Nyad had to be pulled from the waters in Hawaii and the Caribbean Sea.

Many of these debilitating stings are often at night, right after sunset when the creatures seem to rise to the surface of the ocean to do their damage. It seems the warmer the waters are, the more painful the stings seem to be, although there are undoubtedly exceptions to this generalization.

In the case of Shelley Taylor-Smith swimming 90K from Sydney to Wollongong 90k swim, she had to be creative after ingesting blue bottles on her first attempt. On her second attempt one week later, she wore tights (leg stockings) "to keep the stingers off of me. I cut the crotch out and put it over my head and wore the legs as arms and the stockings on my legs and cut the feet out. I also put mesh on the front of my shark cage to disintegrate the blue bottles when they hit the front of the cage."

As Skip Storch, who attempted to swim from Cuba to Florida in 1993, observed, "[My cage] was more of a Portuguese man o war cage than a shark cage."

Photo above shows skin and face protection against stinging creatures.

Copyright © 2011 by Open Water Source