greetings, all

Welcome aboard. Being a "newbie" myself, I understand your apprehension. You have been quite lucky in finding a tri team to train with; I've been looking for a long time but this is mainly a cycling and running town. As I am doing training on my own, I would be interested in learning about your team workout. This may give me an idea on how to plan my own workouts which, so far, have been rather loosely carried out.

I'm a runner myself. I did my first marathon early December and plan my first Tri this May also. This is a great site. These forums will help answer questions if you have any.

Good luck in May,
Toaje

Lauren,
You will do great at triathlons. The type of physical and mental preparation that you used for Marathoning will come in handy. There are many knowledgeable people on this site who can help you a lot. Good Luck with you training.
Kevin

Everybody is usually a little apprehensive about their first triathlon, but I have to agree with others that being a marathoner is going to be a plus. Stay focused, and remain dedicated to your goals and you will do fine. Good luck on your first day of training!

Still Tri'n
Michael

Welcome Lauryn! What kind of tri are you doing first? If doing a sprint, then it will probably be easier than a marathon. You will get your confidence as your training progresses.

welcome here!  i have heard a lot of good things about TnT...surfking, one of the writers for the site did his first with TnT...loved it!  and u get to raise money for a great cause.

great name, Mach. I'm out of state at the moment, so haven't gotten my complete packet yet. I found a nice set of swim workouts if you're interested.

Hi Cameron - doing a mile swim, 40k bike, 10k run. Just did my first swim workout tonight and it went very well. Thanks for the encouragement!

Thanks for the encouragement; I did TNT on the marathon, and ran for a little girl named Julia Rose. She got me out on the trail in rain, mud, etc, when I otherwise would have stayed in and watched AbFab or Blackadder. It's a great program. I'm in PA and spend a good deal of time in Ohio; could do a long ride sometime.

Thanks, I selected the name some years ago while logging onto a Cycling forum. I was taking a political thought course at the time and was deep into Machiaveli...so being a cyclist who loves his "velo" and having a deep admiration for the "father" of modern political thought, I put the two together. If you can lend some ideas on a swim workout which concentrates on conserving energy rather than on speed, I would be greatly interested. The thing which worries me is coming out of the swim portion exhausted or out of breath; that would throw me off completely for my next two events.

Edited by Machiavelo 2003-12-23 5:49 AM

Sounds like the Oly distance although swim a little longer. Great job with the TNT. I am doing the Disney marathon jan 2005 for either TNT or the Diabetes foundation. I will have to see if any of the Clermont tris are events I can raise funds for.

Coming from a swim team background, the best thing I can recommend doing is this: for an olympic tri, you have a bit less than a mile (1750 yards) to swim. Depending on whether you're doing this open water or not is going to make a huge difference; if you're doing an open water, you need to train in open water; since you can do laps open-water, time yourself for 100 yds in a pool, doing a steady, even pace, and then try timing yourself open-water at the same pace. It's been my experience on swim team that most swimmers don't use their legs to the fullest extent that they can, so try to incorporate some leg weights into your workout. This is also a good workout to build distance endurance: 300 yd warmup: 200 yard swim, 100 freestyle kick. Then do 1500 yards in this sequence: 500 with a nice steady pace, rest two minutes, 500 at a slightly faster pace (you should be doing about 100/3 minutes), and then 500 at the same pace as the first 500. followed by a 300 cooldown. This should accomplish a few things: you should get a sense of what your normal comfortable pace is, you should be confident that you can speed it up without being too tired, and you should get a sense of what it feels like to get out of the pool after a mile of swimming (this is over 1750 yards). Now, if you're dead beat after this, you need to up the swim training regularly by half again, so that the 1750 is going to feel like a walk in the park compared to your usual workouts. Hope this helps - L