Brett's Group - All Full Up

Good to have you, it looks like you've got my undivided attention to this point.  I went back and looked at your questions from the last mentor group, did you ever get them answered?

bts

Joy, I'll try and spell out answers to those questions (or give you links to them ) in the next day or two.

Stu, welcome aboard... my sport progression went martial arts -> powerlifting -> rugby -> triathlon so we followed a pretty similar path... although I need to get back into some of the contact sports to scratch the itch.

For both of you, make sure you are logging your workouts as much as possible.  It's obviously much tougher for me to throw "inspires" your way or offer feedback if I don't know what you're up to.  Hope everyone had a good memorial day weekend.

bts

Katie & Dan, welcome aboard.  Good to have you.  And good job on the logs.  In my opinion that's one of the single most important things in sticking with this.  It's also invaluable in terms of looking and and ironing out problems.

More later, it's wicked late.

bts 

Without a bit more information on the intensity/frequency/degree of the pain it's tough to say (and even then it's not easy) I would ease up on your miles.  Cut by 50%, but keep the intensity up (more intervals/speedwork).  At the same time, replace some of that lost run time with an extra swim and/or bike or two.  I've seen numerous cases of people who have running related injuries doing the majority of thier training on the other two events and doing fine in the race.  It's not ideal, but certainly doable. 

bts 

Here are joyjoy's questions from her previous mentor group, answers posted for everyone's benefit.

1. There are countless opinions on this. You can do a search on "tri clothing" and similiar word combinations and get countless different takes. What it boils down to is basically you can where whatever you're most comfortable in. There are tri-specific swimsuits for women that have a mild amount of padding for the bike so that you don't have to change throughout the course of the race. Check out trisports.com for a variety of choices.

2. Lots and as fast as you can. If you check out race results you'll see that you hurry through pretty quickly. Check out this link for a reasonable example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybh8QbpEPlQ

Be careful if viewing at work, the cameraman is a bit vulgar, but nothing too bad. This is overall about an average pace. You can see from the camera time that he was in and out in about a minute. With your first tri you can expect to go a bit longer than that. For more advice make sure you are checking out the beginner articles, here's one of my favorite basic ones.

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=206

3. I wouldn't sweat purchasing a plan from the race. The free plans here or advice from the local club should be more than enough.

4. You've got this. You'll do great.

bts

Jen, welcome aboard, it's good to have you, it seems we have a nice diverse group from just about every corner of the country.  It sounds like you're on the right track and hopefully we can pull you along.

Katie, to answer your question... it depends.  In your case, you've got it right.  Traditionally the answer to that question is "you do whatever is most important to your goals first."  Since endurance is your focus then you want to do your endurance work when you're freshest.  That's not to say that you can't throw in a hardcore strength session first every week or so, just keep in mind what your focus is and expend most of your energy there.

bts 

Hello! Thanks for letting me into Team Brett. 

 I had my 'long' swim this morning, and was wondering about my training - whether I am doing the right type of drills:

I'm training for a tri where I'll swim 0.5 miles.  I am pretty sure that I'll be able to finish this, since I'm up to swimming 600 Yd all at once.  I took swimming lessons and was taugt about 'pyramids' where you do sets of 25's, sets of 50's, a 100, sets of 50's and sets of 25's.    Should I work more on the pyramids, increasing to sets of 50s', sets of 100's , 200, sets of 100s, etc, or just keep swimming the race distance ??

Oh, and one more question.  I have noticed this week that when I am sitting at my desk, my leg muscles are achey.  Not like a medical issue achey, but like I can't sit still and need to stretch and walk around.  I'll get up and stretch a little, but it keeps coming back.

Is this normal?  Is it just from the increased amount of exercise I'm doing?  I mean, I have always worked out, but I am doing it much more regularly and maybe a little more intenstiy than in the past.  thoughts, anyone??

Jen, regarding swim workouts I prefer to focus a reasonable part of my (exceptionally rare) swim workouts on drills to keep form sharp.  Unlike the other two events, a huge part of swimming depends on good form.  What is the average yardage for one of your workouts?

An example of one of mine might look like this:

300 W/U

10 x 50 on working various drills (catch-ups, fist drills, finger drags, etc)

3x400 with decreasing intervals

5x50 form focused sprints

300 C/D

Total Yardage: ~2500

While you can certainly add or subtract easily to modify the total length I wouldn't worry too much about pyramids if you're already able to swim the total distance you're looking to complete in the race.  Looking at your swim workouts in your log, I'd say you're pretty much on the right track.

As for the lingering soreness, that's probably a mild version of what's called DOMS, Delayed Onset Muscle Sorness.  It's realtively common in weight lifting or any sport that calls on extreme efforts.  The increase in your intensity is the likely culprit.  As long as it's a soreness and not a sharp pain, then feel free to think of it as your body getting stronger.

bts 

I'm a little worried by the fact that it your knees have similar problems with both biking and running.  I'm not sure if I'm understanding where you're saying the pain is, but it sounds a bit like ITBS (Iliotibial band syndrome).  Check the link here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliotibial_band_syndrome

If you think this might be the case then a sports med doc would be far more qualified to give advice on that than I.

It sounds like it's improving and hopefully even if it is ITBS it's minor and already resolving itself.  Keep up the ice regimen, but if it persists, definitely see a doc.

bts