Diagnosis, please

Originally posted by jhaack39

I am no expert on triathlon.
But, I do consider myself an expert on acquiring skills, abilities, and knowledge.
Doesn't mean I'm any good at that, but as a sometime teacher...I 'study' this.

So, being that any physical activity in some sense is just like learning to play piano...or anything else.
1. You're not very good at it when you first start.
2. Other related skills (say...another instrument....or in your case...cycling) can certainly be helpful. They can also hinder if you think they're "the same thing"
3. You practice some....and you get better.
4. As you're practicing, you start to "think" much more and more about it.
5. As you're thinking about it, you find the things you don't do so good...and you focus on those. Just because you can get to the end of a song, doesn't mean you played it properly. No point in expending excessive time on the things you do right, unless you expend effort on the things you do wrong.

Also....adults are terrible at doing all these things. We complain about kids who have no sense of delayed gratification. You know, standing in line at the checkout "Mommy, I want this candy/toy/etc. NOW". But the reality is, they have tons of it, because we enforce it on them. No, you can't drive until you're 16. Voting 18. Drinking 21. We make them go to bed at 9:00 and don't let them have a snack before dinner. As an adult, if we want to go out to McDonald's for dinner...we go. If we want to stay up and watch TV, we do.

We're terrible at breaking things down and working the sum of the parts.

That being said, it might be harder to find the sum of your parts when you're trying to do put two things together. But, that's a "part" of triathlon that we all have to learn and figure out.

Definitely, try dialing back on the bike.
Definitely practice cycling and then straight into running. Even if it's just a half mile or a quarter after cycling. It took me two years to start to learn to deal with the legs that feel like they're both made of lead and yet, somehow helium filled. After five years, I still have not found a way to slow down to my regular pace for the first half mile in a race. I virtually set a half mile PR in the first half mile of every race I do. I'm getting better.

My 17 year old did his first race with me on Sunday. He didn't "train" for it. He's in decent shape as a lacrosse player and the fact that he's 17. The biggest thing for him was...he had little sense of "how far" he had left at various stages and therefore had no idea how to 'pace' himself in any part of it. At times he felt he laid off too much. Other times he went too hard.

Keep it up, and soon...you'll be one of those guys blowing by me on the run (even at a jog!) and when I look at the age on their calf as they blow by...I just shake my head in shame.

Originally posted by nathan_strahl@yahoo.You are correct, my strength is in biking as I have been doing that for years. With limitation in time (work, family), is HIIT the best (most efficient way to build endurance?