Funked Up Triathletes (Sprint, Olympic Focus) Group - Closed Until Next Season (Page 10)

As this is my first season racing, I don't really know how much or little to do in the off-season to set myself up to reach my 2014 goals. Basically my plan looks like this: My final race is an Olympic on September 29th. After that it's rest for mental and physical recovery. I don't plan to do much of anything for the entire month of October. November 1 it is the start of pre-season base building for 2014. November and December will be a maintenance phase building to be ready to go a big step up in intensity and volume on January 1. My goal for 2014 is to be competitive for Olympic distance Age Group podiums on the local and regional level, and be around or preferably under 2:30 neighborhood.

Does this October break seem logical? I know I will have a strong itch to train during this time, but I also know I need the time to heal some nagging injuries and to recharge the mind. I want to be hungry when its time to go again, it's a long season and I don't want to be feeling mentally fatigued from the start. In other words, I know I need the break even though I may not want to take it. Thoughts?

Edited by Dominion 2013-08-30 5:52 PM

And BTW, Got the new Shiv...first ride, 10 miles in ...flat rear tire. Over 1500 miles on my road bike with no issues and the new Shiv goes flat within 10 miles. Hopefully not a sign of things to come.

I did do the Revolver! I hated it! (thanks!) Almost needed the puke bucket! The only one I've hated as much is "A Very Dark Place", which is true to the title!

My FTP was 228 when I started and it probably is still close to that now, possibly a smidge higher but not much. I weigh 182 right now, so that is a watt/kg ratio of 2.75. Not good. I'm hoping to get my watt/kg up to 3.2 or more in the next 5 months.

Did you buy all of the videos? Also, A Very Dark Place is one that I *hate*. I think my favorites are The Hunted and There is No Try, but I think I do The Wretched more than any of them...sometime if I find myself tinkering around too long in the morning I run out of time and have to do The Wretched as it's a little shorter than most of them.

Haven't bought all videos, just have Revolver, Very Dark Place, and the Wretched. I am working with the TR Intermediate Base Plan I right now and throwing in the Sufferfest videos when I want more. I'm trying to decide whether to buy all the Sufferfest videos and also their Novice Road Plan and do that next or do the TR Inter. Base II. I'm just kind of winging it as I am doing a "base" plan at the end of my season.

The Tour of Sufferlandria is in Jan or Feb and last year they had a 30% off sale for all the videos. I'm guessing they'll do something similar this coming year. I haven't used any of the training plans from the Sufferfest yet. I have done Base 1&2 that is available through TrainerRoad. I thought it was good, but that was before I discovered SF. I now rarely use the trainer without the SF, with an exception a few weeks ago I was feeling pretty fatigued and opted for a few longer tempo rides just using Trainer Road. Sometimes, it's tough to get the nerve up to do a SF workout since you know it's going to leave you close to puking, but I still think they are awesome.

I'm not 100% sure what my plan is for the winter, but I plan to incorporate a few different plans in with TR and SF. The only reason I haven't bought any of the SF plans is: a) they are cycling specific, not tri specific (they say a tri plan is coming out soon), b) they still include some outdoor rides . So I'm still working out what I'm going to do.

Jesse, i see your time from Hy-Vee....looking forward to seeing your race report. I guess you're officially in the off-season..right?

Yeah, back from Hy-Vee so almost in the off-season. The Recruitment Program is implementing new run testing so I have to do that this week before official rest, but its pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

Fastest non-wetsuit swim for me this season (it was awkward as heck the way it was set up) and a bike split that put me into a lot of pain where I just tried to hold on with the run. Run was 38:30, should have been 36:30 or faster on that particular course, but I pushed it a little too hard on the bike. That was the goal for the day though, trying to find the level of pushing it just too hard on the bike where I can't pull off a full speed run so now I know.

I'll get a race report up by this weekend I imagine and I'll also start working on the video for setting up your base training. I did have an idea though to actually go through some real mileage/setups with you guys in the thread before I ever make the video. That way I can get some clarifying questions out of you guys and put that in the video to be helpful.



So if any of you have already picked out your A race or priority distance for next year and have a date put it in the thread here as well as the kind of weekly mileage you've been doing for at least a month in each respective sport. Intensity at the end of the year is a little less important for our purposes currently, but if you have a big drop in mileage in the last couple months while intensity shot up please let me know that as well.

So for me this would look like
A Priority Race: Olympic Distance Age Group Nationals 2014 Approximately August 15th.

Swim: 3 times evenly broken up most weeks at 4-5k sets Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Bike: 2 or 3 days when doing a brick, most weeks 2 days at 35 Thursday and 52 miles Sunday
Run: 3 days a week with 12, 6 and 10 miles Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday

Alternate workouts: Strength training with tubing post swim in the afternoon Monday, Wednesday, Friday, stopped about 2 months before end of season (I got lazy and tired, it happens to the best of us).


So something like that will give me a good idea about your current work load and where we can start to build you up from there. Also as David and I have been talking about via PM let me know what kind of time during your week you have available to get workouts in since I know Triathlon is not on the top of the priority list for everyone and you have to take care of business first.

So true! I was procrastinating big time today because I knew I had "A Very Dark Place" SF workout on my bike schedule today and I was dreading it and putting it off all afternoon! I finally did it and really suffered!

An interesting thing I thought I'd share was my calves cramping and what I did today-- back story is my calves almost always begin to cramp when I bike *really* hard. Doesn't matter if I'm grinding a big gear at 60rpm or if I'm doing the same speed spinning at 110rpm ( I experimented a lot this year) Anyhow, during all my sprint tris this season, I would feel cramps coming on, usually after 5 miles or so of really pushing and I would back off a gear and slow 1-2 mph and the cramps would back off, I never pushed it because I assumed it was a sign that "bad things" were about to happen- i.e. full blown cramping that would make me have to stop and stretch or whatever. Anyhow, on the trainer today during one of the lactate-threshold intervals, I felt them coming on, but I figured I would experiment and see what would happen if I just kept going as hard or even harder. This was about 25 minutes into a 50 minute trainer ride. I figured if my calves really blew up, I wasn't going anywhere, I would just get off and stretch.

To my surprise, the cramping never got any worse! It was painful for awhile, but they stayed in the "pre-full-cramp" phase until the end of the 50 minutes, even when I pushed over 320 watts (which is about my 30 second absolute maximum effort). To test how they would respond to running, I did a quick 5 minute jog immediately after the bike, assuming they would cramp then, but they didn't! So if this one time experiment is any indication, I've been backing off my pace on the bike when I didn't need to in every race. I have a sprint on saturday and I'm going to put my new found information to the test. We'll see how that works- I'm hoping my average speed might go up 0.5-1.0 mph.

Jesse- congrats on your race! Looking forward to the race report. I will post the info you requested soon- thanks! John

Curious as to what you guys think. I'm kind of bummed.

I joined up with Team in Training again this year for 3 main reasons:
1) It's a great cause and I'm helping do a lot of good for a lot of people
2) My nephew wanted to do it with me and he is set to turn 21 the day of the race. We were on the same team and we were going to celebrate by raciing togehter and I have mentored him throughout the process.
3) I did the same event last year. The course was flat and FAST and I've been pumped to do it again and make see some gains after a year of better training. I did 20mph on the bike last year and was hoping to see in the 22.5mph range.


A few weeks ago my nephew dropped off the team because he can't swim. It's not a total loss, he's still with the team, just on a cycling event but our plan for DC together is up in smoke. He's not going with me.

Now, the Race organizers have changed the bike route. Instead of being one loop on a fast course, it now is two loops that look like this:



This is a huge event, and there's going to be tons of bike traffic on that second loop, plus all the technical turns. I'm disappointed because I may have a better race and the same, or slower time.

At least reason #1 is still there and that's the most important one.

Sorry all, just had to vent a bit.

I'm going to look at my 2014 tentative schedule and try to get Jesse my dates/hours, etc. It may not be until after the weekend though after my race.

Went 2:39:28 at my Olympic today.
Took 3rd AG.
First Tri Podium!

SHIV was awesome..20mph on a hilly Oly course that gave me the #3 bike split and +8 total positions. I'm used to BOP bike splits and minus 6-8 positions. Bike made a huge difference today! Couldn't be happier.

Sprint race tomorrow..same course, just everything cut in half.

I'll try to get race reports for the entire weekend out on Monday.

Awesome! Congratulations! Good luck tomorrow!!

Sprint today - didn't go well. I was 10th swim wave out of 12 waves with 3 minutes in between each wave. I warmed up in ocean before first wave went and warm up was okay but water was getting rough and wavy due to increasing winds. Then got out of ocean after warm up and shivered for 40 minutes waiting for my wave to start, so that was a mistake. By the time my wave went, the waves were really increasing and it was chaotic wave action with 2-3 foot waves every second (literally), so it wasn't some wave action you could time and get in a rhythm for breathing. I tried breathing one side, and would get smashed in the face with wave, then switch to the other side, and it wasn't any better. A woman was panicky near me and tried to grab me to hold on and I waved a lifeguard on a paddle board over to get her, which he did. Multiple people were being pulled out or hanging on to lifeguards on paddle boards. It was the first time ever I felt so anxious. My wet suit seemed tight on my neck (though I'm sure it wasn't any different than usual) but I became aware of it and it was anxious about that. I couldn't keep my head down so I tried swimming head up and then breast stroking for a minute. I tried belly breathing and deep breathing but I couldn't settle down. I got SO mad at myself because I pride myself on being comfortable in the ocean no matter what the conditions, so even if my swim isn't fast, I'm always consistent and can come out of the swim comfortable and ready to bike. Today I staggered up the beach finally about 2-1/2 minutes behind my reasonable goal time and got on the bike exhausted. Bike was okay. Run was slow. I just chalked the whole thing up to a bad start and am moving on! Yuck race though.

Getting wet, then having to get out and stand around cold is the worst. I had to do it just for a few minutes, not 40 and I can see how that could really affect performance. The rough waters sounds a little bit like my race back in June at Tybee Island where we had to swim against a strong current with swells. I know that was easily my worst race of the season and I think/know it was because that swim messed me up so much from a physical and mental standpoint...just took me out of my game plan and the rest of the race went pretty bad.

Yeah, "took me out of my game plan" is a good way to put it. I guess it's just an experience I'll learn from-- I equate it to getting a flat tire on the bike- nothing you planned for, it eats up your time, but you have to just move on. I'm doing a final sprint in 2 weeks with a 1/2 mile
ocean swim, so I'm going to get out of the YMCA pool and into the ocean the next 2 weeks for more practice.

How did your sprint go today???


edited to add this link-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRgdEnUYgKI

swimming tips for rough water

would have served me well to have watched this! Just the one (obvious now) tip about rolling much more than normal to breathe would have helped, for whatever reason didn't occur to me during swim, but that was my biggest problem- not being able to get enough air, just needed to roll way over and breathe up and not try to breathe on my side.

Edited by johnmoran 2013-09-08 5:54 PM

Went awesome! Won the AG by over 3 minutes and got 10th overall with a 1:12:53.
The SHIV continues to impress...had the #1 bike split in the AG (7 athletes). so not sure if its me or the bike lol..either way I am getting faster.
Happy with all the progress I've made this year, one more race left in 3 weeks. Pumped and confident!





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I've got my weekends races up on my blog link below if anyone is interested. It's a little long but I put both races in one entry. Lots of pictures too!
Thanks.

I read your race reports. Nice races! Now, I want a new bike. : )

Your Shiv would look great with some Flo wheels with the matching torquise decals.

I PR'd this weekend and am working on my race report.

Just wanted to pop in real quick for a question for you guys, comments on your posts later as I just skimmed them briefly.

A long time friend of mine is interviewing for a job with a company that promotes both an event and I think a team like situation like David's Team in Training. She asked me from an athlete's perspective what do I think really makes a run (1/2 marathon or triathlon) fun and makes you want to do it?

So now I'm asking you guys to hopefully get her a little more information on what engages you guys and makes you interested in doing a race/what about races do you think make you want to go back?

Interesting question. For me, there are three things:

- the challenge of the course
- the "athlete love"
- the support

The first one involves a few things: the type of course (is it challenging, easy, too easy, too hard, etc). I think different courses take on different personalities and some are designed to be a signifcant challenge (hilly, technical) while other are designed to be fast fast fast. I think it's tough for a race to change identities and retain athletes. For instance, my race this weekend changed from being a fast designed course to a more technical but spectator freindly course. I was already signed up, otherwise I might have passed. They pulled it off though, because the spectator freindliness turned out to be a huge win.

Athlete "love": I've wanted to repeat races where I felt that the organizers really valued the athletes. I felt that in 2012 in Omaha and did it again in 2013. I didn't get the same feeling this year and don't know if I'll go back. This is the little stupid things. I don't particularly care about shirts, medals, etc...but I do notice them. For instance, when Omaha ran out of size medium and Large shirts and had me choose between an XL and Small...I noticed. I thought it sucked. I don't care about race shirts too much, but when you have a gaffe like this...it makes me feel like the athletes aren't that important. I did a race early this year on a very hot day. Post race they offered bottled water and grocery store branded cans of cola. Again, it's not that I wanted a pepsi, Gatorade, or Powerade, but the choice of the cheapest possible soft drink option made me feel like they didn't care about the athletes. I would rather a race organizer do a few things, and do them well, then try to do a whole bunch of stuff cheap.

Support: is the course properly marked, safe, etc. Also, figuring out a way to cultivate involvement is key. The Nation's Triathlon in D.C. is really a nothing race. There are no pro athletes, while USAT sanctioned I don't even know if it's a qualifier for anything. However, it's a massive event and has tons of fan support. My involvement with Team in Training makes this a world series type of event. I had hundreds of teammates screaming and cheering and encouraging the whole way as if I was actually going to win something. After I was through, I stood on the sidewalk for hours cheering on my teammates from Kansas City (including one who was fighting to beat the cuttoff times). The fact that it was a national Team in Training event and these were my "team mates" changed everything and made it so much more fun. I have been to several events where I finish and just pack up and go home. Not at this one. I think stuff like that makes the "everyday" athlete want to come back for more.

The best athletes are likely going to choose the events that help them advance their goals (5150 qualifiers, national qualifiers, etc) but I think a majority of athletes approach events with a different set of goals.

Thanks!
Wheels are an upgrade for this winter. I did see a Shiv with Flo's this weekend. Certainly on the short list.
Congrats on the PR!

For me there are a few things that seemed to stand out this year.
First off is location. This is not something a race can change I guess, but if the race is a destination type location I am more likely to return.
Second is the atmosphere and energy. Up-tempo music playing, announcer calling out finisher names and getting the crowds into cheering and just promoting a fun high energy environment.
As for the race itself, plenty of volunteers and a well-marked course are essentials. I also agree with dp, care about the athletes, don't be obviously cutting every corner like buying generic sodas. Haven't seen that at any of my races, but I would be turned off to pay $100 for an Olympic and have generic soda at the finish.

Wow! Congratulations!!

what the others said, I agree with.

I'm trying to think about what actually draws me in to sign up vs. what I care about once I get there...

to be honest, one thing that attracts my attention are cool names and event logos of runs or tris! pretty shallow of me I know but when I'm trying to decide what event to do for say, a 10k within 50 miles of me, I would drive to do "Big Wolf Hollow Applefest 10k" (made that up) rather than "Joshua Smith's memorial 10k", especially if the Big Wolf Hollow Applefest 10k had a cool logo of a wolf eating an apple or something.

also I like swag! i'll admit, I care about cool tech t-shirts with cool logos that I would actually wear. I'm also a sucker for a finsher's medal. Love them. everyone always says "I just throw mine in a drawer", not me. I wear my race t's if they are nice and I hang up my medals and race numbers (though i do it discreetly in the basement by my treadmill, not in the living room )

once I'm actually there, I care about well marked route, tons of happy volunteers, good energy, music and POST RACE FOOD! i've seen much better spreads at cheaper 5ks and 10ks than I have on more expensive events. Pizza is always a good thing to have! and lots of it. Love post-race pizza.

I love the podium awards here. I'm always a fan of creative awards or freebies (this are obviously earned not just a freebie). I don't drink, but this is probably something I'd keep around. Also nice writeup on the race. Deep water starts are a little different but I actually almost prefer a wading start depending on the race. I feel like it eliminates some of the crowding from the beach start. And I too had a summer of what felt like long swims. Sighting is a big deal, but even when you feel like you're on line the whole time sometimes you've still gone astray.

I plan to keep the wine around. Everybody knows you can't drink "Trophy Wine"

Thanks for taking time to read the blog, I've been following yours as well !!