Gray Guys/Girls Master's Focus Triathlon Mentor Group--CLOSED (Page 10)

Good morning all. Do any of you use a weight loss/food tracking app? I'm just trying to be better about watching what I eat and how much......not too worried about weight loss. I have been using "Loseit" this week and it seems to be pretty easy. I am just tracking calories by inputting what I eat and calories burned via exercise. Anyone have a favorite app or system they use?

!.5 hour bike interval workout in the garage this morning and a short 20 min run at some point. Then watching some college basketball from the couch in a prone position.

Have agood day everyone 

Hi Jo,  I eat a fair bit of hemp hearts and we can buy them at our local health food stores.  I would think that any whole foods type store would have them.  They're quite good and I particularly like them on my rolled oats for breakfast but they're pretty versatile.  My wife eats them as a snack.

Edwin - I lived in Toronto for 4 years while in college ('86 to '90).

I road my bike/trainer this morning for 1:40 and I'm pretty wiped out now.  Time for a short nap.  I think I'll postpone my planned run to tomorrow.  I need to focus more on my run.  It is by far my weakest sport and I can really cut a lot of time off any of my events if I can get faster/stronger on the run.  Any recommendations on improving my run?

Hi Donna,

No, you don't want to swim 200's in a workout as fast as you can.  Threshold pace is the approximate pace you swim at maximal lactate steady state.  If you go faster than threshold pace, you begin to enter acidosis (the burn we are all familiar with) and you either need to slow down or your body will force you to slow down.  Below threshold pace, you are not swimming as quickly as you are able to.  At threshold pace, you can theoretically swim indefinitely.  You can find a more detailed explanation of swim threshold pace (STP) here, and the procedure to determine STP.

To answer the question before anyone asks it - threshold pace goes by a couple different names.  I prefer swim threshold pace (STP), others use critical swim speed (CSS).  CSS is a biology term that is used to describe swim speed of fish.   When someone says critical swim speed, it is not immediately clear what they are referring to.  CSS may mean swim pace at threshold to you, while it may mean fish speed to me, and to the fisherman that just fell overboard, it may mean the speed he has to swim to stay ahead of the fish with really big teeth.  I prefer a term that is more instructive, so I have adopted STP or swim threshold pace.

Randy,

I use My Fitness Pal.  It is easy to use, I don't think I have ever entered a food that wasn't already in the system, and it syncs with Garmin both ways so you can see your calorie count in Garmin Connect and see your exercise totals in My Fitness Pal (well, except for the past few days as Garmin has had some problems with Garmin Connect - but what else is new?)

Hi Tammy,

Glad you made it!  Sorry to hear your sick.

When you get a chance, please post a short bio so everyone can get to know a bit about you.

Hello, looking to join for motivation and accountability…. In addition, to learn something.

NAME: mtsnorider (Tammy)

MARITAL STATUS: Happily married almost 25 years, two daughters 19 and 15. 

STORY:   I am 45 and never ran step or did any physical activity until 37 and only after a health scare and the realization, I had a family history of heart disease and diabetes.  Did my first sprint triathlon on my 39^th birthday.  I have done several sprints both pool and OWS and I have done two Olympic distance.  Both were OW swims.   I did three sprint triathlons with my head out of the water because I did not know how to breathe correctly.  I did a triathlon clinic at a local health club two years in a row just to get the personalized swim instruction to learn to breathe appropriately.  This is the reason my girls were members of the local club and HS swim teams.  Since swimming is my biggest down fall, it is my concentration this year.  I enjoy riding my bike, but to be honest I just got clipless pedals two summers ago.  This past summer was the first year I got comfortable riding with bike shoes. I still need to get arrow bars and some gadgets but not nearly as worried about the bike as I am about the shortest portion of the race, the swim.

Our house has been attending half Ironman’s and Ironman’s for the last several years as my husband who never ran a step until I begged him, has now completed two full Ironmans and one half Ironman.

CURRENT TRAINING:   I have been fortunate enough to become friends with a circle of women that are completing triathlons.  We are not competitive with each other but there is a flash of competitive nature during the race.  We train, eat, drink and motivate as well hold each accountable.  Currently, we have one planning a full ironman and the rest are planning the same 70.3 distance in June.  We gather weekly to “pain cave” bike training and will soon gather for trail and road running as the ice disperses.  Our official training does not start until the end of January.  My hubby is also planning for the 70.3 in June.  We all have our own goals for completion.   We just returned from vacation and unfortunately I got the flu/cold and as luck would have it I sprained by ankle in my own driveway yesterday.   I guess the pool will see me much more than my running or bike shoes.  At least for the next several days/weeks.

I have to be honest, I am dedicated and a determined individual, but I do not take these races and training as my sole focus and gospel.  I will do my best but if I cannot train a day or two, or I do not get the full time or mileage, I do not get too upset because to me, these training programs are guides.  I am not fast at any three disciplines so I know I will not be making any AG qualifications.  I do these races solely as my own personal goal and challenge.  I am stretching my comfort zone to complete the 70.3 and just finishing would be amazing.

Past races:   2013 Wunder Women tri – Medical Lake, WA (Oly), 2014 Garden City Triathlon  - Frenchtown, MT (Oly) – this race I thought I was going to have my first ever DNF.  Within about three minutes in the water, I seriously considered quitting.  I finished but it was the longest OLY distance swim EVER; it took me close to an hour.  I swear it was more half distance than OLY.  Spring Meadow Triathlon – Local (sprint), Queen City Triathlon (local) – this race I do each year with my daughters.  I love I can complete a triathlon with my girls on my birthday weekend.  I run 10Ks, half marathons and plan to run Bloomsday in Spokane in May (This was my first ever-running race and is a favorite so I try not to miss it).   I stretched my comfort zone and completed a local 30k trail race 2012.

PLANNED RACES:   Bloomsday 12k, Queen City triathlon, Boise 70.3 and after that… not sure.

Weight loss:  Would love to lose 5-7 pounds, I am guessing when training gets going the toning and firming will begin naturally.  The weight loss challenge sounds very intriguing.

Tammy,

We are starting the weight loss/workout challenge this coming week.  We are weighing in tomorrow.  Next Sunday afternoon/evening or Monday, we will all post our weight gain/loss and our workout minutes for the week.  Don't need your actual weight, just the gain/loss.

There is room for one more if you would like to join the challenge.

We've all gotten past the holidays and are probably beginning to look ahead to the upcoming season.  During the off-season triathletes often work on their aerobic base and many focus on specific priorities such as strength training, technique improvement, or maybe raising their cycling or run cadence, etc.

In my case, while I am still cycling and swimming, my focus this off-season is my run.  I'm working to increase my cadence and more importantly to increase my distance per stride.  My running coach wants to see more "flight" in my strides and to accomplish that he says I need to increase the strength in my legs, improve my balance, and lose another 50 pounds.  Specific to increasing leg strength I am doing a fair amount of hill work, running a few miles a week in the soft sand at the beach with my coach, and spending a good amount of time in the gym working on legs.  Coach has me doing a number of different balance drills on a daily basis - you ever tried brushing your teeth with your eyes closed standing on one foot with your free hand on your hip?  On the weight front, I continue to do what has been working for the past couple years, yeah I had a LOT of weight to lose - logging everything that goes in my mouth, paying particular attention to quality of food, and balancing intake with caloric needs brought about by my training volume.

I am curious if anyone else has any off-season priorities you'd  like to share and what you're doing to improve?

 Edited because I can't spell and I forgot all of my grammar lessons.

I've been focusing mostly on my running because of my HM in May but also trying to make sure I spend more quality time on the bike.  I used to just get on and ride for 30-40 minutes a couple times a week without any real kind of plan.  This time I downloaded the winter cycling program (the one here on BT) and am using that to try to get in better workouts - and I'm using my HRM for most of my rides, something I never did before.  After starting that I realized that most of my rides before were really just too easy.  I find that it also makes the time go by faster if I'm focusing on what the workout is and not just how much time I have left. 

I joined a tri club this year and they do swim clinics on Sunday mornings during the winter.  I went to the one today - the woman giving the clinic is a local tri coach (and a member of the tri club).  She talked for about 1/2 hour about some of the aspects of OWS, mainly deep water vs. beach entry, dolphin dives, and buoy turns - some stuff I knew, some I didn't.  Then we got in the pool and practiced some of those things.  I don't do a lot of OWS races but I figure if I want to move up in distances, it's stuff I'll need to know.  Not too many Olympic distance or HIM races have pool swims.

Janet