kaburns1214 Mentor Group 2013 (Year 3!) - CLOSED (Page 104)

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HR is important but disconnecting every once in a while and listening to your body is a good exercise as well. 

Yes.  You probably know what Z1 and Z2 feel like by now.  Sometimes it's really liberating to leave the gadgets at home.  I went by RPE my first year doing triathlon, and I did pretty well (for me) and ended up having a pretty fantastic season.   

I can pace a run or bike really well. In the pool I can hit the wall and guess my speed for any distance within a second or two 95% of the time. OWS I've gotten a lot better but it's so hard to know where you're at effort, speed and distance wise. Somebody much smarter than myself is going to come up with an OWS swim buddy that you upload a course and pace into and you follow it around a body of water and it has a huge LED display on the back so you can get your total time as well.

I'd love to have somebody I know and trust in my swim wave that's a slightly better swimmer than me and just grab on to their wake and let them pace me.

I've already found my huckleberry for this purpose at IMTX.  LOL.

It's going!  This pool has no ropes because it is a therapy pool as well as an all-around pool.  And most times, I either have it to myself or with one or two other people.  So, sometimes I envision the pool as an OWS and swim all around it.  I've really been working on my breathing which is one of my biggest obstacles.  I just keep practicing and doing my best!    Thanks for asking!

Shin splints are a complete beotch.  Ouch!  That is all.  

Thanks, guys.  I massaged and iced last night and woke up feeling better.  I think my legs are just in shock from moving from the treadmill to the pavement.  They'll get used to it the more I run outside.  

3900 in the pool this morning.  Swimming always does a body good.  Always.  It also makes me happy  

My mother gave me some tough love yesterday (pretty harsh and not always the greatest approach to take with me as I tend to tune that out).  She reminded me that I have an autoimmune disorder AND a lung disease, and I ought to be thankful I can even participate in this sport.  She told me that I want to be this rock star athlete but it may not be in the cards for me because of my health issues.  It was really hard to hear.  I was mad at her for a while.  She scolded me for abusing my rescue inhaler during my HM (I took it before the race and 2 x during the race).  I continued to run through my asthma attack with an average HR of 182.  I don't know if any of you have asthma or know anything about these inhalers, but they cause your HR to jump up really high.  That's dangerous.  I need to be more mindful of my health and well being.  Reminds me that I need to call my mom and thank her for making me think about my race in a different light.  I got off the phone with her feeling pretty salty.  LOL  

4k in the pool and an hour fifteen (supposed to be an hour ten...ooops) of over/unders running.  Hungry now.

Shin splints ... trying warming/heating pad before a run.  Until they are gone, will help as it makes everything more pliable before you start.

Your Mom is right, but you are doing more then you every have and you just need to learn to adjust.  It may take some time, and it sucks, but you will get through it.  And don't let anyone tell you you CAN'T, you ALREADY ARE, just need to take precautions and listen to your body.  It is crappy weather right now where anyone is allergies or asthma have trouble ...

Your Mom is just being a mom ....

I know, and that's why I need to call her again.  Sometimes I shut down when people speak hard truths to me, but then I sit and think about it for a few days and see some validity to those truths.  I'm hard headed, so sometimes people have to plant a seed in my head.

I'll try the heating pad.  I've been massaging them like crazy.  

I think we should all say to ourselves every day..........it's a hobby. You have a family that needs you and it's not worth the health risks. I don't have asthma but my wife has it mildly and I've seen what happens when she breaths in too much dust never mind hitting a 180+ HR.

I'm certainly as guilty as you are of getting the rock star complex and thinking I'm going to do all of these grandiose things. My newest one in the back of my mind is qualifying for Boston which with my new age group went from an unattainable sub 3:15 to a hmmmm 3:25. That would require 7:49 pace which I've never run a HM at but that doesn't stop me from dreaming about doing it for a full.

Hour low Z1 trainer ride, 1000 yards in the pool, 5 mile low Z1 run and 20 minutes of core in the book. I've been doing a lot of work with kick drills with fins and closed fist drills and I have to say it's really paying off. I did a 400 yard interval after 600 yards of warm-ups this morning and I wasn't trying to cook the pace at all and came in at 6:40 which is 1:40/100 yard pace. My heart rate was pretty normal and I could have gone on for another 2-400 pretty easily. I think the core work has also helped a lot in this regard.

You are completely capacble, you just need to listen to your body and be smart.  Expecting a PR the same week you're having breathing issues is not reasonable, but it doesn't mean that you're not capable of hitting the numbers you want, it just means you need to be patient.  There are no such thing as bad races, there are good races and races we learn from.

At what point in the race will you introduce caffeine? The reason I ask is because for me I've come to the conclusion that if I take it before the swim my heart rate runs too high and then I have a hard time getting it back down at the start of the bike and it will affect me later in the race. If I wait until I'm 20 minutes into the bike and my HR has normalized I'm good and it has a positive effect.

BTW I can never get affect vs effort straight. This is what I found online and think I'm right.

When Should You Use Affect?

Affect with an a means "to influence," as in, "The arrows affected Aardvark," or "The rain affected Amy's hairdo." Affectcan also mean, roughly, "to act in a way that you don't feel," as in, "She affected an air of superiority."

When Should You Use Effect?

Effect with an e has a lot of subtle meanings as a noun, but to me the meaning "a result" seems to be at the core of all the definitions. For example, you can say, "The effect was eye-popping," or "The sound effects were amazing," or "The rain had no effect on Amy's hairdo."

LOL.  I never get effect/affect right either.

I think about mile 80 on the bike I'll switch from normal GUs to Roctane and then Kel says no cola until mile 20 on the run.  Trying to avoid a caffeine crash.

Good luck with that!  I could never do it because coffee truly brings me joy.  I'm that rare bird that started drinking black coffee at age 16.   Fell in love and will never, ever give it up.  It's one of my favorite things in the world.  I will never see a performance benefit from drinking it because it's been in my system for so long.  Keep us posted.

That makes a lot of sense.

General rule for an IM is about Mile 80 of the bike (using 2 to 3 caffeinated gels over the last 32 miles of the bike) and then on the second half of the run (using caffenated shot bloks starting at mile 13 and a caffinated gel at mile 19).  With regards to Cola, its a little like rocket fuel because of the combination of caffeine and simple sugars.  Genreally you shouldn't start using it until mile 20 of the run (sooner if you're fast) because you will crash. 

Caffenie is one of the few supplements that truly has an ergogenic effect and if you dole it out correctly, it can help your performance. 

I drink mine black no sugar as well. I do an iced venti Americano at Starbucks every day. It's 4 shots of espresso over ice with water added. It's consistently good because it's fresh. I still get a high from it even after 25 years of every day. If I do a second coffee I get jittery and if I drink one in the afternoon good luck getting to bed that night. When I fly I take the earliest flight out I possibly can and don't do coffee. I never see take off and most times don't wake up until the wheels hit the runway on landing. Part of that is having 1400 skydives and a bunch of pilot hours but a lot of it is the caffeine.

The only thing to be careful about here is the fact that normal GUs do not have electrolytes so while using normal GUs you need to make sure that you are getting in about 600mg of sodium/hour from other sources (especially at race like texas where its going to be very hot).

Huh.  Interesting.  Maybe I need to pick up some PowerGels

Affect/effect - Affect can also refer to one's facial expressions. I have to write lots of reports on psychological evaluations that I do and my father was the senior editor for the World Bank - so, as a result, this aspect of grammar is part of my muscle memory.

I wish having high elbows on my catch was as engrained.

FWIW - I was given a tee shirt for Christmas that reads "I am silently judging your grammar."

I like the GU Roctane gels (FWIW #2).