Asphalt Junkies CLOSED AND GETTING OUR FIX (Page 109)

Tony, the bike for the half should feel relatively easy, probably easier than your typical long rides.  Also remember to NOT push the hills.  Even effort wins the day.  Pushing hills can really cost your legs.

Something I was advised to try which really helped get the feel for the bike is to do a race rehearsal.  Essentially you set your bike up exactly as you plan to race – nutrition included.  Then do a full 56 mile ride, hopefully on similar terrain as the race course, followed by about an hour run.  If you can some amount of swimming before so much the better, but the swim isn’t critical.

Though it’s obviously not the same as the race, it will give you an idea of how the ride affects your run.  You should feel relatively fresh after the hour run, within reason.  And be especially careful the first mile or so of the run.  It’s common to push way too hard since you have that weird leg feeling and it seems like you’re barely moving, but you’re likely going a lot faster than you think.

Warren thanks for the advice I was definitely planning to do a few 56 mile rides followed by the long run. I am thinking about just going out and riding the bike course in Montauk. It may be worth just blowing a day off and going out there on a weekday to avoid all the folks heading out on the weekend. It is a two loop course so I am thinking it would be worth the trip out there to check it out and ride the course. I also agree with you in regards to that first mile running. I have noticed a tendency to go out too fast that first mile and have been working on trying to get myself to just slow down and ease into the run. I am hoping I can find the right pace on the bike but man I'd be lying if I said I was not worried about the run. I know I can do the distance I just don't want to put myself in a position where it becomes a sufferfest. I'd rather conserve some energy on the bike so I know I can make it through the run. One more thing there are some hills I will need to contend with on the bike course and also the run course so I really need to be smart about how I approach that and pace myself through out the race. I plan on working on all those things over the next 5 weeks.

Great advice Warren!  I agree completely with all of it.

One thing you might want to try is to remove your bike's computer for a ride and then you will have nothing but perceived exertion to go by.  You won't know your speed or your time.  This removes the ability to perform to a goal or standard that you may keep in your mind.

Then on this ride, focus on how you feel.  Ride as fast as you can without breaking either of these 2 rules:

1) No labored breathing

2) No burning sensation in the leg muscles

Because you have no feedback during the ride and your only goal is to avoid breaking those 2 rules I think you may be riding perfectly for a HIM.  When you are done, you can then check the results of your ride by either looking at a stopwatch you left running at home, or a gps device you left in your jersey pocket.

Then look at how that ride pace differed from a more focused ride.  If it's way off the pace then we may need to do more strategizing.  But if you find that it's a much better pace than you suspected, then we've found your race strategy.

You WILL feel lazy.  You will feel guilty.  You won't think you are getting a valuable training ride.  But those feelings can't be trusted.

And you are smart to be thinking about conserving on the bike.  That ride is long and the run is long and you cannot pace it the way we pace shorter races.  The #1 or #2 most common mistake I see people making in HIM/IM races are pushing the bike pace too hard (it's a toss-up with not handling nutrition right).

And BTW, a big reason nutrition gets messed up is that people find they just can't eat and drink enough, they get bloated or nauseous.  And I think 9 times out of 10 this is simply because they are riding too hard.

Jeff thanks for the advice and to be honest I really don't look at my bike computer much when I am riding so I think I can do exactly as you say and leave it on there. I usually just look after the fact anyway as I am usually too focused on not hitting anything or having anything hit me while on the bike. Same thing goes for the HR monitor. I rarely check it during the ride again too worried about my safety on the bike. I will give this a try this week. I'm thinking I can do a short ride first to get the feel for where I should be and than I can do a longer ride over the weekend to put it into practice. While I don't want to be so slow on the bike that I'm on it for 4 hours I don't want to comprimise my run either so I need to work on finding that balance. Also I have been giving the nutrition plan a lot of thought as well. I have been thinking about how many calories I will need for the bike and run and what would be best for me to eat/drink based on what I have been doing during training. I think I have an idea about how to approach it but again I still worry about the balance of taking in too much vs. taking in too little and also making sure whatever I decide to eat/drink will agree with me during the course of the race. I know there is no easy answer to that and race day conditions may dictate what you do as well but I really am going to try and prepare as best I can for whatever the situation my be.

I share the same ability as you Jeff.  As a matter of fact I have been noticing this for some time and I have been contemplating the reasons why this occurs.  I have found that my efforts can be at a high level on the bike, in particular, for a specific WO and maintain the same speeds as a ride of similar length and a greatly reduced effort.  I feel it is because of all the HARD miles I have logged during various training phases.

Without putting a lot of thought into this, I would suggest that it is because of the relative effects of technique for swimming.  Sometimes I think we tend to "try" to go faster in the water and this can somewhat destroy the good habits we have enforced at a normal to moderate efforts.  Engaging the muscles harder does not increase speed in the water necessarily, but a solid technical approach to learning how to stroke long and glide, rotate hips and shoulders and proper breathing techniques will likely do more than working harder.

The bike on the other hand seems to indicate that training at higher levels of intensity works the muscles harder while training the body to work easier and maintain a higher rate of speed.  There are certainly technical aspects of cycling, most of which I am equally as certain I could use some coaching on, but in principal, cycling is rotating your feet on the crank.  Becoming a strong cyclist, in the sense of being able to ride hard, can be learned through hard work.  But becoming a good cyclist requires the same hard work with a lot of technical learning and practice.  In essence I think when we work harder on the bike our body adapts more easily to the hardest of WO's, thereby allowing us to work much less and maintain the higher speeds we all look for in our races.

I also think it's important to note that there needs to be a focus for each WO, bike or swim or even run, as far as that all goes (except that most all of our running should be low key stuff).  Finding the "pain zone" is good and working out in it can be very good but demanding the high pain zone for every WO can be detrimental to our training and overall health by robbing our system of valuable nutrients used for keeping your immune system operating correctly while allowing for muscle recovery.

I am curious of other thought as well.  I don't posses the technical knowledge of training and physiology that you do Jeff but I have applied some simple logic.  Thoughts?

There are a couple of things I will add in support of Warren.

1. Practicing race nutrition over all of your long rides beginning TODAY will be of more value than you can imagine.  This will allow your body time to go through a few episodes of change that may occur before the race.  Things that you may or may not think of in the few days leading up top the race.  Things like: 1.) Diet - the types of specific things you eat that constantly change.  2.) Weather - hot or cold affects of your chosen fuel.  3.) Stress - work or home related.  Basically you need to allow yourself some time to let your body go through all kinds of changes that are normally unseen as you dial you everything in closer.
2. Plan for temperature changes that will occur during the course of the race.  Pacing on the run is critically important if the temps will be climbing into the 80's at all.  Do all you can to make sure you do exactly as Warren has said: "be especially careful the first mile or so of the run."  This is VERY accurate.  The first 3 miles of my HIM run were sub 8:00 and the first came in WAY too fast!  At: 7:34, 7:55 and 7:57 and then the last 3 were: 8:59, 9:05 and 9:03.  A very poorly split race.  I will say it was because of poor heat management which lead to poor pacing.

Since Michigan is so awesome  I want to let those of you in the midwest know about a new HIM/full distance triathlon in our state for you to consider in the future.  Anything that will get people to stimulate our state's economy.   Anyway, this year (yesterday) was the inaugural year, and it sounds like people were pretty pleased overall. (Bike was a little more difficult than anticipated it seems.) This is in/near Grand Rapids, on the western side of the state.

http://mititanium.com/

Dirk thanks and points well taken. I have been thinking about alot these different things and it is good that you, Warren and Jeff have reinforced some of the thoughts I've had and some things that I have not really considered. I am trying to cover all bases and I want to be prepared for the unexpected as well. The last thing I want to sink myself because I didn't plan properly.

I have completed my lengthy race report for the Great Buckeye Challenge HIM for you all to hear all the details.  I also placed links for the official results at the bottom of the report if you would like to skip the details and see how I placed.

Also, here is a link to the man that died during the swim portion of my race.  This obviously took a bit out of my race because it is "always going to happen somewhere else."

I would encourage everyone to make sure you take the swim portion of your races seriously as it appears (outside looking in) that this gentleman may not have done so.  But that is my own opinion.  I would also encourage everyone to adopt a personal emergency plan that allows you the ability to recognize any potential serious situation and prepare for it.  I have begun to plan and now also will train some back stroke to allow the possibility of continuing a race without becoming a different statistic.  My plan is slightly outlined in my RR.

I'm still undecided about the OLY on Saturday BUT leaning towards racing. Things keep popping up for the weekend - family bdays and maybe an evening camping but I think I can still swing it. Anyway, my biggest concern at this point is nutrition. Any quick recommendations for me? I've really stayed away from sports drinks this summer, I was totally burned out on them after the HIM last year but I have used gatorade or heed with no issues. This summer I've relied mostly on just gels and water.

Remember I'll just be treating this like a long training day as I really don't want a setback with my back. When I think back to my first sprint of the spring in April, my back has made a lot of progress this summer. Swimming is the most uncomfortable so I know I will need to pace this fairly easy.

Jo63 - 2012-08-27 8:31 PM Sam I will check it out... Karl how are things with the hurricane? Jeff I have a 50/34 and although Dirk explained this all to me...I didn't really digest so does this cover both big and small ring number

The 50/34 is the tooth count for the front rings.  There are also numbers for the rear cassette, which tell how many teeth are in each gear.  Typical rear cassettes say something like 12-23, 12-27, 11-28, etc.  The first number in the number of teeth in the smallest cog and the other is the teeth in the largest.  Sometimes you can see the numbers on the cassette itself.

The key is the combination of front/rear ratio, which is calculated as gear inches.  Here is a great website which shows you how gearing affects speed/cadence, so if you know you can get up a steep hill at say, 7 mph, and you want to be at 80 rpm, you can see if the gearing of your bike allows for that.  You have to  enter the front and rear teeth counts and then the site does the math and calculations for you.

It's hard to talk about this stuff without sounding too technical, so the important thing to remember is that bigger number in front = harder/faster at the same cadence, bigger number in the rear = easier/slower at the same cadence.  A 50/34 is called a compact crank, which is a good choice for a hilly course.  Depending on the rear cassette you have, you can really spin up some fairly steep hills without "mashing" at a low cadence and burning out your legs.

Put your HR monitor in your jersey pocket so you don't look at it.  You can always look at the info when you get home.

I suggest you change that to 'participating'.  If you purposely go slow it can be an emotionally refreshing thing. 

Ok, so as far as nutrition goes....don't over think this.  Have you done any workouts in the neighborhood of 3 hours?  You may not need any nutrtion.

I know that if I were just doing what was going to be a long workout, I would do something I wouldn't do before a race....I'd eat a big breakfast.  Without the adrenaline and fast race pace, stomach upset wouldn't be a concern.  And the food will continue to digest and 'feed' you for a number of hours.  Allowing you to do just fine drinking just water if you so desired.

I agree.  Anything that gives you anxiety out there isn't helpful.

Now that I know you have a compact crank (good), what is your tooth count on your largest rear cog?

I agree that a change to participant status may be what you're looking for but I wonder if you'll be able to do that.  You seem to be a racer.  Maybe my wife can drive over and write "DISCIPLINE" on your arm to keep you honest too, it seemed to work for me.

I agree with Jeff on not over thinking what kind of fueling you need to take in.  Where I will make sure you understand (and I'm sure you already do) is that you may not want to eat big breakfast depending on when you choose to eat.  If you would like a big breakfast make sure it's early enough to keep you from being real full before the race.

Personally I would probably eat a slightly larger breakfast than "big" and still have some nutrition on the bike available to me.  If you chose to be non-competitive you could plan to ride your road bike for added comfort too. 

I agree with Tracy and Jeff.  Keeping the data available for something to analyze later can prove pretty beneficial.  Another alternative could be setting your watch up to show only data that you need to see.  Such as: distance or time.  But don't start to do a bunch of math in your head.  If you are a mathematician you may want to ditch idea and keep the watch in your pocket.

No you both are correct - participating is the correct word. I know I can not race the run and will have to be careful pacing both the swim and the bike to be able to complete the run without being totally miserable so participate is exactly right!

My longer rides this summer were around 3 hours and I stuck with gels and water (and maybe a payday ).

It all may be for nothing since the RD just sent out a weather alert. I guess Isaac is predicted to drop a bunch of rain and strong winds on us this weekend. We'll see, they like to get carried away with the weather alerts around here.

The munchkin fell off a play structure at the park today.  He slipped on a step and rolled under the railing and fell to the ground from about 5 feet up.  (Maybe a bit higher.)  He tried hard to hang on in the split second that he slipped under the railing.  I was just far enough away to NOT get to him in time.  When he landed on his bum/side, his head hit the metal play structure pretty hard.  He didn't loose consciousness....THANK GOD!  He was sitting up as I got to him so I scooped him up and walked carefully back to our truck with him screaming in my ear.  I set him down on the seat and cleaned him up and checked EVERYTHING.  Eyes were dilating and constricting just fine.  No broken bones.  No blood.  Only a big bump growing on his head.  We went to my in-laws house, which was close, gave him a bath and kept him awake for about 3 hours.  He seemed to be doing fine so we drove home.  He's asleep on the floor right now.  I'll probably rouse him in about an hour to see how he is doing.  I'll be keeping close watch on him this evening and tonight.

In other news....I ran and it didn't suck.  I'm still coughing, but not as bad.  When I was running, I noticed that every time I coughed, my HR shot up to the 160s.  No wonder I've been tired over the past 2 weeks!  I've been doing non-stop interval training!