PLMsbr (JD) Group - FULL (Page 11)

5'8" and 147 sounds pretty good to me; and that's a nice steady weight loss since November. I've never tried the Hammer stuff, although I do hear good things from the people that have.

Have you ever tried a good low or non-fat frozen yogurt as an icecream substitute? Pretty good stuff, especially if you mix in some blueberries, strawberries, sliced bananas, etc.

My weakness that I indulge periodically is Chick-Fil-A. Gotta love the waffle fries...

My first year I learned that you can't run 200 calories short of your target during a HIM and not pay for it in the last 2 miles of the run (especially if the temp is 105).

I learned to not drink too much water on the bike in an Oly in the last 20 min before the run (cramps). 

I learned how to swim. 

I learned that if the course has hills you need to ride hills and that 56 miles on the bike in a race is harder than 56 in practice. 

I learned how far I can run between aid stations based on the temp. 3.5 miles in temp 30-50 F is fine, 2.5 miles in temp 105 is not. 

I learned that everything that everyone says about the last 6 miles of a marathon is true.   

I learned that training plans will in fact get you ready for the race, if you race smart and don't overreach your training. 

And I learned that what was impossible one year ago is now easy and well so now there are new impossible things to try (read IM in August here). 

I have tried frozen yogurt from various places and different flavors and brands. I just like icecream so much better that i'm going to stick with the icecream. Cutting back on chocolate was hard enough!!

I'm real comfortable at this weight. It's what I weighed about 10 years ago. BTW...I missed my swim and run this a.m. due to "adult responsibilities". I don't feel guilty or worried about missing it. I just enjoyed a day off! I learned that on this web site !!!

I read the post on what the guy learned being a new triathlete. Very useful stuff...thanks for the link..................Tom

I read the first year post also.  I didn't see anything new or earth shattering but it was a good reminder from someone who has been there.  I have read most of those tips elsewhere many times so I'm guessing they're important to remember.

For some reason I'm at kind of a low point in my training.  I feel like I've plateaued and haven't seen any real increases over the past month.  I know I need to just stick with it and be deliberate in my training but I'm at one of those points where I'm only training because I need to do it not because I want to do it.  I never thought that this would happen to me because I have been completely infatuated with training up until now.

Hopefully racing on the 14th will renew my desire.  Sorry for the drama guys and gal, but have any of you ever experienced this?  What did you do to get your mind right again? Thanks for the input. 

I have 5 kids and it is winter, there is some pretty good intrinsic motivation to get out of the house to workout at some point during the weekend 8).  To get away from the constant bickering. 

Often when I get really low motivation it is because I need a day or two off.  It is usually when I have low engergy, drag through a few workouts and just don't have any umph.  I may also be sick at the time, but blow that off because I can't just not workout for 2 months because I have cold 1 2 3 and 4 from my kids.  Seasonally this is a harder time for folks as it is not quite spring, but spring is close enough that you wish it were here. 

I am a little afraid that if I stopped working out due to low motivation that it would be too easy to not get back up on that horse for weeks, months years.  I anticipate a post IM recovery bleek spot in the fall. 

But.... our contractor says that our swimspa will ship next week.  And although it will likely take him 2-3 months to prep the hole it goes in, wire, plum and tile it, just the thought makes me want to go run or bike or something.   

Maybe some people enjoy training all the time, but I don't know any of them personally   You're gonna have some periods where you just don't get super-excited about going out and doing another swim or bike or run or whatever. As baowolf mentions, sometimes that is a sign that you are a little over-trained and need to take a day or two off. Doing that and coming back invigorated does you a lot more good than continuing to plod thru your workouts. Another thing I do is change things up, find a different place to do the workout. Swim at a new pool or lake; drive somewhere with your bike and ride in a new place with new people; go somewhere interesting to run, etc.

The plateaus are a natural occurrence as well. Gains in triathlon are going to follow somewhat of a reverse exponential curve (similar to people trying to lose a lot of weight). Big gains in that first year, with small plateaus; but then the gains start slowing down a bit with longer plateaus as you get closer to your theoretical maximums. Take someone that goes from a 12 min/mile 10K to a 10 min/mile 10K in their first year. They can't continue that pace forever, the improvements will start being smaller and a little harder to come by. One way to shake that up a bit is to try a couple workouts where you consciously push yourself past your comfort zone. Every speed breakthrough eventually becomes the "norm", and you might have to go through a little bit of short-term pain to move to the next level (within reason).

Some things to think about... but don't get discouraged - it happens to all of us!

JD

Hey Trinity...great advice from those with much more experience than I. I do find that when I'm over doing it a bit I get a little discouraged. If I take a day or 2 off I'm a bit more motivated to get back to work (even though it's fun it's also work). Also, when I miss a swim day (I swim every other day) I feel stronger when I get back into the pool and always have a real good work out. Which is another indicator to me that I've been over doing it. If you can, I find it helps a lot, as has been said already, to ride/run somewhere else or find someone to do a run or ride with. It is generally harder to find a new spot to swim in the winter (unless you live in warmer climate and near large bodies of water!) or to find someone to swim with. Like JD said, it's even worth driving somewhere different if you have the time.

BTW All...today was my last pool swim in baggy trunks!!!   I hope I don't catch on fire from all that increased speed on Monday!!!

JD...you'll be glad to know I'm back on the bike. I did my first ride/run brick yesterday. I rode a pretty steady pace. When i started running my legs felt "wierd". It took a bit to get into the groove. The next time I think I'll hold back on the ride just a bit until I get back into riding shape and get more used to doing those bricks. Hope you all have a great weekend. 

Time for training check-in...

trinity: you getting ready for that 10K next weekend? I have a feeling that when you do that race, some of the motivation will come back. Let us know how it goes.

baowolf: nice bike ride  yesterday! Looks like a great week overall; I guess the news on the swimspa really did motivate you

triscruggs: hope you're having a blast in Whistler!

shawnawrites: hope to hear from you soon...

mtnbkr: welcome back to the bike! That weird feeling coming off the bike is normal, and not really a sign that you are going too hard on the bike. The more you do it, the less weird it feels. What I've learned is that I am going faster than I feel like I am, and the legs will actually start feeling better as I go; so I just ignore that feeling and keep going. Let us know how the swim goes without the parachute...

pac10er2: nice swim time on your 1000 yds, that must have felt great. Did you get in some long bike/run workouts this weekend?

As for me, I have Austin Marathon coming up next week. Droopped the running down to just over 20 miles, with long of 9.4. Bike miles just under 100; and pretty much all of it on the trainer. Not my favorite, but such were circumstances. Good swim week, over 10K yards; and I got the chance to get my swim videotaped under/over water! Cool stuff, although somewhat humbling

Take care everyone...

I am ready for the 10k although there have been times this past week where I thought about just doing the 5k.  I haven't done any specific training for the race and will likely only taper for a couple of days beforehand.  I am hoping to PR.  My previous best was 54:10.  I would love to throw down a 50:00 but I think even a 52:00 would be an acceptable 6 month gain considering I had to take about 6 weeks off due to knee issues.

Thanks to everyone for the words of encouragement.  The motivation is back.  I just need to learn to keep my expectations a little more realistic.  My first outdoor bike ride of the year I only managed 12.7 miles per hour and was extremely dissapointed with that considering I average that on the trainer.  The course was moderately hilly though so I need to take that into account.  I went for an outdoor ride on a level course Thursday and managed over 14 mph with only about a 80% effort so that was encouraging (although not near as fast as I had hoped).  I'll reserve judgment on my running until after the 10k on Saturday.

Decent weekend for training.  10.55 mile long run on Saturday and 25.91 mile long ride yesterday (unfortunately inside on the drainer cuz winter is back).  How was everyone else's weekend?

Hey guys, you may have seen this thread ; but it has a really nice explanation of tapering from a coach that posts often on this forum (JorgeM).

JD

If only... I managed a 3:28:45 last year in Austin, that was pretty tough for me. I do seem to be getting a little faster, so maybe next year I'll see if I have something better in me. For this year, I am treating Austin Marathon as a "C" race, really just supported training on my way to the Boston race in April (which itself will be a "B" race in terms of effort so I can get back to IM training). So, I'm hoping to avg around 8:30/mile and finish between 3:40 and 3:45 this weekend. If I am really hurting or feeling injured in any way, I'll have to back down even slower or walk as necessary. Gonna be a long year...

JD

Couple days of taper should be fine for a 10K, and then stick with your race strategy. And like I mentioned above, if you start feeling hurt or injured at any point, don't risk further knee issues for any one race. Looking forward to hearing how it goes!

Hills and wind can certainly wreak havoc on bike times. And just make sure that the only thing you concern yourself with is that you see improvements in your own bike times over the course of the year. No comparisons to pre-conceived ideas of how fast you *should* be, or to the speeds of other triathletes. In a few months if you are out on that same course and average 14 or 15 mph; there's the victory!

In response to :

 pac10er2: nice swim time on your 1000 yds, that must have felt great. Did you get in some long bike/run workouts this weekend?

I had a great plan, which got changed as we had a storm come through.  I found a riding group that I was going to join to get my 4 hour scheduled ride in.  However, due to the rain and wind, they didn't go and I ended up in front of the tv on my trainer.  I managed to do 3 hours, but didn't have the ability to do 4.  I also did a swim and an hour run, so it was a good workout.

I have noticed that my swimming has been improving the most of all 3 disciplines.  I think this is the learning curve effect, as I am still new to swimming.  It is good to be under 17 minutes for 1000, and I will keep focusing on it. 

As long as the weather is better this weekend, I will hit the riding group and see how it goes.

Hey all,

I hope you had a great week.  You've been busy here...  I've got some catching up to do.  Whistler was a great time.  No new snow and a little choppy of the groomed stuff, but living out here any snow is good snow.  

I got out for a nice run and a swim while I was up there.  They have a crazy swim center in Coquitlam (just outside Vancouver) where I was staying.  Synchronized swim teams were working out in one large pool, they have a huge 'cove' of toys for kids and water aerobics, and a 25m lap pool.  And, who knew, but Canadians know how to swim!  The lap pool was divided into leisure, medium, and fast lanes.  Even the people in the leisure pool were organizing themsleves into workouts for the lanes they shared and kick-flipped at each end.  I've never even attempted a kick-flip.  I swam in a lane with a guy who was nice enough to give me half while he cooled down from his workout.  Cooling down involved swimming with his water polo ball - which he did almost as fast as I was crawl stroking...  Intimidating.

So I'm back and ready to go again.  Especially in the water where I'm going to start using the workouts from this website while I'm waiting for my local pool and Master's club to open back up. 

Will

Training is going well here.  This is my 3rd week of getting in a 5:30 am workout before work (bike 16-25 miles), a noon run (6-8 miles) and after work workouts to top things off.  Saturday is a long bike ride 60 + miles (25 mph wind last Saturday hurt big time).  I am still trying to figure out where to put the long run in.  I could drop the noon run and put it after work on Wed or do it on Sunday.  I am averaging about 2000 calories burned a day and have lost my Christmas pounds yay.      

The weather is still crappy with snow on and off all week with highs in the low to mid 30s during the day and 10 F or lower at night.  My swimspa ships today 8).  That drive on M and F can get long. 

Hope that mary and 10k go well.  And ya progress as in speed comes slowly in all 3 events.  Bicking up distance is much easier than picking up speed (relatively speaking that is, neither is truely "easy". 

I also have a question.  Each week when I set up my schedule I start by setting up 4 workouts - long swim, long run, moderate/high intensity ride, and moderate/high intensity run.  Each of those workouts make sense to me and I don't have much trouble figuring out what I'm supposed to do there.  However, I haven't really figured out what I should do with the other bike and run workouts each week.  I usually keep them in zone 2 with a couple of jumps in intensity.

So my question is how do you set up your workouts for the week in terms of length and intensity to get the most out of your workouts without overdoing it?  

Mahalo

 Will

I have several 'issues' interrupting my training this week also.  Mother-in-law is staying with us for the week, so that extremely limits my ability to ride the trainer in the living room.  Also, the pool I use has been closed for over a week due to maintenance issues.  So lately I've just been running.

3 hours on the trainer... God bless you   And that swimming improvement is really impressive. REALLY impressive!

Welcome back Will... Glad you enjoyed the time in Whistler.

Here's how I set up my workouts for the week, which I don't think is very far off most of the training plans that you'll see.

First of all for swimming, I have that set up on a regular M/W/F pattern with the masters swim group; and I just follow the workouts provided at each workout. Before the masters group, I focused on drills/technique one day, speed intervals on the second, and then one day focused on distance/longer sets. As mentioned in previous posts, I've become a believer in limiting how many really long sets you do, because technique just has a way of going out the window; and then your are training your muscle-memory to do the wrong things. Mentally, though; it sometimes helps to cover the full distance of an upcoming race at least once or twice before the race (more so if a distance you are not used to).

For running and biking, I break it down into 3 basic categories and try to fit in at least one of each type into the week.

1) Long steady (not SLOW) distance: This will be my long bike and run for the week. The actual distance for the week is determined by what I am training for, and where I'm at in the training. Gradual buildup to the full distance, with a break about every 4th week where I drop the distance a little to allow for recovery. I also like to keep in mind the rule of thumb about having the long bike/run be no more than 50% of the total distance for the week.

2) Pace/Tempo: Distances adapt to the overall training volume for the week; but usually 4-8 miles (up to 10 for marathon/IM training). This is where I try to push a pace that I can sustain for at least 30-45 minutes. You can read all the techie descriptions elsewhere, but it boils down to working at a pace that makes you feel like you're working pretty hard, breathing a little heavy, more discomfort than on the LSD runs.

3) Intervals: I've covered those before too. I try to do these no more than one day a week, as they can take a lot out of you. This is somewhere around 5 minutes of biking or running until you think you're chest will explode and/or you're going to throw up I mix this up between straight intervals and using hills (aka Hillervals).

4) I lied... one more category: EZ workouts; these are extra workouts to cover miles where I don't really push anything. LSD type of pace, but for short distances.

So, what that all ends up looking like for me as I get into IM training is something like this:

M: Swim 3-4K; Bike 20-30 miles intervals/hills

T:  Run 4-6 miles intervals/hills; Bike 15-20 EZ

W: Swim 3-4K; Bike 20-25 miles pace/tempo; Run 3-5 EZ

Th: Run 5-10 pace/tempo

Fr:  Swim 3-4K; Bike 20-30 pace/tempo

Sat: Long (LSD) bike; 3-6 mile tempo run after (i.e. Brick)

Sun: Long (LSD) run

Please note that I'm not suggesting that everyone go out and do the same thing, just using this as an example of how to structure different workouts for different purposes throughout the week.

Fire away with any questions or thoughts; I'm still learning how to make this work myself.

JD

trinity and mtnbkr - real life can be a pain, can't it? How sweet it would be to get one year where you didn't have to work, etc.; and could just have a few hours a day to train and rest!

No worries, though - have your plan in place and follow it as closely as you can. When you miss stuff, just brush it off and move ahead with the rest of the plan...

trinity - you should probably be taking it a little easy this week getting ready for that 10K anyway!

JD

I have cut back drastically on the intenisty of my runs.  Running at a very easy pace 10:30-11:00.  I did strides on Monday every mile for :30.  I did an easy run on the dreadmill last night and I will probably do another easy run today with 1:00 race pace strides every mile.  I will do no running Thursday or Friday but will try to get in an easy bike and an easy swim (if the pool reopens). 

Wow...  5 rides and 5 runs during the week.  Impressive.  Thanks for going into all that.  It's helpful. 

And I know we're all a little crazy, but 3 hours on the trainer takes the cake.  Even my half-hour favorite TV shows feel like they last 3 hours on a trainer.