Fast Twitch Tri-FULL (Page 11)

SAMANTHA -

I am FINALLY getting around to your reply about your injury, and I deeply apologize for not getting to it sooner.  With any of my groups, I have gone through the getting-to-know-you phase, and that usually tanks me for a few days, and then I get recovered and am good to go again; that's where I've been the past few days!

You struck gold with an A.R.T. person who is also a chiropractor.  I love my A.R.T. person, but she does not have a chiro background, and as for my highly-regarded chiro...she does not do A.R.T.   But you obviously had the best of both worlds, nicely wrapped up in one tidy package, and of course I'm very relieved and pleased for you that you are back running to no lasting ill effects.

But I know full well where your hesitancy to "go long" come sfrom, as it's pretty much where I am now.  It took a couple of years to diagnose my hip problem, which turns out to be a "complex degenerative tear" of my left labrum, with almost no cartilage between "12 and 3 o'clock".  The okay news is that it mostly bothers me when I am driving, or sitting too long, and that SBR are mostly okay.  The less okay news is that it can bug me on rides >75/90 minutes, which is where the focus on half-irons disappeared, and also less okayy is that recent runs have left it feeling tender.  I have had two cortisone shots (last in Aug '11) in it, and one $400 injection of Durolane.  That was last Dec, and while the cost is steep and not covered by our insurance, i think it helped get me through the past 10 months in good shape.  The shots are awful, though, right in the most tender spot in the groin.......and he can't help but hits a nreve or two each time...and it's a slow push on the plunger, so the needle is in for too long for comfort.  I think i am due for another soon, due to the recent running symptoms, but I'm not at all happy. 

BUT I DIGRESS!  All that is just to say that injury-prevention is a superb reason for staying short, and I really have found a happy place there.  The races are affordable and recovery is negligible, and I am fortunate to have speed still in my arsenal.  You seem very copacetic with your own "staying short" situation, and I hope that attitude and perspective continues for you.  (Of course, the big hope is that you can get complete resolution of the issue, which given your age and the success of treatments already, I'd guess will indeed happen for you --- and maybe sooner rather than later!)

But probably always...........worry, worry, worry!*

Finally, I really appreciate your assessment of Detroit, and I will pass that along to my son --- who would probably agree with yoru that "the new Brooklyn" is a bit over-the-top.  But one can hope, though, huh?

* My perpetual condition since a torn meniscus in '06, which couldn't be scoped and needed to resolve on its own.  And because of that - and even though it's been fine for six years now - it's worry, worry, worry.

AMY -

I see, just above, a post from DOUG that refers to other posts to you and from you about being oldish and feeling beaten up.  Ohhhh, do I ever have thoughts about THAT topic, and you can start with my comments to Samantha, right above this one. 

I will now drag my soon-to-be-64 body and mind back to your original post on this topic, and see where your thoughts started, and carry on from there.  See you in bit!

AMY again -

Sidetracked by your post-race post on page 10, and mega-congrats on that phenomenal a.g. placement.  That is mammoth, and as you know, your a.g. is full of hot talent who have been doing this stuff for a very long while, yet are still young enough to run reallyreallyreally well.  20/1000; mercy!!!

As for your 12/30 birthday, you're one of the very fortunate ones.  I am at the opposite end, with a January 13 b-day, and since USAT started its age-up rule about 5 or 6 years ago, i have rued the fact that my mom didn't have me two weeks earlier.

Think about this.  The M60-64 age group is fairly small, and of course there will be less guys at each chrono-age withe each year older.  So for next season, the age group will be all males born from Jan 1 '49 to Dec 31 '53.  There will be relatively few of those who are 64, and of only about 700 in my a.g. who are memebers of USAT........there is a grand chance that I will be the oldest in M60-64 next season.  GRRRR!

Aging-up rules also kept me from going 10-for-10 this past season for age group firsts, as the two guys who beat me were not turning 60 until this fall (one in Sept, one in Oct).  GRRRR!  So, techically, I was beat my 59-year olds..........is what I tell myself!

Onwards and back to you and that post!

AMY once more -

Found it, and it is hardly old -- just this morning!

The answers to your first paragraph is yes, yes, sort of sort of.  As for the final sentence, yes to the overcome, no to the acceptance, and despite that -- sort of to the different goals being set.

I can't remember what's in my bio on page 1, but in a nutshell: I ran seriously starting in '98, and then switched to triathlon in '00.  I continued doing some stand-alone running for a few years, but have been 90+% triathlon for 13 seasons now.  I too wish I started this stuff about twenty or more years ago, but having said that ----- I am thankful that I don't have that wear-and-tear on my body!!!   It really IS a double-edged sword for someone like me, who has a few athletic gifts......but being bionic is not one of them.  That is, I have a pretty lurid history of injuries, and I am sure I am one of those who, had I started back in, say, 1990, I wouldn't be doing this stuff now.

I definitely feel old at times, and I sure worry about my body not performing as it used to.  This past season was not my best, but there were neough glimmes of past speeds and paces to let me know that I haven't lost much at all.  That's not to say i don't worry about it, which I do, but mostly I can attribute this past season's small setbacks to a very chaotic training "regimen", in part due to injuries, in part due to other commitments, and in part spending too much of the season feeling that my mind was telling me that it desperately needed to have a down year.  So, I cibbled togther fairly lanme training and too many races in Set?oct..........and I wonder why the results were a bit down from the past few years?!?

Body not as capable, and maybe I've peaked --- oh, do I worry about those; it's all part of the same mental-constructs package!   I KNOW that at my age I am due for a peak here and a peak there, and maybe it did happen this season when I didn't run off the bike quite as well as I have in recent past seasons, but for now I am willing to attribute that to my chaotic training.

For you, at your age, I wouldn't worry about it too much -- or at least no more than you absolutely have to!  This is kind of a bad time of year to assess your overall abilities, as it's the end of a long haul and you're bound to be feeling some of the cumulative effects of the past many months of training and racing.  Some of your thinking might suggest that you are due for a decent off-season stint, starting any day now; I am thinking the same myself.  Do you have any immediate plans for that?

As for possibly not getting any faster, well, after a break, try a few time trials and see where you're at.  Maybe do one or two half-hearted efforts just to play around with speed again, and gthen give one a good go.  The distance choice is yours -- could be a mile, could be 5km, could be anything at which you think you can gauge your speed skillset.  Seeing as how it IS the off-season, don't pin all your hopes on getting, say,  a 5km "PR" in a timetrial; as long as you're reasonably close, and can say to yourself "You know, with abit of focused training I can be there!", that should give you some confidence that you're not over the hill (or , old as the hills and twice as dusty!)

I am not ready to accept a slow-down, and I know that, going forward, i need to get somewhat serious about my training again.  I'd like to think that my Base is big enough and my experience vast enough to carry me through races at the top of my game ----- but I know now that that's just delusional thinking!  So, maybe for you, a gut-check of training will help.  That really is the case for me, and it doesn't at all suggest that there is anything the least bit amiss about your own training.  It sure is a key factor for me, though!

I'll leave this here for now, think about it all some more, and maybe return later to this richly fecund topic!

Noelle,

One more thing that might be a quick fix is to check your iron level. You will feel exhausted if it is too low.

noelle1230 - 2012-10-23 5:58 AM Are there or have there been any full marathons for you?  Doing this well in your 20's it seems there should be   I didn't consider all of this endurance athletics until I was post 30 and I often wished I had started a decade earlier!

That is an interesting question...  I was actually initially *thinking* about a possible spring marathon, saying I would decide after the half marathon to see how I feel.... well, my initial thought after this weekend was, a spring HALF marathon it is!!!   I don't know if I have it in me to train for and then do a marathon.... (kudos to you all who have done marathons!!)  So at this point in time, I am thinking that I would like to train for a spring half marathon (martian half) to improve upon my time from this weekend.  Plus I'm thinking that training for an April half marathon would give me a good base to move forward towards improving my 5K run times for the summer sprints, without requiring the weeks of recovery I'm assuming I'll need after a first marathon... especially since I want to be able to do well for a May triathlon. (island lake)  Plus, I am afraid of running far because I'm afraid of injuries!

Hi again Steve

Well there are a couple of reasons I am okay with staying short for 2013.  For one, every time the thought creeps into my head of "oh maybe I'll do xx HIM next year", I then remember the cost, and then think about how I could do 3-4 sprints for the price of one HIM.  Which I would much rather do because it gives me more opportunity to improve upon previous times, and I like seeing progress.  The other reason I am okay, or feel like I am self-forcing myself into it, is because I'm thinking about doing sprint worlds in September 2013.  I qualified for that at this year's nationals, but we don't pay the entry fee until the summer, which is why I say I'm thinking about it.  I will qualify this by saying I benefited from a smaller age group at nationals- 32 in my AG, with the age-up 2013 age, I was 24th, and the worlds qualifying spots rolled down to 25.  Anyway, so with a "big" sprint in the fall, my other feeling is that I want to sprint it up all summer as multiple practice runs so I don't make a complete fool of myself at worlds!

Sorry I missed this post earlier!  I have only been skimming through these pages, and my goal is to actually read all the posts at some point!  Was trying to start that process now when I found this...

Anyway, yes, personally I was completely intimidated being there.  All of my races up until that point had been 250-450 participants, and the nationals race I did had 1000+.  When I went to drop off my bike the night before was when I got really intimidated because it was tri bikes galore!!  (I was actually laughing about how ridiculous I felt...) I had never seen so many tri bikes at once- they were practically ALL tri bikes... (one of which I did not have, which furthered the intimidation factor...)  And yeah, I'd say it seemed pretty much everyone there was an experienced triathlete... so it was definitely different from what I was used to... but also keep in mind what I'm used to is local races!  But once race day came, well, it was in fact just like any other race- swim-bike-run!  That's not a bad thing though.  If next year's nationals is indeed in Milwaukee, I would like to do it again to improve my percentile (for lack of a better term) within my age group... although I'm not sure if the timing will work out for me depending on the date.

Unfortunately, as we age, we definitely change from a physiological standpoint.  No way around that.

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that we can't adapt our training - and several people have suggested how they do that.  For me, it's been about not taking any training shortcuts and getting more rest than I ever did previously (especially getting that 7-8 hours of sleep I didn't think I needed, but REALLY do).  This will eventually not be enough to stem the slow decrease in top-end ability, but for now (and coupled with my not exactly having been in "top form" to start!), I'm making actually better headway than I thought.  I've even beat some of my times from races 20 years ago (that just means I wasn't as fast as I could have been then).  I do get sore doing it, but that's where age has an advantage - I'm WAY more mentally tough than when I was a young and even more clueless lad.

It strikes me, from your subsequent posts, though that it's not just a matter of a slow decrement in peak performance (just can't get around that) for you but maybe more your body's reaction to the long period of training?  I definitely feel more soreness for the same work as the years pass.  What I haven't felt, though, is the high level of fatigue you describe, and that's not something that is unavoidable with age.  

If you are resting well (as described), it does suggest a long term accumulation of fatigue or perhaps something other (iron was mentioned, and is definitely worth checking).  The month off might also be worth trying.  I know how hard that is (my wife is dealing with a bit of it at the moment - and so, therefore, is the whole family!  , but can be a powerful recharge to the batteries...

So, yes, we're all getting older every day (43 and rapidly approaching 44 here - also a December b-day, so next year is a good AG year!) and more sore - and less capable (vertical leap was mentioned, but for me it's top end speed).  But that shouldn't be a process that makes training progress a tiring slog.  I am now in what is probably the best shape of my life (admittedly low bar) and getting more fit with time - but mostly trying to s-l-o-w the rate of decline.  You shouldn't be falling off in a step-function kind of way, though, as that's not the normal pace of decline - despite the many jokes about turning 40 (or 30, or 50 etc)...

Last point, I'm also cognizant of what is considered competitive for my age (across ability levels - so FOP vs MOP vs BOP etc., not just the fastest times).  For me, how I fall and move within that spectrum is one measure of fitness and progress - and I think a much more age appropriate one.  I don't expect to have the potential I did at 25 or 30, but I can sure strive to move up in my AG pack.  So, that's my strategy for mentally dealing with the slow decline... getting faster from an age-adjusted standpoint!

So, mine is a mixed response.  Yes, I'm getting older/slower/less capable, but there are still many milestones to achieve and even more ways to achieve them (lots of ways to skin that training cat).

I hope you figure out what's driving your feeling "old" and adapt around it.

I've been thinking on this and tumbled to a different way to look at the aging and performance issue (warning: speculation alert)

With the exception of the lucky few who approach triathlon very seriously at a young age, most come to it later (for a variety of reasons - but that's a whole different post).  As such, new participants are typically starting no where near their peak capabilities - and that can take years of progressive training to achieve.

I wonder at what point those curves "cross" for most people.  In other words, even though we are aging and our absolute top end limit (which few people have the time or capacity to train to at any age) is decreasing with age, we are often getting proportionally closer to this peak capability as the years lower it and our training progresses closer to it.  At some point, the top end moves down closer to where we've trained to and progress slows.  I suspect this is later than in many sports, as triathlon peak performance also seems to occur later in life than some other sports - hence it's attraction and relatively balanced participation among age groups (more competitive "older" participants than other sports - compare it to hockey, for example...).

Now, to the fast twitch angle.  Is this potentially more or less of an issue for the sprint and Oly distance?  Said another way, is it harder to be fast as you get older, or is it harder to go long - as a proportion of max ability, that is.  

Does anyone know the relative difference between 20 somethings and 50 somethings at, for instance, the Oly and IM distances?  Are the deltas consistent or different?  I think I know what data I'll be trolling through when the kids are asleep...  

Just wondering where I'll be most competitive in a few years.  KIDDING!

OK - might not be of interest, but thought I'd post it up... 

MATT -

HUGELY of interest, and many thanks for your "speculations"!  There are many threads in what you say, so in no particular order:

You may be kidding about where you will be most competitive in a few years, but as age advances I think that attitude becomes more pronounced.  For those younger age groups, definitely the three that contain ages 30-44, it is very difficult to be nationally-ranked, and maybe even regionally-ranked.  Once past 44 (and more accurately past 49), however, it is easier to be more competitive ---- and this maybe is because of what you say about "getting proportionally closer to this peak capability as the years lower it and our training progresses closer to it".  I would say that is what happened in my case, with two "peaks" in performance:  one in '04 and '05, resulting in deep training but before my lost season of '06 to a torn meniscus, and a second from '09-'11 -- which coincided with (a) aging-up to 60, and (b) focusing on shorter stuff.  I can also relate those two peaks to having two different foci, with the first being in my long-course days, as opposed top my more recetn short-course focus.

My former coach was fond of saying that it takes AT LEAST FIVE YEARS of serious cycling for a triathlete to get really good on the bike, and that's about how it unfolded for me.   So when you talk about peak capabilities and that it can "take years of progressive training to achieve", the cycling example is a perfect case in point.

I would add to that running, which even though I was pretty strong at all along (and until about '06 it was my strongest discipline), took even longer to get consistently really strong at -- especially running well off the bike.  Along the way there was lots of tinkering -- with shoes, with footstrike, with cadence -- and then superimposed on that was learning through MUCH trial-and-error how to run well off the bike, how to balance the strongest best bike effort and the strongest best run effort.

With long-course (sticking with half-irons for now), there is no illusion of a truly fast run off the bike.   I am judging this on the basis of my best stand-alone times for 5km, 10km, and 21.1km vs those distances in sprints, olys, and HIM.  Best current stand-alones at those might be 21, 43, and 97 minutes, whereas in a tri I would be happy with 22, 45, and 110, respectively.  So, in a sprint, I still feel as if I am fast, and mostly so in an oly.  In a half-iron, however, that 13-15 minute differential between a stand-alone at 13.1 miles and the same distance in the HIM......makes...me......feel.........slow.  So, at that distance for me, the game is less one of speed and more one of hanging-on and hanging-in for the duration.

So!  I find that for older guys who haven't trained for speed, they find competitive happiness in longer distances.  That's not to say that more DO the longer stuff, but if the body is willing and the training time is there (which of course happens when one retires) a lot of oldsters will devote their training to long-course events -- in no small part to feel/be more competitive. 

That lst part is hitting on your "fast twitch angle" paragraph, so let me post this now (I'm always afraid of "losing" my bigger posts -- it has happened many, many times -- and then return.)

Thanks Steve (and everyone else) for some wonderful insight into this topic.  Perhaps the questions I should be asking is, how do you define "rest"?  If I just take one extra day off per week, so let's say 5 workouts versus my normal 6 per week, is that enough?  Are we talking, you do NOTHING at all for a solid month?  Not one workout?  I don't think I could handle that!

So how do you all define "rest"?

MATT again -

I think the key concept in your "fast twitch angle" paragraph is when you phrase it in terms of proportion of max ability.  That becomes tricky due to how it might dovetail with one's innate abilities (nature) and the amount of time one can devote to training (nurture), as well as where one chooses to do their suffering, and how much of it, and also just where they get the most satisfaction (last few are maybe both nature and nurture!).

If an ever-aging person can maintain and sustain distance training,  I think it's easier to be both more competitive and to keep moving towards maximum capabilities.  That all goes south (as it has conceivably/possibly/probably done for me) when the body rebels against doing the training necessary to get and keep at long-distance peak, and that might be why, for older folks who don't break down so easily, they can look at making small inroads in their performance, year after year, over x number of years.  They know that "max" or "peak" is out there somwhere, and they steadily move towards it -- no hurries other than for that clock tick-tick-ticking away!

I found that getting pretty good at long-course was much easier than getting good at short-course, so IMH experience I would answer your question by saying that it IS harder get fast as you get older.  If viewed in terms of being a.g. competitive, it demands that at least two of the three disciplines has to be fast, and that requires either natural abilities or an ability to train rally hard AND to be willing to put yourself into situations that aren't comfortable.  (I mean, one can get faster as they get older, but i'm taking your interpretation to be fast in a broader and more competitive sense.)  For me, as a mediocre swimmer, I need to ride and run hard and fast to be competitive, and the training for that is difficult.  I would NOT say that I have serious natural gifts as either a cyclist or runner, and I trained in neither as a kid, teen, younger adult, so whatever I have accomplished has come through hard work -- and maybe a couple of physiognomic characteristics that help, a bit.

Suffering, or rather the willingness to do it, becomes big, and how I suffer in half-irons is very, very different than how I suffer in sprints and olys.  To be simplistic about this, once I hit the bike in a sprint or oly I know I can't really back off a moment until the race is done.  In a half-iron, however, I KNOW I am not capable of holding max speed for 5+ hours..........so i have the leisure (and good sense, in theory) to dial it down from time-to-time.

So for many older people (and I guess younger people as well), they are either natural-born sufferers, or need to want to and learn how to do it; that's a deal-breaker for most.  It's mental and physical, and as the mental part usually caves before the physical part, this prevents max or peak capabilities to be reached.  If one refuses to go into Those Zones (as JASON here said, the "pain cave"), they will never know of what they are capable.  And given that most older people have not subjected themselves to big, physical, self-induced suffering over the course of their lives, it is unlikely that they will would to acquire that ability as they hit middle age and beyond.  It is just so much more pleasant to do the race, have fun, and get great satisfaction in being one of the tiny percentage of the less than 1% worldwide who even does this stuff --- but it will not be at their max capabilty, which is what you are thinking about.

Does ANY of this, or the previous post, make any sense?  I'm kind of doing it on-the-fly, but will get more serious in my thoughts later and see what changes.

Finally, FWIW, i will tell you that a few years ago, when I was doing half-irons fairly regularly, they were consistently my best point-getters in terms of USAT ranking points.  So, the simplistic explanation there is that I was able to keep closer to the so-called (for USAT ranking purposes) "pacesetters" at those races than I was at olys and sprints.  As most pacesetters are much younger guys, I guess you could say that my HIM skills were slightly closer to younger guys than were my short-course skills -- which might help answer your "relative difference" question.   So, let's see............I am relatively less slow against a young tri-stud at HIM than I am at sprints and olys; is that what it means?  I guess?

Put another way, if I do a half-iron in 5:20, that might be 30-45 minutes behind the overall winner......whereas in almost any given oly in which I go 2:30, the winner will have romped the course in 1:55-2:05, which is a big comparative difference when viwed against the much longer disatnce of the half-iron.  And halving that oly distance down to a sprint, my 1:15, say, will be 15-20 minutes behind the overall winner, who is likely one of the USAT "pacesetters".  So, the difference between me and a pacestter (or the overall best guys, who are almost always between 30 and 45) diminishes as the distances decrease, suggesting I guess that it is "easier" to be (big-picture) comparatively better at long-course than at short-course.  You think?

I have rambled and roamed all over this topic..............and have no clear idea of what i've said.  Ack!

MATT once more -

Still owe you a big comment(s) on your fine, detailed bio.  I haven't fogotten!

AMY -

As further thoughts on aging and all, see my two to MATT, above.

As for "rest", well, I'm not too good at it.  I can do it okay, I guess, on a week-to-week basis, but where I run into trouble is the end-of-season "recovery" or "transition" phase.  The latter term, "transition" is the one that is used in Periodization literature, and it encompasses the period between the last race of a season and the start of Prep and Base phases of the next season.  But I think, looking over your post again, you are not talking about Periodization......so that's a topic for another time. 

Just before I go further, though, are you asking about "run-of-the-mill" rest days during any given week ---- and then kind of projecting it to a month?  (Which would verge into that concept of "transition" period!)

OK you guys, a quick google search turned up gold. I'll list three of the most interesting, but if you want to read more it's not hard to find. The best one is the second one. I'm actually going to keep it on my desktop home screen and read it once in a while to keep me from falling off of best practices for me. 

If you have time, take a look at them...lots to digest...even for the younger folks in the group...never to early to adopt sound behaviors that will help us as we age...

http://www.runningwarehouse.com/learningcenter/training/runningages.html 

The second article I just posted talks about this...suggesting that older athletes still will do the same workouts but that a traditional workout week is probably too compressed for recovery. They didn't spell it out but it sounds something like a 10 day training cycle vs. 7.

I define rest by feeling able to do my planned workout so I end up resting sometimes when I can't do a workout at the intensity I am supposed to do it. So I probably end up on a 10 day cycle, just unplanned.

Steve, I guess I'm asking about both!  Is six days per week, all year round, even during recovery periods too many, even if I'm making them shorter and/or less intense during off season?

And, should I be taking more than one consecutive day off during my off season?  I've never ever in my life taken two or more days completely off in a row.

And, by "day off", does that mean off just s/b/r?  Or off just intense workouts?  Or off cardio?  Or off as in, not even a yoga class?

AMY -

I know your type!  (It takes one to know one!)  In fact, we are hardly alone, as the multisport world is strewn with like-minded folks who think "THE HORROR!" of taking multiple days off -- be that in a week or a month.  One big difference between us is that you are young, so in theory that gives you much more latitude in which to stay active as much as possible.  And if you are mostly injury-free (is that right?), then your workout wiggle-room becomes even greater.

One thing to consider, right off, is whether you ever feel burned-out, or whether you get fatugued, which is maybe another way to think of your body as beginning to break down some.  If the answer to either of those is "yes", or even "sort of", you can probably benefit from the odd day off (and maybe the odd week off?).  Do either apply?

Another thing to keep in mind is that, physiologically, our fitness gains happen during our recovery periods -- be they even days.  A lot of people have operated that way, with hard days followed by easy days, and for me it is a very satisfying way to do things.  If I can get into a good groove with those workouts, I can eagerly anticpate each day, with the recovery day priming me for the hard day to follow, and the hard day leaving me reveling in the recovery day as I feel rewarded for the hard work.

Recovery this, recovery that --- but what does it all mean for you?   To start at the tail end of your post, I say that a Yoga class (well, some of them) is perfect for a recovery day.  I would yell a resounding YES!!! for a Yin, or Gentle Hatha, class, less so for many "flow" classes, and worry some about Ashtanga or a "hot" class.  I did a colossal amount of Yoga into and throughout my 2011 season, and as the season went on I realized that what seemed to work best for me were Yin classes.  Both mentally and physically, they were the perfect counterpoint to S/B/R.

I have also lifted on my non-S/B/R days, but for me lifting is two things: (a) only upper body, and (b) only modest weights.  Literally, I never do any leg stuff in the gym, mostly (a) becasue I dio enough with Ba dn R, and (b) I am afraid of tearing my meniscus again.  But I a  similar way to Yoga, i find lifting great for my mind, as there is discipline and focus and overall, a slowing-down of my movements.  That's why Yin is so fine for me --- work into an asana, and then hold it for 2-5 minutes.  It barely even qualifies as aerobic, whereas some Yoga classes border on anaerobic -- which is not what I'm after on a day off.

As to your musing on after intense workouts, a rest or recovery day is best.  Again, this gets back to the idea of how one's body adapts to stresses, and the best adaptive gains happen when the body is not experiencing another stressful workout.  This is possibly a good time for something "junky", and I say possibly because there are lots of mixed opinions on ther benefits of junk miles.  I happen to think that they are fien, and maybe especially for sowmone who is complled to stay active every day.  As long as your body is okay with it, i say you can follow a hard effort with an easy run, and maybe that's where you focus on form for the duration of it.  My former coach used to have me do "junk runs" thinking about "running pretty"-- whatever that means to you.  But the idea is to get a picture in your head of what a "pretty" runner runs like, be it arms, carriage, back-kick --- and then try to emulate it to some degree.  It'll make you aware of what you may or may not be doing rigth in your own running gait, and somewhat justifies carryng on for another day!  Junk runs are also great for working on cadence -- but just as long as the cadence increase doesn't have a speed-up component to it (which can be difficult).

I have to leave soon, so I only have time for one more thought.  I think the number is 10, as in hours of S/B/R each week.....and if an athlete is under that, they can maybe benefit from a day off each week, or something very light.  Another way to view this is to keep recovery workouts in Zone 2, based on heart rate or, if you are not a heart-rate person (I no longer am, and never really was), then a perceived heart rate in zone 2 -- which will find you in borderline junk mile territory!  (It's a conspiracy!)

Finally, as I diddle around with my own poor excuse for an off-season, since finishing on Oct 7 I have done one or two OWS (now way too cold!), 3 or 4 pool swims, about 5 or 6 runs........and nothing on the bike.  My "official" (HA!) off-season (HA!) is usually a wishy-washy time of taking a break from one discipline, then another, and then the third.  I'm usaully very mopey and pouty about leaving months of OWS and retruning to the pool, but for some reason this year I was back to it about a week after my final race.  The bie is easier to drop for a while, just because it's probably my strongest area, and I (mostly) dislike indoor riding, an dit just gets cold and windy up here too early.  As for running, which takes its biggest tolls on my body......that's one I find it hard to steer away from for long.  The irony is that injuries will do it for me, and that carrying on with some running over the course of each year is what leads me to Injuryville.  DOH!

Gotta go, shall return!  Hope this all has helped you some. (?)

Ok, Shane and everyone else who has done that swim drill where you tie your feet together. Is this a drill that exposes your weaknesses or is it a drill that will help you get better or both?

I had a hard time doing this at first but when I figured out to point my toes I got almost all of my speed (using the term loosely) back. It also made me have to pull harder and more likely to pull my left arm across my body. Is this evidence that I am compensating with my kick so when I lose it, I lose my balance? What can I learn from this? How can I apply what I found out to my stroke?

Should I do this drill every time I swim? What should I focus on while I am doing it? I can't do it for long because it was a bit hard on my shoulder...and I didn't try 50's...

I think I am going to do masters swim starting in January. I am stuck at about 1:45/100 in the pool and 2:00/100 or slower OWS. Frustrating. Along with my transitions it is my biggest limiter in short course or any course for that matter.

Q

WOW - between comments and links, there is a LOT to dig into here...  Too bad I'm at a meeting in CA and don't have as much time as I'd like until the weekend to do so, but I am looking forward to it.  They are, indeed, right on as to what I was ineloquently trying to ask/propose!

As for a "transition" period, I thought that meant signing up for a HM and cramming a 12 week training program into 5 (cuz it's only ONE sport).  Right?  Right?!?!  

Shane said to include this drill once a week. He said that it will tell you how well your swimming from your core. I guess I'm supposed swim like when I'm doing planks. I haven't googled any swim from the core drills yet but will before I get my swim in tonight and report back tomorrow. My usual drill (when I do them) is right side, left side, catch up, kick with fins and pull so I'm not sure if that will help me with using my core more.

Now I'm not doing anything near 1:2x, more like 1:5x to 2:0x, but it works.