Ironman USA Lake Placid : Official Thread (Page 113)

We had WONDERFUL!!!!!! weather in upstate New York today.  How about you guys???

Anyone else training with a triathlon club?? One of the women in our club lead a group of 4 of us and it was one of the best rides, ever.  I went to a part of our 'hood that is just a few miles from my home and the views were AMAZING!!!! 

I'll help this thread be positive by sharing some good news... in fact two pieces (or 3 or 4 or 5 depending on how you count)...

1) I had some heel pain following a break-through run race (for me) two weeks ago.  I did the smart thing and stopped running completely for 2 weeks.  After 1 week I was pain free, but I gave it some insurance time since I'm in decent running shape and could use the extra bike time anyway.  Yesterday and today I did two easy runs and it felt perfectly fine -- DISASTER AVERTED.

2) Today I had my longest bike ride in 2 years (75 miles), and I was able to hold the pace of my Sprint Tri PR (>20mph) as my avg for the ride.  For me, that's huge.

Bottom line - I'm in the best shape of my adult life, hands down.  Lots of winter running miles + INTENSE trainer work (not as much as I'd like, but it was all hard) = run and bike speeds I've never seen before.  And despite virtually NO swimming in the past 12 months, I'm faster there by  about 20 seconds per 100 then I've ever been too.  I think that one is related to (3) weight loss making me more balanced in the water.

Executive summary - I'm happy and excited.

PS (4) - depsite one full week of no biking, I might just make 600 miles too.
PPS (5) - it was supposed to pour all day here and I was sure for every second of my ride it was about to start... it looked nasty... but it didn't rain a drop in 4 hours.

Edited by JoshKaptur 2010-04-24 3:55 PM

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Bryan tore it up in his race today!!!!  Way to go, Bryan!

x 10000

Edited by Dream Chaser 2010-04-24 7:53 PM

Josh....glad the heal feels good. Keep an eye on it as if it is the beginning of plantar fasciitis then you just want to baby it for a little while and keep icing. When I had it a couple of years ago I would fill an empty coke bottle with water and freeze it. Then put it on the ground and roll the bottom of my foot on it. The groove gives it good coverage. 20oz worked best for size. Great job on the long ride as well!

I spent yesterday up at Jim Thorpe in Pa riding the mountains. 81 miles of killer hills and perfect weather. 10% grade for 2 miles on each loop. That sucked!! We got rained out today so back home and a trainer ride tonight. Hope everyone else had a great weekend.

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As I tell my kids...anytime you challenge yourself and then beat that challenge it is never a small accomplishment.

As someone new to this forum over the past couple of months I have found everyone to be not just positive and informative, but downright nice!

ive PM'd Fred.

no need for me to disrupt the great mojo that exists in this thread, plus life is too short!

my intent was never to invade someones privacy.  but, how a message is received is more important than its intent; it's everything actually.

looks like some great things happening here...keep it up!

mike

At the risk of starting up another controversy, I am going to ask this question but let me first start out by saying the comments in the post from Endurance Nation regarding the mentally challenged are insensitive and ridiculous but you need to consider the source.... a man... Sorry boys I think they were just trying to be funny but it was at someone else's expense.

Anyhow, it got me looking at their site and their training methodology. Its totally different than what I have seen in your 'standard plans.' I am really intrigued. Seems like they don't subscribe to the usually zone 2 stuff. Seems like more high intensity stuff on the run and especially the bike. I have often thought, 'why do a 7 hr z2 ride when you can do a 5 hr ride with some long z3-4 intervals and save time. Looks like you need a power meter though and I don't have a clue about that.

Does anyone have any experience with their plans/coaching? Any thoughts??

A couple of people from our tri club were discussing your points this past weekend Lesley. I am not expert and I am only relaying what I heard so it is not necessarily what I do. One interesting point someone made was that in theory your body is designed so that you can pretty much go all day at 70% of your functional threshold. Therefore he believed that by mostly training with high intervals he would specifically work on increasing his functional threshold for most of his workouts. The higher that number is, then by theory the 70% number becomes higher. Interesting I thought.

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I've come across their methods of training before.  A few from the coaching group (alumni to my coach but we're all still friends and on a yahoo group ) joined up with them. 
My observations are that because of the more intense training there are more injuries than traditional approach. Again, this just an observation from the people I know to be with EN so might not be representative but it kind of fits with the age old idea that intensity is more stressful and more prone to injuries.

I think there is room for both and I think it depends on what level you are aiming at too.  My first ironman I NEEDED to do the longer rides and runs - to make sure my body could handle them and for mental confidence.  My key workouts were the slow, long ones.
Now I am more focused on improvement via a bit of speed my coach incorporates a lot of tempo work in - even on long stuff often.

EN also downplays the importance of the swim. For LP they are fine with you starting some limited swimming in March with all other time devoted to the bike and run. Theory is that you cannot justify the time it takes to swim with the relatively small part of the IM day it represents and the greater impact of a strong bike and run. I tried EN but then converted to a live coach. You have to spend an awful lot of time at your computer and analyzing all the data. (I have enough trouble getting the workouts done) For me I am much happier talking it through with a live person...If this was not my first IM and I was a little more into crunching all the numbers it might have been a better fit.

If I wasn't working with Jorge, I'd have done EN's plan with a little more swimming.  I'd have made sure I'd have had some long runs & long bikes, but otherwise, I liked it.

thanks for the input on the EN plan. Good points. I hesitate due to the whole power meter thing and how technical that is plus costly. I guess you don't have to get one but it is sort of highly encouraged. I love reading all their info on the website. Different mindset then all the other books/articles I have read on IM training. I really like the idea of higher intensity stuff because I have been doing this with my running since mid November and have seen results but have to tailor things back at times so I don't get injury. I like the time efficiency of the workouts too. I know you got to do the long rides but when you are as slow as me (likely 7:30ish plus in LP) why not hammer intervals early on to try to get faster than put some long rides in closer to the race?? Just trying to make some adjustments so I can enjoy the process and get results. A 5 hour hard ride I could likely get in mid week versus a 7 hr on the weekend that kills the day. Its always about keeping the peace in my house

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545 miles. Should be done tonight.

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