SBR Utopia - OPEN (Page 113)

No DBA's.  Guess I need to keep looking for my own training facilities.

Besides the obvious fitness advantages, I found the poster who commented on how it's harder to ride evenly when you constantly need to pass people within 15 seconds...especially when you need to pass a large pack all at once.  You can really spike your power if you have to do that too often.

This part was what Sam (sgy) and Bryan were getting at. It wasn't so much for the specific time time improvements (though they'll still take it), but for the being fresher. And what they're saying is more applicable to age-groupers.

But then there is this part. I wonder how much the riding ability of Sam & Bryan has to do with it. Bryan is still good at Kona, but doesn't stick out like in another IM event. Sam, however, had one of THE fastest couple age group bike splits. He won the M35-39 age-group for those that didn't know. Said his power was 270, which is strong enough to match at least some of the pros at the event. He's going fast enough that he won't need to surge much (if at all) even if there is somewhat of a group to go by.

Very interesting!

Yep.  Last year it was about the consistency for me, but my longest pool swims were 45min, and my average was around 35-40min.  This year I'd like the average to be closer to 55min.

Arend alluded to it earlier with his poor run - but how many of you brick the swim?  I'll do it with OWS, but very infrequently do it after a pool swim.  Thoughts on any benefits/gains from doing this once in a while - not sure how often.

I use to do it, but more due to time management then anything.  Less showers, and I had to get my run done early before it was a 1000F outside.

VERY cool!  I work at a company where the vast majority of people are overweight and incredibly unhealthy (one guy actually "lectured" me about drinking too much water while putting CHEW into his lip!!) -- I can only imagine how cool it would be to work with a bunch of like-minded individuals.

Now if only you were hiring engineers

The Master's group I swim with is very tri-centric -- it's not uncommon for us to do a set and then get out and run a lap around the track.  Even though the run is short, I think it's helpful for getting used to that horizontal to vertical transition.  Our "tri" sessions just started up again last week, so I'll be curious what they have in store for us!

Before joining our Master's group, I think I'd only done a few swim bricks and they were all in conjunction with OWS.

I've really increased my swimming since my knee injury, so I'll be curious to see how much of a difference I feel/notice when racing (I was a pretty awful swimmer before, so I'm hoping the hard work pays off!).

Having worked for companies were I had to hide my 'lifestyle' I was nervous when I brought the idea to our president. I had gone back and forth a few times with Jordan Rapp and he had provided some good quotes from a very credible source. But I was still nervous. Our president turned around "Great idea, just do it". But then again he is a visionary and sees things like no other.

Now I have to make it work. I have the backing, I need the people. So I have to get the message to the people. Any and all ideas welcome.

Think of it as a SBR Utopia at work :-)

I think it comes down to ROI.  That is going to be different for each individual.

I thought Bryans comments on page 3 were interesting.  I do think that coming out of the water fresh in longer events is certainly important...but that is more a function of pacing than whether you swam 20K or 2K per week.

I sent the link to my HR department.  I'm the company coordinator for our Annual Corporate Challenge activities so they may think I'm somewhat serious.

Good for you Marc and that's awesome that the boss is open to it.

Well, it is and it isn't pacing. One can still pace ok for their ability, but it's still going to take a lot out of them simply because they don't have the conditioning for the size of the event.

I think this is extremely relevant.  Sam can just swim his swim, ride his ride and run his run.  That said, if he let me do the swim for him he would be nipping at the heels of some of the pros overall...     I think he is very much an exception to the rule.  

As an aside, on the subject of small degrees of separation, Sam is dating the best friend of someone that swam in my masters group.  Somehow that was enough for him to add me as a friend on Facebook - LOL.

I got to run outside in shorts and a t-shirt this afternoon.

That's all.  

I'm happy.

"Like"

I may not come into work tomorrow (or leave early) because it's supposed to be 70+ degrees.  There's a long bike ride calling me.  Perhaps even a run after since today is just swim.

That makes more sense. I remember Bryan talking to various people here at times about swimming. In the past year, someone like Nate Thomas was making a push for qualifications and was putting in 30-35,000 a month for swimming. Bryan's recommendation was to swim more. Then in others he'll discount the swim as being really important towards the overall time, citing something like Vegas results. His swim ranking wasn't that great, but the fastest weren't really that far ahead. But being well conditioned, it didn't take much out of him and he could mow them down on the bike & run.

I can certainly see it in my results the past couple years. I've done a sprint tri and sprint duathlon of similar bike and run lengths and similar fitness level. The du was less difficult even though run 1 was 21 minutes up in Z4 and the swim was 14 minutes at no more than a moderate effort. Also in one half iron the swim was dropped and I just flew on both the bike and run. Over 10 minutes faster than any other HIM run and I was holding back a little. I always swim very easy from Olympics on up too. I just haven't had the conditioning for it to not have an effect no matter how I went through it. Be interesting to see how this year goes as the past few months have been the most directed work I've done towards swimming by a considerable margin.

Many tend to look at only the bike as a reason for a poor run, but I've really come to see how much the swim affects it too even though I thought I was ok coming out of the water. Various bike/run workouts and the duathlons have shown that I can run well off a strong bike, so it's the (lack of) swim conditioning that's doing it.

What I love (hate) about a power meter and intervals. Do them on a trainer with a graph and make sure you keep the interval nice and even or negative split on the power. So if you interval calls for 300w for 4 minutes, don't have a spike for the first 30 seconds at 340 and finish off with 280 for an average of 300. Start at 300, hold it and finish at 310-320.

BRUTAL !!

The beauty of a computrainer is that it keeps your intervals very constant.

Last night I had to do 30' of tempo with 115% 1 min spikes every 3min. Then go into 5' at threshold. I decided I was going to keep my threshold even as can be and went out too fast but had to hold it. It was 'fun'

Those surges can be challenging, but I've found them quite helpful in learning to reach new marks. That's one reason I like the 'fest vids, they have them in a lot of things. Otherwise I probably wouldn't do them, or up it as much or for as long. I'll also work intervals in the same fashion, as in starting at or just under and increasing to finish just over. Wouldn't want to do something like start at 250 and finish at 350 as that can change the type of work in spite of the average being the same, but a few watts over or under should still be fine.

Pretty interesting stuff, congratulations.

My PM has got me confused the last couple of trainer rides.  "Long" ride last weekend, where I overdid it early on and limped home, and then tried to ride a couple of nights later and couldn't get any power or HR going.  Next day, I was killing it.  Last night, same thing, 1' intervals at 120% and I did the last one closer to 130%, and was feeling fine.  Even the warmup was 10 watts higher than normal.

I calibrate before every ride, so I'm not sure what explains the sudden strong efforts.  Me or the PM...

I finally got a chance to read all the way through the ST thread - probably one of the best most informative I have read in a while - my faith in humanity is restored! Of course you can't help but like the threads that reinforce what You already believe to be true...

Neil, I brick almost every open water swim, which is pretty much every week starting some time in April and going through July. Usually a long bike afterward, but sometimes a run. And on our OWS we will usually include 5 or more "T-1 exits." If you don't think the body takes a bit of adjusting from going all-arms horizontal to all-legs vertical, go hang out at the finish line of your next 5k or 10k OWS - it can actually be quite entertaining.

the thread on ST is obviously aimed at FOP Kona folks, I think all of that is exacerbated for us mere mortals. The average swim time at many IMs is around 1:17~1:20, so in most cases you are talking about folks that are in the water 20~30 minutes longer than what they are talking about. My guess is the impact is exponential in nature, not linear.

Last year I don't think I swam many more yards than the year before, but I switched from 3~4 swims per week to 2~3, but kept my overall distance per week the same. I do feel like doing the longer sets with more threshold work at once vs split up contributed significantly to my cardiovascular fitness which made my bike and especially run better. As fragile as i have proven to be there is just no way i could have built that fitness by simply running more. This year I am doing both (increased swim distance and frequency) to see where that gets me. And I do plan on increasing bike and run volume somewhat as well. I'll let you know how it worked out at the end of July.

Calibrate or zero offset? I seem to find mine to be much more reliable and trustworthy when the numbers are high. Not so much when they are low....

I actually find this time of year my numbers are a little all over the place as well, there are of course environmental factors (temperature fluctuations, etc- so I zero out frequently), but also I am switching between trainer and road a lot, and between bikes, and honestly with volume increasing significantly some days are just better than others. I wouldn't worry about it too much. It was only when my numbers began fluctuating by about 40 watts last year and my zero offsets were all over the place did I realize my PM was actually broken. This year I did get everything i need to actually recalibrate ours at home, so I will probably begin to do that more often. When we did it at the bike shop last year it seemed really easy.

I've been doing something similar.  I've only been swimming 2x per week this winter but they have been in the 1:15 - 1:30 range rather than the 45-60 mins I have typically done in the past.  I feel a lot better about my swim now than I typically do at this point in the year.  Now, I've been swimming with the swim team kids which is also working me a lot harder but I think the longer workouts is helping a lot too.  It will be difficult for me to know how or if it carries over to anything else since the rest of my training is so different than anything I have done in the past as well.