Experior and Slornow's Winter Mentor Group-CLOSED (Page 12)

Got a run in at lunch.  Will hit the pool after work.  I am extrememly lucky in that my office is 150 yards from SD bay, I can go for a run on the seawall, there is a full gym right next door, a 25m lap pool 100 yards away in the middle of our headquarters buildings that is open before work, at lunch, and in the afternoons, and a great bike path down the strand that I can ride for a quick 25 miles when i need to.  My set up might be almost as good as Jason's out there in Hawaii.... 

Today on my run, I kept thinking about something I was told during the summer.  "Make every workout have a purpose."  For every workout I try to remember to ask myself.  "What is the purpose of this workout?"  Today it was recovery run.  Reminding myself the purpose of the workout helped me to go easy and set myself up for harder workouts during the week and weekend.  Just a random endorphin fueled thought.  Have a great afternoon.

Bennet   

Jason, I sometimes fall into that trap as well.  When thinking about my goals for this coming year, I realized that over the past 12 months I had really slacked off on the bike compared to what I had done before.  I was living (and dying...) off of old bike fitness that was gradually fading.  I'm planning to step it up this year.

Bennet, you certainly have a pretty sweet arrangement!  And yes, I totally agree about thinking about the purpose of a workout -- it does help a lot to make sure that we keep the easy ones easy, and the hard ones hard.  I will say, though, that from time to time the only real purpose for me is to enjoy a nice run -- the enjoyment is the purpose.

Matthew-nice goals!  They seem well thought out and should give you a good balance between swim, bike and run.

Jason-I frequently look back in my logs to see what I was doing at the same time as last year.  Just curious although sometimes I will notice a workout that I had forgotten and it will prompt me to incorporate it into my training.  I'm trying to get away from the "more is always better" mentality.  I think after 2-3 years of consistent training there is a certain base to build on and I'm hoping I'll be able to improve on previous year's results . 

Headed to bed.  Busy work day tomorrow.

Randy

You've got this, Blanda.  And the more you do it, the less difficult it will become.

Blanda-let us know how the swim goes.

Anyone else doing Masters swimming?  I did when I first started swimming but more as a way to learn to swim.  I think the structure and camaraderie would be helpful to improving my swim but just can't seem  to make that leap/commitment.  Maybe I'll go for a couple of sessions and check it out. Right now I am getting specific workouts from my coach but in the past it has been too easy to bail on a workout or shorten a workout if I didn't feel like doing it.  Of the 3 disciplines swimming ranks somewhere around 8th in terms of what I enjoy..... 

Randy

Brian -- here's hoping for a speedy recovery.  You know the drill -- lots of sleep and water, and take it easy.

Blanda -- you can do it!  For swim workouts, what gets me through when I feel like quitting (well, I have to admit that sometimes I do quit, but I'm trying to break that habit) is to take it one interval at a time.  As in: "I got through that last 100; I can certainly do another."

Masters:  I tried it once, and it was disastrous (for me).  I think a lot depends on the group dynamic, and how it is coached.  There is another group in town, and I met one of the members.  Talking with him made me think that the other group would be more suitable for me (and vice versa), but it is at a time that is very inconvenient for me most days.  I'm just now at a place where I am ready to commit to swimming, but I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to making it an inconvenience as well...

Have a great day everyone.  I'm working at home today while waiting for the repairman to come fix my dishwasher.  You know how that goes:  "we'll be there between 8am and 2pm".  I'll try to resist the temptation to hop on the trainer instead of work!

Randy - I have done some Masters swimming, but I am working on stroke improvement with a coach right now.  I do plan to start working out with the local masters group in the near future though.  

Got in an hour of interval work on the trainer this am.  Swim lesson at 11:30.  Have a great hump day everyone.

I do masters swim twice a week.  Like Randy and Michael mentioned...it's a balance of what you're trying to accomplish along with what the class is trying to accomplish.  Sometimes you wish you were swimming on your own because the class may be doing more alternate stroke (back, breast, fly) or simply not doing enough yardage.  But then there are those other days where you get in a killer workout that you know you wouldn't have done on your own.  So it goes both ways. 

But I can totally see how some masters classes may just be a totally wrong fit for some people.  The class I swim with is mainly for intermediate swimmers.  We'll swim about 2500 yards in 1 hour with a decent amount of rest between sets.  For someone with a competitive background that is more accustomed to swimming closer to 4000 in 1 hour...it would be really furstrating.

If nothing else though...it's a chance to see a bunch of people on a regular basis and just be sociable.  And I do feel a small sense of guilt/accountability when I don't show up for a class.

Thanks for the confidence, guys. The swim went better than expected. The focus was freestyle stroke counts and working on your turnover, which was perfect. If training only did freestyle I'd be a happy camper. I'm a hot mess on my back, and I can't butterfly for anything, especially sharing a lane.

I was always a 50-100M short on each set, and I'm sure it's because I don't have a good turn, so I was basically swimming continuously playing catchup. Perfect, and the purpose of my being there. Swimming continuously and being forced to swim outside my comfort zone. The instructor is great about pushing me. Yesterday he wouldn't let me rest on the wall, and would yell instructions to me to help me relax so I wouldn't be so winded and feel the need to rest.

I still swam pretty ugly. My husband says he's going to video me swimming so I can see what he and the instructor are talking about when they're correcting me. BUT, I'm improving on the breathing. There were times when it felt like I was just breathing, not heaving and rushing to get my face out of the water. We have a super sprint coming up on the 22nd. That will be my first test of improvement since the first one two months ago.

Swim team again tonight and I think it's speedwork.

Have a great evening!

Brian: Hope you're taking care of yourself so you can recover quicker.

Apologies for the absenteeism, I seem to do this a couple of times a year where I just sort of flake away from all things web based, including BT.  I haven't updated my logs for almost a month, and keep telling myself I need to get a grip and just start logging again - maybe tonight, so I can record this afternoon's treadmill run.

Here are my totals for 2011 (still need to update December).

Specific goals for 2012 - I'd like to take 30min off my HIM time.  I've raced the same course twice, and the second time was only a few minutes better than the first.  Both occasions I had massive meltdowns on the run.  Similar to Jason's comment, I'm going to have to work really, really hard this year to actually achieve this goal since I felt I worked extremely hard last year, only to fall way short of expectations.  I likely take this stuff too seriously sometimes, but that's how I am about things.

Other goals - clean up the diet, especially after the past few weeks/months.  I'd also like to finally breakthrough at the Sprint distance and podium in my new AG 40-44.  Last goal - crack 1:30 at the HM distance, but would love to think I could get close to 1:28.

Need to come up with a plan over the next couple of days and restart the consistency that I had for much of last year.

Blanda - Just keep going...it will get easier!

I just got a reminder from my Masters coach - I haven't been to the pool since October, I think, and it's time to renew and get my butt back to the pool.  I planned to go on 1/2, but this week has been crazy, so I WILL GO ON 1/9 and get back on my M/W schedule for the rest of the month.  In February it's M/W/F - I really want to swim better this year.

I have a great Masters group.  I really only learned how to swim properly for my first tri in 2010 and have been working on it ever since.  I can do the workouts on my own, and we have plenty of free pools to swim in here, but I don't push myself like I do in Masters workouts.  Our coach posts the workout on the board and then leaves it up to everyone to time themselves (we don't all swim the same sets at the same time).  I like it this way.  He's very good at busting us if we are slacking and correcting form.  We usually have about 8-12 people at the 5:45 a.m. session.  Only two or three of us are triathletes.  The rest are pretty much rec swimmers (although some VERY GOOD ONES and one former Olympic hopeful).

I just won an TRX rip trainer at a SUP event a few weeks ago...dying to get to work with it.  I think it will really help my upper body and core strength.  I'll let you know how it goes.

BTW - my magician husband resurrected my treadmill and it's humming along...so I am one happy runner these days!

Keep it up, Blanda.  It sounds like you are doing all the right things.

Neil -- I had a horrible melt-down on the run this year at Worlds, and I'm 100% sure it was because of my bike training, not my run training.  (In fact, I was able to sort of pull things together later in the run, and I attribute that to run training.) Perhaps something to think about.  Your May HM time certainly indicates that you can go under 1:30 with good training.  Just remember that the gains are harder and harder to get as you get faster.  Think in terms of percentage of time gained rather than absolute minutes and you'll be closer, but still even figured as percentages, the gains become progressively harder.  That just means you have to work harder for them, and that's part of the fun!

Di -- good news about the treadmill resurrection!  

I'm hoping for all of you to be running as much as possible so I can live vicariously through you.  It looks like at least 2 more weeks of no running for me and I've been told to cut out biking for the rest of this week.

The hope is to do two this year - Peterborough earlier in the season to guage where I am leading up to the Muskoka 70.3 in Sept.  I say the "hope" is to do two because it will come down to scheduling work/life, etc - but that's the plan at the moment.

Michael, I fully agree on the bike training setting up the run.  I was extremely disappointed with how things went this past year because I'd basically been training for the 70.3 since Jan, and had logged far more bike miles than ever before - and since I use a PT, most of those miles were at a decent intensity.  But come race day, the HR was higher than expected for the effort level, even though I backed off the effort, and I messed up by not taking enough nutrition on the bike.  By km 5 of the run (I'll call it that), it had turned into a death march, and I just wanted to turn around and quit.  Ultimately Pepsi saved me for part of the run and allowed me to salvage some of the day.

This year, part of the plan is 1)  Find nutrition that is not so sweet.  I just can't take the warm, sticky sweet liquids and gels after a couple of hours on the bike.  I think I want to experiment with something more solid.  2)  Ride some over-distances this year.  Last year my plan had a lot of back to back bike days in the 2-4 hour range, which I thought would be really good, but this year I may try and do some 5-6 hour rides to see if that has a positive impact.

Neil-some interesting thoughts on your HIM and upcoming training.  I have only done 1 HIM and felt like I had a "sub par" bike as I didn't hit my goal time.  However, I had a better than anticipated run. Maybe I saved a little on the bike?  Hard to know.  You are right about the balance between the bike/run.  Hard to have an "A" day on both if the pacing on the bike isn't there. 

Early treadmill intervals for me this morning.  Busy work day and then on the road this afternoon.  Will check in with everyone tonight.

Randy

Neil, I think that over-distance biking is a great way to get prepared.  Try to keep up race-day intensity for a large chunk of the ride, if not all of it.  The times (rare) that I've had good long-course rides have come after plenty of over-distance riding.  Rides that are the length of the race also give you a great opportunity to work on nutrition.  For B2B in 2010 I did a 150 mile ride, and it helped a lot with working on nutrition (which became a huge issue for me on race day, and I attribute my ability to get through it to having practiced it quite a bit on those long rides).

Flat Coke saved me during worlds this year!  I had never tried it before, and don't drink it as a rule, but I was desperate.  Maybe coincidence, but once I started taking it, I started feeling better.  The problem is that the stuff is like crack -- every aid station I needed another Coke.  One didn't have it and the next aid station better have had Coke or a rehab program.  (Fortunately, it was Coke...)

I'd be curious to hear people's ideas about less sweet nutrition.

I'll throw a few out that I use on the bike.  For a sports drink, I use Heed, which is not very sweet at all.  I believe that Infinit can also be made less sweet, but I'm not sure -- I've never tried it.  Coconut water would be good for electrolyte replacement -- it isn't sweet at all -- but it doesn't have many calories so you'd need something else for the calories.  I use it for post-workout sometimes.  For solids, I sometimes carry dried fruit with some nuts (still sweet, but not gel-sweet), turkey sandwiches (unless it is 100 degrees out -- I'm not interested in consuming turkey that's been in my pocket in 100 degree heat for 4 hours!), and random stuff from the cupboard.

Anyone ever tried making your own (solids or liquids)?  I've toyed with buying a tub of maltodextrin and experimenting in the kitchen.