The Dominon - Beginner Focused Group - Closed (Page 12)

Awesome time for your first half! Congrats!

S: 9840.17 yards
B: 148.75 miles
R: 42.51 miles

Hi, all. Well, I was doing pretty well in February, until the 22nd when I came down with ick-itis and spent the next ten days in my recliner in front of the fireplace, with friends occasionally stopping by to check for a pulse and to bring me food. I'm still not over it, but I went out for a walk for the first time yesterday and managed to jog a mile, so I think I've managed to pull myself out of the grave. I'm slowly going to try to ease back into training this week.

With the recent Garmin group and challenges, I've started wearing my watch in the pool. To my surprise, it's maintaining an accurate lap count, which it didn't do when I first tried it last year. Anyway, I discovered that when I swim from the south end to the north, I can go pretty fast (for me), at about a 1:50 to 2:00/100 yard pace. However, when I swim north to south, my pace drops considerably, to 2:30-2:40/100 yards. I know; it's really weird. When I look at my swim graph, it looks like teeth; I can easily see which direction I was swimming. I have a new coach for this year, one that's local, and we've been trying to get together for some swim sessions, but with me being on death's door for the past few weeks, we've had to keep rescheduling. I'm hoping we can get together this coming weekend because I'd really like to see what's going on. If I can figure out where my form falls apart heading south, then I should be able to correct that and perhaps pick up some speed this year.

In other news, my triathlon club got word that we had the single biggest entry by any triathlon club ever in an Ironman event this past June at Cd'A 70.3, so this next race, they're giving us our own dedicated bike rack. Woohoo! That's pretty cool.

Where abouts in east Texas. I may be able to give you some colors / tips for some locations . What park, Martin Dies has some pretty good white bass fishing this time of year. I have my second kayak tournament this Saturday. My first I came in 13 of 64, but won the pitching contest which netted me a $700.00 NRS wader package.

I would suggest you get some Watermelon Green w/ Red Flak and Black w/ Blue Flak Worms (Zoom Baby Brush Hogs are usually really good during the spawn, which is upon us). We just use small silver rat-l-traps and simple silver spoons or what we call slabs in my area for the white bass.

Edited by Hunting Triathlete 2017-03-08 1:47 PM

At my bike fitting about a week ago, the fitter suggested that I might benefit from a shorter crank arm. I believe my current bike has a length of 175 mm and he suggested dropping down to 170. I'm just curious if anybody else in this group has switched to a shorter crank arm. If so, did you find that it affected your pedal stroke at all? Were you able to use bigger gears? Were you forced to use a smaller gear? Was there any effect on your hill climbing? I'm considering making the change after browsing through some articles online, but I was curious if anyone in this group had actually gone through this kind of change on their bike.

I switched from 175mm to 155mm on my mountain bike four years ago because I have limited range of motion in my left knee, and the shorter crank arm put less stress on my knee. Since then, I've increased my range of motion so I can now use 175mm crank arms without any issues. Honestly, other than range of motion, I haven't noticed any difference. No difference in gears, and maybe just a little easier for hill climbing just because there's less stress on my knee.

I'm curious why your fitter suggested the shorter crank arm and what benefit you might get out of only 5mm?

I'm still pretty much a bike newbie....but I'm curious as to how the change in crank length (shorter?) helped with your ROM issues with your left knee? Due to my knee replacements my left knee has less ROM than my right; it affects my foot placement on the pedal and I find my right leg works harder than my left.....thought I'd ask in view of your remarks on ROM issues.......

Looks like we've got a bunch of gimps in this group! Same issue for me. I tore my ACL when I was about 20 and I've had 2 surgeries on that knee. After the 2nd one, I lost some of the range of motion in that knee. It hasn't caused issues per se, but it is something that I become aware of when I'm on the bike. I wish I could remember exactly what the fitter said, but I know one of the issues had to do with the shorter crank arm putting a little less stress on that knee. I believe he was also saying that it would give me a little more clearance at the top of the stroke, which would put less stress on my quads and/or hips.

I found several articles that discuss the benefits including this from Cycling Weekly:

“With shorter cranks, the rider’s torso can be positioned lower because the shorter crank keeps the hip open. This has the knock-on effect of preventing unhelpful and inefficient pedalling adaptations due to hip impingement.”

“Hip flexor angles can be eased and this can have a positive effect on the rider’s ability to breath better, as the diaphragm is not as affected. Lower back angle can be achieved."

“Some research has shown a decrease in the riders’ blood pressure, and this can have a positive effect on physiology. Short cranks can also protect riders with knee issues.”

Read more at http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/product-news/are-shorter-cranks...

With shorter crank arms, when your knee is at the high part of the pedal stroke, it's not quite as sharp an angle as with the longer crank arms. When I first started riding four years ago, the angle with the 175mm crank arms was too steep for me to even be able to pedal. I tried to get 145mm crank arms, but 155mm was the shortest we could find to fit my bike. And it is a lot easier to pedal with the shorter crank arms. However, it's a HUGE expense (cost me nearly $300 to modify my mountain bike) because your entire drive train has to be replaced, possibly even including your gear shifters. My bike fitter recommended I shorten the crank arms on my tri bike from 175mm to 170mm because of how I place my left foot on the pedal, but frankly, spending $300 to shorten them 5mm is not worth it to me. It is different when you're talking 20-30mm, but 5mm isn't enough of a difference for me to fork out that kind of money. I really don't think it's enough to affect my foot placement.

Wow, not sure I'd be doing it if it cost that much money. I got the work order from my LBS and it's only going to cost me $125. They aren't having to change any other parts, so I'm not sure what happened in your situation but the only part on the work order is the crankset itself. The description of the part says that it is a 9-speed crankset and my bike is an 8-speed. So they are supposed to confirm that there are no issues with compatibility of the part. I won't do it if they start having to add more parts and driving the price up. At the time of my fitting, the guy said there shouldn't be any issues, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he was right.

Appreciate the insight on the crank lengths! After doing some reading I've come to the conclusion I'll need to get my cheap butt down to our local bike shop and spring for a fitting......no sense "chasing parts" that might not pan out.....I've even looked at some new model bikes during my research today....but a new ride can wait I suppose...

I had my first 5K of the year today. I was not happy when the weather turned cold for this weekend. Temp was in the 12-14 degree range, with forecasted wind speeds of 14 mph. I bundled up enough so that my only real issue was that my running gloves were kinda thin and my hands cold for the first half of the race. I figured I was headed for a slow time given that I was all bundled up and I haven't really done any 5K pace type of running. I was shocked to find out that my official time was only 6 seconds off a PR! Obviously, I was very happy with my time of 24:23. I negative split each mile going 8:01, 7:55, 7:44 (and 6:37 pace over the last 0.11, LOL). I wasn't planning on any kind of record setting performance, so I started in the middle of the pack instead of closer to the front. Who knows how many seconds I lost being stuck back in all of that slower moving traffic? ;-) I've got my next 5K in about a month, maybe I'll actually work in a little 5K pace work and actually go for a PR this time.

Nice work! It went from 70 here Thursday to around 30 yesterday so I definitely understand the struggle. I been reading lately that most of your training should be slow in that z1 and z2 heart rate so maybe not training at race pace didn't hurt you as much as you thought.

I don't train by HR zone. I go more by feel and estimate an RPE for my runs. I tend to do most of my running in a range of 4-6 for RPE. But I usually do a few 5K time trial runs at a hard pace when I know I have a race coming up, but I didn't do that this year. I've been almost all longer runs (5-7 miles), usually at a comfortable pace. So it was a nice surprise to be able to turn it on for the race. I've got another 5K in a month. I'm not sure I'll bother changing my training routine based on yesterday's result.

Hi all,

I'm considering entering my first 70.3 at the end of August. This, allowing for holiday, will give me about 3 months to train. During that 3 months I already have a couple of 10k races, an Sprint and Oly Tri booked in.

I'm 46 (and 9 months) and whilst I've done two oly's and a half dozen sprints I'm still apprehensive of the distance. I think I'll be OK on the swim provided I can arrange some open water training, and the run should be OK (I did a half marathon last year), but I only have a very cheap road bike and (if you have seen my previous post) only just progressed to clipless pedals.

I'm not worried about time just a finsih.

Oh, and one final thing it starts at 6:00pm in the UK so the majority will be in the dark!!!

So what do you think - too soon for a 70.3 should I wait for next year or just go for it in August.

I don't understand your math. There's 5+ months until the end of August. Are you saying that you're going to be taking 2 months worth of vacation between now and then? If so, I'm very jealous!

It's a little tough to gauge without knowing your current fitness level. I'm also training for my first 70.3, which is set for September 3rd. I took some down time at the end of last year and mostly only ran. I didn't swim at all from mid-September until the end of the year and only logged 6 bike rides from October through December. But come January 1st, I jumped back in full force. How long have you been training so far? I understand you just want to finish and not care about time. But if you don't adequately prepare, then a DNF becomes a possibility. I don't mean to discourage you, only to say that you need to be realistic. Maybe I'm the lone member that thinks it sounds like 70.3 might be a reach, especially if your training is going to be interrupted a lot by vacations. I'm curious to hear what others on this group think.

Heat shouldn't be a factor since it's in the dark. Personally if I thought I could finish the swim, I wouldn't be too concerned with a DNF but then again that's my weakness. You can always take walk breaks on the run. I do agree it would probably be tough if your not training consistently though.

Thanks very much for the feedback - Sorry I didnt explain my timmings very well.

The race is on 12th Aug and I get back from holiday on 17th April so that gives me about 17 weeks of training. As I said I do have some races booked in which I could use as training prep.

I have done 2 Olympic distance races and 6 sprints over the past couple of years. To give a rough idea of fitness level my long run this weekend will be around 14km and I normally turbo for around 1 hour 40 mins.

I think I'll be able to do around 8-10 hours training a week, provided I can get the family on board.

So what do you think????????

Well, that sounds like you've got a really good base from which to build your run and bike training. If you were able to maintain those levels through mid-April and then build from there, then I'd think you'd be able to finish, especially if you aren't trying for time and just want to cross the finish line. If you don't train at all, it's hard to know how much that will set you back and what your starting point will be.

I'm like you in that I don't have a ton of time to train. I'm sure that my weekly training would top out at 12 hours and most of it will be more like the 8-10 hours per week that you mentioned. I've read through some 70.3 training plans and read plenty of articles and it seems like a lot of them want you to train 15+ hours a week, but I just don't have that kind of time.

I think if you approach the race as just one to complete and are able to exercise some discipline in pacing yourself right, then I don't see a reason why you couldn't be ready. Thoughts from others?

Go for it Tony. Keep your base out. Most plans are about 20 weeks so you may have to shave some. Your not starting from zero and you may be ablegally to get a couple runs in on vacation. Maybe find a 10k or half where your vacation is to have that time blocked.

I put off my run today until I had a nap after work this morning. I later regretted it. Temps hit a little over 80*F towards the end of my run and 86*F for a high. From running season right into melting season!
I hope everyone had a good weekend of training! It's a new week. Hit those goals!