lrobb's group full - the work is plentiful, success is guaranteed! (Page 14)

Had a nice open water swim yesterday using my new Desoto Speedtube. If you don't know what these are, they're basically wetsuit capri pants. You can buy a vest to go with it, but our swims are warm enough that I just went with the pants. Really easy to strip off, and felt great swimming in them.

You'll love this Babs: I wore a white tri top, which is now stained brown from the water. I even got it in the wash while it was still wet!

Finished the morning off with a 1:15 run. I finally figured out band-only swimming last Friday, so more of that planned for today.

Ewwww!

OK I am telling myself that all that brown in the water is dissolved minerals from the surrounding soil that has washed into the lake. Iron would stain!

The other day when swimming in the lake I was resting at the dock. There was a bunch of fish hanging out under it, kinda looking at me. Perch and sunfish type of critters. Well one of those suckers up and bit me.

That Speedtube sounds like a great idea. Are they acceptable to use in a race? I am debating doing a race but it wll be too warm for my full sleeve wetsuit. I am not a strong swimmer and would like the buoyancy to help me get through those 1000m.

I've been fish-slapped before! Somewhat unnerving.

The speedtube is only legal whenever wetsuits are allowed. But if it's a wetsuit race, it's legal!

What is band only swimming? You only swim when someone marches by with a Tuba?

A link to a thread where some of my friends are discussing climbing hills on the bike.

Thor was the number 3 American finisher at this years London Marathon and has represented the United States at the World Triathlon Championships.

JRoden is a former Cat 1 bicycle racer.

The rest of the posters are middle of the pack age group triathletes both male and female.


http://www.kickrunners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32206

band only = tie some surgical tube around your ankles so that you can't kick... you'll sink if you've got major flaws.

I sink when I can kick.

Think band swimming may have to wait for the next lifetime.

Well since my back side sinks when I kick I guess I have something wrong. Actually I know and it takes 100 % concentration to stay in a good level position. I start group lessons in two weeks so I hope this will help.

For those who have done sprints what is a respectable time for a sprint distance swim or regardless of the distance what is a good pace to shoot for per 100 yards?

Oh yea I broke my bike today. (BOOOO) I was 8 miles into what i hoped would be a 30 or so mile ride. I have been trying to get my wife to longer distances but I don't want to push it. She has a sore back today so I took the opportunity to head out on a long distance ride was going 30 for sure and as going to see how I felt at the half way point and maybe go 40 mi.

I was trucking along pushing a great pace and feeling really good. I was riding along on an almost completely flat portion of the trail when I popped a spoke on my rear wheel. I was about 100 yards from a bike shop so I figured it was lucky until I got there and they are closed on Mondays.
So I called the wife and she picked me up and I dropped it off at my LBS for a new set of Mavic Aksium wheels. This is the wheel that I put on my wifes bike after the now famous incident.

They have straight pull spokes which should help them withstand my substantial girth.

The more spokes, the sturdier the wheel.

It's great that you are thinking of doing 30 - 40 mile rides Tiny.

For those who have done sprints what is a respectable time for a sprint distance swim or regardless of the distance what is a good pace to shoot for per 100 yards?

Depends on who shows up!

Speaking in terms of a 1000 yd time trial, I used to think a pace of 2:00/100yd would be good. Once I hit that, then I thought 1:50...1:40...1:30. Now I think about a pace of 1:20/100yd would be good. See where I'm going? You can only train and race with what your current level is. Some people think I'm a good swimmer, but I see all the people ahead of me and I think they're the good swimmers. No matter how good you get, there's always someone out there.

Swimming is a tough nut to crack because it requires a unique combination of fitness + technique. You can have the technique to hold 1:50, but not the fitness, or vice versa. All that said, just looking at your swim times on your training log and only having a vague idea about how your workouts are structured, I think 2:00/100yd is achievable for you in your first year, given enough time to get to the pool and put the work in.

Lee is right, whatever your current speed is, you always feel slow, and only notice the people ahead of you. You forget, that what you swim at now, last year you would have thought of that as fast.


Here 2:00 minutes per hundred is back of the back, 1:45 is middle of the pack, and anything under 1: 30 is front third of the pack.

I am happy with anything under 2:30 per hundred. My best friend does 4:00 per hundred. First 25 yards he looks great doing the crawl. Then he gets tired, cant breathe, flips over on his back and waves his arms like he is making a snow angel in the snow for the rest of the swim.

My wife and I did a mini sprint tonight. We did 400 yd swim, 8.2 mi bike, and 1.54 mi run. Total time without transitions was about 1 hr 3 min. I waited on my wife on the bike so that time was slow. This are the distances for the mini sprint that we are doing the week before the Northeast MD Sprint distance in August.

I was very happy that it didn't kill me. The run was not any more difficult than a normal run (which I suck at). My swim was 9:13 which is 2:20 min per 100 yrds. That is my average durring training which is very consistent. As I said the bike was slow but I am confident that I could have averaged 15 mi per hr instead of the 12.5 that we did. My run was 15:50 which is roughly 10.5 min mile which I can live with at this point. Overall I am extremely happy with my results and now I am much more confident that I can not only finish the sprint but feel a tiny bit competitive in the Clydesdale class.

Now its time to start incorporating more brick training as the race gets closer.

Good job Tiny.


Breakthrough night for me. 1 mile swim, stopped twice for 30 seconds or less to dump water out of the goggles. I call it a continuous swim. No problems breathing ( other than my hips sank) and arms didnt get so tired that I had to stop.

Feeling better about attempting an Oly now that I feel that I can swim the distance.

absolutely right on.
My technique is great - I've had people come up to me at the pool and comment that I swim like a fish, but.......a fish that needs to surface breathe VERY often due to lack of endurance.
Working on that!

Congrats Tiny - you're a TRIATHLETE!

Good job everybody!

Great job Tiny and Cash

10k race today. 47:55 Ave 7:41 per mile. Previous best 52:07. Goal was to beat 50 minutes, so happy about that.

Course was flat and the weather about perfect. Being down 17 pounds from last year this time helped as well.

Haven't run as much this year as I did last, but have done a lot more biking, and I think it helped with the run a bit.

Great job cash.

Amazing what a few pounds will do for performance!

Tap tap tap...... is this thing on. How is everyone doing?

I rode by myself tonight for the first time in a while (well since breaking a spoke). went 13.8 mi and averaged 15.2 miles an hour. It was a decent run flat and gradual climbs followed by gradual declines. I felt good even after having gone at it pretty hard for my training specified 20 min swim workout. I bought slit fins today to try to work on my legs. I also worked out with my paddles to help with my technique.

Hope everyone had a great Independence Day.

the 4th was a busy week - wife was sick so I had to do double time daddy duty.


wed: 1:25 treadmill run
thu: had to bail
fri: 1:15 treadmill run
sat: 1:40 treadmill run
sun: 1:10 bike trainer + :25 run

Did a lot of running! Gee.... maybe that's why my achilles is acting up?

on the bike trainer:

10' easy warmup
4 x [9min comfortably-hard + 1min easy]
5' moderate

transition run: 30' moderate

http://www.bikesportmichigan.com/shop/product.php?productid=16278



I was thinking about this on my ride this morning.... If I were starting over, aside from a bike, running shoes, tri-shorts, and goggles, a good fluid trainer would be my next purchase (or old fashioned wind-trainer if I wanted to go cheaper, but I don't like mag-trainers).

Even in the summer, I'm on this thing at least twice a week - very early in the morning when it's still dark outside, getting in a solid 45-60min workout without having to worry about traffic, stop lights, the weather, etc... I only have to focus on my intervals.


Edited by lrobb 2008-07-11 7:32 AM

It would be nice to have a clue about my power output

The Kurt has a very realistic power curve, similar to what you get when you ride outside, plus you can buy a $50 computer from Kurt that will perform the math for you and display it on your handlebar, or you can just enter the numbers into the formula (published on Kurt's website). It is very close to what my powertap reads.

I have a Garmin Forerunner 50 that I use on my road bike, and when I ride that bike on the trainer, I just use the speed function. Close enough for my (training) purposes.

For example, I know from past sessions that a low 20.x mph reading corresponds to roughly 240 watts (IIRC). So for today on my 4 x 9'(1'), I just used my speedometer to hold the appropriate level across all 4 levels. I was suffering toward the end of the 3rd interval, but the speedometer doesn't lie so I had to suck it up and get the work done.

Here's a good review of it (and some others):
http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/default.asp?pg=fullstory&id=4569

Of course none of those work on the road.

54 mile bike ride down to San Diego for my birthday today.

Easy ride, most of it was slightly downhill. Rode the train back. Yes it has 3 bike racks per car, where you hang the bike on the wall.