GrooveTime!group - CLOSED!!! (Page 14)

DEE!


Wahhhhh! You've likely left --- and without a proper goodbye from me to you! Well, have a wonderfully restful time, which should include SOME time in an internet cafe, I should think. As the old adage goes: "GrooveTime! -- Good ANY time!"

ARTHUR -

Yo!

You might be very happy with the shoe switcheroo. I went years with only Asics, and most of that was in several generations of DS Trainers. I then switched to Newtons a bit over two years ago, but last November decided to give a try at something less expensive. I did not like the current model of DS Trainer, so I went out on a limb, kind of, and tried a few Saucony models - Sinister, Fasttwitch, Tangent, Type A2. I very much liked all of these, and felt more comfortable in them than in the DS Trainers......but not as much as in the Newtons. So, I returned to Newtons for the entire '10 season, and will continue that way indefinitely. But if I ever have to return to "conventional", Saucony would be my go-to.

Asics made me crazy with radical changes to the DS Trainer from one model to the next. Some I loved, some I tolerated, some I couldn't wear for more than three steps in the store. I'm not sure they (Asics) worked very hard at maintaining my loyalty, and as much as I very like being a loyal person, it evntually wasn't worth the aggravation of worrying about what the next model would feel like. At one point I even stock-piled 5 pairs of a model I especially liked, but that just becomes a nuisance if you have to do it every so often.

ANYHOW, I hope your switch to Saucony is as seamless for you as it was for me!

Edited by midlifeinsanity 2010-05-23 7:33 PM

LOGS....LOGS....LOGS....(part two)

Hey!

You all were great in responding to the earlier "LOGS...." post! It was good to see how many of you are already logsters, and it is useful to know who is using the BT log.

For Neil ("Sax") from my other group, who really wanted more of us to use BT's logs, there were two issues for him: (1) to see what other people were doing, and (2) to get feedback from others about his own efforts. If a lot of us feel similarly to Neil, then it might be a good idea for as many of us as possible to be as visible as possible - for the good of the commonweal, I guess!

Having said that, one downside might be that looking at other people's logs will "guilt" people into feeling they aren't doing enough. I definitely would not want that to be the case, and I doubt anyone else wants that, either........but we all know how that sort of thing works insidiouly in other aspects and times of our lives. Just a thought!

SOOOO......if there is a kind of consensus that higher visibility is a good thing, then I will make a real effort to use the public log here, although I won't treat it as seriously (i.e., detailed) as I do my actual log-log, the paper one, properly spiral-bound as a good log should be.

Thanks again for the "LOGS...." responses so far; I have found them very illuminating!

Ack. Spousal unit and both kids are now up, and two of the three want to use the computer, so I'm being ejected. So much for seniority! So much for the concept of the eary bird catching the worm! (Although as kid #2 has pointed out, I've been up for a while and should've gotten on the computer earlier. Smarty-pants....)

Later, Groovesters!

I use the logs here on BT. Will be using the 20 week winter maint. plan on BT (as a guide) starting Monday. Received a pair of Newton Sir Isaacs for Christmas and would like some pointers on breaking them in as well as fore foot striking

Edited by Dwayne 2009-12-29 9:11 AM

DWAYNE -

Just elbowing my way past the rest of the family to say YES!!!!!! I will definitely give you pointers on wearing Newtons!!!! Pointers on Newton-wearing can be incredibly important, although the Sir Isaacs (a new model for them) are supposed to be much more "forgiving" of people who are looking to transition to midfoot- or forefoot-running.

But, for now, very quickly, think midfoot and NOT forefoot!! Look at the lugs on the bottoms, and visualize where your foot needs to strike in order to land on the lugs. And if necessary, put the shoes on and press with your fingers against the lugs so you get a good idea where exactly they are positioned under your feet.

Stiil more quickly --- for the love of god, abide by the Newton guideline to keep your first few runs short!!! They suggest 2-3 miles, i believe, but 1-2 for the first few runs is not outrageous -- especially for people who are not midfoot- or forefoot-strikers.

Stay tuned!

DON'T DO IT STEVE!!!!  Avoid the cell phone - keep your life your own!

DON'T DO IT STEVE!!!!  Avoid the cell phone - keep your life your own!

Steve -You should give the Asics DS a go again. I also hated a lot of the DS' previous incarnations, but both the 14 and the 15 are SPECTACULAR in my humble opinion. They remind me a lot of the series 6 and 7 of the DS, which I believe were the best ever. I've done about 120km in the DS15's and they took no time whatsoever to break in. I'm hoping to get at least 700k / 450m out of them.Next time (hopefully when I've improved my running form, I'm considering trying a specific midfoot strike shoe. Are the Newtons you have such a shoe? Do you know if the new balance 800/801 are worth a damn?Thanks!Arthur

Edited by Hepeoc 2009-12-29 4:35 PM

Oh, my goodness!  We lived on the north edge - a couple of blocks from Lake Owasso.  If you ever went to a 4th of July celebration in Central Park, you heard my husband play tuba in the Roseville band.  I worked on the Mpls campus and my husband in White Bear Lake, so it was a good location for us.  Loved Roseville.

Denise

I just noticed the date you moved.  We left in December, 99.

Edited by LadyNorth 2009-12-29 4:53 PM

Okay, I have 2 things to say, or perhaps many things but in 2 parts.

1. Logs: Are great. I have been using the BT one since January 2008. Highly suggest it, great way to keep motivated and keep track of friends and how they are doing. I find looking at a friends log gets me motivated to go out and do a workout. On the negative side, I am a maniac for the graphs, I always want them to get bigger week after week, although I am breaking myself of this habit as it is a bad one. I also think that keeping a log is essential on BT if you are going to ask for feedback from others. There are some great smart helpful people here and if you are wondering how to go to the next level in terms of distance or time or both or whatever, they will look through your logs if they are available and give you some great and REALISTIC advice which really is impossible without logs.


2. I am back after a break, I hope. I really wanted to get some good runs in last week but it is just too much fun hanging with family. And....I got this problem, that if I miss one workout I miss another and then another until the next week starts, I think it has to do with wanting my graphs to always increase. I also have difficulty reducing my long run, if I am planning 30k I want to do 30k, if I only have time for 10k then I just ditch the whole thing. Gotta stop that.

DWAYNE again (albeit about six hours later) -

You can find some very long-winded thoughts about Newtons by going to my previous-but-ongoing group. Click on Mentor Program Archives, then scroll down until you come to stevebradley's Mentor Group. Both comments are to Ivan, and one is on page 248 (5th post), the second is on page 251 (10th post).

The story here is that a member of the group is Mindy, and she gave her husband, Ivan, a pair for Christmas. When I met them at Kiawah a few weeks ago, Ivan had lots of questions about Newtons, but as he was soon to do the marathon the conversation as brief. So, the post on p. 248 were prior to his gift, the post on p.251 was after he "crashed" the site asking for my thoughts about how he felt after his first run in them a couple of days ago. His two posts are sandwiched around my long rresponse on 251, so read those for his thoughts. Also, down a bit further on 251 is a comment from hooslisa about her most recent Newton run. She started with them a couple months ago.

Let me know what you think!

Another reason I like using the BT logs is that it gives my friends a chance to 'inspire' me when I have had a good workout, need a little nudge to get moving or make me feel better when things aren't going as well as they could.   Looking at their logs doesn't really affect how I feel about the quanity of my training and I like to see the different workouts they do.  

I have followed some of the BT plans in the past, but find it puts too much pressure on me.   If I can't get the req'd distance or time completed I feel like I am failing.   Mike Ricci told me once that they weren't designed for a woman my age, and that we should just stick to the suggested times and do whatever we can get done, in that time frame.  

The other problem is they rarely fit the way I like to train - swim on T, Thur and S; bike on M, W, Sun, etc.   and it is too easy to get into trouble if you just start randomly switching their days around.   SO, with the little knowledge I do have, I have been trying to create my own workouts, but it does take a bit of time - more than I would like. 

What does everyone else do?

KASIA -

Finally getting back to your bio!

You're absolutely right -- 2 out of 3 ain't bad at all. In my case, I came into tri with 1 out of 3, the one being the run. And from rubbing elbows (presonally and cyberly) tells me that most people come into it with 1 out of 3, or even, really, none out of 3. Of course, it's all relative as to what QUALITY of experience any given person brings to the tri table, but at any rate -- if you feel good about swimming and cycling, then that's a great springboard from which to bounce from.

Beyond that, what's that I see? "Been running and swimming a couple times a week."?? Gotta be impressed that for someone who is not a huge fan of running, she's pretty diligently hitting the running thing! Good work on grabbing the bull by the horns!

So, that was posted on Sunday, and yesterday should've been the start of the 20-week plan......so how have the first two days treated you? Curious minds want to know!

Which is the Vegas race on April 17? I guess I can ferret that out without too much effort, so I'll see what I can find. As for the Colorado ones, there are a bunch there that have always appealed to me ---- but there's the small problem of the couple thousand miles between me and them. I did a huge tri-drive trip in '02 that saw me race in Kansas City one weekend and Cleveland the next, with the middle days tooling around the foothills and adjacent plains (and there was the small matter of the drives connecting K.C. to Colorado to Cleveland...... ). That was a dandy trip, but I sure blew the opportunity to race in Colorado! StupidstupidstupidSTUPID!!

So --- how HAVE the first two days of the 20-week program treated you??

I totally change the days around on my training schedule.  BeIronFit has Monday as the off day, swims on T/Th/Fr, long sessions on Sat/Sun.  My problem is that the pool I like to swim at has the 50 meter lanes only on M and W mornings, so I changed the routine to go M-Th,Friday, Long on Sat/Sun.  Only downside really is that after the long ride/run on the weekend, I don't get a "recovery" day.  Then again, I go into them fresher with just a pool session on Friday. 

Personally, I think it's all about taking the general gist of minutes/hours/miles and then making the spirit of that plan fit your schedule.  As long as YOU are consistent week to week, who cares if it matches some schedule printed in a book! 

Other than that, for me, I just follow the rule of "Don't Bulls**t Thyself!"  That takes care of everything else!

STEVE:

Hope you had a fabulous holiday!

Just wanted to let you know that I had day 1 of my "formal" 20-week training on Monday. I tried the pull buoy as you suggested and it worked great! (I know I can't get too used to it though.)

I found it to be really helpful to help me focus on what I really need to - the breathing. I think I might have even found "the pocket"! Not to say that I breathed in the pocket every time (I did swallow a bit of water here and there). I also kept Arthur's tip in mind, of trying to keep one goggle in the water.

I was also quite surprised at how much more quickly I moved through the water with the pull buoy. Of course I realize that it's making me more buoyant (hence the name), but I could really feel how high my legs were in the water. So that makes me think that without the buoy I have quite a bit of drag due to my lower body sinking down. And I realize that the way to correct that is to get the head down into the water (meaning no lifting of the head when I breathe!) Are there any other tips for keeping the lower body up?

I've decided that I'm going to keep using the pull buoy until I've got the breathing thing completely down. Then when I'm totally comfortable, I'll move on to swimming without it. What do you think?

By the way, I've been sort of half-reading the posts about the logs. I'm planning on using the BT logs online, and if there's a way to make them "public" so that others in the group can read them, I'm all for it (I just have to figure out how to do that...)

Also wanted to ask, do you have any tips for increasing my running speed? I am a very slow runner (but also a new runner). My current pace is about a 12-minute mile. I'd love to get down to 10 in time for the race in August.

Thanks!

Tracey

Edited by midlifeinsanity 2010-05-23 7:34 PM

Hi,

My daughter and I are running a 5k New Year's day.  Looks like the temp will be about -5 at race time.  I know you Canadians aren't impressed but the rest of you should  be. 

Denise

Steve,

By "running and swimming a couple times a week" I totally mean that I've been swimming and maybe managed a run or two somewhere in there. Running is most definitely not my happy place, so I'm trying very slowly to ease myself into it.

As for the 20-week plan, I got a swim in on Monday (surprise surprise that I started with that), and today was an unexpected off day since I had to get my passport renewed in a city 2.5 hours away, and the lines and bureaucracy took much longer than expected, essentially killing my day and completely exhausting me. Excuses, excuses, I know...

Tomorrow I'll try the run in the morning in the canyon by my parents' house (still home for the holidays). It should be really nice and refreshing. It's always better running in pretty places rather than the same roads around the block.

I'm signed up for Rage in the Sage at Lake Mead, just outside of Vegas, Olympic distance, with my roommate. Although she says we should run it together, I still want to kick her butt since she's always been just barely faster than me. So that's my motivation. It's going to be nice doing it with her, so I'm excited.

And apparently Colorado is really big on tris. Some of them fill up really quickly and there's bunches of racers. Kinda nuts, actually. So I may go for the smaller events. We'll see how this training goes and I'll take it from there.

I can see how you may've missed CO, driving from KC to Cleveland -- kind of out of the way. But I do recommend it if you're ever in this neck of the woods again. It's crazy tri country out here. I'm kind of intimidated to join the tri team around here, seeing what kinds of workouts these people do. Maybe with some base, I'll get the courage to try out their group runs/bikes/swims.

I'm very impressed. I'm sitting in Southern California right now in a beanie and fleece and it's 60 degrees. I can't imagine going out for a run in -5.


I've been trying to make myself write in the BT blogs more consistently, but I find I only input days for which I'm curious about the length of my rides (so far only one entry). I do keep a paper journal/log, also informally, simply putting in distances/times and not many comments. Now I'm going to try and be more meticulous about stuff, both online and on paper, to be able to have people look them over and give advice.

As for training plans, the one I'm on is Mondays off (totally didn't do that this week and instead gave myself today off), T-F workouts, and Sa/Su long ride and long run. I may have to switch that around since my training partner (my roommate) has 12-hour days on Tuesdays, so those may be the days off. But I'm also hesitant to have a workout right after the long runs and rides on the weekend. I guess since it'll be a swim, it shouldn't be too bad. More refreshing than anything.

-Kasia

Edited by augeremt 2009-12-29 9:49 PM

GANG!

The kids are leaving tomorrow, so by tomorrow evening i should be back to normal!

But it might not be that simple. Peter takes the train back to where he lives, so although it's kind of a long ride (actually, two of them), at least his train isn't as disruptable as is Jane's flight to NYC. The assumption is that it will fly as scheduled (maybe three hours late, but still), but depending on how the Flying Powers are viewing things, there is a chance it will be cancelled. And then? Um, drive her to Montreal or Albany for a train? Drive her all the way to NYC? Oh, nooooo!

Great discussions, all. You play so well together!!

KASIA -

I did make it to Colorado, which was the silly part. I mean, I got three days there to enjoy the mountains and plains, but couldn't/didn't extend it to include a race.

That was back in the days I would drive anywhere at the drop of a hat. In the past couple of years I have just gotten tired of those long drives. Sniff.

Your logs are already public Tracey.   I left you an inspire this morning.   Nice work on the swimming.  

Anne