Asphalt Junkies CLOSED AND GETTING OUR FIX (Page 144)

23 seconds with one arm sounds pretty amazing.  You need to get some video and post it for us!

So my foot issue is understood at least.  My left foot is size 10 1/2+ 4E, and my right foot is 11 4E.  I've always bought 11 2E or 4E shoes, and they've always been "good enough", but I suspect this has been a life long thing.  The last set of running shoes which felt good were the original New Balance I was using, the 760, size 11 2E.  The successor was the 860, which has always been tight on the right foot.  I checked my 760s, and they are absolutely wider than the 860 (and the newer 870 which I now use).  So  11 1/2 2E it is, tightening the left shoe worked great the last two runs with them.  If I can find an 11 4E I'll go with those next time.

Certainly Jeff would have better answer than I can give but my first thought about the shifting you're doing on your seat is the angle adjustment.  Is it possible the angle has more of a downward angle than before this adjustment?  On my TT bike the adjustment of the seat is such that it I need to tighten the front and back bolts have to be tightened evenly to keep the seat at a specific angle.  I suppose since we have similar models of Felt's TT bike that you can look at your bike and see what I mean.

My second thought is that you may need to sit back up a little more which would require you to buy a shorter stem.  Jeff may have suggested this is a possibility already, if I understood what he said previously.

Dina, I know ABSOLUTELY nothing about the way bikes are supposed to fit but i have 2 questons.

Do you always ride w/ your elbows locked?

Do you ride in the drop position for the roadie?

those will make a difference I would think on the position

No and no, on the trainer the only always is that I'm always changing position. I sit straight up, in the drops, in the aero bars, type on the computer .

Dina, I think your youngster did great at taking these photos.  However it really is hard to draw any conclusions from them.  It's important to have all of you in the photo and it's important that it be level and directly from the side, not to mention the bike itself be level (so put books under the front wheel if necessary).

And as just mentioned above, the arms being locked is probably not how you actually ride...so it's important to actually ride...then perhaps freeze yourself for the photo if necessary but holding the riding position.

Since we are focused on your knees the important metric here is your seat position relative to the cranks.  I won't address the handlebars and their position relative to the seat until we have played with the seat.  But I will say that there is a lot of latitude for bar position and deviating from the theoretical ideal in bar placement is often just fine.

As Dirk suggests, is the seat level or did it get tipped up or down in the adjustment?  If it is level, your moving around could simply be due to the newness of the seat placement. 

Now that you've moved back 1/2" I need to ask...can it still go further or is that all the way back?  And in addition...can the seatpost itself be turned around or in some other way allow for the seat to be further back or can you only adjust it via the saddle rails?

You all are fast! My fastest ever was 1:19 but I thought I might pass out after that one!

23 seconds for a 25 swim is fast to a lot of people but with one arm it sounds really incredible.  I have never done a 25 sprint in any of my training session in the pool so I really have no idea what I could do in such a short distance.  This past Monday I did 4x100 on 1:40 (:20 rest) after my MS of 1x1000.  I was able to land my first 100 at 1:18.9 but that allows for my hand to hit the wall and then hit the lap button to stop the interval, so whatever that would actually equate to.  This wasn't an all out sprint either so I MIGHT be able to knock 2 seconds or something off the splits.  If I were to guess I might be able to go about :20 for a 25 yard swim.

It is now occurring to me that you might be talking 25m rather than yards too and that would then become a phenomenal time in my mind.

Oh, Dina...one more important thing.  As you move the seat back, it gets further from the bottom bracket which has the effect of 'raising' the seat.  That could be part of what's having you sliding around looking for your right spot on the seat.

So as the seat goes backwards, to keep the distance to the pedals the same it actually has to be lowered some amount.

Yes and yes. I had PT in the spring and she signed off on me. I made improvements during the PT but not back to where I was before the bike fall. Now I'm driving to the city (2 hours) for  Muscle Activation Therapy to see if that helps. It is too far to make it a regular treatment though. I continue to do my PT exercises and the MAT therapist has also prescribed some isometric exercises for me.

I'll leave the tri bike as is and focus on the road bike for winter. I guess I thought since I had a fit from bike fitter on the road bike that it was as good as it gets. But, thinking back, when I had that fit we were focused on an aggressive position for racing on that bike and adjusting for some sit bone discomfort that I no longer have. Plus that is not the same seat, lots of variables.

Yikes, ok, maybe I'd be better off taking it to the local shop and having a quick fit check.

I had a dog that was part Border Collie, my most favorite dog ever. She was so smart but very territorial. When she was around other dogs she would circle them all up until they were all laying down in a group - it was so funny to watch. We moved from the country to a neighborhood then adopted my son after we had her for about 3 or 4 years.  All of that was not a good combo for her so my in-laws took her back to the country where she was very happy and free to chase squirrels instead of the neighbors dog .

Hope your little guy is able to work through his emotions. Around here my dog is deteriorating rapidly. My kids keep talking about "when Maggie dies we can get another dog". I'm not even sure they will be sad!

Not necessarily. 

I'm 50/50 on whether to ascribe your fit to the changing variables or incompetence at the bike shop.

But that fit was very bad. 

You are absolutely free to move the seat back, then lower it and just find the height that feels right to you.   You'd be amazed at how precise our 'feel' is when we've been habitualized to something for a long time.  And frankly there is a good inch or so of seat adjustment that is all within the acceptable zone for seat height.  If it ends up too high or too low we will tell you from photos.

Ok, I just thought about something.  You have aerobars on your road bike and I never saw you in those bars.  The fit might not have been bad given you were in the aerobars.  So there's another reason to withhold judgement on your bike shop.

One problem with adapting a road bike to tri bars is that you often have a fit that's only appropriate for one of the positions and not the other.  And that is possibly what you have going on with that road bike.  Do you ever plan to use those aerobars on the road bike in the future?  If not then I will carry on advising you without regard to using them.

Along these lines, question for all... how do I know what an appropriate pace is for any given workout?  I have no clue what my T-pace is (maybe I'll test it in the coming weeks!), but as an example, if my T-pace is 2:00/100m, what would be a good pace to go at for 100s and 200s?

Also, I think I would prefer to know what my pool time is for 800m, so at least I'd have some sort of reference for ows since most of my triathlon swims are 800m.  I would think goal 100 and 200 times wouldn't shift too much based on an 800 vs 1000 TT?

That is what my original fit was all about since I did not have my tri bike yet and I wanted to get more serious about racing. Now I rarely take this bike outside much less ride it in a race. I just leave the aerobars on to give my wrists and hands a break from sitting up. I would say it is safe to advise without regard for them.

Whoo Hoo!! Congratulations but I don't envy what is in store for you from your coach!

I'm sure my dog isn't a good running bread (miniature schnauzer), but I used to take him quite a bit for short runs (about 3 miles) when it wasn't too hot outside.  He was never a great walker because he was so distracted, but he was always a very focused runner! 

This can be WO specific, so a definitive answer would be harder to come up with.  However, I think you can work out fairly hard in the water in a similar way you can on the bike.  The caveat to that would be to make sure you have solid WU's and solid form and stroke technique or at least good enough technique to allow a lot of shoulder work.

To provide an example to your specific scenario you could have a hard work out with something like a T Pace -5 seconds.  You might try a 10x100 at 1:55 on 10 seconds rest.  Or if you want something easier yet still provide a little bit of work you could go + 10 seconds on a longer rest.  You can also do shorter distance sets that will improve your VO2 max of 50's on short rests.  That might look something like 50's on :55 with descending rests of from 20 seconds down to 5 seconds.

It might look like this:

4-5x50 on 1:15 (reps @ :55 + 20 for the rest interval)

4-5x50 on 1:10 (reps @ :55 + 15 for the rest interval)

4-5x50 on 1:05 (reps @ :55 + 10 for the rest interval)

1 minute rest (you'll need this before beginning the next interval)

4-5x50 on 1:00 (reps @ :55 + 5 for the rest interval)

The last one will feel as if you're gong to DIE.  If you cannot hold these times simply add 5 seconds or so to the rest interval.  But also remember you shouldn't be able to hold the last 2-3 reps.

Then CD or drill work

Your swim WO's should have elements of both of these training zones that very from WO to WO in order to develop your abilities.  My swims are geared toward some harder short stuff to attempt to drive my VO2 max up.  Longer MS's help develop the endurance needed for our races.

Dirk posted while I was writing, and he has a much better handle on swim workouts so I'm nuking mine.

I wouldn't think your 800 pace would be significantly faster than the 1000 pace, but I'd still use your 1000 pace as the reference.  If your OWS are wetsuit legal, and the water isn't terribly rough (and not the ocean), OWS times are often quite comparable to pool times.

The discussion on swimming has me thinking about doing a TT myself.  I haven't PR'd a 500 TT (6:56) since May 18 of 2011 but my swimming as of late seems to have taken a pretty big turn for the better.  My times have gotten faster in the pool with a seemingly unnoticed change in WO's.  I don't know if it is some kind of peaking thing or my body had adapted all of a sudden to the workload I had been subjecting it to over the training cycle for almost a year.

If I do a TT I won't do a 1000 yd because I'll want to compare to the last 500 I did.  It has been a while but I did a 2000 TT back on April 30 of this year and hit a 30:47.  That was a brutal swim and one that I am not particularly interested in doing anytime soon.

I am planning n a swim tomorrow night and I might check the waters so to speak.

Thanks!  Over the next few weeks I'm just going to get in the pool probably mostly easy stuff to get used to swimming again since I haven't been in the pool since August.  I will keep this in mind for the future though.  Since I also realized as I was looking back at logs I didn't put in a whole lot of pool time this summer, I feel if I were to put in some quality time this winter I could take off a minute or 2 off my 800 ows (I hope anyway.)

Do you ever do longer continuous swims?

I've been reading posts the past few months - everyone doing very well - and I've gotten tons of great training ideas for next year. I've continued to run - but biking out of the question - swimming possible, but need to join a pool again. Divorce issues complicated life in July, but my back is the real thing that slowed me down - first doc said shingles - but now that I finally got an MRI, I have a bulging disc (or 3) and one in particular is causing my pain. Now that I know the culprit - fixing it should be easy - and I expect to be good to go for next year's season.  I do plan to run a mini 11/3 - so the training has continued to some extent. 

eating some ice ream- reading posts - have a good night - thanks for advice and posts form all. 

Paul. 

Holy cow!  You have had quite a time of it lately.  So good to hear from you.  Keep up the fight to find out how to prevent your pain.