Wurkit_Gurl's Group - CLOSED (sssh...we're training) (Page 16)

Good morning, all No biking last night after all - it actually wasn't on my schedule! And we had a team BBQ thing, so that was fun. It was a disgusting, rainy, gloomy day yesterday. Today, the sun is actually out - kinda. 40 minute easy run on tap for me. Hope some of you get a pink square today

I can get my swim cap on when my hair is dry, because I'm used to it, but I know when you're first starting out, it's a little easier to wet it first, then put the cap on. You can do whichever is easiest I put my  hair in a ponytail before it goes in the swim cap, so all I have to do is get the cap over my head and then stuff the ponytail up into the cap.

Hmm...side stitches can be any number of things. Could be because you didn't drink enough during the day, could be because you drank too much too close to the run. Same with food - eating too close to the run, or being too hungry before you run. It could be what you're eating and drinking while training. Could be a breathing thing - ie, you started breathing too shallow-ly (I don't think that's a word, but you know what I mean!) - sometimes focusing on deep breaths makes them go away if I get them. I rarely get them, and that's usually the cause for me, it seems. But you said you know you get them when you push hard (and that usually screws up your breathing), so it might not be that. I guess the thing to do is think back to the times it happened and what, if anything was different between those times and your usual times. Also, if you're running sorta slouched over, that kinda bunches everything up - it's not a very scientific answer, but it can be a cause - it compresses your diaphragm, which is what controls your breathing.

Not the best answer, I apologize - but side stitches are kinda tricky to diagnose.

Yes, that's fine. Your training plan has a built-in "taper", which is normal. The idea behind a taper is that volume and intensity drop, in order to let you recover and have "fresh" legs for the race, but to still keep you moving and loose, so your body isn't like "wait, what?" on race day, after a week of doing nothing at all. Usually, I take the day before the race off completely. Sometimes the day before that too - or just do an easy swim on one of those days, like jumping in the lake at the race site, if it's an OWS, since I dont' get much OWS practice around here.

It does seem a bit light for a taper, but since I don't know what the rest of the plan looked like, I'm not sure. Did you grab it from BT? Which one did you use?

Yeah, you could do 30 minutes EASY on the bike, maybe 20 minutes easy on the run and the swim. 15 minutes on the bike doesn't seem worth it, esp. since that's where you spend the most time in the race.

Hi Amy - sorry that work has sucked! Happy Thursday

Yes, that was a good point made, that I didn't think about, at least not directly - when you run, you want to think about running "forward", not "up and down" - ie, your head should not be bobbing up and down. So all of that bouncing jiggles your internal organs around.

Hey, sorry I've been kinda MIA today - was sorta busy and then went to lunch with the boys my age - love them (all taken, though).

Shifting takes some practice. Do you have a triple crank (ie, 3 rings in the front)? If so, your granny gear, the smallest one, can be used for in conjunction with shifting to a bigger ring in the back, for very long climbs where you need to spin - to go up a reasonable hill, you want to shift down just enough that you can still spin your legs as fast as you were before you started the climb. For shorter hills you can attack, you don't want to shift down TOO far, and probably don't want to use your granny gear, because you need the resistance to pedal and attack. WHen you approach the hill, you want to start shifting down, so you're not trying to shift from something really tough while you're climbing the hill.

To descend a hill, push the biggest gear you can, really. Like climbing, make sure you shift before you descend, not while you're descending. If in either scenario, you feel like you need to add/subtract more resistance, you can, but you should already be part of the way there before the climb/descent starts.

In general, I stay in the middle ring on flats with a fairly small ring in the back - so I'm pedaling comfortably without mashing (pedaling too slowly and having to use your quads to push down), but I'm not slowing down. If it's a slight descent, I may shift into the big ring, and back off one or two on the cassette (back ring group).

Play around with it as much as you can, on a flat stretch, to see what different combinations feel like - the one thing you DON"T want to do is be in your biggest ring in the front and biggest ring in the back, or smallest and smallest - that's call cross-chaining, and you can drop your chain that way - with a triple there's more space between the biggest/biggest and smallest/smallest, so it's easier for this to happen accidentally. And in general, if you feel like your legs are spinning out of control, you need more resistance, so you need to shift appropriately to even that out.

Morning all It's Friday, so I suspect the thread will be pretty quiet. My office is usually DEAD on Fridays, so I have even more time to hang around here (I'm just an Office Manager, made a victim, back in January, of the layoffs sweeping the country, so this is where I am right now since I need money and health insurance).