Slornow and Wannabefaster's Winter Mentor Group-CLOSED (Page 16)

Good job Mary! Take it one day/week at a time and you will be surprised how quickly the weeks fly by. Can't wait to follow your progress. Have a good weekend.

Randy

Good morning and happy weekend. Heading to the pool for a workout then a short run later. Bike workout tomorrow. Lets get those workouts done folks! Keep taking those steps towards meeting your goals.

Randy

Bike Ride and swim for me today and tomorrow ... its going to be a busy weekend .... happy working out for all of you!

Good swim this morning. Main set was 4X500. Decided to really push it for the first one and came in at 7:26. WooHoo! Fastest 500 ever and first time to break 7:30. One of my long term goals is to do 1000scy in under 15min. Not there yet but may be a possibility.  

Randy

A pretty epic ride with Nate today, and I'm not of those of guys who uses that word all the time. I found it on Strava, and it looked good, 20ish miles with some serious elevation gain in the middle. Well, we started by getting lost...quite a bit. I had a cue sheet taped to my aerobars, but it was wrong in some places, and I couldn't keep the mileage straight since we were having to find the route again and again. Then, I got a flat, which seemed appropriate the way things were going. I had equipment, but I'd never actually used my C02 before, so this was my chance to try. In my head, I kept thinking of Chrissie Wellington's C02 running out in Kona '08, but, with a little help from a quick YouTube video on my iPhone (which saved the day over and over again) it was pretty a pretty seamless fix.

Then we hit the elevation, after getting turned around a few more times. For the ride, it was 2,000 feet gained, but I think 90% was in the span of about 3 miles, which burned and burned. Nate can tell you, it was rough. The downhill was pretty spectacular, if scary; we hit about 43 mph, which made me a little nervous, but was also pretty exhilarating. 

We got back with a total of around 24 miles, by my log. My workout called for a Z2 workout, which happened somewhere in there  Overall, a really good day.

Randy good work on the 500.  Doing 1000 under 15 minutes will come sooner than you think.

Jamie I have done that myself.  Had a ride in mind that ended up longer than I intended due to navigational errors.  As long as no harm done, I just log the extra miles and call it a day.  All the better if you really enjoyed it.

I went on a new ride today.  Excluding my warm up and cool down it was 19.1 miles.  What made it interesting is it included 14 of the 16 miles I will be doing at my sprint in April.  It was nice to get a feel for the route, where the hills are etc.  Great scenery.  I did the route in 1:06:25. 

Now my first goal on this route is to get rid of the 6 1/2 minutes.  That's just about 20 seconds per mile I need to shave off.  Gotta have something to shoot for.

Everybody enjoy your weekend.

Stuart, what do you do for warm-ups? I never consciously warm up for a workout, I just walk out the front door and start.

Jamie/Nate-sounds like a killer ride with some serious elevation gain. Good job

Stuart-you will have no problem meeting your goal of going under an hour. Continue with the consistent training and that coupled with race day adrenaline will have you way under an hour.

Thirty minute run done. First time I've run that long in 7-8 weeks. Trying to be smart in building the run back up but its frustrating.

Randy 

Hospital is full to capacity.  Busy long day at work.  Fortunately I always keep a gym bag in the ready in my car so I stopped at the gym before going home.  I knew if I went home first I would find multiple reasons why I should take a nap.  So instead I accomplished a 10 mile run and feel great!

Moral of the story:  Always keep extra stuff in the car or at work in case you suddenly have the urge, or extra time to get in a quick workout.  I cannot count how many times this has happened.  Jim

I am finally managing to fit my day around my exercise plan. I think I was most pleased by the fact I managed to do 5 miles on the indoor bike while my wife was putting our neice to sleep.

Jim: great lesson on keeping the bag at the ready. I find that I' much more likely to get out the door and do what I need to when I'm ready to go. It's amazing how much work doing laundry can be when it's 40 degrees outside.

Paul/Saint: great job getting the workout in! Are you logging your workouts in some way? If you're not, its really easy to do it here on BT, and I'd recommend it for a couple reasons: 1) It's really cool to look back and see what you accomplished. I'm looking forward to comparing this February's workouts to last February when I started. 2) If you need any help/advice from anyone on here, it's a lot easier if we can look a your logs and see what you're doing. Keep up the good work!

Randy: I hope the calf come back strong; a training injury is my #1 concern this year! It's tough when the mind is willing, but the body needs a little time off.

When I ride I always have a much better one when I get the legs warmed up first.  I have a route around the neighborhood that is just over a mile.  I always go once around, twice if the legs are feeling heavy.

I start off slow and then drop the gears down low, spinning the legs really fast.  When I get back to the house I begin the ride of the day.  Most people do a warm up for a swim or run but I know a lot of cyclists that don't so it for a ride.  I figure my workout distance should not be wasted but riding a mile or two at a warm up pace given I have specific routes I plan to ride. 

I guess it just works for me so I do it.

Last one to post my workout for the day... again 

I had a PHENOMENAL run this evening -- probably the best I've felt since starting the whole triathlon journey back in May.  It was my long run for the week -- 70 minutes / 12km (a new PR for me) and more importantly, it felt so easy.  Felt like I had wings on my feet -- breathing was easy throughout -- I finished the 70 minutes and probably could have continued for another 20 at least.  Wow.

I have to give credit where credit is due -- I started upping my runs to 4x a week (last week and this week) -- based on some cockamamie helpful suggestions provided here -- not sure if this already paying dividends, but it's certainly not hurting...

Happy weekend all!
Scott. 

Scott-great job! The increase in sessions and volume will help you build a solid run base heading into the season. Glad the PR felt easy.

One thing I would warn everyone about, as I am guilty of it myself, is trying to always best your PR in a training run. Certainly, when things feel easy like they did for Scott yesterday its fine to push and see what you have in the tank. Love those rare days when everything feels easy. In general though keep your easy runs easy. Too much intensity on the run, too often, will lead to injury. There is a time for running fast but as has often been said: "Run often, mostly easy" (credit to Jamie's blog). Its different with biking and swimming as they are not nearly as hard on your body in terms of impact. I'm not saying biking and swimming workouts should always be hard. Its just that your body takes longer to recover from running than it does biking and swimming.

Well, headed to the garage for an interval session on the bike.

Randy 

Just got done with my long run this morning, and it felt good. To go with what Randy was saying about keeping easy runs easy, I've learned the best way for me to do this is by either not looking at my watch, which gives me my pacing, or by keeping the screen on just my total time, since my training plan goes by time, as opposed to distance. Whenever I see my pace, no matter what the number is, I always feel like I can go faster. 10'/mile: you can go faster than that, get it under 9'! 8:30/mile: lets get it under 8! I work in speed intervals on some runs, but for the most part, if it feels solid (like I can maintain my pace and form for awhile) and I can glance and see I'm in/near Zone 2 in my heart rate, then I'm good. 

Yeah, that sounds like me when I'm doing outdoor runs!  Last night was on the treadmill which -- if nothing else -- keeps a very disciplined pace.  If you look at my Garmin output for outdoor runs, I'm a lot more erratic.   Bursts of speed when a good song comes on the iPod, things like that.  

Scott.

Nate-how did you feel on the new bike during your ride with Jamie yesterday? Feeling better in aero?

Bike workout done. Work shirts ironed (I'm real picky about how my shirts look so I iron them myself...hate ironing!) A couple more things to get done. Looking forward to watching my long suffering Redskins in the playoff this afternoon. Then tonight I will watch some UNC basketball. Grew up a big Redskins and Carolina basketball fan.

Got my training schedule for the upcoming week and I have almost 14,000 swim yards scheduled among 4 workouts. Warned my coach a few weeks back that his efforts to make me a "real swimmer" would be useless....apparently he took that as a challenge.

Randy

V Impressed.

I think what is striking me as a newbie/wannabe triathlete is everyone's strong desire to work through their personal training plans with no let up.