MightyMojoMentorGroup -- (Full House!) (Page 162)

GEORGE -

I got your address and will act on it soon.  I will also act on gel thoughts within the day or so!

Over the years I have found HEED to be very "forgiving" on my system, and that might be the safest one to play with this week leading up to GF.  Experiment with a two or three different mixing regimens and see how each sits with you.  For the stronger mixing, maybe just try that when you are doing something small; before a swim might be a good time?  And for the weaker mixing, see if you can even handle the taste, being kind of watered down.  Some people prefer that, and in many drinks I do.  For HEED, however, i like it medium-strong, and even though I do not have a cast-iron stomach, even strong HEED doesn't upset it.

Glug, glug!

Just got a sneak preview of the BT training calendar redesign. Graphically, looks like a big improvement to me. Can't test the functionality yet.

Link here

Had my second A.R.T. session to work on a wonky hip, lower back injury, and tight achilles. It all sounds worse than it is. Dr. beat me up pretty good, gave me some exercises to do, and I'm seeing improvements already.

After getting a little blindsided by the ramp-up in volume and intensity in my training plan last week, I peaked at what lies ahead. Nothing seems unattainable, but there are definitely some sessions in there that are gonna hurt. The following week is even more of the same.

For example, 3x5' VO2 Max intervals on the bike on Wednesday and 4x6' Lactate Threshold run intervals on Thursday.

I'm sure it's a mind over matter thing, but I seem to have trouble getting into those high HR Zones 4-5a, particularly when running on flats and downhills.

Looking forward to blessed taper starting two Sundays from now.

DAVE -

There's that old rule-of-thumb that "what you don't know won't hurt you"........but I always found that, with training plans, it was best to look ahead and know what was comin' at me.  Btter that than being -- as you say -- "blindsided".  But there were times I didn't look ahead even by a day, and woke up, and went to my schedule to see what was up for the day -- and it was a killer.  Didn't even have time to brace myself!  Gulp!

A.R.T. is superb, or at least can be.  I liken it to somewhere between a basic therapeutic massge and either Graston Technique or Rolfing.  just wait until you develop an issue in your psoas or pirifomis, and your A.R.T. person is digging in with one set of fingers while moving your leg in the opposite direction with the other hand, while you try to apply resistance to that movement even though every subtle movement makes the digging fingers penetrate deeper.  Lord have mercy!  the pain feels so good when it stops!!

Those 3x5' VO2 max intervals on the bike will be great for you!  I love workouts with that kind of stuff in them, and I actually can employ it to a decent degree in races.  I'm not sure I ever go 5' at that intensity in a race, but probably not all that far off.  And what I love doing in a race is endless surges, by which I mean push at about VO2 max level until I start to come undone, then back off just until i start to feel normal again, and then repeatrepeatrepeat.  Whe I'm "on", I can do thsoe seemingly endlessly; I just get into a sweet rhythm of dancing on the edge and then backing off only to do it again.  have fun with that workout!

As for the 4x6' LT run intervals............"have fun" is not quite what I'm thinking of.  Um, how about "benefit from the learning opportunity"?

I had my very 1st OWS today.  I have mixed feelings about it.  Some good stuff and some so-so.  Overall not too bad.  I got geared up okay and was pleased by how many other people were getting ready to start or were coming out of the Lake. 

The water was pretty cool considering it is summer - definitely wetsuit legal.  I didn't find it too bad and when I started swimming I felt good in the water.  I didn't think I was excited at all but I found my HR seemed a bit high (just based on my own feeling) and my arms seemed to fatigue quickly so I wound up mixing freestyle and breaststroke.  When I was swimming freestyle I really liked the feeling of moving through the water.  I think I'm going to have to push myself a bit to get back in there and get more comfortable.  My main problem was with sighting.  I could see fine to my right, fair to my left but I was really struggling to keep myself headed straight for the Sicamous.  If I just swam long enough without sighting, I would've done one big loop.  I did try to keep a mountain on my right side at about 2 o'clock but it kept moving.

Near the end I found my ears weren't haapy with the coolness and my head felt cold so I'm going shopping for a swim cap (and ear plugs?) - my wife offered me her bright pink cap she got from IMCanada last year.

My bike computor says the distance from the "Peach" to the "Sicamous" is 900m so I'm claiming a 900m swim but I have no idea how long I took.  I started after 9:00 and finished before 10:00.

GEORGE -

CONGRATS ON YOUR FIRST OWS!!!!  That represents a first huge step as a triathlete, and everything you had qualms about is shared by most of whom have gone before you.  So, without further ado:

1. Heart rate up?  makes ense, as most of the security windows of a pool are missing in open water.  No lane lines.  No walls.  Limited visiblity.  Possiblity of chop.  Sighting points are distant (and don't seem to stay put!)  And others.
2. Sighting, sighting, sighting.  Sigh, sigh, sigh.  ANNE wrote recently about her sighting issues, JEFF has too, I think, and I sure have as well.  For me, I tack to the left....and have yet to figure out why, and moreover, how to correct it.  Well, i can correct it with more frequent sighting, and do use that as much as possible, but in races it isn't always the most efficient way to help get me from start to finish as quickly as possible.  That said, though, many people get really good at it quite quickly, with practice and experience, and hopefully you will be in that fortunate category.  But for now, take comfort that You Are Not Alone!
3. On that note -- wear a swim cap, and brighter is better.  If your wife's is bright pink, WEAR IT!  I do not hesitate to wear a pink cap on my OWS, and the fluorescent ones are better still.  Right now I have run out of pink caps and nedd to buy a couple more; in the meantime i am using fluorrscent orange.
4. Visibilty is enhanced by a bright swim cap, and so too is head warmth.  And many people wear two swims caps for added warmth, and if you choose that route the difference will be obvious first time using two caps.
5. Ear plugs will probably help keep your ears happy.  I have used moldable silicon ones, from Tyr, in the past, and have a pair of highly touted ones From Mack's that I have never used.  I'm guessing that if your head was cold and your ears were bothered, the water temp was mid- to low-60s.  In my experience, that's about the temp when those problems surface.
6. Back to sighting points, you did the right thing in choosing something large and easy to see -- even if "it kept moving".  That'll happen....but in time it will happen to a far lesser degree.  There are a couple of sighting "tricks" that I'll mention if you continue with yor driftin' ways, but for now let's give ait a couple more tries and see if you make progress on your own.
7. 7.  For now, try not to focus on distance.....and maybe not even time.  It also might be useful just to swim until you start feeling your form falling apart, and then calling it a session completed.  It takes time to get a good stroke going in open water, but in this came time is well-spent sessions, as opposed to thrashing away for another 45 minutes, say, after your form started to go south on you.
8. On that note, I'm not surprised that your arms started to fatigue so early on in the swim.  Heck, mine do at the start of every OWS season, and I thrive on OWS.  I do about 50-60 OWS each year, and I am completely comfortable....but for some reason my arms aren't quite up to the task after a winter of pool swimming -- another conundrum that i can't fully explain.

And that's it for now, but again -- congrats on getting your first OWS behind you.  Halleloo!

Gel thoughts tomorrow!!

By special request:

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I can't wait to see Steve's guidance on this one...

And I'll come clean / admit to being the "requestor" / it'll make sense if you find the other thread....

Looks like I picked a good time for my renaissance

Been quite inactive lately unfortunately, both on the forum and practice-wise. Life caught up with me and I'm not so good with planning things sometimes! (understatement ) I did do my first tri last weekend however! As with every tri I guess it's a tale of 3 parts (or 5?) for me with a "relaxed swim", a hard bike, and a survivng run (maybe this is normal too?). I wrote a concise race report on it here if anyone is interested:

 http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=448647

I am gonna try my best to get up to speed with what everyone in the group is up to, I hope I can once again learn from all of you guys out there. 

Steve sorry to read about your MRI and your hip. It seems like the shot does work as you say, and with surgery likely at least 2 years away and then a 1 year recouperation. Yikes. Good luck to you on your eventual choice.

Nice race for someone who admits to being "under trained" Took me a minute to make the metric/English conversions but both the bike and run splits looked strong to me. I am impressed with a non wetsuit swim in 68 degree water, but I am also impressed racing in an event with what appears to be an unpronounceable name

Haha, they were advertising the water to be 68 degrees "warm", not 68 degrees "cold". But to me that sounded reasonable, isnt that around room temperature? For me there was no choice as I don't yet have a wetsuit and had a tough time borrowing one from the local club due to my height. There were many more without suits though and I would probably have wasted a lot of time getting a suit off without having done that at least a half dozen times  

I will say that I did a short aquathlon (is that what a swim-run is called?) a month ago and it was about 62 degrees. That definitely put a shock to my system :P But luckily it was only a 300m swim.

Sorry about the metric data. For a sec there I thought that the site would convert them to whichever user accessed the data and convert it according to their preferences, but I guess it doesn't work that way.

No worries, as long as we don't go into weights or temperature I can multiply by .62

Nice race!

Hmmmm....

Where did she come from?!?  I guess from what Curt wrote, he requested it from some other thread, presumably from the main forum?  Surprise, surprise!

CURT -

No real guidance for her, other than that if she doesn't come up a size in her cycling bottoms, she'll eventually lose all circulation to her feet.  And also, ditch the mountain bike cuz having one's bike number on the front of the bike is just plain dorky.  (Even if one is actually MTB....it's just plain dorky!)

THOMAS -

Just thinking about you a couple of days ago, swimming mostly mindlessly and trying to construct a mental list of those gone-but-not-forgotten from this group.  You were on the list, clearly not forgotten --- and now you're not gone, either.  Halleloo!

Halleloo, too, on completing your first tri, and I say you did great.  The bike and run were especially splendid, fabulous paces for both of them.  And even though the swim wasn't what you wanted, perhaps, you realize your currnet limitations.  Heavy-duty specific training would be one of them, and then there was the temp and no wetsuit.  You're right, though, that struggling to get out of it would've cost you far amore time than you would've saved by wearing one, and in the grand scheme of things, 68 is warmish enough to not cause big problems --- just so long as the air temp isn't significantly lower.

The 62 you had in the aquathlon would've been tough, but thank goodness it was a short 62 degrees!  I might've been able to handle 62 for 300m, but I sure wouldn't've been happy about it.

I enjoyed your comment about sighting well due to combining water-polo freestyle and breaststroke along with regular freestyle.  Now there's a workable strategy for the sighting-impaired!  I don't do water-polo-style per se, but I am pretty good at sighting off the top of my goggles when I breathe on every fourth stroke, choosing the off-breateh stroke to peer forwards.  When I do that, my leftward drift becomes less pronounced...........but too often in races I get agitated enough to feel I need to breathe every second stroke.  But when I use it, it works well.

I also liked your comment about the possibility of giving the drafting guy a piece of your mind --- if you could only talk.  But that's a sign of running hard off the bike, not being able to formulate spoken words, and it makes sense given the 4:22/km pace.  And it's too bad a marshall wasn't there to catch him drafting; where are they when you need 'em?

Great to have you back, and hope you stick around for a while!

THOMAS again -

Thanks for thr hip wishes.  I won't do surgery until I get significantly more debilitated than I am at presnet -- which isn't much at all.  It affects how long I can comfortably sit in a car without needing a wee walkabout, or a bit of "proppage" under me to realign my pelvis and thus take pressure off the torn part of the labrum (I guess that's what the proppage accomplishes), and it also affects how long I can happily cycle.  I begrudge not doing any more long rides, I suppose, but how I fare now is far more tolerable than having surgery and undergoing a lonnnnnnnnggggggg recuperation.  So surgery is a no for now.

But as things change...................................although there is a chance they will change for the better!

George -

About them gels......

I put potential causes of Gel Aversion into two categories: taste and texture.  I suspect that for most people who "suffer" from only one of those, it is possible to move forward and find something that is palatable enough to be beneficial; I'm not quite so sure about double-sufferers, however.......and hope you're not in that category!

I can be fussy about both, but work around various combinations and compromises to be able to find some gel or other to eat at practically any time.  It took me a while to get to that point, however, and I'm always open to the "perfect" gel.  (Years ago I found it in Lava Gel, but they sadly went under for a few years before resurfacing.  Since then, however, their flavors and textures have changed, and they have become difficult to find anywhere.)

In general, i like thin gels and subtle flavors; Lava had both of those working for them to perfection.  Now, however, there is not one company that pulls off that feat (Carb-Boom! came close a c few years ago, but then they too reorganized and returned not satisfactorily for my picayune taste buds!)

Your preferences might be different, but the bottom line here is to experiment across the board until you find 2-4 flavors/textures that work for you.  For the flavor part, choose a few key flavors for you and then buy that flavor from however many companies you can find that make it.  The big universal ones are chocolate and vanilla, and most companies have strawberry either by itself or combined with something like kiwi.  Most companies now have a coffee-ish or espresso-type flavor, if that interests you, and the potential benefit there is that sometimes these ones are not as clear-cut sweet as the "standard" flavors.

If you experiment around, you'll be surprised to find how variable flavor can be; I find this especially true with vanilla (but I like to consider myself a connoisseur of vanilla).  I say that just to advise you not to give up on a particular flavor if your first or second experience with it is less than good.  Try, try, again!

As for texture, right now PowerGel has the loosest consistency, and that is good enough for me.  AccelGel is also quite loose, but it has less carbs* than other gels, so that's a downside.  Hammer Gel and Carb-Boom! are somewhere in the middle, and the thicker gels are from Clif and Gu.  (But Gu Roctane is thinner than regular Gu -- although about twice as expensive.)  That'll give you some rough idea of where to start a search, if texture might be a factor for you.

As for the asterisk above, AccelGel is unique in following a 4:1 carbohydrate:protein ratio.  So, in their formulations, they reduce the amount of carbs to accommodate the addition of protein; I think most of their gels are 16g carbs, as opposed to 23-27g in other companies' gels.  There's a lot of debate about that 4:1 ratio, but almost everyone agrees that once exercise exceeds about three hours, some protein is beneficial so that the body does not cannibalize itself in order to utilize it.  Somewhat similarly, Gu Roctane has a solid amino acid profile, thus helping with bringing in a protein source for use during long workouts or races.

I don't know how much all of the above helps you; I hope it does, in some way or another!  The only other bits I can add are weird ones, such as: PowerGel's "green apple" is uniquely good; when AccelGel restructured several years ago, they came back as a subdivision (I think) of Cadbury, so their chocolate gel tastes like a melted Cadbury chocolate bar -- YUMMILICIOUS!!!!!  (FWIW, their vanilla is, to my taste buds, the "truest" to real vanilla.); some "tropical" or "island" flavors are pretty fine, especially if you like pineapple.

Happy hunting!

Hello, happy 4th. I skipped the 5k today in deference to my slow to heal ankle, instead I did a 5 hour ride-85.5 miles. About 40 miles into it I rescued an American flag someone had lost on a rural shoulder East of a little town called Howe. I stuffed it in my jersey and carried it an additional 45 miles home.

http://app.strava.com/rides/12496096

GEORGE again -

And alwaysalwaysalways chase a gel with water immediately -- if not sooner.  That makes them sooooo much more palatable!

JEFF -

Good choice!  Not only the sparing of the ankle, but you got a long ride under your belt and a wayward flag under your shirt.  Not a bad day's work!

I did a 48km ride with minimal complaining from the hip, but it was hot and windy and I was happy to have it end.  i'm now setting off on a brief run: minimum 5km, maximum 8km.  No pressure, really, to do anything, so I'll just do what I do and see how it's done when it's done.  Ah, irresponsible bliss!

Nice touch on the flag

JEFFTX - 85-mile ride is your backup plan! Sick man. I think you may have driven the women off with your analysis of warm-weather cycling clothing.

THOMAS - Nice job on your first tri. Really solid bike and run legs and that T2 was quick. Sounds like a nice race for your first one.

STEVE - Re: your comment a little while back on training in the clothes you race in. I don't at all disagree, but I'm going to file this one under the stuff I wish I would have known when I first started in this sport.

I went out and got a bunch of swim-specific stuff (jammers), then a bunch of cycling-specific stuff (road bike, non-ANT+ Strada Double Wireless bike computer, bike shorts, bibs, jersey, gloves), than a bunch of run-specific stuff (shorts, shirts). When it came to actually compete in a triathlon, I discovered I didn't have the right gear to perform at my best. At last year's Pittsburgh tri, I was one of those people that make me cringe by wasting precious time trying to put a shirt on a wet body in T1.

So I filled in a little with a one-piece tri-suit, clip-on aero bars, wet suit, and the Garmin with ANT+ speed and cadence sensors. I do rotate the trisuit into my training, but the real determining factor is what happens to be clean that day.

If I had it to do all over, I'd probably have a couple of nice two-piece tri suits and, maybe a tri bike. But c'est la vie.

MOJOs - halfway through the first of two tough weeks of training. Made it through Saturday's swim with 6x100 yd time trial and run-bike-run brick - Sunday's 10-miler - Tuesday's 6x30" intervals at 5K pace - Wednesday's 3x5' VO2 Max bike. I think I'm flirting with overtraining: I felt like I was working pretty hard on the bike yesterday and could barely get my HR into Zone 2. We'll see how these 4x6' LT run intervals go tonight.

Hi to Everyone from Edmonton.     Ended up pushing through and getting in a couple of days early and glad we did.   Took a full day to get organized and locate the grocery stores I wanted, check out the race site and bike route - YIKES - WHY do we always end up with the tougher courses.   

Turns out that we have been getting some decent training in, especially staying over 2 nights in Bemidji.   Today we are doing a bit of swim, bike, walking the 5km run course followed by a 3km run, plus some easy strengthening, stretching etc. at the Millenium Place which is 5 minutes from our hotel.  

I love our suite - full kitchen, with full size fridge, dishwasher, 'stove' etc.  Laundry facilities, we we definitely needed.   

Edmonton is pretty cool - seems to be thriving.    The bike course is a rather bumpy road and the first hill which IS about 11% with a 180 degree switchback at the top has construction on it from the top of the hill to Groat (STEVE, you will probably know where this is).   The 1.5km climb isn't outrageous - seems to be about 4-5% and winding.   

The swim looks like a little POND.    Saw they had a big hose hooked up to a fire hydrant going into it.   Were they trying to put more water into it???    There is no swimming in the lake but we can do a swim on Saturday for a couple of hours.   They will definitely have to put us in little waves because there is no way you could get 100 people swimming in that at one time.  Looks like we have a really long run to transition - maybe 300 meters?   Will know more on Sat with race packet pick up. 

The weather here was COLD the last 2 days - 13-14 degrees, rainy with 40km/hr winds.   Getting warm now and Sunday will be hot and humid again.    Our race starts at 9:45 which is the latest I have ever started a race.   

Quickly skimmed all the posts from the last several days and as usual, can see lots going on.   Everyone seems to be doing GREAT.    Take care, and talk to you soon,

Anne