SBR Utopia - OPEN (Page 166)

phhhhhbbbt. I am following in .Fred's footsteps and ditching power: it is soooooooo last year.

Instead I just installed a set of strain gauges into the ends of my aerobars to create a pair rudimentary dynamometers and I am training strictly by left/right grip strength for the rest of the season. Right now I am trying to decide what secondary metric makes the most sense to bracket it against: barometric pressure or urine salinity? Any of you docs (or soon to be) have a line on a good digital refractometer that is compact enough to fit on a bike? In addition to being small in size it should also cost less than $8500.00 as my preliminary market research shows that is the upper limit that most triathletes are willing to pay for such an advanced training device.

Rusty, Rusty, Rusty. I think you need to take up an extra hobby.

Good read. The article states that finding "ideal" race weight is a process of trial and error and you will know when you're there by "feel" during training (my summary). I'd be interested in hearing from some of you on how you know when you're at race weight vs when you've gotten too lean. 

Very interesting discussion on weight yesterday!

For me personally, this is the first year I've really paid much attention to my weight.  I decided (completely arbitrarily) that I wanted to try racing at 160 lbs this year which is down 5 from last season.  I'm pretty much at that now and I see no reason to try to go any lower based on how I look and feel.  That said, no one has asked me if I am sick yet so I'm sure I *could* go lower if I decided to.  

A bit of a side note - I was in Kona for Ironman week twice and the overwhelming majority of the people racing were really, really skinny.  To the point where it was difficult to get a good stamp on the arms of some of the smaller women for body marking without squeezing and/or flattening their upper arms a bit.

SBR Utopians!!!

I do plan to have this group continue on as is, but I do not plan to submit the actual "application" to Ron until the end of the sign up process.  It seems that this group is quite popular among lurkers, which is fine, but I want to give the other mentors a chance to have their groups fill up who can provide more personalized attention.

I just don't want a newbie signing up for this group and getting completely lost in Rusty's endless power discussions when they could have signed up for a more appropriate group.  If that newbie still wants to join our discussion afterwards...the door is always open.

Hope that makes sense and is okay with everyone.

So there has always been a focus on weight with me, but not necessarily in a healthy sense.  OK, this was a bit more of a ramble than a discussion of the question, but really just to say I have no frame of reference yet for what is a healthy weight.  I bought Racing Weight by Fitzgerald, but haven't yet really read it.  I also have to admit to being terrified of goig "back there," which I very easily could do if left to my own (de)vices. 

Great read...thanks for posting. I do have some thoughts on this topic because I have been experimenting a bit over the past couple of years to find a good weight for me.

When I got into Triathlon, I was the skinny runner type. I'd been running since age 8 and was naturally thin, even after each of my pregnancies, I went right back to skinny. My body changed a lot when I added swimming and cycling to the mix. I finally got muscles. I also found that I gain muscle pretty quick and stayed very lean. I lost a lot of weight, and muscle when training for IM and got down to that weight where your non-athlete friends start to worry about you. I learned a lot during that time, and Chris touches on it in this article....it's not healthy to stay at that low weight for too long. For females, there's hormonal issues, risk of stress fractures etc. I also caught every cold that was going around and had trouble sleeping. Once I put on some weight, everything regulated but I still had this nagging idea that I needed to get back down to that "racing weight" again. I'd never paid much attention to my weight at any point in my life but I suddenly was aware of it. I was of the thought that leaner=faster. However, along came the bike crash, knee surgery and a long rehab. I put on some more weight and when I started up again, I was mostly swimming and cycling, which for me meant adding muscle mass. I had to let go of the idea that skinny means fast. I have spent the past year or so on my bike. My body has changed and that took some getting used to. I have bigger quads than most guys I know! 

I started to think of nutrition/training/body composition in terms of health rather than a number on the scale. By health I mean sleeping well, feeling energized, avoiding illness, having my hormones in balance, being able to meet my training goals, racing well. I'm at a much higher weight than I used to be but it's not affecting my performance. I have a few races coming up and I will be interested to see if the extra weight hinders me too much. I do know that the measures I would have to go to in order to lose the weight quickly (feeling hungry, weak, getting sick) are not worth it.

phhhhhbbbt. I am following in .Fred's footsteps and ditching power: it is soooooooo last year.

Instead I just installed a set of strain gauges into the ends of my aerobars to create a pair rudimentary dynamometers and I am training strictly by left/right grip strength for the rest of the season. Right now I am trying to decide what secondary metric makes the most sense to bracket it against: barometric pressure or urine salinity? Any of you docs (or soon to be) have a line on a good digital refractometer that is compact enough to fit on a bike? In addition to being small in size it should also cost less than $8500.00 as my preliminary market research shows that is the upper limit that most triathletes are willing to pay for such an advanced training device.