TexasMPGal/Smilford/Mattb1's "Faster and Stronger in 2010" Crew (CLOSED) (Page 17)

Short sprint race this weekend (that is if my daughter decides to hold off on having her 1st born).  Then back to regular training.

I have a Valentine's Day weekend 14K on the 13th. Besides that, training for my first half mary and trying to get over injuries.

Yeah, same here. But i don't want to do one. Bleh.

I think either event would be good! Congrats to your family on the soon to arrive addition!

The worst part of the first trip I ever took with my wife before we were married was manning the "main crank" on the Canadian equivalent of Dennis Connor's Stars and Stripes boat while drinking El Presidente beer (hey, the crew challenged us all to drink when we weren't tacking into the wind and I never turn down a challenge!).  By the third leg of our race, the bending over, repeated chugging of beers before 10 AM and physical movement of grinding had me ready to blow but somehow I held it all in.

We won, so it was worth it but I'm not sure I'd ever want to do something like that again.

Hrm...now that I think about it, I ended up buying her engagement ring just after that in St. Martin...I think she took advantage of me in my weakened state!

I think I live on a roller coaster at work!! WOWZERS!! But so far FEB isn't too bad, and January ended on a good note as the Marathon Relay I ran with 3 of my friends resulted in a 1st Place win for us!! So that made me happy.  This month has me doing the Austin 1/2 marathon on 14 Feb and I'm trying to figure out March should have--I'm thinking another 1/2 Marathon, we'll see!! 

I need to start liking swimming again, so hopefully that happens this month. And my house goes on the market. And I hopefully make progress on kicking some duds out of the Army so your tax dollars no longer go into their pockets.

Question for you runners... I have my first half marathon coming up Feb. 27th, and I've been working on some nutrition stuff on my long runs, but would like to know what works for you.  I will obviously have some pre-race nutrition, probably my regularbreakfat of a bowl of oatmeal, a banana and some coffee, and then a GU about 15 minutes before the race starts.  I don't want to have to carry any bottles, so I will rely on the fluid points and will probably just do water, I'm not sure how Gatorade would affect my tummy.  I'm hoping I just have to carry some Shot Blox and eat them every 30-45 mins?  What do you think?

I never take anything other than gatorade. Given I've never ran longer than 1hour and 45minutes. Maybe a 1:50 run somewhere in there. I do eat larger breakfests than most.

For halfs I may take a couple sips of gatorade and that's it.

Edited by smilford 2010-02-03 10:04 AM

Good morning team,

After a grumpy weekend I am back at it.  It was just too busy for my liking and I think i had a minor bug. it's all gone now and I am fine.  I was going over the next few months and I finish the winter maintenance program the first week of March and the 20-week HIM program doesn't start until the last week of April.  So, i have some thinking to do about the time in between.  I have a 30k run race March 29th and a 10k run on April 26.  Hmmmm, i'll report back on what I am thinking about doing to fill the gap.

Had a good swim this morning. A great sweaty treadmill tempo run last night ... all is well. Just tired. but that's normal. Especially when work is as busy as it is. 

Speaking of work i should get back to it.

If you are concerned about stomach upset with Gatorade, dump half of the cup out and mix in water.  I have LOADS of issues with gatorade and prefer other sports drinks.  That being said, I can make do with Gatorade if I cut it with water.  Hopefully you've already experimented with the Shot Blox and GU.  For some reason Shot Blox always make me choke.

Janet

Good Morning!

Just wanted to fill everyone in on my swimming lesson yesterday.  I was right, the instructor is very young, and admitted right off that she had never worked with an adult before.  ( I debated on telling her that I wasn't very adult most of the time, but I wasn't sure whether she would laugh at my attempt at humor )  Anyway she watched my stroke and immediately zeroed in on what I feel are my major weaknesses.  Best of all she made suggestions on how to fix them and I think by the end of my 1/2 hour lesson I had made some progress.  I'm sure it will be a long haul to get my form to where I want to be, but at least I'm now on the road to change.    Although I know there are better, more experienced coaches out there, I am comfortable with this young woman and think there is much I can learn from her.

Janet

PS - Yesterday I rode my trainer in the AM, had my swim lesson at lunch and ran after work.  Does that count as some sort of triathlon? 

Swim, bike, run all in one day is DEFINITELY a tri!!  Love those 3-a-days when I can fit them in! You GO Janet!!

Thanks for the run nutrition tips everyone!  I'll keep trying stuff on my long run, and I think I'll be just fine on race day!

Swim today is done!  (With Brittany, LOVE that I get to swim with our mentor, she is FAB!!).  5 mile run on tap for after work, but I have errands to run first, so it may get pushed back till tomorrow afternoon.

Haha! great work - you'd just have the longest transitions ever!

Good morning!

Had a nice short swim this morning.  Will do some hill running tonight.  My poor fiance is sick so i am pulling the load at home but that's okay. He needs to get better.  Not too much else to report over here.  Feeling good and hoping not to get sick! (fingers crossed!)

Janet - that's great about the swim lessons! i took a whole bunch of them from the city and my instructors were always high-school age (or first year university).  For a newb like me it really built my confidence  so i am glad you're getting good stuff out of it!

Yea, work on those transitions!


Anyone have any questions about anything? I'm in a good answering mood!

What's your favorite way to cook weenies?

Smilford:

Hopefully you are still in the mood to answer questions.  If not, perhaps someone else can chime in.

I have in my hand my registration for an indoor Tri next month.  I've debated and debated about doing this event and finally decided that I should just go for it and see how it goes.  You see, I have a real fear of sticking out in a crowd, not knowing how to do something, getting confused, etc, etc.  So you can imagine if this is how I feel about an event like an indoor tri at a YMCA you can imagine how much fear I must be carrying around for a real event that would involve things like a bike, bike shoes, wet suit and more!   Of course, the other side of me loves challenges, loves pushing myself harder, and most importantly loves the feeling of conquering something.

OK, now that you know what makes me tick here are the questions:

1) Wetsuit (buy or rent).  Is it creepy to wear a rented one.  Do they clean them? Do they smell like BO or stinky water or something?  Are there any cheap ($150-200 range) suits out there?

2) Bike.  I really like my bike.  Its a road bike but I think it will serve me well for several more years.  I got it professionally fit and it works for me.  I plan on doing a few small sprint tris this summer and I'm fairly confident that my bike will get me through the bike portion as is, without aero bars, without new wheels, etc.  Am I right?   Or should this be revisited?

Janet

I'm not smilford but I did play one on TV.  It was a Lifetime movie of the week.  

I can answer these because I just had them last year - I hope I'm not stealing anyone's thunder!

1.  I wore a rented wetsuit last year from wetsuitrental.com and it was absolutely fine.  The inside appeared clean and definitely didn't smell at all (though on the advice of my last mentor group, I did "christen" the inside during my first wearing).  The suit fit just fine, was in good repair, and worked well for my first race.  I believe the cost was around $40 and I took it for an extra 2 weeks for an extra $20 so that I could use it for an open water clinic.  Since I'm bigger, I feared I would have problems but I sent them my measurements and the suit fit just fine.

At the end of the season, I bought a new fullsleeve wetsuit from Xterra.  They often run sales and you can get a fullsleeve for $150 (rarely) - $170 (from time to time) and a sleeveless for $99 (often).  There are several threads in the gear forum that talk about this very issue with some other possibilities but the consensus seems to be to just wait for an Xterra sale by signing up for their mailing list or waiting for someone here to post an alert about a sale.

2.  I rode an LL Bean mountain bike from the mid 1990's last year in all 3 of my sprint races.  While I did stick out a bit, I can definitely say I wasn't the only one not riding a road bike of some kind.  The fact that you are on a road bike will mean that you are already blending in pretty well and it should serve you fine for sprint races.  If you decide to do something longer, they other kind folks in our group will have to let you know about aero bars and such.

As an aside, I checked bikes (sort of like a coat check for bikes) last year at the Nautica NY Tri expo and was shocked that someone was riding a beach cruiser and two other people were riding heavy mountain bikes.  I guess there are always a couple of people doing their own things!

I hope this helps, and, like I said, I hope I didn't step on any toes.

shawn

You always want to get your wetsuit wet before an event. If that means taking a shower in it a few days before the event.. then so be it. Rentals may have a few tears in it, but nothing major, or they most likely will take the suit out of rotation. I also picked up a Xterra suit off one of their sales, at the time it was their $600 suit and I got it for $280... can't beat that!

I used a road bike for my first year in triathlons, absolutely nothing wrong with it! I did have some clip ons, and had no problem with that. I wouldn't think much of it if my TT bike got damaged and I had to race on my road bike with clip ons, the difference in speed isn't that great.

So suck it up and sign up for those triathlons.

Edited by smilford 2010-02-05 11:16 AM