JohnnyKay and Fred Doucette's HIM/IM focused Mentor group-CLOSED (Page 17)

Be careful with the long workouts buddy - we're getting close to race day!

Got my long run in this morning and felt good.  Body seems back to normal. 

Recovery week for me too (and good thing it is because I have a serious case of leg flu).

I'm racing St. Anthony's down in FL this weekend.  Should be interesting to see how I do, especially when the temp is supposed to hit 90.

I have a sprint on Sunday and this week starts the final build phase of my plan. I didn't plan that very well! My training plan called for me to race on Saturday since last week was my recovery week but there weren't any races around here.

It's still raining here........

Used my spare earlier in the ride to fix a flat, but this time around it was the actual tire that was torn apart. However, it happened most likely due to my error in mounting the tube as the sidewalls of the tire were not completely sitting under the rim and instead pushing out just a bit. I choose not to re-install my tube and obviously paid the price. I tried to McGyver the old tube (which was a slow leak) back on, but it bulged out of the actual tire so I looked for a ride home instead. A long hard way to learn to take the extra 2-3 minutes to re-install a poorly installed tube.

Swim on tap for me today.

I also officially have an HIM plan to follow for the next 20 weeks to get ready for Muskoka. 

My next race won't be until 5/15...an Olympic distance.

As far as my training, I just finished a nice recovery week and am now going into 3 weeks of focus work.  This week is the swim which has me doing about 4.5 hours in the water.  Next week is run @ appx 27 miles.  And the last week is bike @ about 130-some miles.  GOOD STUFF!

Persoanlly, I would just use the sprint as your 'all 3' workout.  It will be shorter in duration, but higher in intensity.  Maybe just do a bike on Sat.

Nice work!  Keep it up! 

Swimming question.  Just wondering if anyone watched this video and what their thoughts/perceptions were?

http://beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=2244

For me, I found it quite interesting, especially the focus on stroke rate and distance per stroke.  It's not something I've paid a lot of attention to in the past, but I counted strokes today.  On average I was 18-19 strokes per 25yds, but could easily see how I'd fall off that rate as I got tierd.  I needed to focus to maintain.  According to Terry, for my height I should be able to manage 14-17 strokes, which I can't really do at the moment.  Also interested in his ideas of using a tempo trainer to time your stroke.

Just looking for the groups thoughts and experiences.

I am coming toward my 'taper' for Am-Zof.  However, I don't have as much to taper down from as I would typically.  Just cutting back on my longest runs (15mi now, probably down to 12mi this week) and ease back on the bike intensity a bit during the week.

Hope to do some type of 'race rehearsal' workout this weekend, assuming I can fit it in somewhere.  Goal will be to ride in the 4-5hr range (A-Z bike, 84 hilly miles, should probably take me towards the upper end of that range) with some running before and/or after.  Maybe 4-6mi total.

While I think stroke count can be useful, I think you need to be careful about not developing a too "forward" stroke for open water swimming.  When you're swimming in the washing machine the first part of your stroke to get cut off is the reach and stream lined glide forward.  I think its important to realize that for OWS, getting your fore arm quickly into a vertical position and working on a strong back end of the stroke may have bigger returns than elongating your stroke and decreasing your stroke count.

Yea, I know people tend to be on one end of the spectrum or the other with TI, but a lot of this discussion wasn't about TI and was more centred around DPS so that's why I brought it up (again, it seems).  A couple of the analogies that he made, connected with me.  i.e.  Running faster and smoother tends to occur when stride is increased - I've found this to be true personally.  He translates that inot swimming as well.

He also commented how many people will speed up their stroke count to go faster, but this may very well have the exact opposite effect than what was intended - the last 50M of the race he highlights is eye opening (for me).  I'd never considered that a faster turnover may actually make me slower.