Athena/ Clydesdale Official Mentor Group (Page 18)

After having a pity party for myself on Friday about my bike not being ready I sucked it up and did a ride on the MB Saturday.  Not bad, first ride in quite some time.  I still need to get in the miles even if it's on the MB, it's just so hard to go from the nice road bike to a bouncy MB.  Lost about 3-4mph.

Went out for a run tonight with the intention of going 5 miles.  I checked my watch at 19 minutes on the way out, figured I'd head to the next street and turn around. Ended up being 5.45 miles which was awesome and I kept a good pace the whole way.  Makes up for not having the bike I guess.

sorry to hear about the bike, sounds like you had a great run!

I put together a couple of days that I am overally happy with. Yesterday played some tennis and logged 40 minutes on the stationary bike. Today went for a good afternoon swim and then this evening got in a run/walk 4.24km in 39 minutes speed 6.5 km/h. Fairly poor run/walk, but in the context of two busy days I am satisfied.

jonD, glad you got the bike in.  I would have been ecstatic to pick up 3-4 mph stepping up to the road bike.  As it is, it has taken me three week just to get ONE mph faster.

Don't mind me whining.  I'm just in a foul mood tonight.  My wife and I loaded the kayaks into the truck and drove 45 minutes to the lake.  My intent was to log a 1200 yard open water swim with her tagging along in a kayak, just in case.  We got to the boat ramp and the first thing we see is a sign that says NO SWIMMING.  I am SO bummed out!  I have no idea where I can get an open water swim in before the race date.  And I'd rally like to nail one or two before then.

Ni-i-ice!  I am hoping to schedule my first Oly for sometime in May of 2013, after having done just the Blueman sprint in October.  I figure I'll have all winter to train at the YMCA and then bring it outdoors starting April 1st or maybe even earlier.  You Clydes/Athenas who are already doing these things are a real inspiration.

Walk - 3.8 miles - 1h 0m 13s - 3.77 mph

OMGoodness!  I honestly don't know if I can do THAT every day.  I knew I went out strong, but I never expected to be at 16m for the first mile.  And then 15m for the second mile!?  Overall, I took more than a minute off my best time.  I am REAL close to my race goal.

My goals for Blueman are to do the swim under 30, the ride under 45, and the walk/trot under 45 also.  If I can pull that off I will have a time under 2 hours for my first sprint, should be solidly in the MOP, and will be VERY happy with my first effort.

BTW, I just wanted to thank you all for tolerating my daily posts.  There have been days where the knowledge that I had to post here was just the impetus I needed to finally get out the door.

Great job, leatherneck!!  It's very uplifting to read about your progress, and I just read your swim post...dang, boy, do you have gills?!?   Keep up the good work!

Great traing and racing you guys and gals, keep up the great work. 

Leatherneck and Yeti, woo hoo, fantastic stuff, you guys are an inspiration to us all

Chirunner134 - brilliant work on your first Oly in 2 years.  I hope you had lots of fun out there?

I'm still chugging along with my training for my first Oly in LESS THAN ONE MONTH!!!!  Panic, what panic!!!!  I ran 3.4 miles on Saturday on the dreaded treadmill (still >>100°F outside and horribly humid too) and I can honestly say that I enjoyed at least half of it.  I normally hate running, especially treadmill running, as it's so damned boring and I run at a slugs pace, but Saturday evening felt great and I managed a 10.20 minute/mile pace for all of it.  I haven't managed that sort of pace since I came back from injury about 9 months ago (when I did 5.5 miles at 9.40 min/mile pace), so it felt pretty good!  Let's see if I can do the same on Thursday when I've got a 5.7 mile run scheduled and then next week at 6.4 miles.....

LOL, no gills, but my nickname on both the high school and college swim teams was "Moby".  And I suppose I am still "the great white whale".

good about the most useful race thing you can have next to a bike and a wetsuit.

No we are not putting you to shame.  If that was the case my old training partner who is 15 years older than me just completed the iromman ( a dream of mine) and I barely finished an Oly.  I got into tris before she did.  Really its not about keeping up or beating others.  its about beating yourself.  Doing what you think you can not do.

Spoke with the bike shop yesterday.  They spoke to Scott, there are no 61cm frames left from this year, so they'll be getting the 2013 stock in in about 2 weeks and they'll send one out once they get it.  Problem is my tri is in a month, so if it takes a week for them to ship it, that leaves me very little time to totally disassemble my bike and get the whole thing on a new frame and be ready for the race.  Therefore, I'm just going to suck it up and kick a$$ on my MB.  If for some reason I get the frame early and get back on the road bike, good for me, but I'm looking at it as a challenge to compete on my MB knowing every time out there I'm working that much harder pedalling on those fat tires.  I figure I have 3 weeks of butt kicking training left with a slight taper the week before just to keep loose, so the next 3 weeks are going to be huge.  Time to HTFU and go after this thing.  That's my rally cry, did I have too much coffee this morning?!?

This is me too. I posted pretty early on I wanted to be part of this group and then it got so busy and I didn't check often enough.

My season has gone pretty well. It started with a rough Oly (had full on panic in the gulf after jumping off a boat to swim to shore) which affected my run (drank too much salt water). But I've done a few sprints and seen some improvement.

I am kind of freaking out right now though.... Last fall I did the 5150 in Galveston and qualified for Hy-Vee which is THIS Sunday! I have never done a destination race so there are logistics I've never had to worry about. Thankfully we are driving so I don't have to really worry about my bike.  However, this course has some hills and I am a Houston flatlander. Found out this week the last mile or so of the run is UPHILL! Yesterday I realized the swim will most likely be wetsuit legal which does not bode well for me. I much prefer swimming w/o a wetsuit but to be competitive I will have to wear one as well.

I have looked up my competition and looked at the results from last year and the numbers I projected would have me finishing dead last.  I keep telling myself it's the experience. I mean, how many people get to go to the National Championship of anything, right?  But I am freaking out inside.

So, can I count my visit today to the dentist as a workout? I am sweating already thinking about it. 

Hope you all have a great week.

Bike -10 miles - 45m give or take - 13.5 mph avg

Walk - 1 mile - 16m give or take - 3.6 mph avg (pushing the bike)

MAN!!  Sometimes I think it it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all.  I rode right past my house and was well into my 3rd lap,which would have finally given me my 13.5 miles.  I hit that set of double railroad tracks and started pedaling again.  Within a 100 yards I started to feel a nasty wobble in the front end.  I stopped and checked the front tire and handlebars but they seemed solid.  Saddled up (actually got my feet in the straps) and tried to ride again.  Nope, wobbly.  Decided not to risk ruining a wheel or worse, crashing.  Turned around and started to walk home.

Hmmm, maybe I can make the best of a bad situation?   I'll turn it into a brick!  So I busted hump all the way home.  The Global Trainer (hereafter known as GT) says I averaged 3.6 mph.  I was hoping my HR would be somewhere in Zone 3 (116 -131 for me) so I'd know I was working hard enough.  LOL, nope, my heart rate spent almost all of the ride in Zone 4 (132 -148) with a couple of peaks in the 150-152 area.  My HR was in the upper Zone 3 for the entire walk home (128-132).  Now worries about not working hard enough.  I'm just not that fast.

I loaded the bike up and took it to Marty's.  Did you know that front end wobble indicates a rear end problem, not a front end problem?  I sure didn't.  I was coming up on my 30 day "tightening" and I've logged nearly 200 miles since I got this bike so I shouldn't have been surprised to find that my rear spokes were REALLY loose.  As in, I could shake several of them with just two fingers.  Needless to say, the bike is getting tightened up today/tomorrow.  I guess I lucked out, 'cause I could have ruined that rear wheel, and we all know they aren't cheap.

You should have seen the faces of the guys in the shop when I told them my route includes four sets of tracks and two of them are really rough.  They strongly recommended that I find a new route.  So I guess my new route is going end up being much more traffic, many more hills, and generally more gnarly than the peaceful rides I've enjoyed to date.

Then it took me most of the afternoon to figure out how to get the software and firmware loaded for the GT, download the workout to the laptop, and then upload it to the BT training log.  But I got it.  Of course, the workout was so screwy that it didn't look right anyway.  So I deleted it.  Tomorrow's workout is a straight walk and I will hopefully be able to get more out of it.

Hope the bike is ok.  Sounds like it's under control.

How do you like the GT so far?  I saw your other post about it.  I'm personally not looking to drop $400 on a Garmin, but I do want to get a watch that supports a foot pod and cadence sensor, and the GT seems a lot more affordable and it gets some good reviews and they did an update to support foot pods and other ANT+ devices.  I'm not as concerned about the swim because, well, I never swim, and if I do I don't really need the data for it all. 

Dentist: Cleaning = 1  Cavity Fill = 1.5 Work outs.

Leatherneck hope the bike is up and running fine again.

Everybody great job keep up the great workouts and races, You all are an inspiration!!!!!

Woot Wonderful Wednesday. Have some great workouts today!!

I think Root Canal probably counts as a week worth of workouts... good luck...

good news/bad news:

first with the bad news: I still need to HTFU, monday it was raining and I wanted to watch tennis, so I bailed on my planned run and went on the stationary bike instead.

Good news: went swimming last night and logged 50 lengths continuous (1.25km), which is my longest swim since my lifeguarding days and this morning I weighed in at 228 which is my best weight and down 7 pounds since I signed up for IM!

If I can get out of work early enough tonight I'm going to try and go for a group run for the first time, hopefully I don't get dropped... but either way, I would call first monthish of IM training a success!

Had a work meeting but manged to get in a short run (25 min) and short swim (26 min) and some play time at the pool with the girls. Now I need to get ready to go to work.

We leave for Iowa tomorrow morning, plan is to get up early and get on the trainer for 30 minutes to loosen everything up before getting in the car for 12 or so hours.

Okay, I'm so new at this that I had never even heard of Hy-Vee or 5150.  I had to look them up.  keri  you earned a slot in the US Championships!!  Do you have any idea what a fantastic thing that is!?  Congrats.  Forget about what position you finish in, as long as you finish.  That's pretty heady company you are going to sweating with.