mndiver's group-closed (Page 2)

Noz - 2011-01-05 12:58 PM oh man, closed already?  i can't get in on this group and bryan's sage like wisdom?  

learn up kids.  this man knows how to get himself across the line.  have fun! 

If I thought I could teach you anything you would be more than welcome.  Actually, you are more than welcome.  Pop in every now and then and share the wisdom a true elite level athlete can share.

How is everyone doing.  Our group is starting off kind of slow but I'm sure it will get legs soon.  Let's throw a question out there for everyone to respond to.

Q.  What are your work-out goals for this weekend?

My answer would be getting in a nice easy zone 1-2 work-out in all three disciplines.  Long and easy run, long and easy bike and maybe a little more intense swim.

Zones.  There a lot of really good articles on zones but I will give you the crib notes.  Zones are as follows.

z1- Very easy.  Not much more than a walk.  Active Recovery

z2- Extensive Endurance.  This is where a lot of your work should be.  As you get more fit this is a pace you should feel like you could hold for a very long time.  Ironman racing zone.

z3-Intensive endurance.  Heart rate is still in line but you could hold it for longer efforts.  Half marathon, etc

z4- Threshhold training.  This is where it starts to hurt.  5k, 10k pace.  I will explain how to figure out threshold shortly.

z5- Anaerobic training.  Very difficult, hard, full blast training.

Almost all of your training should be in z2 and to a lesser degree zone 3.  Most training should be easy enough to stay focussed and get better.  Then, when you go hard, go HARD but give yourself time to recover when done.  Unfortunately most people spend the majority of the time in zone 3 and zone 4.  Instead of making hard workouts hard and easy ones easy they have all work-outs somewhere in the middle.  This is not the way to get better for long.  So how do you find out where your zones are?  Easy, well not really.  You are going to have to be willing to hurt for about 30 minutes and will need to be able to monitor your heart rate.

We will go over testing procedures in tomorrows thread.

woops.

Let me see if I can figure that one out.  I think there is a way to post a link onto your blog page to this site.  I'll ask around.

Got it figured out and it's quite easy. 

1.  Go into forum and "copy and paste" our thread.

2.  Go to your own blog and hit the "edit" button on the top part of your blog.

3.  Hit paste.  There it is, no more searching. 

I did it on my blog and it took about 2 seconds. 

Best of luck Erin.  Have a great time!!

After the talk of Lactate Threshold yesterday I decided to test myself today.  The protocal is pretty much the same for biker or run.  You need a heart rate monitor that gives you average heart rate and a willingness to suffer.

You should not do this test until you have been training long enough to have a good idea of pace and can go hard for 30-40 minutes.

Start off either with the ride or the run and do a good warm-up.  Start easy and work up a slow sweat after about 10 minutes or more the hard stuff starts.  You need to figure out a pace you think is your MAX pace for 30 minutes.  Start running or riding at that pace.  It should be hard and you should be nervous.  Nervous that you can't hold this pace but even more that maybe you can but it's going to hurt.  After 10 minutes hit the "start" botton on your heart rate monitor.  Now you are on the clock.  You have to continue at this pace for the next 20 minutes.  Do your best to hold it the whole way.  If you have energy left over in the end you went too easy.  If you can't make it the full time you went too hard.  Make sure to hit "stop" on monitor after 20 minutes.  The monitor will give you your average heart rate.  This number is your Lactate Threshold or (LT)

So what do the numbers mean and what do you do with it?  More to come later tonight.

Now we have our Lactate Threshold (LT) what can you do with it?  BT has a great tool for this also.  If you look on the far side of your blog you will see something titled HR zones.  You can go into this area and enter different numbers from different tests.  They have entries for swim, bike and run.  I like to use the Lactate Threshold test so I simply enter my number into the box and it spits out heart rate ranges for zones 1-5.  Now that I have these numbers and a heart rate monitor I can better dial in my training to give me the best results.  Good luckand I hope this helps people out.