SCIFT group (Short Course is Fast Twitch)! (Page 2)

10K trail race yesterday. 2nd overall Male. 48:xx. Won a medal and a jar of honey. 

Got to get into the pool, but my work/home life is full and the pool is far away. Next time I get some spare money I'm going to see about joining the local gym so I can at least get my bike on.

Next race is a possible local TG-day Turkey 5K. My family likes to watch so I decided to enter this one so they could cheer me on. Gobblegobblegobblegobble.

 I just renewed my pool membership for the winter. Water temps. here are around 55 degrees now and I'm whimping out and heading back to my nemesis the Black Line. I'm also in the market for a bike trainer as well. Currently the negotiations with the Commandant are touch and go but I'm confident  I will get my way, I usually do. As far as running goes I own a treadmill that I only use if it's too cold/windy/snowy. I'm hoping for a mild winter like last year.

 All I need is a well rounded plan to get me through the winter.

Nice job! Gotta love prizes like that too. Good luck with the 5k.

I'm not sure how those of you who live in places with actual winters do it!  I hate being cold!  I suspect if I lived in a cold climate, I'd have to do all of my training indoors....trainers and treadmills.  That said, I'm making an effort to use my trainer more, even if it's not due to temps.

Today was a strength training day for me....trying to get my quad back to where it used to be, that way when my knee is good to go, I won't have quite as much catching up to do.  Figured I'd throw in some upper body and core work as well for good measure

I'll keep the bio short...

Name : Jason

Story: Been doing tris for 3 years, also including various running races (half and full marathons) and bike races (time trials and road races).  Have done sprints to HIM.  My strength and passion is on the bike.

2012 races: Oly, HIM, and a relay (bike portion).  Did well in all of them.  Also did a lot of bike racing this year...did well in some races (won my first race), and others not so well (didn't plan my peak wisely).  I normally do a December marathon, but strongly considering not to do it.

2013 races:  My A race is the Hawaii 70.3.  It will be my third consecutive year doing it, and I want to nail it.  It may be the only tri I do all year, but I'll throw in a shorter running race, and a few other shorter bike races. 

Current training: just trying to rebuild my running and swimming that I neglected over the summer when bike racing.

Jason, use the floaties if you need.

Threshold level intervals this morning. Would like to run outside, but it's dark, wet, and there are hardly any streetlights around here. Seemed slicker than normal in last night's run too, so had to go inside. Nice, easy warm-up for a bit, then 5x5 min with 1 min recovery. Started at 6:00 pacing and went a touch faster on each one. Went better than I thought it would, HR never actually hit threshold. Just below is fine for this. Still a strong stimulus and I'll recover a bit quicker.

Anyone have other near threshold level workouts they like to do? I have a few others, but it's always nice to have more. This is how to keep a treadmill interesting, or at least less miserable.

I haven't done any threshold work yet....I'm still new to all three sports, so I've been working on getting a good base in.  I'm now starting to do some faster stuff with my swimming (less likely to hurt my knee swimming!), but haven't done any lactate threshold testing to know where my actual (current) threshold is. 

Might be something worth considering??  But even if I did, I don't think I'd know what to do with it (i.e. how to shape work-outs around that information!).  So much to learn about sbr!!

I mentioned a little bit of this in my bio, but I'll tell the full story.

Two of my good friends (husband and wife) started running a couple years ago.  I was pretty happy with the weightlifting program that I'd been using and had no real interest in running.  At some point, my husband and I were out at lunch with our friends and the wife mentioned that she was interested in starting triathlons.  My husband said he'd also be interested (he had trained for one back in college but never ended up registering).

I told them I had no interest in triathlons....I "hated" running, didn't have a bike, and could only sort of swim.  My husband was a worse swimmer than me, so I told him that if he wanted to train for a tri, I'd consider swimming with him since it was non-impact and a nice change from the weightlifting. 

Our friends kept talking about their running races and I started to wonder if I could run.  I did a one mile run at a 10 minute pace....and felt like I was going to keel over at the end!  But I was determined to not let running win, so I kept at it until I could run one mile relatively comfortably....and then began adding a little more time to each run.

Fast forward to some random weekend in early February.  My husband purchased a road bike.  He was very excited about it (I was happy for him, but still had no interest in triathlons) and told our friend....who, turns out, bought a bike the same weekend!  We all met up for dinner that night and the husband told me that he had "inherited" his dad's old road bike.  I, being completely irrational, decided that if I didn't want to get ditched, was going to have to go out and buy a stupid bike too

After a little bit of swim training, being able to run a few miles (and a couple 5k's under my belt), and now owning a bike, I was like, "I guess I'm committed to this..."  Signed up for my first race and it turned out to be a ton of fun!  Signed up for four more races after that and now I can't seem to get enough!

Your post was about half as long as the ones in the other group.  Good stuff there, but nearly impossible to keep up...LOL.

Anyway, I always wanted to do a triathlon from when I was young.  I vaguely remember watching Kona broadcasts and thought it would be a cool bucket list thing to do (just one and done).  I even put doing a triathlon on my "in 10 years" project in high school. 

In 2009, I was training for my first marathon, feeling proud of myself for committing to it, when we got a new employee who just did a Olympic distance tri.  Sort of stole my thunder, so that really planted the seed.  I did my research, then finally bought a road bike, started cross training, learned how to swim at the Y and realized how much I enjoyed it.  Did well in my marathon, then focused more on balance tri training and the rest is history.

Think it's always been in the back of my mind after seeing one of the Kona races when I was like 8. The swimming made me nervous, so never seriously considered it. I was fine being in water, but swim training was too daunting. A friend of mine did a supersprint, caught the bug and began training more for the next season. He said the swimming actually wasn't bad once you get a slight idea of what you're doing. We're the same at everything. Same height, weight, athletic ability across every sport we've done. So I figured I could handle it ok too. A local half iron distance race had caught my attention before, so began training for that. I could already bike the distance well, and was doing so once or twice a week. I could run ok, so the half marathon would be do-able, but a challenge. Then with months to get ready, the swim should take care of itself.

That was not my first one though, just what lead up to it. I planned to do several smaller local ones over the summer to get some experience. My brother and his wife (then g/f) were going to do a sprint out by her area and asked if I wanted to go too. They knew I was doing stuff, but not like this. Ended up beating them by several minutes in a 400m pool swim, ~10 min on a 17 mile bike, and edged out my brother on the run split (which drives him nuts as he was the better runner). 13-15 min total ahead. Ended up 2nd in age-group and ~12th overall. But not to get too carried away as there were maybe 5 in the age-group and ~85 overall. Not really *that* far off the front. The next year I was just behind the guy who had won it, and this past year I beat him easily in spite of being tired and running easy to not aggravate an injury (and still kicking myself for 2 seconds off the overall).

Get your knee better first. You want to consistently be putting in a good number of miles a week before pushing the pace in running. The bike will likely start sooner since it's not an impact sport, but see how it goes. Swimming should be ok, but be mindful on turns & kicking. Other parts may, but you'll find them as you go.

For all 3, having some variety (or at least a rotation throughout the week) can help to make it more interesting no matter what intensity you're working at.

x2

You want to build up a solid running base before incorporating faster running.  The funny saying is that speedwork is the icing on the cake.  You don't even have cake yet.

For swimming, while it's good to work on major technique flaws, I think sometimes people focus too much on technique and not enough on simply swimming volume with some intensity.  Increasing your swim fitness allows you to swim faster, and swimming faster also improves your form (your body streamlines at faster speeds).  It also prevents you from fatiguing faster, which is when even good form breaks down. 

For biking...just let her rip.  Unless you have an injury that is impacted by biking, you should aim to bike hard as much as possible.  Recovery costs are much lower than running, and the benefits are great.  If you're riding on a trainer, then using things like trainerroad, suffervest, or spinervals are great.  If you're riding outdoors...then just have fun and mix it up.  Designate a few points in your route where you will go hard.  Some can be longer, some shorter...just put in a good effort.

Skipping tomorrow morning's run. Was fading some at work today. When that happens, I'm not getting enough rest. When that happens, I'm not recovering enough, so the training load needs to come down some for a bit. Not getting enough sleep for one or two days out of the week happens from time to time. More than that and something needs to be adjusted. It's not quite about the training load, but being able to adapt brought on by the training load. Should only have to tough things out a short time. Have to be smart over the long term.

I fully agree with pretty much everything said in the above posts.  Before I hurt my knee, my plan had been to get in a full year of base training before even contemplating any type of speed work.  Other than a handful of races, I kept my running to a comfortable pace.  Now I'm just hoping that after 4+ months off, I won't feel like death on my first run....whenever that might be!

Has anyone done any aquajogging?  My plan is to start with that before going back to full-impact running.  I'm curious, though, how I should treate the aquajogging training....more like running (mostly easy) or more like swimming (more speed work since there's no impact).  I'm thinking it should be more like swimming training...

That said, I guess we'll see how that goes.  I'm quickly realizing that I might not be mentally tough enough for the bike trainer, and I think the aquajogging is going to be even more mind-numbingly awful!  Definitely think it's time for TrainerRoad/Sufferfest/Spinervals on the trainer....tv shows are just not cutting it!