The Night Owls (aka "I hate mornings") Group - STILL OPEN (Page 2)

I'm hoping for a late evening atmospheric run home from the office tonight, hopefully isn't raining too hard at the time!  Legs feel ready after this past weekend sprint race. Have my new K-Swiss running shoes ready to break in too.

Hey Chris,

Oh yeah the RR is up.  I've been doing this race since 2004 only missing 2009 due to an early sellout.  I PR'd the swim and bike legs this year to help me PR the race as a whole with a 1:21:49. 

Swim distance at this race is really reliable as they measured it out by rope and a few years ago they placed post in the water to permanently mark the corners, so I feel great about the Swim PR.  Kicker is that I only have ~7000 yards of swim training this year, 5300 last month, must be doing something right!!!

Bike PR is due to all the trainer work over the years.  Still didn't have enough consistent bike training though, wanted >23.5 avg and came close with 23.3, but...

The run is where I had issues, bike effort a bit too hard for the run fitness.  I lagged in the run because if I went faster than 8:05 my left calf would start spasming on me and I'd have to slow down to let it settle down.  Had to stopp at ~ 0.3 into the run to stretch it. Hopefully next year I'll be coming off a good run season which I didn't have this year to get that sub 1:20 race.

Oh, I also made my own disk cover the day before the race, some pix are on my blog (Saturday).  Worked great!

I was struggling with the swim for years then I saw this BT video and the balance part I had my "ah ha" moment. 

Regarding a coach, Orlando is pretty sprawled out, not sure where you are, but I know that the I-drive YMCA Aquatic Center has a swim team & masters with some good coaches that may be able to help you out, they use to have a tri club flyers out front (my kids are on the Cocoa Y swim team and we're out that way often). Further East is the Blanchard Park Y, there use to be an active Tri-club out of there.

Oh, and when you're ready I'll come over and do Lucky's Lake Swim with you, it's been on my tri bucket list for awhile now!  My son wants to do it too.

I mostly train and race in tri-suits and wear Desoto & Zoots.  I picked up a pair of Desoto Tri-bibs for trainer work.  You can keep it simple with just Tri-shorts and a tech /no shirt if you want.  I never pay full price for wearables.  Desoto has a mailing list and periodically sends out sale info/closeouts.

Short of having a coach to give you your best plan, you can just go with the free 20 week BT plan import it into you training log to follow and adjust as necessary.

Oh, and I recommend to also log your training here on BT as you'll likely have more questions here and in the Tri talk forums.  Training history helps those with more knowledge to provide you with better feedback.

1) Yes a bike fit is very worth it.  You can really impact power output/efficiency with the wrong fit.

2) I have a tri-bike so yes I have AB.  I previously had a cheap entry level RB and I put AB on it, helpful for aero but was pretty twitch on the front-end but got use to it.  Here's an interesting article regarding the aero benefits of a RB on down to a TB.

What do you have for a bike now?  I see that last year you posted on BT about used bikes for sale...

Here's the full swim video link: http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=2244

Check out these AB, a friend of mine has a RB and he loves these as they flip up out of the way.

I don't do a lot of central FL races, usually just the ones over here on the East Coast.  The Battle of the Bridges is a nice race, Sprint & Oly, and a great course. Bike is ~2.3mi longer than the standard 24.85 Oly.

BTW, you interested in some cheap 40mm wheels?  Craigslist in Orlando has Felt 40mm TTR3 for $150, been on there for some time now.  I was going to buy & flip them last month but decided not to.  I have a set on my TB.  Slap on some GP4000's with latex tubes and its a decent combo for getting some aero & rolling resistance that will add up for time savings over 56 miles.

OK back to work, I took most of last week off following the race now I need to get back into it.  Ran 3.5 last night, pure bliss!  Ran 1.5 on trails and walked another 1 with the dog at a local park and ugh it sucked! .  Hopefully I can get home in time to do some riding on the trainer tonight.  Have a flat front to fix, take the disk cover off of the rear, set it up for trainer wheel and rearrange the garage some to give me some space.

This group needs some love!

I've been out of town since last Fri as my mother had emergency surgery for a twisted large intestine. She's home now and I'll be back to warm, humid, sticky FL on Thurs vs. these cool, refreshing, sometimes damp upstate NY days!  Haven't been doing evening runs since I'm out in the countryside,more like late AM or even noonish, all I know is that I'm awake! 

That said, sometime today I'm going to attempt a monster climb run/walk.  There's a ridge not even a mile from here that I mapped out to have either 650 ft of climbing in 2.1 miles (5.9% avg) or 1.3 miles (9.5% avg), hmmm I think I'll go up the 5.9% side!