Birkierunner's Group - FULL (Page 2)

Just so I don't leave folks hanging after posting my lasting answer....Coach Mike Ricci wrote a great article on lactate threshold (LT) testing and setting up HR training zones  http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=633

Ideally, LT testing using the Friel method mentioned in the article is done with a 30 min time trial and the avg HR during the last 20 min approximates your run LT.  Training zones 1-5 are based on percentages of your LT. 

I mentioned to Tammy that she could use her 5 k race this weekend as a rough approximation of this LT test.   We may have to tweak the numbers a little bit since we aren't following the Friel protocol exactly, but it will be close enough.  Just be sure to have your HR monitor set to go (or hit the lap buttion if you have already started recording data) at the start of the race and hit the lap button at the finish line.  Your avg HR for the race will be our starting point for the analysis.  I can post an analysis of Tammy's results here next week so that everyone sees how we set up the HR training zones.  Don't be intimidated if this seems daunting...its not rocket surgery.

tripletmom01 - 2006-12-28 4:58 PM Check my log If my legs remember this on Sunday- you are in BIG trouble Jimbo..... hee hee Tammy

ahhh....but your legs WILL remember it on Sunday and they'll be soooo happy.  Now, that wasn't so bad now was it?  130 HR is nice Z1.  Now don't go overboard on Fri and Sat either.  Good luck in the race.

Hey, congrats on approaching the "century" mark!!

Let's see, you did 30 min of swimming and an hour bike today.  You mentioned your legs were a little tired after the bike.  If it were me I wouldn't hesitate to run on Saturday, and I would say the same for you.  But, I would try to keep closer to that 9:00 min/mi pace again and would probably keep it under 5 miles.  If after 3 miles you feel that you have lingering fatigue in your legs from Friday's bike I would cut the run short.  Finish the session doing 3-4 of the striders I described to you a couple days ago.

Remember to wear your hear rate monitor for Sundays race as we discussed earlier this week so that we can use the info for determining training zones.  You can either start recording HR data at the beginning of the race or hit the lap button if you started recording during warmup.  Then end the recording at the finish line.  The statistic we are interested in is your average HR for the entire race.  Usually a lactate threshold time trial is a longer duration than you'll be doing for the race, but it will be close enough for now.

Let me know if you have any other questions.  Good luck with race!

Jim

Folks, I'll be putting together a summary of HR testing protocols for swim, bike and run this weekend that I'll post here for you to see.  The results of these protocols (they are basically time trials) will be used to set up separate HR training zones for bike and run...the swim is a little different and I'll explain that also.  I'll use the results of Tammy's race on Sunday to use as an example of how you use test results to set up various HR training zones for the run and provide explanations of what the zones are about.  I'll also provide links to pre-existing articles that explain the tests. 

Mike, one thing you might want to check is to make sure you have good contact with the HR monitor strap and the skin on your chest.  My Polar chest strap has 2 sections that you wet with water before putting it on and that ensures good conductivity between the strap and skin.  If you don't have those sections on your strip, another good trick is to simply wet your chest skin with water on the area where the transmitter fits on your chest.  If there is not good moisture contact you will get funky readings or no reading at all.  Once you start sweating, this problem will go away.  Be sure the strap is snug and centered on your chest, at the bottom portion of your pectorals.  I'll try to post the testing information sometime on Saturday.  That's it for now....way past my bedtime.

 Jim

I tried using hotlinks for this article, but had trouble with the code so I gave up

A couple of you have commented that HR training and training zones are confusing.  Trust me, its not rocket surgery, so I’ve tried to put together some links to information that should help out.  Luckily, much of this information is contained right here on the BT site!!  If you are new to the BT site and want to know how to get the maximum benefit from its features go here http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=327

Before I go further, I’ll describe some of my training during the past 30 years.  Actually, it is a little embarrassing.  For many, many (many!!) years I simply subscribed to the alternating hard, easy, long, short, type of training with basically no structure at all.  For each day I knew whether I should do a hard, shorter run or a longer, easier run.  But, I literally decided what I actually was going to do for a given day as I walked down our long driveway – that is called zero planning.  For marathons I simply tried to get my mileage up, a few track workouts, get at least 3 runs of 19 miles in no less than 3 weeks before the race, and that was it.  Although I managed to go sub-3 in most of my marathons, I always wonder how low I could have gone if I took a more structured approach.  I also loosely followed the concept of periodization, whereby I would have increasing hours of training for 3 weeks and then back off for a week.  These are better described as microcycles.  My increase in annual hours (mesocycle) has been a slow, steady process rather than having a radical increase in training from one year to the next – see my graph of weekly hours (attached file) for the period 4/28/03 to 12/30/06.  Some of the dips in hours you see are weeks where I was lazy in logging my training, but other dips are true rest weeks.

In order for HR based training to be of maximum value, it should be viewed in the context of your general goals for the season and should be incorporated in a fairly structured training plan.  The key to HR training and racing is making sure you stay within the right HR zone to accomplish the intended purpose of the workout.  Rather than me trying to re-invent the wheel it will be much easier to point you to the following articles that do a great job of summarizing concepts. 

Coach Mike Ricci wrote a good article on periodization:    http://www.d3multisport.com/articles/periodization.html

Let’s all congratulate Tammy for her recent 5k PR on a rainy day in Wisconsin – 22:12 ( http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=62907 )  I know she really wanted that sub-22, but in that weather its tough to perform at your best.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to get her HR information that we could use to set up her training zones (we’ll have her to do a formal test in a week or so) but we can use the elapsed time for the race to set up zones based on running pace.
According to Table 4.2 in the Triathlete’s Training Bible, a 22:12 time in a 5k would translate to the following zones and minutes/mile paces:

Zone 1    9:56+
Zone 2    8:47-9:55
Zone 3    8:10-8:46
Zone 4    7:42-8:09
Zone 5a  7:27-7:41
Zone 5b  6:55-7:26
Zone 5c  6:54-max

What are these zones used for?  In my last post I gave the following article, so I would refer you to it again: http://www.trainingpeaks.com/trainingplans/ericschwartz/trainingintensity.asp

Exactly when you use these zones is dependent on your specific training plan.  There are many plans available on the BT site so I would urge you to check those out.

It’s hard to believe that 2007 is here.  I hope you all had a great holiday season.  I just got my 26 week advanced Ironman plan from another source and it kicks into gear in mid-March.  If it doesn’t start snowing around here I may have to abandon x-c ski season and get a head start on triathlon base training – especially swimming. I look forward to working with all of you on making 2007 a great year.

Tom

Sorry to hear about the loss of your pet.  Its never easy when it happens.

Hey, 2007 is still very young, so don't sweat missing a workout.  Still plenty of time to work on that base.

Hi Gang

Tonight I finished reading the book "Iron Will: The heart and soul of the triathlon's ultimate challenge" by Mike Plant, published in 1987.  I found myself reading the last paragraph of the book over and over and thought I'd share it with you.  Although perhaps only 2 of you are registered for or are pondering the IM distance right now, I think the sentiment applies to other triathlon distances as well....

"You can't ever do the Ironman just right.  It's too big; there are too many places to fail.  So you keep getting better and you keep failing, and you correct this and fail at that, and all the while your potential keeps stretching way out there.  And the funny thing is, right about the time you start to think that you never will do it right, you begin to realize you've already done it perfectly: you finished, once.  The possiblilities from that point on are endless"

Loved it.  I included it in my list of recommended books in one of my earlier posts.  The Ironman was still in its infancy when the book was written.  It was interesting to read about how the race got started and how it dealt with growing pains.  Highly recommend it if you can find it.

Tammy, I would refer you to what I tried to get across in my Jan 2 post (see above excerpt).  You must first choose a training plan for the race you are gearing up for.  Any plan worth its salt will give specific guidelines for what zone you should be in for a given workout on a given day.  This website has offseason training plans as well as race prep plans that give a 13-20 week buildup to a particular race (Sprint, Olympic, HIM, IM).

Earlier I gave this link to learn how to pick a particular plan from this site:  http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=19

The free plans available on this site will not give the detail as to what HR zone you should be in for a particular workout.  The free plans only give minutes you should spend on a given workout.   You have to upgrade to at least the silver membership on this site to get the more detailed descriptions of the training plans - i.e. HR zones for each workout are given.

If you don't want to go to the silver or gold membership, you will then have to either 1) hire a coach,  2) purchase a pre-packaged plan somewhere else, or 3) use a book such as Triathletes Training Bible to build your own plan or use Gale Bernhardts book "Training Plans for Multisports Athletes" to get a training plan.  I'm not a qualified coach so I'm not able to develop a plan for people.  That goes beyond what the mentor program is set up to do.  I would highly recommend going the silver or gold membership route.

Hope this helps.

tripletmom01 - 2007-01-05 6:12 PM OK- I am convinced- I upgraded my membership Tammy

Cool!  Take a look at the detailed training plans this weekend and see which one you think would be best for what you want to accomplish this year.  I'll be happy to try to answer any questions.

Also, you'll now have access to a lot more training articles in the BT library.  Take a look at the articles on nutrition for half-ironman racing. 

Mike

Glad you found a plan you are comfortable with.  Its still early, so there will be time to make adjustments if you feel its necessary.

As for weight/strength training you will get strong and passionate arguments on both sides of the issue of the value of strength training to triathletes.  First of all, I can tell you that I did absolutely zero...nothing...nada... with strength training in 2006.  That is, nothing other than the tri-specific strength training you get from the simple acts of swimming, biking, and running.  I just hate lifting weights.  Would I benefit from doing some type of weight lifting program?  Who knows?  I'm not willing to invest the time to find out.  My legs are fairly strong from decades of running and x-c skiing and it seems to have carried over to my new entry into biking, so I don't feel I have a need to work on it.  If you feel you have a weakness perhaps it warrants working on it. 

All I can suggest is that you take advantage of the articles on strength training in the BT library and make your own decision.  That sounds like a copout, but there really is no right answer as far as I'm concerned.  I would also suggest you do a search on the forums and read some of the threads on strength training.  There are some very heated discussions.

Have a great weekend.

Good move on the silver membership, Mike.  I can't believe I went nearly a year without becoming a Performance member and didn't realize all of the tools I was missing out on.  It will be well worth the money for you. 

Let us know how the testing goes and what types of tests they plan on doing. Great way to start off the year!

I've been trying to keep up with inspires on everyones blogs every once in a while since no questions have been posted for the group.  One request...if you want to reply to one of my inspires please use the "blog reply" feature rather than just the "reply" feature so the reply gets sent to my blog.  Otherwise I have to check each of your blog sites to see if a reply was made.  Some of you already do it this way, but if everyone does it I won't miss a reply that gets posted to your own blog.  Thanks.

January is flying by.  My x-c ski season will be over on February 24 with the 51km American Birkiebeiner ski race ( http://www.birkie.com  ).  8,000 ski racers twisting their way through the woods of northwest Wisconsin.   A short rest, then back into tri training....although I've been running about 3 days/week this winter and squeezing in a swim a couple times a month.  Its still January though, so don't get too carried away with intensity right now (not mentioning any names.....cough....Tammy...cough    )

Let's hear how everyone's training is going!