Gearwhore/himself Group - FULL (Page 2)

Arizona is really early, and you have to be willing to commit to a lot of long training in the cold months.  For some people that works fine, but I want to avoid long rides and runs indoors if I can.  That was part of the attraction for me of Wisco or Florida, both are late in the season, so a lot of the big mileage training days would occur in the spring or summer time, when it's much easier and more pleasant to be outside training for 5-7 hours at a time.

I think the Florida course cuts both ways.  It is flat, and most people who have done multiple IMs have a PR at Florida, but I've also heard that the flat course can be challenging because of the mental drain and the lack of variation is hard on the muscles.  Also, the wind at Florida can be a breaker, so there's another consideration for you.

Just a quick thought this morning:

They say it takes six weeks to form a new habit.  Now is a great time to form the training habit (if you haven't already), and settle into consistent training. 

The idea, especially early on in your fitness/training endeavor is to make sure and do something every day.  If you don't have time to complete 100% of every workout as scheduled, do half, or do as much as you have time for.  It's better to get in a 15 minute run, 30 minute bike or 20 minute swim than to do nothing at all.  Don't get trapped into the mentality that you have to do everything exactly as scheduled or its not worth doing at all.

I don't ride outside too much below about 35 degrees because it's just about impossible to stay warm and comfortable.  But, above that, here are some ideas:

Legs - full length cycling tights down to the ankles OR leg warmers (like sleaves for your legs). 

Upper body - layering - liner shirt, jersey, fleece, jacket.  You just have to experiment.  Make sure you wear something with the rear pocket to stuff layers into if you're wearing too much.

Head - I have a Descente skull cap that covers my ears, and my helmet fits on top.

Feet - neoprene cycling shoe covers over my cycling shoes.  These thing are amazing, and work great to allow you to clip in and still keep your feet warm.

Hands - Pearl Izumi winter cycling gloves (or another brand, but cycling specific if you can afford them).  They have a soft patch on the thumb to wipe the (profuse) snot from your nose, and pretty loose fingers to allow easy shifting and brake use.

Sunglasses - Especially important in cold weather, or you'll have tears streaming down your face from the cold air on the eyes.

That's about it.  I wore basically that exact outfit this weekend riding my mountain bike in the snow, and I was warm the whole time.  Granted, I was out in the middle of the day, the sun was shining, and the temp was about 40, but I was totally comfortable the whole time.

Do you guys have specific questions about the logging functions on BT?  I'm no technical expert, but I've been on the site a while and pretty well know all the logging functions.  We could use this forum to answer questions.

Here's a few basics though:

When replying to inspires, use the "blog" function.  If you hit reply, the answer is only posted in the "Inspire me" section of your log, and I don't know that you've answered until I come back to your log.

In the three main sports (swim/bike/run), you can enter time and distance, and then click pace for an automatic calculation of your pace for that workout.

If you're logging a sport other than s/b/r, go to the sports section, click on the drop down list, click on that sport, and hit add sport.  After you add the sport, a new box will appear with time next to the sport.

There are tons of other functions, so ask me specific questions.  The site host also has various logging instructions in the "Forums" section of this website, so you can go in there and check out the more detailed instructions with step-by-step pictures.

I'll tell you what happened - you got older, like the rest of us!  Just kidding, I know, I went through the same thing.  I decided to start triathlon basically because we took a beach vacation a couple of years ago, and when we got the pictures back my first question was "when did I get so f*cking fat?!"

Okay, to actually answer the question.  The first thing you should check is the major resource here on BT in the "Forums" section called "Tri-ing for Weightloss."  There's a lot of good information in there, and lots of other BT users doing the same thing.  People post questions, have discussions, and challenge each other to weight loss contests.  The only thing I would caution against is that I have noticed on occassion that it's a place for people to and moan about how they can't lose weight, and they can't give up on the ice cream or cookies, and how they're bummed about the whole thing, etc.  No offense to any of them, losing weight is hard, and slow, and sometimes very frustrating.  Just don't get sucked into the enabling whining-fest that can sometimes occur on BT.

My second suggestion is to read the nutrional articles on BT.  A registered dietrician/nutritionist posts some very useful and informative articles here on BT.  Some of the articles are for paid users, and if you want to read those, it's only $25 every 6 months to get a bronze level membership and unlock those performance member articles.

Next, go out and buy Carmichael's book on nutrition for athletes.  Carmichael was/is Lance Armstrong's coach, and he and his staff wrote what I consider a great book about nutrition for athletes.  It dispells a lot of the bullsh*t fad diets (especially why they're bad for endurance athletes), walks you through good and bad nutrition, and even breaks it down to calories, carbs, protein, fat, etc. - and matches all that up to a periodized training program.  Very detailed, VERY informative.

You can, of course, also look around at what other BT users are doing and ask me.  Of the people on my friends list, probably the best and most focused nutrition person is "luv2ride" - she's the nutrition queen.  She makes all her own food, packs lunches, eats REALLY well, is very disciplined, and knows tons about this stuff.  I'm sure she wouldn't mind if you ask her questions.

As far as my thoughts, I'm no expert, but I did lose 40 pounds in about 18 months.  I did that through a few very basic changes: I cut out soda completely, I cut out fried foods almost completely, I drank a LOT of water, I ate all the fruits and vegetables I could get my hands on, and I started eating 3 small/regular meals per day and 3 healthy snacks.  I never let myself get too hungry, and I never eat until I'm stuffed.  I sort of counted calories for a while, but I find that extremely tedious and difficult, so I knocked that off pretty quickly.

I don't mean to oversimplify, but in some ways my philosophy is that "it isn't that hard."  We all have a pretty good idea what we should be eating and what we shouldn't.  We all know that picking up that "Big Grab" of Dorritos to accompany the turkey sandwhich totally blows the whole meal, yet we do it and then complain about not being able to lose weight.  Losing weight, in my opinion, is mostly about exercising self discipline and using common sense.  The self discipline part is the really hard part, and that's the place to focus.  And of course, just as with triathlon training, it has to happen every day, day-after-day-after day.  Consistency is king.

Having said all that, DON'T starve yourself, and DON'T expect to be perfect.  A healthy weight loss pace is 1-2 lbs per week.  More than that and you are starving yourself, losing muscle mass, stressing out your system, sacrificing your fitness, and you'll be completely unable to recover from your training.  You basically have to accept the fact that losing 20 lbs in a healthy way takes 6 months, or maybe more.  I want to lose 10 before the next race season, and I plan to give myself 10-12 weeks to do it.  You can't rush the weightloss, you have to be patient.  And accepting/adopting that mentality will serve you well as a triathlete anyway - real change takes a LOT of time and happens very slowly.  I've been doing this for a couple of years, and I still see my body changing all the time.

Okay, enough for now, chip in with your thoughts and questions.

You raise some good points, one of the main points being that the battle is never over and you never have it "beat."  You can't just get down to the weight target you want to hit, and then go back to eating poorly.  This has be a change that you are willing to make and then maintain.  Which is the other reason I say that things like counting calories, or fad diets, or being ultra restrictive on your diet won't work, you simply can't keep that up forever, it's too tedious and too difficult.  I think the better approach is to educate yourself to make good choices all the time, and then discipline yourself to keep making those good choices consistently.

You got it exactly right man, baby steps!  Don't cut out the beer, just knock it down to a sixer!  I love it, that's great.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Admittedly, this is where things get a little complicated, transitioning from one race to the next and preparing yourself mentally and physically to shift gears to another race, or even a one sport focus.

First, I would suggest that you need two weeks of light training after the 1/2 to recover.  Depending on the time between races, I would consider taking 1 full week off from running, doing only easy riding and swimming that week.  The second week you can get back to running, but moderate distances at easy pace.  I don't know the dates of any of these races, so I'm not too sure about how this will play out.  Maybe post the detailed race calendar here or in your blog and I can give some more detailed suggestions.

Starting two full weeks after the half (assuming that fits your schedule), I would start ramping up that mileage for the Grand Canyon run.  Shift your plan to focus on running 4-5 days/week, with 2 cycling and 2 swimming (to maintain fitness in those sports).  I would see that being more like a traditional marathon plan where the mileage goes up 2 miles each week on the long run, and total volume goes up 10% each week (maybe 4-5 miles or more depending on total weekly planned volume).  Again, this depends on dates.  But you need to do some research on plans for ultras, and I don't know much about that.

During that interim period, you will carry a lot of fitness through from the half, and shorter races basically count as hard training days.  So, like the XTerra races will be considered hard training, and you can either do a mini-taper or no taper for those (which assumes they are B/C priority, and they should be, obviously you can't go A race, A race, A race).

After the Grand Canyon race, then some down time.  Is that late enough that you can call December your off-season?  Are you still thinking AZ?  If you're planning on AZ, I think you would be ill advised to take December as an off month.  AZ IM is too early in the season to take a month off that close to the race, so if you REALLY need to take December off, pick one of the later IM races.

All for now, but post some more specifics and we can discuss.  This gets difficult and really specific, and training for ultras and IM takes a lot of time and thought.

Wow, that is a full schedule.  Brian, you know this already, and it seems like you're an experienced endurance athlete, but just as a side note for AJ, Keith and Fred (and HKDan if he's checking the site), that is a MONSTER schedule.  Actually, that is probably a harder schedule than I have ever seen.  Those back to back days are especially rugged, you have a 24 hour MTB race in there, an ultra, AND you want to start thinking about IM next year.  You'll need a HUGE training base and some fairly deep experience to race that successfully and not break down.  I have no idea whether you have the means (and it's really none of my business), but if I were you, I would seriously consider hiring a professional coach to get you through that and start building toward IM.

Now, having said that, it does look fun and challenging, and the timing works out pretty well on a couple of things.  First, you have a two week break kind of already built in after the Muncie Endurathon.  One thing you'll have to think about though, especially when considering your goals for the Muncie Endurathon, is that you have a challenging mix of events.  What I mean is that the half iron will be about endurance and tempo speed, whereas the XTerra and MTB series will be about strength and short distance speed.  Likewise, the R2R2R run will be a tough mix of endurance and strength, and a lot of what you'll be doing going into that race won't specifically help you get through the R2R2R.  And that's pretty much why I say I think you would really benefit from some professional coaching. 

If you don't want to use a coach, and maybe this goes without saying, you should think about doing at least one long-ish hill run per week (meaning hill repeats on short rest in the middle of some endurance paced efforts), and one day/week of strength based riding (probably climbing repeats - maybe parts of the Hilly Hundred course if that is convenient).  Of course, raw endurance will also be an issue, and with that length and intensity of race season, your base period should probably include some road rides gradually building up into the 5-6+ hour range (perhaps culminating in an organized century at training pace sometime in the late spring or very early summer).  Depending on your current base of running fitness, you might consider working up to around a 20 miler in your last base phase (maybe longer if you can handle it). 

I have no idea if that all makes sense and jives with your experience, background, past training, etc.  Seems like it might though, and if you get that combination of strength and endurance training in early in the season, I think it will make you more durable in the long haul.  I would also suggest some time in the gym if you can manage the time for strength work.  Durability will be one of your main challenges this year, and some lifting might help in that arena.

That's about all I've got for you though.  I think even a professional coach might be scratching his head looking at this schedule.  Kudos to you for tackling that monster schedule.

Depends on the phase of training.  If you check my logs right now, you'll notice that I'm doing less and going easy on the legs because I'm tapering (reducing training volume and resting) before the marathon.  Early in the season, when you are building strength and getting ready for the season, equal sets of both is fine.  When you are building toward your race readiness, start focusing on how you feel and avoid being too fatigued in the legs.  When coming down to peak fitness and really getting close to the race, consider skipping the leg lifts altogether.

Another couple of thoughts: don't lift legs on days where you have particularly hard/fast runs planned.  Don't lift legs before running in general if you can avoid it, because lifting can weaken your stability muscles and risk joint injury.  For that matter, to the extent possible, get the priority workout done first (which should usually be swim/bike/run).  If that's not possible, try to get some time between the lift and the s/b/r workout so you're not totally dead going into the triathlon workout.

Brian - Those are all excellent points and a great way to approach the season.  In particular, I like the point about speaking to your loved ones and friends about what you're doing and why this is important.  I would be dead in the water without my wife, who acts as race director, nutritionist, massage therapist, and chearleader for my addiction to this sport.  Triathlon is time consuming and will, at times, leave you physically and mentally drained.  Your S.O. and family need to know that, appreciate your passion and goals, and be prepared to help you manage your schedule and be there to pick you up a little when you need it.  So whether it's in a conversation over dinner, or an e-mail or letter, LET THEM KNOW.

But (and as you're starting to see with me and my comments, there's always the flip-side), don't bore the sh!t out of everyone with the details of your training and racing.  Trust me, your wife and kids don't care about what your average heart rate was on the last long run, your new race wheels, how your flip turns are coming along, etc., etc., etc.  So keep them apprised generally, answer specific questions when they ask, but use BT and your training friends to scratch that itch to be a training dork and talk details.  When you're with the family, keep up with what they're doing, talk about family stuff, news and sports, and generally try and maintain a connection to the rest of what's happening in the world.  When they see that you're not going to become a one-dimensional training freak, they'll appreciate your new sport even more and support your endeavors.

As to the point about the coach, don't worry about that, it was just a suggestion.  There are plenty of resources here on BT and through some basic research for you to figure this out.  Sounds like you're pretty durable and experienced, so the challenge (in a fun way) will just be getting down to the nitty-gritty details of how you prepare for the various challenges.  You can do it though, especially carrying the positive attitude that you clearly already have into your training.