Fred D and Jason's (Tri808) Half Ironman Mentor Group CLOSED! (Page 20)

95% of my training is done before 8AM the the 5% comprised or workouts that go over 8AM and some occasional runs at lunch. Kids, job, house.......no other way to get it in. You get really used to getting up that early. I'm on the east coast and I went out to SD for a week for work and every morning I was up by 2:30AM knowing there was no way I could get back to sleep. So I did what any good triathlete would do and went running in the dark, LOL.

6X250 in the first open water swim of the year. Water temp according to a guy on a local tri team was 62. First 100 yards felt pretty cold but not as bad as last year's first swim which had to have been 5 degrees colder. After the first length it was good and by the end I was actually really comfortable. I actually took the wetsuit off in the water since that's easier and the water didn't feel chilling against my skin. Mike D this was at Morton Park in Plymouth. If you're up for it we'll start to swim a lot of Tue, Thur and Sat mornings. There's a larger triangle we swim on the pond but being the first time out there's this nice straight shot from one beach head to another that forces you to spot yet keeps the interval short until you get used to swimming with the wetsuit again. It always feels so restictive that first few times out until you adapt again. Air temp was 59 so that helped as well.

I live in Marshfield MA which is 20 miles south of Boston. Generally it's a good area to be a triathlete. It's very popular here and there are lots of tri clubs. We have access to lots of ponds, lakes, rivers and the ocean to diversify the swim training in the summer. There's lots of good trails for running and some for biking. The drivers can suck like anywhere. I've had a Saab cut me off and put me on the ground on my bike. I was interesting to look at the Garmin data and watch my speed go from 19 to 0 while at the same time my HR spiked from 133 to 165, LOL. You can see how people have heart attacks from crashes. The weather is probably the worst part of training here. This spring has sucked with rain every Sunday morning which is when I like to do my long ride. Tomorrow looks like the same, UGGGG. I'm so sick of the trainer after the winter.

I live in Spring Hill Florida (just north of Tampa). I'm about 3 miles from the Suncoast Trail. It's about 60 miles of biking path on decent road surface. There are places to stop for water and restrooms intermittently. There are tons of bike groups that ride it on weekends. After my 70.3 with the road traffic I experienced, I feel very very lucky to live here.

There is 3 sprint tri series about an hour north, that sell, at Thanksgiving time for 119$ for all three. They are a lot of fun and a nice way to get a bit of open water practice with currents. They take place in May/June/August. There is a nice international distance 30 minutes south of here in October. There are more and more races cropping up every year.

I live about a mile from the YMCA and it's a nice facility.

The temperate climate allows me to bike outside year round.

Florida is the ideal place for triathlon.  

I train outdoors year round and could do a triathlon just about any weekend beginning in March and going thru mid November. Of course, it is hot and humid in the summer, but you get used to it.

Hey everyone!  I'm a morning girl.  It's the one time of day I can't really make an excuse or blame my lack of training on someone else ha ha.

I live in Toronto and it's good in that I'm in a part of the city that has some great running trails on it and lots of pools close by with varied hours available.  Cycling can be pretty if it's recreational but it's difficult to get a good ride in without traveling outside the city.

Today I had a brutal ride.  I dressed for 8 degrees but with the wind (25km/hour) it was more like 3 degrees.  I felt totally defeated fighting my way up the hills and averaging something like 18km/hour.  My plan was 80km but after 45 minutes I finally gave in and turned around.  Of course the last 1/2 hour was AWESOME!!! A major tailwind and all downhill and then I started to think I should have just been tougher and stuck it out.  But I have afternoon plans and probably would have run out of time.  Thought I could fit a short run in but by the time I got to the car my feet were in so much pain.  I was like a popsicle and shivering so I just blasted the heat and went home.  Tomorrow it's supposed to be colder and rainy so looks like I'll be hanging out on my trainer.  So ya... wanna come to Canada to train?????   Freaking 3 degrees in MAY!!!!

Oh, I definitely agree. When I say practicing I mean getting my body used to taking in more fluids and calories on the bike than I would if I weren't running afterwards. For a 3 hour ride first thing in the morning I can get up, have a big glass of water plus a cup of coffee with cream, eat nothing on the ride, and probably not quite finish 2 bottles of water and feel fine. Since I can't do that in an HIM, on my long rides I try to do what I would do in a race to train my body to take more fluid and calories. Don't like Gu, but I do love the Clif's Shot blocks. Also, like Fred said, I don't like to have anything for the first 20 minutes on the bike in an HIM. By that time I've settled into a nice biking groove.

I live in a great place for running and biking. About 60 miles northwest of NYC in the lower Hudson Valley. I can get into Manhattan in not much more than an hour, but I'm really out in the country. Within 2 miles of my house there's pretty much just dairy and horse farms and a lot of open space with great roads, nice scenery and not much traffic. Winter is tough for biking so mostly on the trainer, but  I absolutely love Winter running no matter what the weather brings. Swimming is not so great because there's no convenient spot for me for OWS. Luckily the Y is less than 10 minutes from either my house or office.

This is me too.  Too much time sitting on a hard flat bike saddle, grinding in the big gear and ramping up too quickly.  YIN yoga is my go-to when it starts getting really painful.  I also supplement deep tissue massage, foam rolling and have even tried ART and acupuncture.  Crazy annoying!

Talk about an active group - so much to catch up on in a matter of just hours!

Let's see…  When I workout.  Where I workout.  My weekend workout.  In that order:

0348 is a bit early for me, as is 0400…  Generally get up with the kids (8, 10, 12 - all about to "age up" in the next couple months), help get them ready for school and usually see them off then hit my first workout before work.  Lucky that I can ride or run from work for an hour (2, if my schedule is open and I push it).  Work is constant for me (I run a biotech, so it's all hours), so I get away with some flexibility in return for working ALL the time, it seems (although I protect family time above work and workouts).

I'm in Concord, MA - west 'burbs of Boston.  Wish I was on the South Shore with some of the others here (we go to Plymouth in the summer, and I love it there), but the commute to biotechland from there is hellish, so we're in "metrowest."  Great cycling here, though - gorgeous - although with the same Ma$$hole drivers (been called all kinds of names, honked at, swerved into, etc. - and I'm actually VERY considerate when I ride), but that's the deal.  Walden Pond is just down the street and several pools in town.  The running routes are beautiful.  Lot's of athletic types around (though I haven't found a tri-club that's close to Concord yet).  All in, pretty great, except the winter if it's snowy (but that's good for the skiing!).

On tap for the weekend - 12 mile run this morning with 6x5' Z4 efforts in the first half.  Then did a 30 or so minute recovery spin.  Have a hard swim workout on tap for this afternoon.  Tomorrow is a 90'-2hr Z2-3 ride followed by a 15' transition run.  Gotta do that between serving breakfast in bed to the world's best mother (and wife) before going over to visit family (and the world's other best mothers - or so I'm compelled to say when I get there).

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Matt

This morning had a 55 mi bike ride and then a short 20 min run. And it was awesome! Sooooo much fun. Rode w/4 others and we had a pace leader who would alternate pushing us with other speeds. At one point I lost a bottle and so I was behind and this guy waited for me and said to hop on his wheel and brought me back into the group. It was sort of a revelation for me, I know how drafting works, but it was just another thing to experience it. Yeah, science!!

But then when I was riding home from our meeting place, I was at a stoplight and tipped over on my bike, lol. Can't lose focus for a minute!

As training in Chicago, I don't know if it's a good place to be a triathlete. I don't know any other way, so I'm not really aware of what I am missing out on. It has it's frustrations, for sure: Completely flat, tons of stoplights/traffic, the weather only knows extremes (crazy hot, crazy cold, crazy humid, downpours, snowstorms, 25 mph winds, i.e.  no such thing as a simple "nice" day). But lots of good things too: access to OWS in a wonderful fresh water lake with our own triathlete beach, tons of bike shops, lots of bike lanes (although these are more for commuting and not riding, see:tons of stoplights) and roads that will eventually get you out of the city and into more bike-friendly areas, and living in a city there are 900 stores/restaurants on any bike/run so easy access to water or food on the go. So I don't know if it's a good place, but it is what it is and it is where I live and train.

ETA Just read Marcia's recap of her ride. 3 degrees?!?! I will never complain about Chicago weather in this thread again!

North of the border they use celsius.

Not that 40F doesn't suck when you're thinking it's going to be 55.

I do a lot of my training in the morning (getting up at 4am is not unusual), but I only have about an hour available in the morning.  So now that I've committed to a HIM, I'm having to add some evening workouts as well.  Thankfully, my Master's group has a couple evening options, so having a group workout makes it easier to get motivated for evening training.  One difficult thing about that is eating....after a long day at work, I come home and am famished....eat a decent dinner and then feel like I have a "food baby" in my tummy for most of the evening swims!  

I live and train south of Houston.  The tri community in the Houston area is pretty huge (tons of clubs, lots of local races, even a couple Ironman-branded races within an hour), but the roads often suck (lots of chipseal, lots of bumps/potholes/etc, and literally not a single bike lane that I've seen the entire time I've lived here), and many drivers are not very courteous.

Also, the weather is pretty brutal in the summer....100F and 90% humidity is just stifling.  But I figure if I can train through this, I'll be in a good place to race wherever I decide to race.  Oh, and there are no hills to train on here....but tons of headwinds to ride against!

TrainerRoad started an eight day "tour" -- 8 Days in California.  So I started that this morning and will be on my bike for eight days straight.  Since I'm not running, I figure this is a good time to do a mini bike focus.  I'll try to get my evening swims in this week as well, but won't do either of the morning swims I normally do since I'll probably be trying to knock out the trainer rides in the morning.

I live less than 10 miles from Everlong (Scott) and in fact will be in Marshfield, MA for dinner this evening. Agree with him that we have plenty of OWS access in season, and when the first warm day of the spring happens, you'll see more runners & bikers than you could believe. I have a Y nearby for swimming, and a beach 1 mile away for ocean OWS. Agree the weather has been a major headache this spring, and I've yet to get my bike on the road. Haven't had any issues with drivers as most on-road riding is do is early AM to minimize traffic.

Love the active/responsive nature of this group.  Looks like we will all be sprinting to keep up with the topics!  I'm in a very fortunate place as I'm retired so can structure my training at much saner hours now than I used to a few years ago.  My wife still works so I've moved around my schedule to make my weekends one rest day and one easy day(except when I ride with a cycling buddy who pushes the envelope for me), and Tuesday's the day I spend with my granddaughter (a convenient 50 mile ride away) so that's a bike-only day.  So this weekend will just be a 2-hour ride and then tomorrow have all the kids and my granddaughter over for a Mother's Day celebration.

I live in Fremont, CA, which is on the east side of the San Francisco Bay.  I'm still relatively new to the Tri scene, so have a lot of discovering to go in terms of doing what where.  There are great biking routes here if you want flats, rollers or hills, something I'm still discovering.  I've really structured my rides from my home but have not done a great job yet of throwing the bike on the car and transiting to some of the really nice routes.  That's about to change as my usual routes are getting stale.  I'm very fortunate to have my house back up on a creek with a bike/ped trail that runs from SF Bay up into the coastal hills, a distance of about 12 miles, so it was great for my early training rides and still works well for many of my runs.  Right down at the bay is a regional park with rolling hills that go right along the Bay, so not only is is good training, but a great view every time.  For swimming I go to a 'local' gym.  I say local because it is between 20 and 90 minutes away - depending on traffic and accidents.  There is a regional park where I do sorta-OWS.  I say sorta because you have to stay in a roped in area about 100m long, but you still get to practice sighting and swimming without seeing bottom.  The downside is the turns, but it is very convenient.  If traffic wasn't such an issue, there's also the opportunity to swim in SF Bay at Aquatic Park in the city, but I really, really hate traffic (30 years of commuting in it'll do that).  There's also the Pacific I could swim in, but have to find a swim buddy before I start that as that water is cold and prone to being rough and having sneaky riptides.  So, in summary, I live in a great place for training but it is incumbent upon me to really make the most of it.

I live and train in Fresno.  The good thing is just about no matter what condition you are looking for, it's either right here or within an hour drive.  Flat, rolling hills, mountains, stifling heat, cooler temps in the mountains, warm open water, freezing open water, elevation, you name it.  The bad news is that it is ridiculously hot most of the year.  And the air quality is really bad, especially if you are an allergy sufferer (I'm generally not).  I went for a jog this afternoon when it had already reached 97 degrees (F) and probably repeated "it's - so - f'ing - hot - i - feel - f'ing - fine" 10,000 times.  It doesn't cool down much at night either.  At least it's not humid.  Used to live in Chicago, I know all about humidity.  And I can ride outside all year.

There's only one tri club in town, I haven't joined yet.  There's a few local bike shops, but none of them are particularly tri friendly.  The one place in town you'd expect to be the most tri friendly, a place called Tri Sports, has no road or tri bikes in stock, they only stock hybrids and mountain bikes because that's what people around here buy.  But the roads and trails around here are very runner and biker friendly, in my experience.  Even on the rolling hills where there's not much space.  Never had any issues with drivers giving me problems.  Most of the bikers around here, again in my experience, are pretty good too, not blowing through stop lights and what not.  

Oh and I think it's worth noting they grow everything here in the valley.  The farmer's markets are awesome.  You can get organic strawberries the size of apples: