SBR Utopia ~~~~ Permanently OPEN!! (Page 20)

Dragging some serious right now - week 3 of this HIM build with an incredibly tough weekend ahead.

Had to bail on my track workout after 1.5 of 6 planned reps Wednesday because I had absolutely nothing to give but bounced back ok with the ride yesterday.  Every workout seems to be a decision whether to do it or take a nap!

I'm thinking more along the lines of your eating in general. Can't remember hunger developing during the swim. I've been hungry early on, but that goes away once I get into the workout. Are you eating enough in general? Have your swims been first thing in the morning workouts? 

You're possibly over thinking this a little bit.  Unless you're really doing a long long session in the pool, you don't really need much for first thing in the morning.  Typically I'll only have something very light, but higher on the glycemic index - i.e. some white bread with jam, or breakfst pita, etc.  If it's a longer swim then I'll bring gatorade with me rather than water.

As for racing, I can never eat much due to race nerves.  At best I manage a partial bagel or banana, and then have a gel before the race starts.  Unless you're racing much longer distances your glycogen stores should carry you through most of the race without too much extra nutrition - sports drinks + 1-3 gels should be plenty for up to 3 hours.

I'll join!

Name: Dean

Story: started doing triathlons in 2007, I actually can't remember why.  Maybe I was looking for a new "thing".  Started off in the cold north west of England and now live in the Northern Virginia area a few minutes from DC.  A very small triathlon community in England to a hotbed of triathletes in NOVA!  Have been into endurance events for a long time, started doing marathons and further races in my military days from 1995 onward and have been doing them ever since.

This Year: Completed the Jurassic Coast Challenge in the UK in March, third time I've completed it, fourth time running it. It's three trail marathons in 3 days.  Each day is over 95% trail, the rest being cliffs :-)  and each day was over 28 miles!!  Raced in Syracuse a couple of weeks back and loved it!  Was my first HIM, I think I've found my distance!

I run, I ride and I drag my legs through water (some of you refer to it as swimming, but you'd stop that if you saw me) 

Struggle to maintain consistency, especially after big races, there's always a lull I have to break.  

An insight to my way of thinking: The answer to "should I buy a Tri bike?" is always yes IMO  (they just look awesome!)

Hooooooooo - that just gave me goosebumps! I have done so many races I cannot distinguish one of them from the other in my memory. But my FIRST one - just wow. I remember every second of it like it was yesterday. Very, very excited for you - you are going to LOVE it!

Hey Ryan - at least you were smart enough to bail out. About 2.5 weeks ago I had a race-effort workout that I COMPLETELY bombed - I dragged it forward a couple of days in the schedule and just wasn't recovered enough to hit my targets. It would have been completely demoralizing if I hadn't had the experience o remind myself that it was just one workout. With a little extra recovery I bounced right back the following week and killed the next one. Don't worry about it - it is all good.

Originally posted by BrotherTri

Originally posted by TankBoyA few weeks back Fred solicited interest in a group meetup/smack-down race next year. I can't find the responses - was there any consensus on that? I am thinking of doing something a little different and being more bike focused next year - Would anybody else be interested in Leadman in September? 3 distances on the same day: 85k/125k/250k - could be fun?

Hey Rusty, I proposed doing a meet up at Quassy. More so due to its a half iron distance and more people are on East/North East coast. Does not mean to exclude West coasters or Jason Planing these sort of things need to be well in advanced imo. Maybe 2016 West coast event? I think Fred was fishing to do a different Ironman and see who was interested. Trust me I had more funds to race I would be visiting allot of SBR'ers. May even make a trip to Indonesia and get Mellon Pressed. Not sure Stacy would like that thou.

Ah, yeah - that is right. I am having a tough time getting worked up to do a HIM for some reason, probably because I find then to be so freaking hard. That distance leaves me utterly shattered if I race it well, and worse if I don't. I never can figure out how you all race multiples in the same year, and often close together. I would do better racing multiple IMs than I would be multiple HIMs - I am convinced of it!

Hey Dean - welcome to the group. Don't worry, we are rotten with swim talent, but are a little short on the ultra running side of things at the moment, so you will fill the gap nicely. Long-time member of the Cervelo Club myself, but this season I too joined the Felt Mafia, and not really regretting it! (although admittedly I do still love my S2; probably my favorite bike, actually). 

Well, you certainly have me leaning in that direction....

Hey Neil welcome back!  - Low/No fiber on race day mostly because it takes a lot more energy to digest it, and requires more fluids in the system to move it along - both things that are better utilized elsewhere on race day. 

For a mid morning or mid afternoon swim, I think I would just make sure I had a good breakfast/lunch (whatever you normally eat most likely) and just leave it at that.  If you were doing something long like a 90+ minute swim you could think about having a water bottle with some sports drink in it to sip on during the workout but for a typical swim, I wouldn't worry about it.

Epic Dartmouth is a great race and goal - just hope it's not as hot as it was this year!  

Sorry to hear that, Fred - hopefully it is just one of things. I had a recovery day on the schedule today so got out for a nice chatty 2:45 ride with JT. It was great as we hardly ever get the chance to ride that long together. The only bummer is that we were experiencing near-record lows here this morning - when we rolled out it was in the low 60s! crazy. Cookout and walk downtown to watch fireworks tonight. Happy and safe 4th to all that are celebrating.

Fred, hope it's nothing serious!

We are having the opposite weather Rusty - 7 straight days of 30C/85F or higher.  That *never* happens here.  We might have that many hot days in an entire summer (maybe) but never all in a row.

The remnants of Hurricane Arthur is rolling through here tomorrow and early Sunday.

Couple mile lake swim this morning with some people I hadn't been with in awhile. Definitely seeing the training improvement. Used to get dropped by the one by quite a bit in the second half of the swim, but even though I was tired coming in was leading much of the way.

Also did 60 some miles riding on the MUP out to Lake Michigan. Definitely see the difference in the bikes as this took just over 4 hrs to do!

And here is a quick little tidbit that may (or may not) be interesting to the group.
So, you may be familiar with Segal's Law which states: "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."
Well I think what might be true for watches might also be true for power meters.

A few weeks ago I went on a group ride and took the opportunity to take the vectors off my tri bike and put them on my road bike, which also has a Quarq/SRAM crankset. I new there was a bit of a delta between the two, turns out it looks like the offset between the two is about 20 watts when at an "endurance" effort.

Link to the data from the Quark Elsa

Link to the data from the Garmin Vectors

So what (if anything) would you do with this information. How would it effect your training efforts from one to the other? Anything else funny you see other than the fact that I obviously have my FTP set too low in Training Peaks, no matter which PM is "correct? This obviously wrecks the use of IF, TSS, etc for analysis, but I don't really use that much anyway, other than to say "oh, isn't that interesting?"

I guess it might be interesting to do this experiment again next time I ride the kickr; because the only thing that I can think of that would be more screwy than having data from two power meters would be having data from three.....

Rusty, do you have an issue with calibration drift maybe?  Look at it this way, broken down in 15 mile chunks with the AP of the Quarq and the Vectors

first 15 miles - 159, 157
2nd 15 miles - 156, 149
3rd 15 miles - 177, 158
4th 15 miles - 197, 164

The Vectors have you riding pretty steadily throughout the entire ride while the Quarq has you building up, especially after the first 30 miles.  So from an RPE point of view, which was it?

I think Arend might be onto something.  I'd check the offset value before and after your next ride with the Quarq.  Given the VI of the ride, it would be pretty beastly for you to average 190+ watts during the last 15 miles...with probably a NP in the 250+ range.  Also, not sure if your FTP is set correctly in TP, but a 300 TSS for a 3 hour ride should be a red flag.

I would certainly straighten out the issue first rather than trying to account for the difference.  Power is all about accuracy...that's why you spent big bucks on it.  If you were willing to do estimations and approximations you could just stick with RPE or HR for much cheaper.  The good thing for you is that your potential issues are with 2 of the best companies as far as customer service and warranty returns.

ETA:  Do you remember if you did the back pedal offset technique during the ride and/or if there was weather change?  I know one ride I did started in normal weather, then it started to rain hard.  By the end of the ride, my Quarq was reading about 15% high...I was pushing 360 watts for 3+ minutes without feeling like I was going to throw up.  Once I did the back pedal thing, my numbers came back to normal and all of my other rides since have been fine.

Funny thing was that I actually managed to back pedal 3-4 times during Haleakala on some false flats.  I was so worried about the power numbers drifting as I gained elevation (barometric pressure), but it seemed to work well.

Crazy windy here today with the hurricane leftovers coming through.  65km/hr gusting to 90 but it's sunny so I figured I might as well go for a run.    It was almost funny in places as I could barely move forward into the wind when the gusts came through.  There is a hill (600 meters at 3%) that I went up with the wind at my back at a 4:20/km pace and on the way back down into the wind, it was more like 5:30/km.  Pretty sure I've never had that happen before.