Fast Twitch Tri-FULL (Page 21)

I've been away for a couple days...

(1) Bricks. I used to do them all the time. Or, more appropriately, transition runs after EVERY ride. Not long, just 2, maybe 3 miles, to get past that "big thigh, short stride" feeling and get smooth and feeling fast. The more I did them, the quicker the feeling passed and the sooner I'd feel like a runner off the bike. I haven't done them outside of a race in years, though. I think one of the biggest points of doing bricks is to get used to what you're going to feel like off the bike, and to realize that even though you FEEL like your thighs are balloons and your stride is a whole 6" long, you're actually doing just fine. I've been doing tri's since 1984... I think I've gotten through that mental hurdle.

(2) Weight gain. I actually haven't worried about my weight since... ever. I pretty much just let it be an outcome of my activity level. I lost 14 lbs this year due mainly to increased bike training. I'm at 150 lbs now, Lisa keeps saying I'm skinny (at 5'10"). Will my weight go up? Maybe. I haven't always gained weight in the off season. I remember one year I actually LOST weight from mid-November to January. But if I gain back a few, oh well.

1) Do I do brick workouts?  Usually no.  Sometimes I'll do a swim/run but that's just because I wanted to squeeze in a run after my swim...not because I wanted to get used to running after I swim.  When in season, I usually will do about 2-3 bricks just to test out my pacing for a given race.  Trying to get a feel for how hard I can go on the bike and still run the way I want to.  For a HIM, I found a 50-60 mile bike followed by a 4-5 mile run works well for me.  I try to do my last one about 3-5 weeks out from race day.

2) Do I use compression gear?  I have a pair of Zoot compression tights that I have used in the past, but frankly am too lazy to use them on a regular basis.  I do feel they help...but are great when on the airplane.  I have never used any compression gear while training/racing.

3) What is an acceptable weight gain in the off season?  For me, generally about 3-4%.  If I'm racing at 155, The alarms start going off when I hit 160, and at 163 I force myself to take action.

DAVE -

Well stated:  "..... even though you FEEL like your thighs are balloons and your stride is a whole 6" long, you're actually doing just fine."  Amen, bro'!

That really is a nifty phenomenon, when your pass the first mile marker on the run in a very acceptable time......but you fear that the marker is misplaced.....only to learn at the seond mile marker that the pace is the same.  Hot diggity!

You're also right that, after a certain point, the mental hurdle is pretty much gone.  Thank god for small mercies, eh?

MATT -

Me too, with that oddly disconcerting rippled configuration.  Weights might help, but for me it's mostly about not eating like Mr.Creosote, in whichever Monty Python movie that scene was in.   And if I just devoted some quality (and quantity) time to my core, that rippling wouldn't be such a tip-off as to my penchant for sconespiescroissantstartsetcetcetc.  It's not easy having a sweet tooth that is best satisfied by sweet AND empty carbs!

SHANE -

"......just need to curtail the snacking a little" ----- see my above post to Matt!

From late '03 until early '07, I think it was, I went vegetarian.  That was a beautiful thing, although eventually all the cooking just wore me down.  I did it just as an experiment really -- to see if I could truly control my eating regimen, and to just start eating mindfully.  Both worked, and quite brilliantly.  I think in time I will drift that way again, but first I simply need to commit to xx hours of cooking each week.  It really was pretty intense.

And it's not like I lost weight or gained admirable leanness, but rather just feeling good about what I was eating.  Every day!  Multiple times every day!  Win-win-win!

Interesting about getting cranky as you swing below 170, as for me it's the opposite when I start veering closer  to 180.  But my crankiness is mostly mental, whereas if I'm interpreting your crankiness correctly, it's maybe more physiological.  It would be interesting to get a biochemical workup done when you get below 170 to see what might be missing at hat -- the subcellular level?

The hat trick of horrors --- "no sleep, no training, poor food"  Yikes!!!

I guess I said that wrong- it's not that I have trouble keeping it on, but I think I just get grumpy and lazy and eating enough feels like a monumental exercise.  I have a crazy metabolism and eat a lot at one point I was eating two burritos for dinner and I eat slow so it's just expensive and time consuming.  I like food and all - but regularly get comments on cleaning my plate and eating desert at work meetings.  I just run on high octane.

In college I did swim fly, but 50/ 100 free were really my events.  We did a lot of weight lifting.  Truth be told I was not faster at a super burley 137 than I was in high school at a puny 126.  So, it didn't really help me.  I spent a lot of quality time on one of these after knee surgery and it will help your shoulders bulk up http://vasatrainer.com/vasa-trainer.html

AMY -

Since my post of a day or two ago, you can see that I'm not trhe only male here who is tending towards "obsessing" over their weight!  In my defense, uh, I obsess only when I get too far from my perceived ideal race weight.  Honest!

I NEVER lifted until early '05, and then I did it religuiously every off-season up until a year ago, when i decided to make Yoga my primary mode of cross-training.  But i miss lifting quite a bit, although I just do moderate weights and only upper body.  Mostly what I miss is the mental discipline and solitude of it, which is soemthing I get nowhere else.  (Yoga might seem to provide that, but i spend too much time and effort trying to get into any number of poses that are real reaches for me, and so never get into an ideal quiet and reflective state of mind.)

I was always a bonebag growing up, and never had anything even hinting at muscularity.  (My best friend's older brother, who had quite a mean-spirited tongue at times, said I had a "chicken-chest".........and I think that kind of scarred me fro life!)  But then, lo and behold, my physique actually started to change with lifting, and that was sort of a revelation.  (Sadly, though, Lynn never seemed to notice.)

Running cadence:  I counted for 30' a few times in an average 6mi run.  Some flats, some hills, some normal pace, some light tempo.  Came out at 85 or 86 steps each time.  With margin of error, I'm thinking... well, 85 or 86 is about average for a mid-length run pace for me.

I suspect it's higher in a race (Sprint tri, specifically), as I purposefully focus on "picking 'em up and putting 'em down" at a faster cadence off the bike, but probably not a lot so.

Not sure what I should be targeting - just letting my hindbrain do most of my thinking (as usual, my wife might say...). 

So, just looked at a swim from this morning and I'm curious (as in, I have no frame of reference, so I'll post here and hope to borrow from others!) about a couple things.

My average spl in a 25yd pool on the garmin is 7 (averaged over 2,750yds), ranging from 6-8.  I'm assuming that's 14 (12-16) the way it's been discussed here.  My SWOLF is 28-29 when "sprinting" (low 1:20's/100yds) and 35 when doing 500-1000yds at a more relaxed pace (1:50/100yd).  Efficiency is 31/32 sprinting 50yds and 38-39 for the 500/1000 sets.  It's just from one swim, but my questions are more general (see below)

Do these data actually tell me anything about my swim that I can use to improve it?  Something like: stroke faster; stroke slower; kick more; kick less; BE FASTER, etc...  Never had a coach/lesson, so I'm wondering if these are often used, or more just fun-facts.

Not sure that there is much to glean from the data (thinking it's so based on form that a coach actually watching HOW you get the numbers is the only thing that'd help).

Any help interpreting this is appreciated.  For that matter, even suggestions of which metrics I should pay more or less attention to would help (I'm currently largely ignore it all in favor of pace, as that's the end product that counts - speed!). 

While I can swim, I'm clearly not a "swimmer." 

Thanks!

Further to the above (this is Fast Twitch, after all), which metrics might be more important for short distance racing rather than endurance efficiency competitions (OK - no flames from any closet long course folks please). 

Really, though, is there a 400m-1.5km style of swimming that is different than long course (where energy conservation is a bigger part of the racing strategy), and does that port to the metrics to which short coursers pay/should pay more attention?  Is spm more important than spl? etc...

Again, just curious.

JASON -

Because both of my OWS sites are right near beautiful running spots, I will do 8-10 swim-run bricks every season.  but like you, i don't do them because I aspire to an aquathlon at some point, but just because it's a great way to get in a run in a pretty place -- and if it's a hot day, i can jump back in the water for a cool-down swim!

I should say that these aren't hard-core bricks, as i'm not aiming for a fast "transition" time.  I've done that once or twice, meaning i've sprinted from the water to my car and done the fast switheroo out of wetsuit and into running shoes......but mostly i just do the brisk walk and try to actually enjoy it all a bit more!

Yeah...I would say my "transition time" in those swim/runs are somewhere around 15 minutes.  I definately still feel a little wobbly for the first half mile of the run though as the blood moves back to my legs.

MATT -

That's a very solid and seemingly efficient run cadence for garden-variety training runs.  When i get around to sunmmarizing thoughts on "optimal" cadence for the three disciplines, you might see a mention of ~90 as being a goal to shoot for. 

BUT, even though that has worked for me, it will not work for everyone -- although I think there is enough "evidence" there to suggest it is worth probing some and see how it works.  This is one of the many triathlon "orthodoxies", as QUINCY called them, that is floated out there all the time, but just won't work for everyone.  (The best example of an orthodoxy that doesn't work for me is bilateral breathing, which I have spent hundreds of hours working to perfect......but cannot get it to be my go-to in races.  Grrr!)

As for your off-the-bike strategy of starting at a faster cadence, that is what works for me.  There is no real effort at "running pretty" initially (and sometimes never in a given race, if it aibn't one of those days....), but I can get into a good groove quite quickly if I execute a quick and low footfall as soon as I'm shod and hatted.

And tell Kim that your hindbrain is awesome, capable of great feats of endurance-focused insight!

More in a while.

I think there is a sweet spot on strokes per length that differs by person.  If you are increasing that much to sprint- I would think you are not getting a very good pull.  When I was in college I had a very consistent 17 to a flip turn, 18 to a wall stroke count.  Even in sprints it was usually right there - I think largely because my kick differed a ton between say a 50 and a 200 and that probably offset a little faster turn over. 

That said- I never really raced over 200 - but in practice and we probably averaged 8-9k/ day I was still 17 to a flip turn and 18 to a wall. 

I would say to do a few 50s adding and subtracting a few strokes and see what it does to your time to try and find your sweet spot- which may change over time.

I've been reading a lot about the 2-3-2 breathing pattern and I think if I didn't have a 3-3 pattern burned into my brain I would try.  So it's breathing Left, left, 3strokes to right, right 3 strokes to left.  It's supposed to get you more oxygen than a traditional bilateral 3rd stroke.  I think doing two to each side is probably a good exercise if you have a weaker side as well.

I missed a few weeks here- so I don't even know what Efficiency or SWOLF mean though.

As far as kick more/ kick less - if you're sprinting you need to kick as hard and fast as your legs can go.  I definitely back off for distances, but I still kick more than most triathletes and keep up a 6 beat kick.

Also, don't just play with your stroke count, but your body position.  I have found that neck/ chest alignment makes a HUGE difference.  So try pressing down and forward with your chest - this alters your center of buoyancy and can push your hips up in the water.  (it's like when you're trying to get a 1/4" more at the doctor and you arch your back a little and stretch up.- try it in the mirror and see how it pushes your hips back- which would be up in the water.)  I always visualized trying to make my chest to neck look like the bow of a boat - that's for sprinting- so it was a little more relaxed for distance.  Also try changing your hand and arm angle. 

I hope this helps a little even if I didn't directly answer your question.

Many thanks - quite helpful!
Interestingly, my spl are about the same for the different speeds.  It's 13-14 when focusing on smooth, long strokes and 15 or so when I'm sprinting.  Or maybe that is a big difference? I can get higher, but I feel like a spastic monkey...

I'm not sure what "efficiency" is either, as defined by Garmin at least.  SWOLF, or swim/golf, is a combination of the number of seconds to swim the length plus the number of strokes taken.  As in golf, the lower the better.  I think it's used mostly to get to that sweet spot of optimizing the amount of work for a given speed (you can go faster, but form falls apart and you windmill, or you can take fewer spl but go slower&hellip.

As for the breathing - I've been doing exactly what you suggest, by chance!  I found myself going 3-2-3-2, with a couple extra 2's or 3's depending on how much I craved O2.  I think it felt a bit more efficient than just 2-2-2-2 and wasn't as O2-depriving/panic inducing as 3-3-3-3 when going hard.

Perhaps that's an advantage to not having a "grooved" stroke (or a coach's voice in my head  - I can still hear my town youth hockey coaches' when I lace up!) - you can try different things more easily.  The down side, of course, is not having a "grooved" stroke...

On body position, I found myself thinking "slow down and look at the bottom" - as in straight down - so my head would be pretty much submerged.  Tried this to get my feet to stay high even when I got fatigued, and it definitely made a difference.  I'll try "getting tall," as you suggest, next time I'm in the pool.

Who knew this could be so much like a game!

Thanks again.
Matt 

HI! I'm back, sorry I've been away for a few days. Just read up on all the posts. I think the swim question is excellent and I would love to discuss it more (technique changes as distance increases...or not). My very first initial thought is that it probably doesn't matter THAT much unless you are already a very good swimmer. But I'd love to hear more thoughts.

And to catch up, 

Bricks, yes, but very short. And not more than 1x a week. I feel like it gives me a run done on more tired (5 mile) legs for the cost of only 1 or 2 miles actually run. I also did a run off of a century ride just as a confidence builder before IM, but didn't do the standard 10% or whatever it is people think you need to do, and only did one off of a long bike. I did have my "long run" scheduled usually the day after my long bike, and that was plenty enough fatigue for me. I generally run pretty well off of the bike and initially run faster than a standalone run b/c I'm all warmed (and amped) up.

Weight. I am struggling with this. Having kid food in the house and a foodie husband and a love of song and drink (mostly drink) I have allowed myself to put on and maintain a weight I am not happy with. To most people I look fine, and my BMI is well within limits, but the reality is, it's not a weight I am going to race "faster" with. I am journaling food again which is apparently the only way I can keep myself from eating like a 300lb trucker. Sheesh.

I am also starting a 5k plan for a January (in Chicago! I am crrrrrazy) so that has helped me get my equilibrium back....I have some questions about what you guys think of how it is structured, but I'll add that to a separate post.

Q

KATE -

Wow!  Great post to MATT; much to think about!

Not only was your stroke count admirably on thr low side, but it was so consistent.  That you maintained 17/18 for 8/9k says something about how consistently efficient you were (and still are?).  I can swim for a very long time, but it doesn't take long for my stroke to start getting faster and sloppier.  The good news is that as far as stroke count goes, I tend to top-out at 24-25 per 25m; at least i don't keep deteriorating until I'm at, say 29 per 25m!  But the bad news is that the execution of the stroke will continue to get incrementally less efficient --- although when I concentrate on it I can reconstruct my mechanics to a place that's closer to where I want it to be.

I have experimented with all sorts of breathing patterns, and do quite well on my own, but as I said to Matt earlier, deploying them in races doesn't work.  It's then that I fall back into the same-old, which is right-sided, which is usually every other stroke, sometimes every fourth.  I love the feel, in the pool, of breathing along the lines of your 2-3-2, but I can't seem to puull it off in races.  Rats.

Gary Hall Sr has posted a few times over at Slowtwitch, and he has a radical breathing pattern that he espouses to the heavens.  I will have to simulate it to remember it, and it sure is radical, and it is fun to play with (although it's been a few years for me), but as with the other variations -- not race-worthy for me.

I think it is breathe right, then immediately left, then NOT, then left, then right, then NOT, then right, then left, then NOT.  It comes out to two breaths for every three strokes, and his big selling point is that it maximizes ---- oxygen!  My unilatral preference come out to, of course, every other, so in six strokes i get three breaths, while with Hall's method it is four per six strokes.  Benefical?  I've never pushed it hard enough to decide for myself, but when someone like G.H. Sr advises it, i feel i should listen and at least attempt it. 

"Pressing the buoy" is what I try to aspire towards, along with the general notion of "swimming downhill".  That's old Total Immersion talk, I know, but it still makes a world of sense.  I think I do it okay, but I'm sure there is lots of room to improve.  You may have missed it in one of the earlier posts, but for the most part i have been on a plateau since about 2004, I think.  I swim a ton, but nothing has bounced me up to that coveted "next level".  rather, if there is any progress at all for me, it has been "as leisurely as the drifting of the continents" (with all apologies to T.C. Boyle for taking his wonderful line out of the context in which he used it).

Oh, my, I could natter on about swimming for a very long time --- maybe because I find it far easier to talk the talk than to successfully walk the walk!

Thanks again for your supern insights!

MATT again -

Boy, it's been years since I did SWOLF, as in probably 9 or 10 of them.  I am currently on my swimming off-season, but when I return to the pool I will give it a shot.  It'll be a blast from the past!

I will save much of what I think I want to say for a broadside post to the group, but for now I will say that -- unlike the benefits of increased cadence in running and swimming -- a higher turnover in swimming is not likely to succeed for most age-groupers who don't come from a strong swimming background.  When I initially floated this whole topic out there a few weeks, it was telling that about 5 or 6 of us had our best success on the bike at 90+ ----while about four of us reported that our swim strokes fell apart when our arm turnover got too fast.  One person referred to it as "flailing", and although that wasn't my word, it certainly does apply to me!

The former Olympian (both swimming and triathlon) Sheila Taormina created a real kerfuffle about 10 years ago when she posted on Slowtwitch that swimming the Total Immersion style was NOT the way to swim faster.  This was at the time that T.I. was in its ascendency, and Terry Laughlin wielded a ton of influence. 

In a nutshell, Sheila claimed that the best way to swim fast was to push the pace of those arms, as every second they weren't propulsive was time that was lost.  She further stated that for people with middling-to-poor kicks, taking long, gliding strokes amounted to a lot of slowing-down between one arm-pull and the next.  Yes, it was calming and leisurely and could look pretty, but no, it was not the way to swim faster.

So i looked at myself and through her goggls I was (a) a poor kicker, and (b) had a long glide to each stroke cycle.  Ack!  So i started working on my turnover, increasing it quite dramatically, and while that had some short-term benefits, those feel away fairlt quickly as my stroke fell apart.  Periodically i will revisit working at a significantly higher turnover rate, but alas and woe, the results are always the same.

I will say, however, that a bunch of years ago I moved from about 17-18s/25m to around 20-21, and that was what got nme off the BOP plateau and onto the MOP plateau -- where I have taken up seemingly permanent residence.  Better there than on the BOP plateau, but........

There are reasons why increeased arm turnover isn't as reliably effective as increasing footfalls on the run and rpm on the bike, and that's one of the things I will bring up when I do a summary, of sorts, probably midweek coming up.

FWIW ---  about eight people had thoughts on bike cadence, maybe five chimed in on it with swimming.....and only 2 or 3 said anything about how it affects their running.  I didn't expect that, and figured that it would be about the same with running and biking --lots of people would've tried to increase cadence in both and had some personally-informed thoughts on the topic.  Ya never know!

JASON -

15 minutes is about right for me, too!

Hi Steve,

I think from my poor understanding of Total Immersion that the body position I was talking about is a lot like swimming downhill- except you break your body at the neck so you don't bury your head you look ~2 meters ahead at the bottom.  I could never do the head down thing- but pushing your chest down and forward allows you a similar body position.  I personally think a slightly higher head position makes breathing easier- especially with small chop in OWS.  I just rotate my chin up to breathe.  All of this comes from tweaking for sprinting though.

As far as racing and breathing every stroke- unless it's bugging your shoulders or causing you to drift off course I wouldn't worry about it at all.  If that's what feels good in a race go for it.  I will sometimes breathe almost all on one side if the sun is bugging me or chop is crashing into me from one side.  I do think it's good to practice both sides to keep things more even stroke wise.

Ha ha- I still always hear my USS coach yelling "If you're cold it means you're not swimming fast enough!"  It's actually very motivational. 

Which- I see you're from Concord- was at early morning practices at Hanscom- I grew up in Lincoln!  I used to do laps at Walden Pond after work in the summers.  Are there still a ton of people swimming laps in the evening there?  That and poaching White's Pond.

Aha, I meant to post about this. On my LSD runs I counted several times (currently a 9:50 pace) and I'm about 83. And I promise you, that for anything faster, I get the speed thru increased turnover. I don't feel like I am exerting any extra power at all, just faster cadence...so unlike my confusion about cadence on the bike, I have none at all about the run. Increased speed comes from turnover for me.

QUINCY -

Glad you're back; you've been missed!

If you saw SHANE'S comment at the top of the page, you'll see that having "kid food" around the house is a big culprit in his world, too.  I wish I could clain that as an excuse for me......but with a 28-year old and a 26-year old who have both been flown from the coop for years, I have to plead guilty with no excuse other than my own lack of resolve --- and love of things sweet and salty.

Good for you on the journaling.  I have never done it, but no lots of people  who employ it with remarkable -- and almost immediate -- success.  I relaly hope it works for you, and not in any small part because I'm struggling with the visual of you looking like "a 300lb trucker".  (I know you only said "eating like" one, but in my world it's a slippery slope from eating like one to looking like one!)

I too am a fan of infrequent bricks, with my rationale being that too many will only succeed in making the user slower.  I think too many people knock off bricks just for the sake of doing them (which has vailidity IF it's a labor of love, and IF the user isn't looking to build speed), and so will either (a) go kinda slow on the bike so as to save something for the run, or (b) ride the bike somewhat hard.......and then have to take the run kinda slow.  I guess I'm really thinking about bricks that are moderate-length for both B and R, and the result is usually a slower-than-optimal performance.

That's just a thought for sprints and olys, though, and only for people who care about enhancing and developing speed.  Longer bricks have a real role in HIM and IM, as you know, and back in my days when i was "focusing on sprints AND olys AND HIMs -- in the same season -- there wer frequemtly "conflicts of interest" when training for a shorter race would get hijacked by training for the HIM, and vice-versa.  For em, it was a clarion call to be smart about my race schedule, and not just pay lip service to Periodization.  When I had a coach, he kept the reins on me; left to my own devices, I have tended to race when I bloody well feel like it --- and then I wonder why confusion reigns and my results don't quite sit where I want them to.  Architect of mny own disaster!

But the apst two seasons, having doen nothing longer than an oly ---- it's all sooooo much easier!  It's hard to overtrain when I should be training less, and undertrain when I should be training more, as it's all kind of in the same ballpark for me.  It's a nice side benefit to the overall unfortunate situation where my body has pretty much forced me to "go short" these past two seasons!

Finally, your plan for a 5km in January is superb!  Yeah,, yeah, I know how awful winter running can be at tiems, but I also truly believe that it hepls prepare one for those days when air temp is low and getting on the bike wet is an exercise in masochism ----- but at least the sufferer can compare that to other episodes of frigidity and not freak quite as much at the thought of hypothermia.  I do lots of runs and rides dressed minimally (in view of the prevailing conditions at the time), and I really believe it has helped me on numerous cold and/or wet race-rides.  (Or so I tell myself!)