Beginner 1/2 Ironman Plan Group (Page 22)

You are right about the strides. You don't have to think about making your stride bigger, but simply "opening up" and running fast. Again you are right that it is not all out but just to get you feeling how it feels to run faster while keeping good form.
RPE is a scale of 10.
So basically, you are right about everything.

Just am home for two weeks and my former high school opened up a 50meter lap pool in this huge cool solar powered natatorium with a huge hot tub, two therapy pools, kids pools, and diving center.  Sweet for these two weeks but why now when I am home for like 2 weeks/yr!?

I wonder if my old HS will let me in the natatorium????  My Y only has outdoor pools.  Sad.


Anyway going to go 13.1 tomorrow to see what kinda pace I can keep.  Should get in easily under 2 hours.  Oh and the run will be fasted.

I'm still building base to start the plan. Doing great on cycling and running, but my swimming is REALLY lacking. I'm confident enough to make the distance. I just tired of lobsided results. I can't get out of the water with the pack to be competitive. I'm playing catch up on the bike and run. It's getting frustrating. I committed to working on it this off-season, but the last couple months I keep getting ear infections!! How do you get frustrated before you even start the plan!!

Easily.  Very easy to get frustrated before the plan, I definitely did and mostly for the same thing.  I still can't really swim for .  When I get a good distance in it is generally with a ton of stopping to recover.  Frustrating before and during the plan, don't let that get u down 

That sounds great.  I really hope it gets warmer than 15deg here and snowy.  I really can't run outdoors which is a killa.  Ran an hour and 7.5mi on the dreadmill today...it was awful and felt like four hours.  Lemme know how that goes! 

That sounds like a nice pool!

I decided to go swimming today in the morning instead of evening. That ended up being a mistake. I came in at 7:55am, and they had a class apparently that starts at 8am for an hour. Since I have a good job that lets me work from home, I just hung around in the steam room, sauna, and spa until 9am to do my routine.

Well you can imagine this created a snowball effect. Other people also came between 8 and 9 all wanting to swim but the pool was occupied by seemingly 4-6 kniting groups in the pool. It was enjoyable to watch though, I hope I create a network of friends like that when I am in my 80s to still bounce around and chat about things that happened 30 years ago.

Well 9am came, I decided to jump in and set the lanes back up, so I could get started. I finished my warmup of 308m (16m pool) and only had 1 other person in my lane with me. Then I started the 10 x 100m (96m actually - again 16m pool), and another person jumped into our lane. This makes things a bit more difficult because you have to go into a circle to let 3 people run a fluent length together. I got to my 6th set, things were going okay, it was harder but the ladies in my lane were nice and noticed me going much faster than them, so they stopped at the ends to let me pass. Anyway, when I got to my 6th set, another person jumped in our lane. One of the ladies waved her arms and yelled "noooooo" but he just giggled and started his lap. I looked at her and just smiled, then sighed... But I was able to finish up my other 4 sets with not too much of a problem. The guy was kind of in the way, when I was on his toes at times he immediately kicked off the wall to start another length instead of waiting 1 second for me to pass.

I wish my pool would institute a 3 person (or 2 person) maximum in a lane. With 4 people everyone has to sacrifice part of their workout to accommodate the faster and slower swimmers. I just wait at the steps with my goggles on until a lane gets down to 1 or 2 people.

So now for my question of the day:
the workout for today said:
wu: 300 continuous. concentrate on form weaknesses.
main: 10 x 100 descend 1-5 and 5-10
cd: 200 continuous, alternate 50kick, 50 swim)

All of it seems straight forward to me, except descent 1-5 and 5-10? What in the world does this mean? I assumed it meant to start set 1 (of 100m) at a RPE of 1, then go up 1 RPE each set until you are at RPE 10 for the 10th set (of 100m). Is this correct? If so, wouldn't that be ascending? In either case, couldn't it be worded a bit better?

Week 2 is almost over for me. It was a really good week. I began losing a bit of weight just from the exercise. My diet has been changed but not considerably.

That would be ascending.  Pretty recurring theme here that things could be better worded in the training plan.  When it does that I swim harder 1-10 because it never says ascending, but it does say each one easier than last, etc.  

And yes I know what you mean about the pool.   For me it's a bit different, even 4 people in the 50m pool lane is easily workable.  This pool is public, but the club my parents belong to has a 25yd pool with 4 lanes that I think in my last 6 swims I have seen one person in.  I have a nice choice but opt for the public pool because the length builds my endurance, in addition to the fact that it's not all old water aerobic ladies with old leathery faces that get mad if you make a splash.  

Stick with the training plan, it is going awesome for me.  Am on week 5 and am thrilled so far.  My swim times are getting better, btu I am still taking too long when I'm resting.  I really need my ipod in the pool or something. 

Descending 1-5 and 5-10 means you descend in time (and increase in effort) for each. So at 6 you start easy again and get harder until 10. You don't have to be all out at 5 and 10, btw. Just working on increasing your effort.

Sounds great, I am just finishing up week 2. To be honest, I don't have a HIM lined up, I just felt that because I want to be able to do some Oly distances next season if I can finish the 20wk HIM training plan, the Oly should be no problem and I might actually have some good split times. Who knows maybe when wk 20 is over, I'll feel confident enough to sign up for a HIM. I anticipate doing one in 2012 in either case.

The plan is going really well. At the start I didn't really feel like I could swim very well freestyle, I could do maybe 1/4 of a mile tops. Now it feels really good in the pool, it seems like I could swim as long as I wanted to. My problem is that for the first 100-160m my form is really fluent and strong, but after that it gets a bit messy, I can still finish but I can definitely feel my form going to crap and my time is much slower. In time, I imagine this gets better and better as I practice on my endurance and skills.

I think the issue with my gym is that it is only 16m, so it doesn't leave much space to get around people without getting in some other person's way. Also, the 3 lanes we do have don't have designated speeds for the swimmers. So often you get someone that is medium, someone that is fast, someone that gets a floatie and justs coasts up and down, and everything else that fits between those categories. Which isn't very efficient.

I look forward to hearing about your progress over the coming weeks. Do you have a HIM lined up for your wk20?

Thanks for the explanation. To be honest, I still can't follow the guidelines. I know in the grand scheme of everything me doing set 1 at RPE 1, set 2 at RPE 2,...set 9 at RPE 9, and set 10 at RPE 10, serves the purpose of increasing my effort. But in case the routine does come up again, could you elaborate a little bit more? My reading comprehension is probably lousy...it is Friday.

From your quote you say "So at 6 you start easy again and get harder until 10." does 10 occur in set 6, or do you complete the routine doing:
set 6: RPE 6
set 7: RPE 7
set 8: RPE 8

Basically do you increase RPEs during the set itself or when a new set starts you increase the RPE for the next set.

Sorry for the confusion, thanks for all the help you have been offering me. I appreciate it.

Nah this isn't an RPE one when it is descending.  It is just saying to go up in effort from 1-5, start slow again at 6, and go up until 10.  You don't have to be at RPE 10 on set 10 or RPE8 at set 8.  Wehn I do it, it is closer to RPE 4 at set 5, rpe 6 at set 8, and maybe 7 at set 10.   

Yea dude, I'm doing HIM New Orleans  (http://www.ironmanneworleans.com/) In April.  You should do vineman or oceanside or something! I wanted to do oceanside this year but couldn't travel with work and school.  Next year I'm going to take a HIM vacation for sure, my decision to train was just a bit sudden so I couldn't impose too much will on my schedule.

ahhhh, very clear now. Thanks.

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I posted in the main forum, but thought i would here too... 

I'm going to Minnesota tomorrow and staying 5 days.  Temp is 5 degrees, so there's going to be a big speed bump in my HIM training plan... so today I decided to Hold the Heck Up and run 10 miles non-stop (previously long was 7 or 8)... I made it at a 9:05 pace!  The temp (50 degrees) probably helped me out a little...

Nice man good for you.  MN is where I'm originally from.  Going to be there a week from now or else I'd say you could join me at my athletic club there or spin on the trainers at my family's.  Good luck, it's cold as hell there--i don't miss that.

haha!  I pictured you doing that and it cracked me up!  Wonder how many "laps" you would need to do to get a real workout in.  haha 

Got a crappy 12 mile run in today.  Legs felt heavy. Hips and knees hurt.  Just an overall lousy and slow run.  It was a bummer because all of my long runs have been feeling great.  I guess we will have those bad ones from time to time.  The one thing my run made me realize is that I DONT want to skimp on my training over the next 16 weeks.  I want to do every thing I can so that I can ENJOY the whole experience on race day.

Keep up the training everyone!!

We DEFINITELY all have those runs from time to time.  Looking on the bright side you got 12 miles of running in, and not that many can say that often.  Are you doing HIM Oceanside? 

Kudos for still getting in the 12 miles with the ailments. Someone else would have probably just tried to tack on the run to another workout later in the week, and then they get behind.

For instance, that's what I did for my first bike of the week. It has been storming here pretty good. In CA, that just means a lot of rain, nothing major. But I tried to get on the trainer and plug out 1hr 30min on the bike. It just wasn't happening. I even had football going and just get way to bored on the trainer. It seems like every minute is just agony. Does anyone have any suggestions to stay on it longer, rather than HTFU?

I don't think it would be too bad, but my hands start to hurt after about 15 minutes. I change up my position on the bike from time to time, but when I wrap my thumb and fingers around the shifters, they get really sore. I assume this is the correct way to ride a road bike. Does this occur to anyone else? Does it just get better with time?

Also, my trainer has been doing a heavy load on my back tire. I got a new tire that I read should last longer when using it on a trainer. Instead of swapping the tires out between trainer and road, is there any drawback to having a different tire on the front and back of the bike? I wouldn't think so, but thought I'd ask to make sure.

Since starting this plan I have seen my swim and run improve considerably, but my bike is lacking. When I look back at my logs I can see why, I seem to never get my bike time in. I'll try to correct going ahead from this week on.

I have to say, this has never happened to me.  If you are on the trainer, feel free to wiggle your fingers and toes periodically and even take ur hands off occasionally if they are hurting.  You definitely should not be gripping it very tightly which it kind of sounds like you are.  If you can't stand up in the trainer with minimal or no help from your hands you are probably gripping it too tightly.  Support the weight that bears downwards with your core and legs rather than handlebars.

13.33 mile run in a little under 2 hours.  Not bad considering I'd never run over 3 miles until August of this year. 

Not bad considering anything Good job!