Work your Weakness aka "Hey, Mike, STFU!" Challenge (Page 22)

What makes time trialing and running in triathlon different than their original sports outside of your pace plan on the bike?  

Look at how much kicking Sun Yang does when he races the 1500m swim:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6uqZd8Tn3Y

Not unlike that of a triathlete, no?

5+ min PR, but more important to me was the mental PR.  RR is here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uncOBURz-6o

Sustained view of his kick.  He almost stops kicking when he breathes.

Kind of.  I've heard the philosophy of viewing tri as one sport before instead of a combination of 3, but I never really understood what that actually meant.

Well, it just is. A triathlon isn't about any one event. You perform each event knowing something is coming before or after. I certainly wouldn't perform any of the sports as though they were a standalone during a triathlon because they aren't.

As to what exactly that means and what is different? Again, nearly everything. I fuel differently, I pace differently, and I even dress differently.

 Not sure if that answers your question or not. 

Well tonight was track night and I have to say ten years ago I never thought I'd run like this again.  Did 4 x (200,200,400) with 200's @ :42 and 400's @ 1:28.  A little faster than my current VDOT R pace but I just felt like I was gliding.  Such a cool feeling.  Lots of  friendly, fast, supportive people working out on the track.  It was so cool to taste just a hint of my glory days so many years ago.

Wore my new flats for the first time.  RC5000's.  I think these things are made out of rice paper.  I do not see how you can run XC in these Adrienne.

Remember how I thought my FTP was around 260?  Silly me!  I tested at 216 on the PT and 221 on TrainerRoad.  I was impressed with how close the numbers were, but I got a looooooot of work to do on the bike.  Probably not a bad thing, since the bike is something I do decently in already.

Well, it kind of goes a bit more than a simple answer. There are a number of patterns to a kick, not just intensity. It isn't just yes/no. Read this on tjfry's blog. Yang is a bit funny with his. There are 4 beats, but there is a noticeable gap in timing. To me it looks closer to 6-beat timing and he just skips some of it. But I'm not really an expert on this. Do note that the kick is *always* timed to help with the rotation. It's not just random to keep the back end up or for a little propulsion.

Another thing to know is that kicking can be very deceptive. We don't really know how hard he's kicking there. Certainly not all out, but it may be easy, it may be moderate, or may be pushing towards hard some. We know it's not all out because of his last 50m, but how far below that is anyone's guess. And this can lead into another part of "swimming like a swimmer" in that does this mean just the effort level like that, or also the training? Swimmers will do more kicking as they will use it for propulsion too. More so with the shorter distances than long. At any of the distances, they will be very, very effective. Yang may be able to do a kick set at his swim intensity and actually pull away from me swimming. Those other guys would blow me away even if I started off the blocks. They're just that effective at it. Someone coming into swimming (like most triathletes) will not be very effective at kicking. Body position suffers if they don't. Drag still suffers if they do because the motion is terrible and they burn up energy because they're not effective enough do much with a really gentle kick.

So you do want to be able to kick, but mainly so that you can do an effective 2-beat as demonstrated on tj's blog. It also needs to be considered as part of the whole stroke. Early on, my stroke rate was too slow that even if I did have a better kick they would have been spread kind of far apart and I'd fall down in between (so really really hope for wetsuit swims). I couldn't do only 2 and everything was a mess. Now with more pulling ability (for a quicker stroke rate), better positioning through the core and a more effective kick, I can actually feel it driving me over from one side to the other a little. I'm faster kicking than by doing as little as possible. And I keep going faster when I kick harder whereas it used to actually slow me down, though that is less efficient when I do kick hard. And I'm still not really that great at it.

OK, that link (all of your links always are) was really helpful.  That is exactly how my D1 swimmer friend was swimming on Friday.  Nice, strong 2-beat.  I will try experimenting with that, but I wonder if I maybe in that too slow a stroke rate/bad body position place that will make a good, effective 2 beat unlikely.

So a couple of other questions.  When you practice your kick sets, do you do them with more of a 2 beat timing, or do you kick more of a 6-beat?  I don't know if you can really call it by beat since there are no arms, but I think you know what I mean

Well tonight was track night and I have to say ten years ago I never thought I'd run like this again.  Did 4 x (200,200,400) with 200's @ :42 and 400's @ 1:28.  A little faster than my current VDOT R pace but I just felt like I was gliding.  Such a cool feeling.  Lots of  friendly, fast, supportive people working out on the track.  It was so cool to taste just a hint of my glory days so many years ago.

Wore my new flats for the first time.  RC5000's.  I think these things are made out of rice paper.  I do not see how you can run XC in these Adrienne.

Some good news is I think you said you hadn't really been riding, so it's quite possible that you could see a nice bump up within just a few weeks of pushing it again.

Ben, with the bolded above in mind, I know you said you don't test FTP that often, is that because you're pretty consistent in your riding?  How soon should someone like Matt retest FTP after getting back to consistent biking?  Is it kind of a "feel" thing? 

Well tonight was track night and I have to say ten years ago I never thought I'd run like this again.  Did 4 x (200,200,400) with 200's @ :42 and 400's @ 1:28.  A little faster than my current VDOT R pace but I just felt like I was gliding.  Such a cool feeling.  Lots of  friendly, fast, supportive people working out on the track.  It was so cool to taste just a hint of my glory days so many years ago.

Wore my new flats for the first time.  RC5000's.  I think these things are made out of rice paper.  I do not see how you can run XC in these Adrienne.

Remember how I thought my FTP was around 260?  Silly me!  I tested at 216 on the PT and 221 on TrainerRoad.  I was impressed with how close the numbers were, but I got a looooooot of work to do on the bike.  Probably not a bad thing, since the bike is something I do decently in already.

This morning's workout was a 5 a.m. HTFU 5-mile T run (1.5 WU, 2 'T', 1.5 CD more or less).  This is scary, but I didn't find it actually that hard.  I held about 7:45 through the 2-ish miles; that was my 5K race pace only 3 months ago.  I mean, I was working and suffering just a little, but the recent racing makes it all relative.  And did I mention that it was at 5 effing A.M.??? 

Yes the drive is mainly because I think I can (and should) be stronger than that.  4W/kg is the landmark I'd like to shoot for.  How do I balance that with my running goals?  I may take out a tempo workout or interval workout to work on my weaker areas on the bike some.  I'm not sure.  It's a tough balancing act.  For now I'll just focus on my 10K this weekend.  The FTP test did at least give me some good practice in suffering for a prolonged period of time.  

This morning's workout was a 5 a.m. HTFU 5-mile T run (1.5 WU, 2 'T', 1.5 CD more or less).  This is scary, but I didn't find it actually that hard.  I held about 7:45 through the 2-ish miles; that was my 5K race pace only 3 months ago.  I mean, I was working and suffering just a little, but the recent racing makes it all relative.  And did I mention that it was at 5 effing A.M.??? 

This morning's workout was a 5 a.m. HTFU 5-mile T run (1.5 WU, 2 'T', 1.5 CD more or less).  This is scary, but I didn't find it actually that hard.  I held about 7:45 through the 2-ish miles; that was my 5K race pace only 3 months ago.  I mean, I was working and suffering just a little, but the recent racing makes it all relative.  And did I mention that it was at 5 effing A.M.??? 

So a couple of other questions.  When you practice your kick sets, do you do them with more of a 2 beat timing, or do you kick more of a 6-beat?  I don't know if you can really call it by beat since there are no arms, but I think you know what I mean

At the beginning of last year I was always faster with a PB.  Then I got to a point where I was about the same with or without.  Now I'm definitely faster without it, but I'm kicking more than a 2 beat. I'm like 6 sec/100 faster without the PB now.  Does that mean anything? Just better body position? Better kicking? Don't worry about it?