Slornow and Wannabefaster's mentor group...Closed (Page 24)

Stuart-I would say the doctor knows best.  I have heard and read of many accounts of calf injuries and the one thing that sticks with me was the following: "when you think the calf is fine to run on give it another week."  I think this is good advice when we are self diagnosing and treating but if I were you I would follow the doctor's advice.  Hopefully, you will bounce back quickly. sounds like you are doing all the right things.  

If I remember correctly, I started with Week 1 to kind of get a feel for how aquajogging would work and if I could handle it mentally, and then I jumped to somewhere in the middle, more along the lines of the time I would have spent running if I hadn't been injured.  I never did a truly long aquajog (like a long run), but I kept my mid-week aquajogs fairly similar to what I would have been doing had I been running, and that was more in the 5-8 week range on that plan. 

Well there is good news and bad news.  The bad news is the pool is closed this week for maintenance. T he good news is that the pool is closed.  I do not miss swimming in the least.  Plan for the week is to continue to build up the run with possibly my first 30 mile week in a long time.  Mostly easy biking as last week was a big bike week for me and some added strength/core work.

My first tri of the season is April 9.  My tri team is doing a big local 10K as kind of a get together pre season thing.  In all the years of running races and triathlon I have never done a stand alone 10K.  Plenty at the end of an Olympic race as well as lots of 5K races and a few half marathons.  Strange.  Can't say I am looking forward to a 10K road race in late March.  I had a 25 year PR in a 5K 2 years ago (19:25) and swore that I would never do another running race.  I hurt more after running races than I do after triathlons that take much longer.  I know the 10K will hurt like hell.  

i embrace the geekiness.  Honestly, some of it goes outside my element and that's fine.  I know that I simply don't have the time to get to the level some people do, but i still learn lots from being on the periphery and reading the micro level to get a better understanding at the macro level.

I very much agree with Marc.  I think most of the data is complimentary....more of a way to objectively verify or dispel what our "gut" feeling is about how we are doing.

I also monitor Heart Rate Variability.  Started doing this in early January and mainly because I was no longer using a coach.  I have a tendency to think more is better when that can take me down a tough road and be counter productive.  The HRV gives me an objective indication of  a metric that coincides with my body's ability to handle the training load.  If my number is low I need to back off.  It allows you to enter factors such as sleep quality, diet, mood etc. but those factors do not factor into the reading.  More of just a way to look back and see where you were with those subjective measurements on a given day.  I have not been using it very long but can see patterns emerging.  I use    http://www.myithlete.com/

OK....that is my contribution to the geeking out of the group.  Really though, I hope people bring up any subject that interests them.  There is no question that is too basic. I feel that these mentor groups are the single best resource on BT.  Fortunately, we have some very same folks in those group. All of whom I suspect have made mistakes in their training and racing....I know I have.  I'm fine with geekiness but encourage all discussion. 

I log my nutrition in MFP to keep me honest.  I'm not really trying to lose weight, but sometimes I need the guilt of having to log the crap I'm putting in my mouth to keep me from doing it :P

I keep track of HRV.  For me, I think it tracks my non-training stressors better than it really tracks my training stress.  It's nice for it to track my non-training stress because I'm notoriously bad about gauging my stress.  I'm the kind of person who will say it's all fine until everything falls apart....and then I'll look back and be appalled at the fact that I didn't pick up on it not being all fine!

And after nearly every training session, I do what I refer to as a "brain dump".  I write down exactly how I was feeling (sometimes I feel great and I note that....sometimes I feel physically okay, but mentally I'm struggling, so I feel like it was a "bad" session until I look at metrics....sometimes I completely fall apart and explain what was going through my head.....sometimes I hit a rough patch and somehow work through it -- it's really important information for me to know how I managed to work through it, so I can save it in my mind and utilize it again when I need to in the future).  This gives me good information in the future, and also shows me a pattern when things start falling apart, which I can often correlate back to HRV and/or TSS.