Got Your Mojo WORKIN'! group - CLOSED (Page 25)

I use Desoto wetsuit.  I like the fact that I can use a top with sleeves or one without sleeves (I have both).  Much easier to get a good fit with the range of sizes of both the tops and the bottoms!

I used a Blue Seventy before the Desoto and it didn't fit nearly as well.

MANNY again -

Great attitude towards the hills -- pretty much along the lines of if you can't beat'em, join 'em! I mean, it's tough to live in a hilly area and hate hills with a passion, eh?

So wise to take your time moving up through the distances.....but I've said that before, haven't I?

Take care of the noggin!

LORI -

I have both type of top also. Another good thing about the two-piece is that I can "stagger" purchases, so it's not a big outlay all at once. I have new bottoms from this August, and a new full top from '09, and a new sleeveless from '08. I'm hoping to avoid any wetsuit purchase in '11....and then see what I need in '12!

DANIEL -

Those walks will be good to continue doing, but if you find them at all taxing, keep them away from your more important runs. They are probably ideal for the day after a run, possibly okay the day before...........and maybe not a good idea at noon on a day you are planning to run in the late afternoon or evening!

And whenever you feel sore or stiff, just take an extra day of rest from any offending activity. We are still months away The Season, so if time must be taken off, far better it be now than later.

Remember to wear your compression sleeves from the moment you get home until you wake up tomorrow morning!

Here is an article that discusses the cause of muscle soreness: http://www.drmirkin.com/fitness/1346.html

I'm certain that he knows what he is talking about but through my own personal experience, I have learned that a cool down walk after a workout does keep me from becoming sore.  When I don't cool down my muscles are almost always sore and stiff the next day.  Just my 2 cents.

What is your current training schedule?

What good would sleeves do for my legs?  Oh wait you must have meant leggings, right? Right!  Here is the thing, and the thing is this; I saw a guy running, on my way home from work yesterday, and he was wearing the running tights and compression pants things.  I am interested in getting some cold/cooler weather running gear, it only get to about low 50 on a COLD day here in Souther California.  Where would be a good place to look for running gear?  My local bike shops don't really have a triathlon section. Oh wait I can always Google this.  Thanks Steve you always have the right answers.

MY current training schedule is kind of a get it in where you can fit it in for this week and next week.  I am following this plan because I am trying to convert the learning to swim and a run/walk program in to a phase I program which will last about 2 to 4 months.  I am almost done tweaking this plan.  I will then move to a phase II plan which will consist of the 2x sprint balanced plan.  This should get me to the place I want to be for a race in time frame of june/july.  I believe I am also trying to do the tough mudder event in MAY and maybe even the muddy buddy event in NOV.

DANIEL -

Hey! Talk to my long-suffering wife -- she seldom thinks I have the right answers!

Right in your home state is Road Runner Sports, at www.roadrunnersports.com, so I'm sure you can order somehting now and receive it 12 minutes later. they have a big print catalog available, so if you contact them they can send it to you, otr you can just shop on-line. They have about the largest running-based stock on the internet, and second might be www.nationalrunningcenter.com, located in PA.

For triathlon stuff, I have relied on www.tri-zone.com almost exclusively since I began in '00. They are wonderful to deal with, but because they are tri-focused, they won't have the range of running stuff that is at RRS and NRC. Both Tri-Zone and Road Runner are in/around SanDiego.

Two other California places are www.nytro.com and www.blbikes.com, with both specializing in triathlon gear. Both deal heavily in bikes too, or at least used to; Tri-Zone never has. Bike gear and accessories and components -- abundant! Actual bikes - no.

(And that's a B and a L, or maybe they use b&l in the web address.

Happy shopping!

JOHN -

Brenda mentioned Rocket Science, and they have a very good rep. They kind of came out of nowhere a few years and made a real, ahem, splash. Blue Seventy bought out Ironman wetsuits about four years agom and they have a good rep as well. A small company from Michigan is Aquaman. The guy who runs it, Emmett, is a down-to-earth and cooperative person, but I think he is really struggling tryng to keep up with the bigger movers and shakers.

Feeling glutted yet?

I have ordered from Road Runner Sports and gotten things in the same day although it is usually the next day.

LORI -

If you saw my longish post to John on the top of page 29, you can get some idea on my thoughts about pull buoys. For years I have followed the various arguments for and against. I lump these into a few convenient (for me) categories. The against camp say they are crutches, they do not allow full body roll, they prohibit the develop of a good kick. The for crowd says they encourage more focus on the front and mid parts of the whole stroke cycle, and they prevent the legs from being overused. A corollary of that is that last one is that in triathlon, the kick is a small part of swim efficiency, that it should be used mostly for balance and some directional guidance, with only a small nod to increased propulsion.

Do those about cover it?

When I have a later wave than the elite and pro triathletes, I watch them from ashore and usually see lots of churning behind each; they are obviously kicking! But I don't, and can't, so for me to train for a good kick just doesn't seem like the best way to spend my training time.

I can go round and round about this! As I said to John, the big limiter keeping me from the top echelon of my age group is my swim. Period. So, do I really want to sacrifice that part of my possible potential, and concede those top USAT spots? It doesn't seem to affect my a.g. placements at the local and even regional levels, but compared to the best of the best nationally, I fall short due to my swim. Bah.

As an add-on to what I said to John, in most races I am in the top 15% overall on the bike, and the top 22% on the run. On the swim, however, it's usually halfway down. That's kind of a tough pill to continue swallowing.......but I've gotten rather good at it! (Fortunately, at the age group level it's not quite as bad. If there are 10 guys in my a.g., i will be 3rd or 4th on the swim, so I like that upper 30% or 40% in the a.g. swim totals, as opposed to 50th%ile overall!) (Cold comfort, that.....)

That's not to say that I don't improve each year, and where i see the improvements is on all the front-end stuff -- reach, catch, pull, recovery, breathing -- whatever seems to do a minor "click" at any given time (usually few and far between, but better than nothing, I suppose). But when I try to improve the kick -- no go.

Soooooo.....if you can live with yourself for abandoning working towards a better kick, and especially if you have a relatively strong bike and run, then I would cautiously say to do with what will enhance your strengths. For me, that is clearly saving my legs for the bike and run!

As an aside, recently I have been working a lot on increasing my stroke turnover,and that is yielding some good benefits, i think. My long-standing inclination, based on too many years spent worshipping at the Total Immersion altar, is to go with a low stroke count and a long glide. This leads to dead spots in my stroke, as well as having to go slightly longer between breaths, so increasing my cadence has removed the dead spots and keeps me in better control of my breathing. If I can continue to progress this way, I think I might be in for a big jump in performance once the season begins. I like to say that when I began in '00, I enjoyed a meteoric rise to mediocrity, but that since then my progress has been as leisurely as the drifting of the continents. I have hope for some less leisurely progress over the next few months......but long years of relative stagnation have me none too willing to get my hopes up!

I hope some of the above is helpful to you!

MELINDA -

That's a good story about Rock Cliff, and I'm glad you can laugh at it. Yup, I think you have to return there for a well-deserved round of redemption.

Fortunately, that sort of thing has not happened to me. Thrre yars ago I did a race in NJ where the lead five or six guys were sent the wrong way on the run, but I wasn't among them. I did enjoy the benefit of finishing 8th overall instead of 13th or 14th, though....but that was a pretty holow way to place high in a race.

And my former coach once was the lead guy on the bike, missed a turn....and brought about a dozen guys witb him. They churned away for quite some time before they realized they had gone a long way without seeing a marshal, and that something was really wrong. So they did a u-turn and when they got back to the palce they should've turned, there were all the "regular" age-groupers, going exactly where they needed to go. Oops! BIG helping of humble pie for the bike studs!

So.......You Are Not Alone! (Does that count as "misery loves company"? )

The resolution folks are filling up the lanes at the Y, but you're right February is just around the corner. 

 
Last spring I had an SUV pull in front of me broadside and cut me off with no time to react, I slammed into her door and slid under the rig still clipped in.  I was so tangled up under the rig I couldn't get unclipped.  Luckily the driver slammed on her brakes, put down her cell phone, and helped me unclip and get out from under her car.  It was very traumatic for both of us.

Steve,
So what is your take on Total Immersion?  i'm thinking about buying the book.

University of Idaho Vandals!  My wife and I went to grad school there, and two of our three kids went there as well.  As  did one of our son's in law and our daughter in law.

Edited by Sementi 2011-01-05 9:12 PM

I start swim lessons tomorrow!  So excited!  I will let you all know how it goes!

A friend of mine says "Move during lunch.  You'll eat less, you'll spend less, you'll enjoy yourself more, and you'll be sharper for the rest of the day."  

Blue Seventy full sleeve, love it. 

Good luck with your swimming lessons, Laura! I have mine on Thursdays, too.

Laura & Brenda


Have fun at your swim classes.  Taking lessons is a smart move even for those who have been swimming for years!!

Roger

GENE -

Let me give you my quick take on T.I. (there's along version, too ).

T.I. is good to great for people who are new to swimming, or returning to swimming after many years away from it, or who really struggle in the water. The emphasis is on body-balance drills and developing a looooong, effortless stroke. There is much stroke-counting to be done, as one works to get theri stroke count as low as possible. The drills can be tedious for people who want results quickly and/or who just want to swim. You can spend dozens of hours going up and down the lanes doing the T.I. drills. For some people that is a good thing. For me it was --- to a point.

Problem was, I belabored that point too long, and I still tend to fall into the "trap" of low stroke count, easy glide -- swimming effortlessly and as "fishlike" as possible....but sure not as fast as I would like. Where T.I. comes up short is on some of the more common technical aspects of swimming, which really involve overall stroke mechanics. You won't find much about the catch, or the pull, or the kick. T.I. will help with maintaining high elbows out of the water during the recovery phase, but won't do much to help with the (I think) more critical high elbow during the pull.

Well! This is beginning to be the long version I warned you about up top!

If you are looking to establish a kind of library of useful books on swimming and cycling and running, having T.I. at hand would be a good addition. But before you spring for it, (1) watch some of their videos on-line to see if their drills are something you will want to devote lots of time to, and (2) go to www.swimsmooth.com and spend a pile of time exploring that. There's a huge amount of fantastic info there, and I can also say that the guy who runs it did a one-on-one with me in '06, and it was far better than any of the one-day T.I.-tinted sessions I have done. I really like Paul's approach to swimming!

Finally, for adults who can swim quite well, to tackle T.I. almost involves completely deconstructing their stroke. Almost certainly, what you do now in swimming is not hat T.I. would teach you if you were just starting ou. So, arr you ready to partially re-invent yourself? Havuing written that......I'm not sure it is 100% true, but I think I'm close. Were I to do a T.I. workshop this weekend, I know that I would start right back at the beginning with everybody else, and that anything I do right now? Doesn't matter at all!

I apologize for the long version, or at leats the semi-long version.

(And if you want to amuse yourself and see the fur fly, go to www.slowtwitch.com, click on forums, type Total Immersion into the search.....and sit back and see/read the triathlon-forum equivalent of throwing raw meat into a pit with 60 dogs that haven't eaten in a week! The slowtwitch crowd can be very vicious towards T.I.......but then they are often vicious to just about anything!)

Just in case you guys need a recipe to go with your mojitos:

Cook until chicken or pork is well done and browned slightly. Serve on a platter with a side gravy or other vessel containing the mojito sauce.

Mojoistas aren't just drinking mojitos you know!

I have their Freestyle DVD and I thought it was a great way to start visualizing some of the components going into their technique. They go through a series of drills that eventually come together to the technique they promote of "effortless swimming" That being said, my technique is far from effortless right now! Take a look at their website, and you will find a .pdf document that basically provides all the steps shown in the DVD. I found it hard to follow and was glad I got the DVD.

Thanks Steve!

My ankles are not the most flexible either due to numerous sprains and one break.  I doubt my kick will ever be strong due to that factor.  I started using fins during kick sets to work on ankle strength and flexibility.