ASPHALT JUNKIES Summer Bronzing Crew - CLOSED (Page 26)

Power meter?  Your wife is way to good to you!  Now I need to begin discussions with Lis about a power meter for me.  I can't be one upped you know.

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I'm having a decent training week so far but the swim hasn't begun for the week yet.  That starts tonight and has another scheduled for the long course pool in the morning tomorrow.  My bike is already at 80 miles for the week and I should get 70-ish miles in for a ride on Saturday.  My run is at 16 miles with my long run scheduled for 14-15 tomorrow too.  If I have the leg strength on Saturday I may run a couple of mile brick to round out my running and training for the week.

Jeff,  I think the wagers are a great motivational tool for everyone involved.  And as tight as I am those $4 might come in handy for some ice cream after the race.

Running the race in bare feet seems like an interesting way to pick up a few seconds too.  My feet would never take it, especially since I am still dealing with my PF.  There's no question that I would run slower in bare feet so my time would be slower and I would have lost the advantage of not stopping in T1.

Matt,  It looks like you had a great race.  It sounds like you're getting closer to getting to that PR again.  The running fitness you've developed is allowing you fewer running miles to maintain your fitness, but it's likely not allowing anymore gains.  Your first mile split is really cooking.  What do you think you're chances of even splitting at 6:50 are? If you could hold that pace it would bring you in at 21:15.  Even pacing should allow you to have an even but hard effort all the way through the course.

Karl,  Maybe you should take a look at a resistance belt for swimming out of town.  Here's one at Swim Outlet that's fairly affordable.  This could be used at your pool at home or a pool at a hotel when you're out of town.  As much as it seems your gone from home it may be just the tool you need.  The only thing you would have to do is adapt to using time rather distance.  All of your intervals would to be based on time and you wouldn't be able to figure any distances at all.  However, it could be just the thing you need to give yourself confidence.  Consider doing a TT in a measured pool and then spending at least a month using the cord doing timed intervals of 1-2 minutes longer than your measured time trial, then go back to the pool and TT again.

For instance:  You do a 500TT in the pool and swim a 10 minute overal time.  Now go home or to the hotel pools and swim 2-3 12 minute intervals a couple of times a week (3x would be better) for 4 weeks and then go back to the pool and TT again.  My wager is that you will see a nice speed increase.

I'm getting ready to head to the pool again this morning to get my first long course pool work out in.  I've never done the 50 yard pool but I am anxious to give it a shot.  I swam last night and hit some difficult sets and today I am planning a bit of a 1500yd TT to see what the outcome is.  I don't have a lot of expectations since I swam less than 24 hours ago but I'm anxious to see the effects of long course.

Following the swim I am going out for my long run.  The plan is 14 miles and I'll see how that goes.  After last weeks layoff I ran 8 miles on Monday and my foot (PF) was remarkable painful in the following hours.  I didn't take any meds for it but if I experience that kind of pain again I will most certainly do so this time.  The meds would allow the inflammation to get out of it and things will work much, much better with one shot of Nsaids.

Jeff,  The PF was definitely worse last when when I quit running altogether!!  I was almost completely hobbled by it after the first week or so when I began to take some time off for healing and recovery.  It was HORRIBLE!!!  My overall condition has become better in general though.  Since dropping a significant volume following Boston things seem to be slowly progressing to normal for me.  I am trying to adapt to slower, shorter stride and I am keeping all of my paces slow.  I am also considering getting a Garmin foot pod to try to get my cadence to "better" my turnover.  I checked my cadence on a recent run and found it to be about 160-ish.

Darek, it sounds like you are getting in some decent workouts this week.  An 11 mile run seems great.  I have to swim at somewhat odd periods and sometimes consecutive days to get 2 swims a week.  Sometimes it works out that I can only get one swim a week in because of the pools' schedule not mine.

Finally Joanne and Tony, There had better be some pictures of the both of you this weekend or you're going to be out of the Junkies!!  You guys are going to do great this weekend.  I don't think anyone is worried about the Junkies being represented well.  That goes without saying. We'll all be following you come Sunday morning.

I did my first long course pool swim today and had mixed results.  My TT went fairly decent but it was definitely effected by the fatigue from last nights swim and one end of the pool.  During my WU I could feel some fatigue in my rear delts, traps and lats so I knew it was going to be somewhat difficult to keep a solid pace. 

Then there was the wall in the diving well.  I knew it would be more difficult to know where/when to begiun the turn because I am used to seeing the cross on the bottom of the pool at a certain place in 4 feet of water.  Now the cross was much deeper at 13 feet and there were 2 of them to look at.  One of the crosses was farther, at the end of the pool, while the other was at the "wall" of the bulkhead that normally splits the pool into 2 separate pools and making all of the lanes 25 yards.  Between the depth of the water and the "shortened" distance of the bulkhead it confused my mind.  I ended up having to glance forward right before my turns to ensure I turned in the right place.  Otherwise I would have had a headache or I would have completely missed the wall for the push off.

Everything worked out alright in the end and I swam a 25:55 for the 1500 meter TT.  I had to check with the pool to make sure I knew what overall length this pool was.  I thought it was a 50 yard pool but after asking I found it was 50 meters.  Now everything in my mind was screwed up!  The time for my swim reflects a fatiguing 1:35 per 100 yard average or 1:43 per 100 Meter average.  I could have been a little faster given a more fresh body and a little more familiarity to the way the flip turns would have to be worked out.  I'm happy with the swim overall.

I began my 14 mile long run later (at 10:30) and suffered a little from the heat.  My pace was much, much slower and I was covered in white powder when I completed the run.............Yeah!  I was a salty mess.  When I took my tri top off I watched white dust flicker in the sunlight.