SBR Utopia ---- Permanently OPEN!! (Page 29)

Yep.  At which point you finish your drink, hop over and try to outswim the sharks.  Good workout and keeps it interesting.

Agree with above.  

No need to carry sport drink, as I think you can get what you need from the right gel or mix of gels, especially in 3h or less and not sooooper hot events.

That said, you need to try out on some long, hard runs if at all possible.  What tastes OK and goes down at the end of a 2 hr. run might be quite different after 2.5 hours of hammering (at least that has happened to me - mile two of a HIM run and GU became suddenly and utterly toxic, despite tolerating it all through training and the entire bike… had to switch to coke and water on the run).  That should also give you an indication of how the electrolytes are working for you...

Do you know if you have a high sweat rate or particularly salty sweat (white lines common on clothes after a run)?  I'd kind of expect the latter from you!

Matt

Contrary to what you might think, no.I AM Salty, I just don't get salty I might have a little higher than average sweat rate (for a girl) but nothing crazy. 

Thanks for the tips, guys!

That's pretty much what I went with this year.  I've noticed some dropoff in my threshold on the bike but my all day power hasn't changed much.  At threshold, the difficulty was partly just mental toughness for trainer sessions.  With a March race I really preferred working on my run base.  I haven't been too worried about the bike because I did Tahoe in September and the NZ course has much less elevation.

Swimming, I tanked on because I was down with pneumonia for awhile.  I feel like I lost more there than I did on the bike.  But again, Tahoe was a 10 min swim PR for me at altitude, so we'll see how it goes.

Fred,

I think that was a good move.  You are very strong on the bike and have proven to come back quick with FOP performances.  With limited time it was the best to sacrifice.  It paid because you made some great improvements in the swim and still keeping the running going. 

I wonder though if the way to do it is to drop your strongest sport?  If I was tight for time, the first thing to go for me would almost certainly be time in the pool as I'm pretty sure I could take 3 months off and within a month or so I'd be back in reasonable swim shape.  I'm not so sure that would be the same case on the bike for me.

I had a great run yesterday.  1:45 easy paced and I went trough the half marathon point in 1:44 something which is the second fastest HM distance I've done after last year's 1:37.  Gives me good vibes for the HM race next Sunday.

Another ugly snowstorm blowing through here today.  It's getting a bit old.

For context, I've never really spent any solid time training for a tri, certainly not a full year with an on and off-season. But I would find it very difficult to take big blocks of time off in any of the sports except maybe swimming (if I had solid form/a swimming background) just because I wouldn't want to spend any of my race prep time building volume and general fitness (ESPECIALLY running.) I like those things to be in place before I launch into a race-specific plan. Then I can really focus on the specific workouts and training goals and not feel like I am trying to also claw my way back into shape.

I'm not sure if that makes sense ...

Had a solid key marathon workout on Saturday. 

2 miles WU 

8 miles at 7:30 (slight decline)

5 miles at 6:50 (slight incline)

2 mile CD

It was fun because although technically I was solo, a bunch of teammates were doing the same workout. The boys were way ahead but I got to see them at the turnaround and then there was a group of girls running about 15-30 seconds behind me. So I was motivated to hit my paces and not let them reel me in.  I was a little slow transitioning from the 7:30 into 6:50 on the first mile but got back on pace and finished strong. 

Nice workout!   How do those paces compare to your goal race pace?

The first portion is a little less than a minute slower than M pace, the final 5 were a touch faster. 

Yeah, that is totally understandable. I'm definitely not trying to be critical.

Honestly, I would find it incredibly difficult to keep up the 3 sports all year long, year after year. It was an easy choice for me to not be a triathlete

But I wonder, if there is value in just keeping a minimal frequency in a sport just so that you maintain fitness vs stopping altogether and picking back up. I don't know the answer, of course. It just sounds incredibly difficult to start from 0 every time. Then again, maybe I'm underestimating the cross-over fitness from one sport to another. 

Probably a few hours near that, though steadier riding. Snow storm moving across the way now, getting a few more inches. Good thing this is all I had planned for today.

Masters last night was fun. Swim performance might be heading back in the right direction again.

Yes, there is value in low frequency vs no frequency. In better programs that's what they'll try to do. Move attention more to one sport, maybe moderately in a second, and low in the other. Just a little activity can slow down the fall-off quite a bit. Some people just flat out don't have the time though. Get really busy and can't otherwise do enough in the focused sport to make the noticeable gains they want to.

Do you think you can make that statement completely confident that the potential gains made from giving a sport 100% focus are less than it would be if you gave it a little less focus and maintained low frequency in the others?

Oh and again, I am just curious. Not trying to be a pest. 

There are so many ins and outs of maximizing tri training that I can't wrap my head around!

I could not guarantee that would *always* be the case as it depends a lot on how one goes about things. It's more of a *generally*. For someone who stays more active, this tends to be what you see. As opposed to them staying well in balance between all three sports all the time, there will be more of a focus section rotating around what they want to work on more. Could be a few weeks at a time. Could be a few months. Depends on what they want to do with it.

I think you're looking at general aerobic fitness versus sport-specific.  There is some crossover.  But if your swim technique sucks, or your legs aren't adapted to running impact, you can have a massive aerobic base and still fail on those.  Some of that applies to cycling too although it's harder to get it wrong.  My opinion on that is probably a bit biased.