Women Ready to Tri - OPEN (Page 3)

Welcome, Maria!

First, it's great that you're swimming and running consistently!  Running 5-6x a week is perfect.  How are your runs structured?  If you keep running consistently and remain uninjured, your times WILL come down -- I promise!  For HM distance, I like to be somewhere over 30 miles/week, keeping my long run to no more than 1/3 of the total weekly volume.  Of course, you have to build up to that 30 mpw gradually, or you risk injury.  Running is funny like that....things you try to do to get faster often end up getting you injured, which then makes you slower.  But if you're able to stay un-injured and run consistently, running can be incredibly fulfilling as you watch your paces improve and old PR's get replaced with new ones!

Second, you definitely need a bike that you love!  If you love your bike, you'll want to ride your bike....and if you ride your bike a lot, you WILL get faster  Find a good shop with a good fitter (I'm sure we can help you find one in your area), get a bike fit, get recommendations on which bikes would work for you, decide which bike is best for you (budget, availability, aesthetics all factor in!), have it fit to your specifications, and then ride it like you stole it!

Keep us posted on your run training and half marathon, as well as your bike shopping!  Glad to have you here!

Welcome, Christina!

I used to hate running too!  My knees hurt, my muscles burned, my lungs felt like they were on fire....it sucked.  It wasn't fun.  I didn't get the runner's high that people talked about.  I was super mediocre and not getting any better.  So I started reading about what good runners did in training and quickly realized that a) I was trying to go too hard, and b) I wasn't running enough.  I learned that runs should feel easy, like you could have a conversation with a friend....and that a couple runs a week wasn't going to cut it if I wanted to get faster.  It's counter intuitive that running slower will allow you to race faster, but it works.  If you can build up your volume and stay injury-free, you'll get faster and you'll probably enjoy it more!  That's what happened for me

Very exciting that you'll be doing your first tri this year!  We all look forward to hearing about your journey!

Remind me again what distance you're training for and what your goals are....and also when your race is.  I can see your training logs, but if you're following a certain schedule, I can't see that. 

When do you think you'll be able to have access to the local Y?  How confident are you in your swimming?

Welcome!  I raced Galveston 70.3 this past weekend and they had a "Women for Tri" hat that I really wanted, but the line was so long and I really didn't want to be on my feet too much the day before the race.  I'm kicking myself for having not bought it, but I think I might buy it and deal with the fact that I now have to pay for shipping!

Having a group of supportive women is great, so I'm glad you're here!  Which races are you looking at this year?  Looking forward to coming along on your journey

It really depends on what your goals for the race are as to whether that plan will have you adequately prepared.  In my opinion, the swimming is too little....I like that it has you swimming three times a week (once you're able to get access to the pool), but you only do race distance a handful of times.  I'm a bigger fan of saying something like "swim for an hour three times a week" (with varying intervals, not straight swimming for an hour!) than to suggest getting in to do 1000 yards.  I'll be honest, my warm-up is probably 1000 yard!  It's usually something like 500 steady, and then 500 broken up into drills, kicking, etc. before getting into the main set.  To adequately prepare you for any distance race, I think your main set alone should be at least race distance.

The biking looks okay.  Again, I'm a bigger fan of saying to ride for an hour (of intervals) twice a week, and then doing a longer ride on the weekend.  For example, my typical week will look something like an hour (or slightly longer) with VO2 intervals on Tuesday, and hour (or slightly longer) with threshold intervals on Thursday, and then a long (3-4 hour) ride outside on the weekend with HIM-effort intervals and a bit of threshold/VO2 intervals tossed in for good measure.

The run....that's the place where I have the biggest contention with the plan you posted.  The frequency is simply too low, with the times/distances too high.  If you're going to run 120 minutes (like the first week specifies), I'm of the opinion that you're going to get more and have a lessened chance of injury if you split that up over more than three runs.  If you haven't heard of the BarryP run program, let me know.  I'm a big fan of that.  Running 5-6x a week, with many of the runs being quite short (and all of them easy for a long while), reduces your chance of injury (even though it sounds like it wouldn't...) and increases your odds at improving.  

As for racing in hot climates, I have lots of experience.  I'm not sure what Indiana summers are, but Houston summers are hot and humid....you will have to experiment with what works for you, but you're at an advantage if you train and race in similar climates (versus someone coming from a cool climate and being hit with hot/humid conditions).

Full information on the BarryP run program:  http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=2548394;search_string=barryp%20part%201;#2548394

Cliffs notes version of the BarryP run program:  determine your weekly run volume, divide it over six runs, with three short runs, two medium runs, and one long run.  You take your planned weekly volume (in either miles or minutes), divide it by 10 to figure out the length of the runs.

For example, let's say you want to do 20 miles per week.  20 divided by 10 is 2 -- so you'd do three short runs of 2 miles (1x2), two medium runs of 4 miles (2x2), and one long run of 6 miles (3x2)....as you ramp up (max of 10% per week increase), you may get to 3/6/9 mile runs, or 4/8/12 mile runs, or you could do these in minutes....so 20/30/40 minute runs or 30/60/90 minute runs.  Keep them ALL easy....easy like you could have a conversation with your best friend while running!

As for flexibility in schedule, I fully agree.  Figure out what your "key" sessions are and prioritize those.  If you know that you have a hard bike session to do and a short, easy run....put your hard bike session at a time when you know you'll be able to do it, and the run then becomes somewhat optional.  Of course, you can't bail on the easy/short runs too often, or your body won't be able to support your ability to do the longer runs.

I do most of my training in Houston, so hot and humid.  I do some local racing (did Galveston 70.3 the first weekend in April.....still working on my race report!), so I have lots of experience with heat and humidity.  Personally, I like to eat solid food for nutrition and drink for hydration and electrolytes only.....I don't like for my nutrition to be liquid.  I've found that Skratch works very well for me (I like the raspberry flavor best).

And finally....strength training.  My opinion is that if you want to get faster at swimming, biking, and running....you need to swim, bike, and run.  Strength training offers very little benefit for getting faster at swimming, biking, or running (unless you're on the very pointy end, like the pro triathletes).  Now, my tune changes if you have specific imbalance / injury issues that you're dealing with, or if you're in a 40-50+ age range.  If you like it, great....have at it and enjoy what you're doing.  But if you're doing it to get faster, don't expect much return on investment, imo.

X

Sorry for the delayed response -- I spent a week at Big Bend National Park riding and running, and had no access to cell reception or wifi

I think BarryP is a fantastic run program!  I think it's great for just about everyone.  Running is a high-impact sport, and as such, it's the one most people typically get injured doing.  Injury can often be traced back to one of a few things -- 1) running too hard when you're body is not conditioned for it, 2) ramping up your run training or intensity too quickly, and 3) having your long run make up a significant portion of your total weekly run volume (I like to keep my long run to no more than 30% of my total run volume....25% ideally).

Short, frequent, easy runs help build up your body's tolerance to running.  Keeping them easy minimizes chances of over training (that can lead to severe fatigue or injury).  And consistency (read: staying injury-free) is ultimately what will lead to improvement.  The more volume you are able to do on a regular basis, consistently over the years, the better you set yourself up for racing.  For 10k to HM distance, I think 30 miles a week is great -- long run of ~10 miles plus 30 mpw will allow you to race a half marathon well.  And I promise that if you train at a 10-11 min/mile pace, that does not mean you'll end up racing at a 10-11 min/mile pace...you will have conditioned your body to be able to go faster, even without having trained that way. 

For swimming and cycling, I am a big proponent of including intensity, but for running, you can make huge improvements (and not get injured) by running easy and frequently.  Eventually (for me, it was after about three years of consistent running), you'll likely want to add some intensity -- in which case, I'd recommend strides (20-30 second intervals at 5k pace) and tempo work, rather than track or hill repeats.

I fully agree that it's far more important to put in the miles (volume) than it is to do the hard workouts.  In fact, until you are able to maintain sufficient volume consistently (think in terms of months or years, not days or weeks), it's best to keep all of the runs easy, so you can avoid injury.

I totally get being tentative about knee stuff!  I got hit while I was out riding almost five years ago and my left knee took the brunt of the impact.  I didn't do any real running for over a year after that, and when I started, I was super cautious about it.  If you can find some flat, soft surfaces (do you have a dirt trail system or cinder track available??), that's a great place to do your run training.

So I raced Galveston 70.3 at the beginning of the month....took me a bit to get my race report written due to getting busy with work, and then I went to Big Bend National Park to ride and run all week last week

But anyways, here's my race report if anyone's interested: http://beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=546739

Short version:  my swim was mediocre, my bike was very good, and my run was a PR but not without struggles....I snuck in just under five hours and I'm super happy with it, but also motivated to make some big improvements!