Come fly with me!- Closed again with a bunch of winners! (Page 3)

Hi Scott,

Went to a bike shop today and started chatting to a young guy. Found out that there are tri's here in Taiwan, but that they only start at Olympic level and go to Ultra. There are 3 or 4 Olympics a year. This is a bit much for me perhaps, but I would like to tri .

What do you think, any ideas about which training to follow?

Do you think that If I , over the next week, go and swim 1500m and then a few days later cycle 40km and again run/walk 10km to have these as benchmarks for the future, would be a good idea?

The method would be just to finish, not on speed, to see how long it would actually take for me to finish them at my current level. Then I would compare stats in the future. Or is this awaste of time?

Kind regards,

Justin

i need some advice on bikes.

I ahve a mountaian bike, do I need to buy another bike? If so, do any of you guys have suggestions and /or advice on buying a bike?

Thanks,

Justin

Hi Justin,

 My input as a beginner for what it's worth. What ever you are doing you will have to track it and monitor, or you will not no if you have improved or hold yourself accountable. When it is written you can truly look at it. Am I improving or just going through the motions doing the same thing week after week.

As far as beginner I go with time and heart rate. Rather than a specific distance. This allows me to increase intensity as my body begins developing and handling the workouts. I am not sure if the true distance is as important as a specific system so you can work on improving. I like time personally because when I am on a treadmill, stationary bike, or in the pool. I know the length I am working out is getting me a good cardio workout, and if at the end I ran 4.42 miles instead of 4.28 I just increased the intensity marginally. I have gone this way and went from 4 to 5 mies in a 65 minute period walking/joggins and from around 5 miles to 8 miles in a 30 minute period on the bike.

 Granted I started intentionally slow on everything to give my body a break in perios so the gains are a little inflated I would say, but may weight is also down 12 lbs in 3 weeks, so I am making significant gains across the board.

 I also consider strength training very important and am spending a fair amount of time each week on that also.

Sum it up; find what works and drives you and stick with it.

How far can you swim bike and run right now?

S: 800- 1000m, but this includes freestyle and breaststroke in a 25m pool

B: 20-25km on flat road

R: 3km with run/walk more walk than run, very weak here. My heart rate goes up too high. 

Are you doing any brick workouts?

 Sorry, I don't know what these are

How do you want to finish?

I just want to be able to finish within the allowed time, in my age group. I am 49 in April 2009.

What are the times allotted for the different disciplines and what are the  cut-off times?

The tri that I am aiming for is in late April 2009

I can train 6 days a week Mon to Sat. 

Ray:

Thanks for the help and advice, As to recording, I will put that into my blog on BT. Not sure how to let others see it though. When running my heart rate goes up very high very quickly so I end up walking to bring it down. Swimming and biking are not so high. You have made some great progress, I need to lose some fat too. Keep going!

Thanks,

Justin

Hey Brian,

Nice job keep up the great work, and good luck with the marathon. I cannot imagine running that far. I am only at 4 miles and that feels long. A lot of respect for you.

Again keep up the great work.

Jeff

I have been reading a bit, but I guess given my weight and stamina issues. Some training suggestions for the pool would be very helpful. My current strategy is to log a lot of time to keep my calorie burn high. And losing the weight I have so far I have noticed that activites are slowly getting easier.

Anywasy, In the pool I will do a 10 lap warmup usually breaststroke as I am comfortable with this. Then I will do 2X25's free with rests no matter what spped I go this gets my heart pumping strong. I do this in about 1 minute then I need a minimum of 30's to recover to 1 minute till I do the next. I do as many of these as I can muster currently about 6 to 10 laps. Then I finish with a breast stroke to get to at least 40 laps (1000 yrds). I am doing this 3 times a week. I am getting very comfortable in the water. I was a very good YMCA swimmer as a child and went through all there programs. Biggest issue is building stamina, so whatever suggestions you can make are welcome.

Hi Ray,

I am new at swimming, six weeks ago I could not swim 25 yds. Yesterday I did 400 yds in 10min.

not very fast but I did it.

I went to triswimcoach.com and signed up for the free newsletter and you get four free drill workouts emailed to you. The drill workouts are long, so I did not move on to the next workout until I could complete it. It took me two weeks to finish all four workouts. Since I am a beginner this is the only advice I could give you.

Jeff

s there something clinical here or do you mean you are just flat working too hard?

I think it is too hard, not clinical. I used my HRM. I wouold run for less than a KM and have to start walking to bring it into the 60% to 80% range. So I end up runnning about 500m and walking about 500m. Perhaps it its a lack of fitness and conditioning and my being overweight.

brick workout/ interval workouts

Yes, please help me here

Thanks

Justin

Justin and Ray,

One advice to give you on wt. loss is try running and biking on an empty stomach. Either first thing in am or at least 3 hrs after a meal. The key to this is to keep your heart rate in the lower end so that you stay aerobic and burn fat. If you do intervals you should eat carbs prior because intervals are more anerobic and uses carbs not fat for energy. I used the empty stomach low heart rate long duration workouts to prepare for bodybuilding shows, going from 15-20% body fat to 3-5% body fat in 16 weeks. I use this practice now because I want to lose 10-15 lbs.(although the holidays are putting a halt to the weight loss).  Another piece of advice is to then comsume more of your daily carbs post workout. The carbs will go towards glycogen restoration than fat deposit and eat less carbs at night and/or do not eat carbs after 7-8 o'clock. I realize that we are endurance athletes now so I am not suggesting to aliminate carbs just change when you eat them.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff, I will try this and see how it goes. Appreciate the feedback.

Justin

Hi Scott...

What excites me the most about my first race is the feeling of accomplishment when you reach the finish line.  All of the hard work pays off...it makes it all worth it!  My first 1/2 marathon was in November and reaching that finish line was a great feeling.

What scares me the most is without a doubt swimming.  I am not really concerned about my time or anything like that...I am literally scared of giving out and drowning!

Thanks, I have been piddling around there too. I think the biggest issue is most people are not my size that decide to train for a tri. I am trying to keep my workouts fairly low impact, as I don't see a point in tearing up my knees as I can't run for long periods of time to begin with anyways at the moment. So I am fast walking with a short runs/jogs thrown in.

My stamina is definitely increasing which is the big thing I suppose we are only talking about 3 weeks of time. I think I need to do what I am doing like you for at least 6 weeks or so to see where I am at. I am logging all sorts of time and I should be netting -1000 caloric intake a day, although I think machines always overexaggerate caloric burn to make you feel good, but no reason I shouldn't keep my weight loss at a couple pounds a week.

lol, I think I ranted in my previous post the exact same thing you just said above. Excites me the most is that this is a giant change for me from what I have done the paast 5 years my most aerobic activity consisted of tilting pints. I truly feel better, am excited to get up in the morning even if I am groggy as I am not a morning person. My biggest fear I guess would be not meeting my goals my sprint tri is six months off I really want to be below 250lbs by then and able to freestyle the whole swim and run the whole 5 K. Which seems very far off.

what excites me is the thought of completing three disciplines, that I do not excel at, in the same day.

what scares me is not finishing, I do not care where I place I just want to finish.

Jeff