Fred Doucette's Half-Iron and Ironman Focused Group! -CLOSED! (Page 3)

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HI All! Here is my info:

NAME: Kate

STORY: I am almost 40 and live in NYC.  I spent the first half of my life as a ballet dancer (I DO NOT look like one any more, lol, have bulky quads and calves!!)  I started running when I was 18 around the dancing because the endorphin rush was swift.  When I was 21 my dad signed me up for a marathon that I was supposed to run part of the keep him company but ended running the whole thing (so without really training) and was thrilled!  I quit dancing, went to medical school and ran 2 more marathons.  Then I had 2 kids and then ran 2 more marathons post kids (and faster than prekids ).  In the winter of 2009 I decided you triathletes look cool! and wanted to give it a try and did and olympic tri summer 2009.  I did a marathon this past april, olympic tri, and HIM (sort of..went out all by my lonesome and swam 1.2 miles in the pool, ran home to get my bike, out for 56 miles, park bike back in apartment, and the 13 miles in central park!.. had a blast even by myself and felt good!).  So then with much nail biting I signed up for IMLP 2011.  So, all in all, I think I'm one of the least experienced here but I am super excited.  My goal is absolutely to just finish.  Have no coach... looks like will do BE IRON FIT intermed program. 

FAMILY: 2 kids (6,8) and super awesome husband who supports this thing

WORK: this is my real challenge.  I am on call every 6th weekend and won't be able to train much at all then.  For the key months of May, June, July I hope to take a vacation day the tuesday that follows these weekends to make up long bike, etc.  Usually one night of the week I get almost no sleep (maybe 1 to 3 hours) but luckily am kinda used to it
 
2011 Races: only IMLP for now but should try to find a HIM before probably

INJURY: tore hamstring Jan 2, 2009.  Was bull headed and kept running, then finally took time off, took about a year to feel all better.  Hope this and ITBS behave!


WEIGHT LOSS: would be great to lose about 5 pounds but don't think it will happen... love love to eat.  After a few years of restrictive eating in the dance world, I am never going back to that!

I will be a good mentee because I am prepared to be a sponge and have a lot to learn!THANK YOU Fred. 

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Haha, already I run my mouth about something I really only know second hand and get pwned I've done lots of recreational cycling over the years and know more about that, and less about the tri specific stuff. I guess I remembered what dave said because it seemed like what was going on for me.

Hey Fred! I am an OB/GYN too!! (we are same age, kids same age... but I am nowhere near the athlete you are, lol... but working on it )

Oh left out :
CURRENT TRAINING:  just started using logs and was happy to see I am somehow finding 12 blessed hours in my crazy life to train (some is yoga, though, which won't help much)...also i have a long planned break of about 5 days of nothing, gulp, just because of some travel next week ...most days i will take off this year
 Cheers

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Fred this is great information, thanks!
I can attest to the value of fit, until I was professionally molded to my roubaix, I consistently had lower back issues coming off the bike.  After the fit this hasn't been an issue, one of the better investments I've made.
I've also discovered the immense value to long rides of doing a little more core work on a more frequent basis, in terms of comfort. 

Ok I am back to fill in my info.

Name: Kathleen

Story:This is my fourth year doing triathlons. My original goal was to complete one sprint distance race but I caught the bug and here I am. For the first two years of training/racing I had a group of friends with whom I shared the experience  but last year I was on my own as I decided to do Boulder 70.3 which no one wanted to take on and I was really the only one who had the interest to continue in this sport. I was part of Fred's mentor group this past Spring/Summer and it was  great! The group provided me the support and friendship that I was missing and their wealth of knowledge and advice was fantastic. Fred and a few others guided me through the purchase of my tri bike and helped me decide to take the plunge and sign up for IMAZ 2011.
Steve (STMass) who has joined this group did a few of the same races that I did last year and it was SO nice to see a friendly face on race morning.
I am a MOP at most races(unless they are in Boulder and then I am a BOP) due to my very poor running ability. My strengh is the bike but I lose it on the run everytime.  I have hired a coach this year and I hope that with a more stuctured focus and a program that pushes me to do things in training that I have never done before, I will have some type of breakthrough. It doesn't have to be huge breakthougth, just some type of improvement, which I haven't seen as of yet.  I also have had some very bad GI problems after two of the half marathons that I ran/walked and that is obviously something I am going to have to get a handle on if I plan to make it to the finish line at IMAZ.  I have to admit that an IM freaks me out and I get nervous just thinking about it. Yet, I really think I can do it.  It might not be pretty at the end(and during the run) but I am pretty determined when I want to be.

Family Status: My fiancee and I live together.

Current training:  I had a late season race this year (November) so I haven't really taken a true break from tri training. I am currently scheduled to do seven to eight hours a week but The Crud and the cold/dark weather has made that challenging.

This Years Races: I did  six tris including the HIM,  and two half marathons this year. I tend to over book myself and know that I need to race less this summer. Deciding on a race schedule is something that maybe you all can help me with.

2011 Races: I am signed up for the Boulder Tri Series (sprint, olympic and HIM) and IMAZ. I don't know if I want to do the whole series but will be doing Boulder 70.3 again. I am also signed up for a half marathon in April. 

Weight loss goals: I could probably stand to lose five lbs or so. I had a weight problem my entire life and stopped getting on the scale a long time ago as it made me crazy. I would like to drop a little weight to see if that helps with my run. At least I think that everytime I am out there running along and watching everyone make it look so easy.

What would make me a good mentee: I really came to care about the other people in our group this past spring/summer.  There really was a give and take and it was obvious that we all really cared about how each other was doing and wanted to help where we could. A few of our members did IMs last year and the rest of us would be following them on line and cheering for them throughout the day. I think my desire to help others,  or just be "an ear" is one thing that would make me a good mentee.  I so appreciate the advice and support of others and love to learn new things. I don't always understand all of it (the whole rolling resistance thing makes my eyes glaze over ) but I try to absorb as much as I can.

When I first started doing tris, I purchased a road bike and always found myself in the drops. I just naturally wanted to be lower I guess. I think I felt that I had more power and that it was just more comfortable. After the first season I put clip on aerobars on my road bike and I was a happy camper.
When I first got my tri bike, it took some time getting used to. Not because of being more aero (which I am not so sure is the case) but because I was much more forward on the bike and it is a bit scary when I looked down and found myself over my front wheel. Finding the right saddle was also a huge factor in being comfortable on either bike.  It took three saddles on each bike before I found one that would work.   Maybe it really isn't about what type of bike is more comfortable but about which type of bike we each feel more comfortable on. Like I said, I just naturally wanted to be lower on my road bike.   Of course bike fit is HUGE part of being comfortable on any bike. 

Welcome Patrick!

Sounds like you have plenty of speed. I myself have 2 young kids: girls aged 5, 8. I suspect you are going to love training for and racing IMTX. It will be well run and is going to be an IM that will also have the best pro's as it is a 3,000 point race.

This is the only 3,000 point race in North America!

Patrick, what would you say your strength sport is and your limiter sport is? (Of swim, bike run)

Cassetts are on my mind right now.  Right now I am running a 12-25 with my compact crank.  I want another cassette for my training/raceing wheel.  I am looking at a 11-23 or 11-25 for the flatter roads we have around here.   I aam up for suggestions and or opinions.

Easy, w/ a compact go 11-23.

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x2. Let's argue crank arm length! :-)

Grrr...stoopid phone. Double post

Edited by shmeeg 2010-12-23 9:21 PM

Patrick, Are you looking at an 11-23 or 11-25 for training on the IMTX course? Or riding in Montgomery county? It is my understanding that the IMTX course is more rolling than the normal roads in our area. Have you had a chance to ride or check out the course yet?

I live near the coast about an hour south of Houston. We're riding over a bridge for hill training down here. I think my bike currently has a 12-23 on it. We switched over to a 12-25? when I went up to MA this summer for Patriot. A friend of mine told me it was a "flat" course..lol. Flat by MA standards. Lets just say I need to learn how to ride with power better before attempting a course like IMLP.

Fred, I would appreciate more information on cranks and gearing.

OK Folks, I am in - here's me - sorry to be late to the party, but hey - it's the Holidays!:

NAME: Rusty - yep, that is right: a grown man with a dog's name. It's a long story; I might need to start another thread for me to tell it...

STORY: I come from a bike racing background - started racing mountain bikes when they were nothing more than beach cruisers with gears. I was really, really good at it, until the sport actually became popular - then, suddenly, I was not so good. I actually went backwards from most at the time and purchased a road bike to cross train for mountain biking - everyone else was crossing over from road to mountain - oh! the road bikes you could buy back then for next to nothing, simply because everyone quit buying them! Of course then LeMond went and won the Tour for his second time in rather dramatic fashion, and suddenly road cycling became slightly more popular - but it took a guy named Armstrong to come along later and make road bikes really expensive again. Fast forward a bit to 1991 - I had just graduated college and fell in with some strange folks that called themselves "triathletes." My roommate and I began racing dualthlons (called biathlons back then - no skis or rifles though) with this bunch of hooligans. Throughout that first summer we would train with them, which mostly consisted of hammering group rides, hammering runs, and then drinking beer on the boat while they swam to and fro. I still remember thinking how awesome it would be to be able to actually swim from one place to another. near the end of that first summer and late on a Friday evening one of my buddies called me up to let me know that another one of our friends would not be able to make it to a triathlon race they had all signed up for, and wanted to know if I was interested. I laughed, as the extent of my swimming up to that point was basically from the back of the boat to the end of the ski rope. However I was easily convinced that I could do it when he told me the swim would only be 400 yards. Had he told me it would be a quarter of a mile, I most likely would not be typing this right now. Needless to say I did the race, and was 12th to last out of the water. I know this because the 12 of us dog paddled the entire course together at a nice conversational pace. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "your first race?"
Them: "oh, yes!"
Me: "mine too!"

I crushed the bike, and did great on the run, and was totally hooked - both line AND sinker. I have not done a straight up bike race, and very few duathlons since. I will never forget the day when I could finally swim 1/2 a mile in less than 20 minutes. I celebrated the occasion by immediately going out and buying my first speedo, which back then was the de rigueur race suit. Ah, the good old days. Just thinking of Kenny Souza almost brings a tear to my eye...

In the past 20 years I have raced pretty regularly, often competitively, in all kinds of events: dus, tris, adventure races, mountain biking, stage races, marathons, ultras, and relays. Over the years I have been healthy, injured, overweight, under weight, wicked fast, depressingly slow, absolutely rabid for the sport, and completely burned out. I would describe myself now as rather balanced all around. On occasion I can still find myself out competing for the Weekly World Championship trophy, but am trying to be a lot smarter with my training and racing. no matter what, first and foremost, this sport is FUN!

FAMILY STATUS: That roommate I mentioned earlier? we lived together for 6 years and eventually decided that we liked each other a little bit. We subsequently got married and have remained happily so for the last 14 years. My best friend is simply awesome. She races herself, so she completely gets this ridiculousness. Training and racing is a big part of our social life - not sure if we travel to race or race to travel. No kids, dogs, cats, or even a fish. A friend gave us a chia pet as a joke a couple of years ago, but it is still in its original packaging.

WORK: I am an educator and administrator. I am the currently the Chair of the Architecture Program at Auburn University, and the Associate director of the Rural Studio, our remote design/build program in West Alabama. I live in Atlanta, so I am on the road quite bit between it all. While I did my graduate work at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, I also spent my undergraduate career at Auburn. I am therefore happy to join in the collegiate football discussion, but once we all agree that the SEC is the most rockin' conference, Cam Newton is the best NCAA player since Bo Jackson, and the coaching duo ofChizik/Malzahn is the greatest of all time, I am not sure what is left to discuss? maybe we should stick to triathlon?

CURRENT TRAINING: for the past two months, i have been coached for the first time in my life. I am a self-professed technology wonk - but gave it all up a few years ago as I really began to feel a little bit of a slave to it all. I got to where a poorly functioning HRM could really wreck an otherwise great workout. For the past three years I have trained and raced totally RPE. Call it a deep cleansing. That said, as part of my recent coaching, I have found myself once again completely jacked in: HR/GPS/Power - I don't really pay too much attention to it - it is really more for my coach - I just do what he says - we will see how it goes. I actually find it kind of nice. Maybe we can talk about that later.

THIS YEAR'S RACES: Ah! every 5 years we get to shrug that off and start brand new! This year I age-up and all PR's are scrubbed. Last year I maintained, the year before I was a regular age-group contender, but could never crack the master's podium. Last season I bagged out of more races than I raced due to work. During the summer I did double duty at work, which allowed me to buy time out this coming summer.

2011 RACES:
work-wise I will be slammed through mid-february, then a normal schedule through May 1st, then off through August, thanks to said overtime last summer. Current confirmed plans:
March: Georgia HM, Powerman Alabama
May: St Anthony's, Beast of the East HIM
From May to end of July, I am all-in for IM Lake Placid - for those three months, I will actually get to train like a pro thanks to my work schedule!

There is a whole host of tentative stuff before and after, but I am really focused on IMLP.

WEIGHT LOSS GOALS: For years when faced with the inevitable question "Why do you train like you do?" my stock answer was always "so I can eat and drink whatever I want." At about 35 years old, that was revised to "so that I can drink whatever I want." At 45, even that is no longer the case. For the past two years, I have raced best at about 152~153 pounds. between October and January, it would be normal for me to plump up to about 170lbs, and all I had to do was give up the martini for about 6 weeks to get back to race weight. Last year that did not work. The thing I am happiest about this current training cycle is that I have remained WAY under 160 pounds to-date. I say that only because this question pertains to weight - which I am actually trying to ignore. See next.

LIMITERS: For me, my current limiter is not one of the stages of the race - it is really my overall strength and power. For the past two months I have been focusing on strength training, so not much concerned about my weight, but rather my ratio of body fat and power/kg. under my current training regimen I have gotten a little leaner, and more power per kg of overall weight. This will continue to be my focus for the next 10~12 weeks. I actually expect to be a little heavier by March.

WHAT WOULD MAKE ME A GOOD MENTEE: OK - I make a living as a professional mentor. As such I have learned that for better or worse we spend the bulk of our life knowing all the answers and simply trying to figure out what questions we need to ask to get to the answers that we want to hear. I am here to forget the answers that I know, and to learn new questions to ask. I am wide open. Also, I am pretty scientific, but usually defer to experience over lab tests. This is a long game. As such I have always been a regular logger - i have about 10 years of paper logs followed up 10 years of digital logs. In addition to understanding that what works for me may not work for you, these logs have allowed me to see that what works for me this year may not work for me next. My coach and I use TrainingPeaks to communicate, but I will be happy to post here as well if folks want to see - I will need to figure out a good work flow on how to report in three different places at once though - any suggestions are welcome.

Whew!

Hey Fred - I recently began using a Quarq power meter as  well - interested to hear what drew you to this brand? If you have any questions about it as you patiently await its arrival - I am happy to answer if I can!

Hey all - the gearing discussion is always an interesting one!

Short:
My best suggestion is to just make sure you have a small enough gear for the terrain you will face. A lot more races are lost from pushing too big a gear than running out of gears on the top end.

Long:
What we are really searching for is how to gain the greatest mechanical advantage possible, which means working out how far you travel with each rotation of the cranks. In doing that you have to consider both your chainring size AND your cassette size simultaneously - not in isolation from one another. Often the discussion centers around "weaker/slower cyclists are better off with a compact while stronger/faster cyclists are better off with a standard." However once you begin to consider the actual gear ratios of the combined chainring combo and the rear cassette, you will find that a compact setup will often not only provide you with a great range of gears, but also give you a higher/faster top gear as well. The trade off (as I understand it) is that you lose some of the real close combos that you might enjoy in a standard setup.

For example, according to Sheldon, with a 12-25 and a standard crank, you get a 8.8-3.1 gain ratio.  With  a 11-23 cassette combined with a compact crank you get a broader gain ratio of 9.0- 2.9. That basically means you get a higher high gear and a lower low gear with the compact setup. In addition, weight weenies will rejoice as both the compact crank and the 11-23 cassette combined weigh less than the standard setup. All this really only makes a difference so long as we are willing to shift gears a lot more than we usually are willing to. If you are like me, you have a favorite gear that you like to push and all thing being equal, we will mash it up hill and cruise it down the backside. To get over this, a few years ago I printed out a list of gear ratios on my setup and taped it to my top tube. Then on one ride per week, instead of watching HR or MPH, I would work on feathering back and forth between close gear ratios, which meant shifting both front and rear derailleurs in tandem. Over time I found a lot of subtle gear combos that  I would most likely otherwise never use. I found on long races feathering periodically between these close combos to really help save the legs. In all my racing, I cannot recall a time when I felt like I had too low of a gear, but I HAVE spun out on my compact/12 cassette. On the rare occasion I have begun to spin out my compact/11, I figure I was going fast enough and could use the break anyway.

In theory, as it is basically a lever, you also have to consider crank arm length as well, but in my personal experience that has not made much difference in real life. For instance I think the rotational diameter of a 170 and a 172.5 crank is only 1/8" which never seemed to make much difference to me - but there are plenty of heated discussions out there that profess otherwise.

But after all that is said, I really just think personal preference plays a big role in the end. I love my compact setup on my tri bike, never really think about my standard on my road bike, swap cassettes regularly based on whether or not I want a low gear available for big climbs (which really messes with the combos) and I even have crazy oval rings on one of my favorite mountain bikes.

And thank goodness none of us are riding 650c wheels anymore. That just makes it impossible to figure ANY of this stuff out!

Edited by TankBoy 2010-12-24 12:32 AM

For those of you using Be Ironfit, a lot of people in my tri club have used it for their IM's and they really liked it and they did really well on it. They also have found that the more religious you are about getting all of your workouts in, the better they did. Seems pretty obvious.

I am going in for my first professional fit after the beginning of the year and I can't wait. I'm sure there are things that will make my bike more comfortable. My bike (2008 Specialized Allez Elite) is in dire need of a tune up. I do not have a tri bike yet and probably won't get one until 2012.

I would also like to talk to my bike fitter about gearing to find out if what came with the bike is the best for me. Right now I have a 11-28 on the back and a 50-34 on the front.

Hydration and nutrition are the things that I'm really focusing on right now as I move up from sprints to the 70.3 distance. I have had some good longer distance rides lately and I think I'm starting to dial in my nutrition on longer events. I have had some bad experience in the past with hydration issues and GI issues on the bike-run transitions. Any suggestions or experiences would be great to hear.

Since last year was my first year doing any physical activity for about 12 years, I just took it easy and actually didn't have any big injuries. This year I'm hoping to up my volume and a little speed will come my way from that. i just really want to be consistent with my training. If you look at my logs from 2010, I would have 1,2 or even 3 good weeks followed by 1-3 poor weeks. I just wasn't as committed as I needed to be. I think that I have turned the corner on that.

It looks like we have some very fast people in our group. I know that Fred is very fast as I was in his mentor group last season. I would say that anyone that does a 70.3 in under 6 hours would be fast in my book. I'll be hoping to get mine done in around 6:30 but we'll see how that goes. My run is still slow (12 min/mile) but I'm hoping to get that down to about 10 min/mile this year. I plan to run/walk all of my races this year. I've found that I can actually finish faster if I run/walk it rather that long/slow run it.

Exercise for today was scheduled as an hour run and 30 min bike. I ended up doing a 30 min treadmill and 30 min stationary bike. My in-laws are at our house right now and it has disrupted my whole routine. i can't wait to get back to a normal day.

Yes please! I know next to nothing about pedal cycles so any extra hints and tips would be great. I've got a road bike that I've used previously for tri and training but I now have a Fuji Aloha 2.0 for next season. Just need to get fitted really so any extra insite is always appreciated.


Oh and two doctors in one group? Awesome! So I've got this nasty rash ....... wrong forum possibly?