Allison and Ryan's Beginner Mentor Group - FULL (Page 3)

which goup was your last?

Recovery day today (always do this on Sunday) and I did need it.

I only started swim lessons in October, and recently had to change teachers due to scheduling issues. I feel like I've been making good progress on my skills up to this point, and I have been improving my distance and times. But the new guy has me working a lot harder, and I'm sore in a lot of strange places - particularly the area between my shoulder blades, and my forearms (I feel this whenever I flex my wrists). I know I am getting a lot more power by engaging these muscles, but at this point they are doing a lot of complaining.

This week will be difficult - I'm doing an extra shift at work, and I have work related meetings during two of the times when I would normally be training. I will just have to fit in what I can, when I can...

Mary,  I have been trying to figure that out also. 

I just ran a ten mile race today. This is my schedule for the year at the moment, although I am sure I will do other 5Ks

May 1 - 5.8mile  race as part of a relay team 

June 19-  International  Tri

Aug 13th- sprint tri

Oct. 1- sprint tri

Nov 6- Half marathon

So I really have no idea how to plan the training. 

My current plan is to try and fit this in each week. The distances will change depending on the next race:

long run (5-10)and later in the day a  very short swim and hot tub soak , a med run(4, maybe some speed work)

Long bike( 25-40) ,   short bike(8-12) with a short run after (1 - 3) ,  long swim, med swim

Although I never  fit all that in. Plus I guess every few weeks I need a recovery week with shorter distances.

But I have no idea if that is a good idea.  I also do not know how long to rest after my 10 mile race today.  My legs are very sore. 

Jean

What kinds of swim drills does your teacher have you doing?  I took lessons for about 2 months this past winter, but am now getting bored with the same drills. I also like the long swim.

Jean

A few different things.

The thing that's causing the fatigue, I believe, is that he has me rotating a lot more strongly and engaging the muscles of the upper back in my pull. I bilateral breath, and my tendency is to get a reasonably good rotation on strokes when I breathe, but less rotation when I don't breathe. He really wants me to get up on my side and use the body roll to pull me through the water.

He also got me working on backstroke, which I have never even tried before. He said although this is not particularly useful for triathlon, it will make me a better swimmer and will help my overall swim fitness.

One of the drills he has me doing forces me to change speeds. Before, I was basically just always swimming at the same pace - a slower, 'endurance' pace. The drill he has me doing for this is to do two laps as slow as I possibly can while still maintaining stroke rhythm, and time that. That time is X. Then go slightly faster, and use the remaining time up to X for rest. Then go faster again, with a bit longer rest to total time X. Repeat this until swimming as fast as I can, with progressively longer rest time. This has been good, because it used to be very hard for me to change speeds - I really had only one speed in the water. This has been helping me a lot.

hey everybody..

Been a crazy week here, but the weather finally cooperated yesterday.  Of course, the family wanted to ride, so it turned into an 18 mile, 3+ hour adventure, but I did manage to get some 1/2 mile sprints in.  On the last 1/2 mile home, after my wife said "go for it, do your thing", I hit 31 mph after cresting a small hill onto a flat, so all in all a decent cardio workout at the finish. 

Spinning class tonight (raining big time here).  Pool tomorrow morning, and maybe spinning tomorrow evening.

I'm having the same issue.

My brother (intense triathlete) and I were talking, and he basically said that it may be important that if you aren't able to train one day because of conflict, basically go all out in whatever you were planning for the next workout.  For example.  If you miss a swim day, then the next swim day, do sprints until you can't sprint anymore.  Go as hard as you can for as long as you can, and then return to your plan.  He says it's difficult, but he says it's working for him.

Interesting. I really hadn't considered swim lessons as I was a fish as a kid, was on swim team and the lot, so I know "how" to swim. But this makes me think maybe I should look into a few lessons.

alath -Thanks.  I will try both of those in the pool.  My teacher did have me do backstroke and I haven't for awhile.  I also swim at one speed and it will be interesting to see how I do on the change speed drill.

shannon- I also took swim lessons as a kid and am a very confident swimmer.  After my sprint and olympic tris last summer I decided to take a couple lessons.  I figured if I was going to put all the time in the pool I should make sure my stroke is correct.  TIMES HAVE CHANGED. I am 47 and swimming is very different now. After my first lesson I was shocked. I had to completely relearn to swim. I was drinking pool water and coughing.  It was actually funny.  My teacher said he thought it would be 6 months before he was happy with my stroke. I have no idea how or if it will impact my time or if it even makes a difference, but I now swim very differently than I did then.

Jean

Don't be frightened, the difference between 10 and 13 really isn't as much as you think. Half mary is a fabulous race distance.

Question:

Has anyone done extensive shopping research on heart rate monitors that can be used for running, cycling, and swimming?  I'm looking for something reasonably priced below $200 if possible.

So after my whine above I decided to just HTFU and get myself to the pool and boy am I glad I did.  I was kind of dreading this work-out.  To put it into perspective, I started training in February and that first week the thought of swimming 1 length of the pool was impossible for me without drinking lots of water and believing I was going to drown before I finished. 

Today's workout (probably a warm-up for most) was a 4x25 warm-up, followed by 5x100 intervals (with 40 sec rest) and 4x25 cool down.  Last week my work-out was 8x75 intervals with decreasing rests each day.  The last time I tried to swim 100 straight I thought I was going die.  Lungs burning, arms burning, and legs burning.  But today was different. Swam the first 100 and wasn't even phased, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th! Surely something was wrong.  Did I miscount? I didn't feel tired at all.  In fact I wanted to keep going but my lunch break was over.  I think things are finally coming together!

Now I'm more than motivated to get back on track again!

Wow....thats some awesome progress! What kind of training have you done? I was in similar situation when I began my swim training in Jan. I've progressed some, but nowhere near what you have. Swimming has become my nemesis.....I work and work but see little results.

I watched a lot of videos on youtube first, then took a basic swim class at the Y.  But I found a swim work-out on Active.com which is a 12-week sprint distance swim plan.  Here's the link. http://www.active.com/triathlon/Articles/12-Week-Swim-Workout-Plan-for-Sprint-Triathlons.htm

It's been working pretty well for me.  I used the videos and swim class to help with my form and now I'm just working on endurance, which this plan is helping me with.  I don't really do the "zone" training that the plan talks about, I just swim.  I'm also doing this in conjunction with the 16week swim focused sprint plan. Swimming is also my weakness so I need to focus on it. I didn't discover the swim plan until a month into the 16week plan so it works out.  Since the 16week swim focused plan has me swimming 3x a week I just throw in an extra swim to the swim plan (the swim plan only has you swimming 2x a week).  It's been working really well for me and slowly building up my endurance.

The thing I try to remember about training interruptions is that it will happen but if you miss one or two workouts here or there it's not the end of the world an unanticipated rest day can do your body a lot of good just with the time to repair itself and in the grand scheme of things 1 or 2 missed days on a 6 month workout plan isn't going to /kill/ your time, if it happens to me I switch up my routines so that the one I missed is the shorter workout of that discipline...

First day of class went well learned how to do correct bike fit and was able to make my dept issued bike fit a whole lot better but it is still too small a frame but we wrok with what we got, hopefully my knees will stop sounding like popping popcorn when I crouch...  shorter ride but that will  change today...

I have to give a 12 min presentation on hydration anyone know of some decent articles I can pull from?

Also here is a decent article for newer swimmers about tri swimming the website itself is a fairly decent resource

http://www.swimsmooth.com/kick.html

Wow - I'm a beginner, and I read somewhere in BT that it's good for beginners to focus on just doing the time. Since my goal is to finish, not finish first (!) I wonder if I'm still OK doing just the time. I don't do the heart rate thing, I just use my bike computer and my iPhone app to track the miles, so I can record them in the log.

Is this just a goal oriented thing - to train in more simple way like I'm doing and that's OK? Or should I be thinking more about the heart rate and sprints, or changing up the routines. I just swim, sometimes I swim a couple laps faster and sometimes try to go really slow, but just do the time.

Mary

Thanks...I took a look at the program and think perhaps it may work for me. I too am going to swim 3 times a week. Where I'm at I just don't think twice a week will allow me to make the progress I need. I'm 11 weeks from my first race of the season, so it fits in pretty well. Hopefully the structure will help. I was also following a swim focused program, but frankly I didnt feel it was challenging enough (with the exception of swimming). So, I've begun just doing a rotation of swim, bike, run, and fitting in some strength and plyo/core work along with some bricks. I feel I'm getting stronger and faster. I'm careful to follow the 10 % rule as to increases and so far so good. So....I hit the pool last night for workout # 1 from the program. Unfortunately, because of work travel I probably wont get back in the pool until Friday.

Hi Mary,

Your two scheduled tris are pretty close in distance so you can stick with the sprint training plan. But if you feel really good after your first tri in June then you can also start an Olympic plan before your 2nd tri. This will increase your distance and stamina and with this your sprint times most likely will improve as well. I hope that answers your question?!

You can use whatever you want but at least try to log your workouts on the BT site. I find it is quite helpful when you have questions then others can easily see what type of workouts you have been doing and can more easily answer your questions about training. Plus then we can all encourage you if you're slacking