Big Steve's Group (Year Two) - CLOSED (Page 3)

Sweet! I ate one of those Nature Valley Trail Mix bars and a banana for breakfast almost everyday during training last year.  Lately, I've been eating the Nature Valley peanut bars, which are really yummy, but probably not as good calorie and nutrition-wise. 

Race and training nutrition is my biggest concern moving up to to a 70.3.  I haven't had a race or workout more than three hours yet, and I know that is where nutrition really starts to come into play.  So, I'll be really interested in any tips anyone has, related to dialing in my on-the-road nutrition.

I hold 3 bottles on my bike, 1 with water and 2 with 2 scoops of Carbo Pro and 2 to 3 scoops of Ironman Perform or EFS each.  Additionally I take a liquid shot flask of EFS (this alone is 400 calories) with me.  Lastly I take a bunch of GU packets (usually Roctane) as well.

The rule of thumb is to intake 400 calories an hour.  I buy all my stuff from http://www.personalbestnutrition.com/ Brian Shea is the owner and he's also a nutrition coach.  If you're interested he can work with you to come up with a custom cocktail mix that will work for you personally.  His website has some great articles on nutrition.

Hope this helps.

Sounds like you may be over training a bit and they be me hampering your 5K's.  Are you tapering at all before the races?

NAME: Everlong, Scott

STORY: I've always been active in sports and the weight room. I was on a skydving team and went to the US nationals 6 years, played adult indoor lacrosse, etc. Being 43 now the joints didn't want to do the heavy lifting any more and I had two different friends blow out muscles in a two week period. One tore a peck the other their shoulder including the rotator cuff. I decided to do more cardio and started doing spinning again and then joined master's swim. I did a sprint the end of 2010 and then 3 Olympics this year.

FAMILY STATUS: Happily married for almost 11 years. 4 daughters from ages 1 to 9. I also go to bed early and get up at times that make people shudder all to keep the house blissful and not take away from my time with the girls.

CURRENT TRAINING: Beefing up my volume. December I'll be at 470 miles biked (on a KK since it's flipping freezing here now), 90 miles running and 28,725 yards in the pool. Most miles in a month for both biking and running. Just behind my highest for swimming.

THIS YEAR'S RACES:

Half of Quincy Half Marathon (first half)

Cohasset 10K Run by the Sea

Ashland Olympic Tri

Stamford CT KIC-IT Olympic Tri

NYC Olympic Tri

2012 RACES

Half of Quincy Half Marathon 3/18 (To blow my time last year away)

Patriot Half IM 6/16 (My first)

Pumpkinman Half IM 9/9

SmuttyNose Marathon 9/30 (My first)

WEIGHTLOSS: A notch under 6 feet I weight 183 and have a good size frame. I might be able to get to 177-ish if I really buckle down but I really don't have much to lose.

Last weeks training:

2 hours 15 minute and 5650 in the pool.

5 hours 58 minutes and 109.54 miles on the bike.

3 hours 7 minutes and 20.5 miles running.

Scott,

Good luck with the Patriot, It is a great venue! That was my first HIM this year, although I ended up doing the AuquaBike due to a back injury. I was hoping to do that next year, but my son had the audacity to get married that day! 

You must be in the Boston area? I'm in kennebunkport Maine.

I might see you at the Pumpkinman?

Yes I live in Marshfield which is twenty miles south of Boston. Love Kennebunkport. Are you doing Pumpkinman? If you are I might come up and ride the bike course a few times over the course of the summer.

I haven't quite figured out my races for next year, but that is one that is high on my list! regardless, if you come up to ride the course next summer, let me know it would be great to join you.

Dan

Steve,

The race is both Olympic and sprint.  I'll register for the Olympic.  However, I would like to ratchet up to the race, competing in a few single or dual sport events.  There is a 10mile run on tax day this March that I'd like to compete in.

Sounds like a plan. Patriot is about a 35 minute drive so I'll be doing that course every weekend once it gets warm enough. Once that is over I'd like to do the P-Man course at least once in July and once in August so I'm familar with the terrain. I've actually driven a lot of the roads the course is on because I had a friend who lived in South Berwick and we drove between there and Lebanon Me a lot. However I obviously wasn't paying attention to ascents, etc back then.

Hi there Steve, can I still still squeeze in here?

NAME:  Katie

STORY: I've grown up as the fat kid; the lucky spoiled rotten only child. I've been plagued with a foot birth deformity and early surgeries led me to adopt and enjoy a sedentary lifestyle. I played soccer and volleyball through middle school but I was never very good and hated the pressure of team sports. Everything after that seems like it happened so fast; I started running around my house to boost my confidence, but sadly running mixed with low self-esteem turned into anorexia and I was out for a good year. The self-esteem still kinda sucks but I'm back in every other aspect. I picked up swimming to get out some energy when my foot issues kept me from running, then just decided to throw biking into the mix and do a kid's triathlon. I fell completely head-over-heels in love, and completed three more sprints this year. About 6 weeks ago I had a surgery on my toes that should make running much less painful for me. so I anticipate ramping up my running routine shortly since it's also my slowest sport. During this off-time I've still managed to shove my boot into the stirrup of the recumbent bike, and started swimming and doing the elliptical 2 weeks ago. I took my first short 2mi run yesterday-- it was horribly slow and painful but feels so good to be back!!!! Oh yeah, and I kind of signed up for a HIM. So I've got some bouncing back to do.

FAMILY STATUS: I'm 16 with no brothers or sisters. My mom is also an avid runner although she just started last year and has some work to do for an old lady just starting up! She is slower than me but more than happy to trail behind me running or biking to make sure I don't die. My dad is scary fat and alcoholic and doesn't want anything to do with activity.

CURRENT TRAINING: Oh, I guess I kind of already answered this huh. I do a Tues and Thurs 45min spin class and, prior to surgery and getting back to it next week, ride with some of my beastly adult friends once or twice a week, 20-25mi now but I'm going to try to join a group that does 40. Swimming is my therapy and pasttime; I stay in the pool just because I don't want to go home. I'm in there 1.5-2hrs at least 4 but up to 7 days a week. I've been doing .5-1hr of elliptical 3-4 days a week but this will slowly transition to running. I try to go off of my HR for training but get very confused over what numbers I should be achieving.

THIS YEAR'S RACES:

• Swim for Smiles Kid's Tri
• Ramblin Rose Winston Salem
• Dash for Divas White Lake
• Outer Banks Half Marathon
• A bunch of 5k's but those aren't all that great.

2012 RACES

• Bay Six Half Marathon
• Tar Heel 10miler
• Rev3 Olympic Knoxville
• Rev3 HIM Cedar Point
• Probably many more insignificant 5k's, maybe a Ramblin Rose in there somethime before the HIM and more sprints after.

WEIGHTLOSS: As I told you, it's gotten to some crazy extremes over the past few years. Right now I'm 5'4" and 107lbs, just barely in the healthy BMI. I don't know if gaining weight would do me any good? I will if I need to. Nutrition is still very important to me; I love to cook and I love protein. I probably eat almost as many grams of protein as I do carbs in a day. I don't know if that's bad but I eat meat and cottage cheese as snacks.

I hope you have room for me! I need a mentor who has good experience and is familiar with the challenges of longer distances and such... plus you have kids kinda close to my age. One question, so do I need to use the BT log or just post my weekly efforts on the forum? I have a bad habit of putting off logging my workouts and forgetting but I will try to get better with using the log.

Hi Katie, welcome to the group.  You're the last one in, glad you made it! 

Looks like we have a killer group growing.   To answer your question, no you don't HAVE TO log your workouts but trust me it helps A LOT in training and I highly suggest getting religious about it.  The reports on this site are excellent and its a great way to track progress.  You'll get addicted to watching the week by week or month by month bar graph grow.

We are officially closed and off to the races!   I'll start posting a group summary starting next week.  Once you're done for the week (sat or sun) just post your training summary and any comments you want to share or questions for me or for the group.  Anyone please feel free in answering questions.  I hope we get a lot of useful threads going.   I'll post a group summary usually by end of day Monday for the previous week.  Quick note... I think by default a week is Sunday to Saturday but you can change that to be Monday to Sunday under settings.  Also - I would update your settings so that you're notified via email of new posts to this thread.  Makes it a lot easier than having to check manually all the time.  That's my preference anyway.

2012 is going to be great, enjoy the ride everyone!!

I cannot wait to post my workouts and see my totals for the week, month and year grow. It serves as great motiviation for the next one!

Major kudos for stepping up and not letting your foot keep you down.

On the protein consumption I'm the same way. One way I combat that is to make sure I mix carbs with the protein. If I eat nuts I'll have fruit with them. If I have meat or fish I'll have a pasta, potato or rice, etc. It helps keep the balance.

Steve, how do you set up the email notification? that sounds like a great idea.

Looks like we have a great group!

Scott, I bet you can't wait to start posting your totals i looked at your logs and you are really rocking it!! that will give us slugs so motivation to try and keep up.

LOL, I tried to look up yours but your security is set to friends only so you need to add me as a friend.

Thanks for the compliment. I'm definately motivated and hope I can motivate others but I'm reticent to start posting workouts or totals too quickly because it can come off as excessive bragging until you know somebody. There's two types of bragging. Type one is hey check this out I'm so proud of what I've accomplished. The second type is look at me I'm so much better than everybody else. I hate type two's and don't want to come off that way so we'll give it a couple of weeks.

Next week is actually my recovery week anyway so the totals will be down as will the intensity.

At the very bottom right of this page you'll see "Actions" and a link for "Toggle e-mail notifications".  Click that an turn on email notifications to this thread.

?????I have clicked it and will recieve a mail when someone is posting.

I have a schedule for running (it starts very slow), but I think it's the best for the injury

Thanks Steve!

Scott, I can assure that I will only take it as great motivation to do more myself!

It's not bragging if you can do it.

Everyone should be able to see my logs now and feel free to push me, I can take it!!

Yep I can see your training log now.

OK......here's today's swim workout....Tuesdays was the real killer........let's get moving!

100 free
200 2X100 pull with paddles on :10 RI
100 Free
50 kick with fins
200 free
900 4X(25 kick, 75 swim, 125 pull)
200 8X25 @35 desc 1-4 5-8
100 4X25 one arm drills
400 4X100 @1:45
300 6X50 @50
400 4X100 @1:40
200 pull with paddles
50 free with fins
3200

What are people's training goals to help them improve in specific areas? I know we all want to get faster and go longer but how?

For me there's two things.

One is cycling power. I have a good endurance level on the bike but steep hills sap me. I need more power. I've been doing a lot of intervals on the trainer to work on this. It's coming slow but sure. There were a few hills in the races last year where I was in the lowest gear and pushing a heart rate up to 170 which is WAY too high.

Two is gauging my level of exertion on open water swims. In the pool I can tell how hard I'm going by my speed in the pool. I have an internal clock that says ok that 100 was 1:45 and I'll be dead on. On the bike or run I can quickly check the heart rate monitor on a hill to make sure I'm not going too hard. In the open water I start out slow but then I find my groove and don't realize I'm going as fast as I am. Once I go vertical I can instantly tell if my pace was too hard but by then I've been going too hard for too long.

There's always better form for running, cycling and swimming as well.

I have a single tri goal for '12 and that's to get faster on the bike. While the swim & run can always get better, I feel that the bike speed improvement is going to cut down my finishing time the most.  I'm average in my swim & run splits and below average on my bike splits.  I think my mistake this year was either listening to music or a audio book when riding outside or watching TV or a movie when riding indoors.  In hind site I can see why I didn't improve as much as I wanted to because my concentration on my cadence, HR and MPH just wasn't there.   I was just happy to be riding longer and longer distances which was great for my endurance but not speed.

I entered my two short runs in my training log.  I will need to post some of my runs manually because I use my Polar HRM when I run on the treadmill at work.  The treadmills only work with Polar transmitters, which is a bit annoying because I have to manually enter the details to Runkeeper and Garmin Connect. 

When I get home, I'll try to post my bike workouts from my Garmin unless I pass out on the couch first.