Funked Up Triathletes (Sprint, Olympic Focus) Group - Closed Until Next Season (Page 3)

thanks, I am going to the LBS this weekend to see what the options are.

I wouldn't spend the money to actually replace the *wheels* on a hybrid, that would probably cost more than the hybrid is worth, but you
might be able to buy slightly less wide tires.

On a hybrid you can usually downsize your tires by a few mm without risking pinch flats. For example, if your current tires are 35 mm
wide, you could probably go down to a 32mm or 28mm safely (depends on the interior rim width) which would reduce your rolling
resistance and increase your speed a little. I did this for my wife's hybrid, changing out her 40mm tires for some higher max pressure
32mm tires that I got for $25 (each) online and you can tell the difference in speed.

The LBS would know what the narrowest tires you could safely put on your bike.

thanks so much. we have a LBS that sells used bikes so I am going to check on it. I did a tri with wide tires did not realize anything until i saw people whizzing by. do they put aero bars on hybrids? that sounds so silly

So I went to the tri store last night for my fitting to put aerobars on my bike and my super awesome husband surprised me with a 2013 Felt B16! He has had the surprise in the works for over a month now. I got new shoes and new Rudy helmet too! What a great surprise! I can't wait to get home tonight and take " Violet" for a spin. ( yes, I named my bike). I have never ridden a tri bike so I hope I don't crash her on the maiden voyage. I don't know how to attach pics from the iPad or I would.
Next tri is in a month - cant wait! Of course I have done two in the last two weeks- would have been nice to have it for them but probably not smart to race when u aren't used to the bike yet.

Paula

Paula, sounds like a great surprise to get! And no shame in naming the bike, although I haven't named my bike (not sure why) my violin is named Susan so I definitely understand the trend. Did you get one of the Rudy aero helmets? I've been rocking an old school rudy road helmet that needs to be replaced and one of the rudy syton open comp aero helmets since I started doing triathlon 4... 5 years back now? Time flies.

Anyway you are correct on the not using the tri bike for a race right out of the gate. I'm still on a road bike with aerobars myself, but from what I understand it's just a bit more aggressive frame geometry which in my mind (coupled with the aerobars) can be a little bit of instability. Not insomuch as the bike is unstable, but being down in the aerobars with the aggressive seat angle will give you a touchier control of the bike (moving with pinkies/wrists versus throwing your arms around, an exaggeration but you get my point).

Post up some pictures if you get the iPad figured out.

Gonna try to post a pic. Hope this works

Race went we- except for a flat half-way through the bike. Took about 7:30-8:00 to change the tire and get going again. Had turned my bike upside down to get the tire on and dumped all my drinks out so hydration was not great. Pushed hard to finnish my bike and paid for it early on the run as i could not get into a good pace since my heart was rushing. Overall pretty happy with how things went. So now the next goal is to do the Banff olympic distance race. Knowing I need to bump up my training times. Does anybody have some good suggestions for a 12 week olympic training plan. Any comments on biggest difference in racing a sprint and olympic. Figure the pacing will be the difference as in the sprint your pushing the upper end of heart rate for most of the race.

My biggest advice to go from sprint to oly is RESPECT THE OLY! I just finished one this weekend and I forgot how much different the two races are. For me it's doubling the run. I am a runner first but for some reason the longer bike just kills the run for me. I have only done two olys but I was pathetically slow on each run. I can easily cover the distances separately but putting them together is a different story. I suggest doing quality brick work outs to prepare. Good luck
Paula

My race report from last weekend's sprint is up on my blog link below.

It didn't go that great for me, so give it a read, and maybe a little feedback.
Thanks!

I'll leave it to others with more experience to give more intelligent feedback, but I know from ocean swimming and scuba diving in
strong currents that swimming into a current is physically AND mentally exhausting. I would suspect that the swim took more out of
you than you realize and you paid for it later during your run.

Also, it sounds like you made a good move checking out the current beforehand and positioning yourself to account for it.

Congrats on a successful race!

John

Thanks for the feedback, John.

I think i was definitely a little rattled coming into T1. Not only due to the rough swim but I also noticed one of my age group competitors right in front of me heading into the transition. This is someone that I had identified as basically on the same level as me, but stronger on the bike. I had outswam (is that a word?) this guy before and was hoping for a little cushion to start the bike, but there he was in front of me! And his transition was right next to mine! So he got out of T1 first, and the only time I saw him after that was at the bike turn-around where he had opened up about 3 minutes on me.
So I was a little de-motivated on that run I guess. I need to just keep the bigger picture in mind, and push hard no matter what next time.

It always surprises me how "fragile" motivation can be during a race if you don't get your head right beforehand. I was never fast, but I used to
run a lot of 5ks and 10ks when I was younger and I can vividly remember the deflation of motivation when I would not hit certain
splits and realizing halfway through a run that I wasn't going to make whatever time goal I had set for myself and then just completely
losing steam and just "phoning it in" for the rest of the run. Currently, I'm trying to get my head right for my upcoming sprint tris and
hopefully not let this happen like it used to.

I couldn't agree more. I'm learning that so much of this sport is the mental aspect.
I think that understanding that can be an advantage in the long term, but it is something that I need to work to develop.

On a positive note, I had a nice 5 mile "modern era" PR run this morning. (40:55). Modern era being anything post HS and college.

Edited by Dominion 2013-06-17 10:25 AM

Fragility of the mind, such a common thing and it plagues just about everyone and almost every level of the sport. I know as far as race jitters go it took me a lot of racing to get rid of them. I still get them a bit with triathlons since it's like there's sooooooo much waiting around before the start of the race. Cross Country and Track I finally got to the point of no longer being nervous before races just through sheer repetition (so many races that you just can't be nervous all that time).

As for actually racing I found it helped me to train with other people in a "race type" scenario where you are really working on churning out your own pace with people around you. It helped me kind of calm down the mind and to race my own pace. Although it depends on the person there are little tactics you can do to get inside other people's head before or during a race since all is fair in love, war and triathlon (well not really all is fair, but you get my drift). Most of which has to do with knowing your own strengths and exhibiting them to competitors. Passing by people with confident form (not super applicable on the swim, but partially) is a huge thing. I try not to employ this during AG events, but its possible to mess with someone mentally by "zipping" by them, i.e. getting really close while passing. Really too dangerous for it to be worth the effort in any AG event on the swim or bike, but could still be employed during the run.

Although this book reflects some of my own attitudes toward life as well, it made some great strides with me initially when working on my mental focus; it's called Thinking Body, Dancing Mind by Chungliang Al Huang. You can get a used copy on Amazon for pretty much the shipping cost (copies available for a penny). Come to think of it, I gave my copy away and need a new one... Anyway check it out if you think that you want some good perspectives on mental training.

Thanks Jesse.
I'll check that book out, always looking for a good read.

I second the "thank you" and just ordered the book!

Just ordered the book myself! $4.00 what a bargain. I can always use a tool to get my mind in the right place. I get frustrated now because in HS I was very strong mentally and the older I get, the harder it is.

I have ridden Vi twice now and am probably the only person in the world that actually is slower in aero position. I have a LOT of work to do and 18 weeks to do it!

Paula

New element thrown into OWS practice last night- jellyfish! Went swimming in the ocean with tri-clinic group on the course for my upcoming sprint tri yesterday early evening with about 20 other clinic participants. I swam out around the first buoy and I thought it was strange that people kept hitting my feet and my hands kept hitting people's toes because we were pretty spread out. After about the 10th time this happened, I stopped to see who I was hitting and I realized it wasn't other people but jellyfish. I was in the middle of a field of hundreds (thousands?) of moon jellies! I have seen the odd one here or there, but never anything like this! I kept going but it was raising my anxiety levels, especially when they were in my face. I kept "catching" them in my hand during the catch phase of my pull. The field of jellies covered the entire swim. I made myself do the 1/4 mile course a 2nd time just to get used to them in case they are there on race day this Sunday. I'm glad I got exposed to this pre-race because if it happened during the race for the first time, I might have freaked!

RE: John
Well at least they were moon jellies and not something more dangerous that would have left you unable to relay your experience to us on the boards here. Even though I think moon jellies are pretty sweet (in a tank) I probably would have been having a moment too. Not done any real open water swimming in the ocean.




Although I'm sure most of you in the group are smarter than me I just want to make a reminder that sometimes I forget (and hopefully this reminds you) that I'm only human. Planned a nice 10k set on the track today that started with a 1600m rep, moved to a couple 1200m reps, 1000's and on down starting at threshold pace and progressively getting faster. By all means it's a workout that isn't easy but I should have been fully capable of. Started out like 6-7 seconds slow on the mile and just felt sluggish, reps didn't really get faster and ended up cutting at the 8k mark because I was just dragging. Although I realized what my mistake was before I got into my first 1200 I knew I needed to get something done today anyway.

My mistake was that this was my 3rd hard day in a row. Sunday was a 50 mile bike with 8 x 5min @ 40k-40khard pace 2 min spin rest in the middle of it and yesterday was a 5000m speed endurance swim set with the main set being 15x (100 all out +25 easy) with 25 second rest. So pretty much I'm toasted and the moral of the story is that sometimes I forget I'm only mortal. Luckily the next two days are already planned as recovery days pretty much, but as a reminder to everybody you do have to have rest and even the "experienced" of us make stupid mistakes once in a while.



Happy training everyone. Let me know what you guys think of the book when you get your copies. Good or bad just curious to see what you think. As you might have guessed before ordering it definitely has an eastern vibe to it, but that's my own personal bend so I enjoyed the book.

Finished first tri ever today. Sprint. Did about what I expected- 1:25.xx. Run was really slow because a) I am slow to begin with and b) it was a 3.4 mile trail run with lots of sand in places (think running on a beach) But other than that, it went really smoothly. Ocean swim was fine, and the jellyfish were still there :-) Transitions went smoothly. Bike was solid (for me). I don't know how I did AG-wise because they haven't posted the results online yet, but I'm sure it was bottom half. Anyhow, it was a bit anticlimactic to be honest because I had done the entire SBR course 4 times in training, so it just seemed like another training day, except I was going harder. I still have 4 more sprints this season, so I plan to improve, focusing on my running and getting faster, plus doing more bricks off the bike, as I was struggling a bit energy-wise after a hard bike today.

Hope everyone is doing well! John

Great to hear about the finish John. Its actually a goal of mine to really think about most race days as just another training. In some ways it takes the extra edge off that can sometimes hold you back if you're too worked up about a race. A little of my psychology undergrad coming out here, but nervousness is actually good to some degree to aid performance, but there's a peak level of it and then the more it increases the worse off you are so being able to maintain a correct level of anxiety is an aid to speed.

Apparently it was a good thing you waded through the jellies the other day so no surprises on race day. Not sure what that would do to me if I started swimming out and was surrounded by jellies. Now that you've made me think about it I'd probably be like "Gotta tell John!"



Finally have my first race coming up this weekend, I'll post results most likely Monday.

Nice job on the race, John. Sounds like you were well prepared having done the course 4 times. Having lived near the coast most of my life, I've done a fair amount of ocean swimming, but never seen anything like what you are describing with those jellyfish. I bet there were some people caught off guard by them and freaking out a little.

Question about hill climbing on next sprint- In 12 days I have another sprint tri, this one 1/4 mile swim, 13 mile bike, 5k run. The 13 mile bike has a 2 mile hill that averages 7% grade over the entire 2 miles. Some sections are a bit flatter than 7%, a few sections are 11-12%. I've seen the bike splits for this tri in the past, and even the winning bike split is around 19 mph average due to that hill. I'm trying to figure out what my strategy will be for a) training in the next 12 days and b) how to attack the hill.

For a) training, I have 4-5 rides scheduled. The problem is there aren't a lot of hills around me, as I am in RI and it's flat as a pancake around here. I'm trying to figure out a riding plan that will help with this hill- I know 12 days isn't enough to change much, but I want to do the best I can with the time I have. Also, I will be traveling for this tri and have a chance to ride the hill 48 hours before the tri, but assume that won't be much help and could make it worse.

for b) what is a good strategy to get up the hill as fast as possible? alternating standing in a higher gear and then sitting + spinning in lowest gear? I'm not really too worried about blowing up on the run, as my run is so slow now it can't get too much slower, even if I go all out on hill.

any thoughts or advice would be appreciated!
thanks
John

Oh, also update on yesterday's sprint. Results posted, I was

75 / 233 OA
54 / 112 men
9 / 14 AG

So I'm happy with my results as it was my first tri and wasn't last in AG. :-)

Edited to add- also, I was pretty consistent MOP OA for each event:

92 / 233 Swim
84 / 233 Bike
105 / 233 Run

So you could say I'm equally mediocre across the board, but I look at it as a glass half-full and say I'm equally consistent and can improve each segment with hard work.

Edited by johnmoran 2013-06-24 10:52 AM

Advice for hills is always going to be about the same for me if they're of any duration at all. Smaller gear, high cadence, no need to stand. If you feel like you're strong enough to do so I suppose you can, but I don't see a ton of advantage being gained there(as I used to do this and get toasted by the guys doing my next suggestion). My preference would be to sit in a little smaller gear and climb up at your threshold pace (legs are slightly burning, but you're not going totally anaerobic) and then to pedal down the hill while others are coasting. Free speed must be taken advantage of when given.

Consequently I'll be applying this situation in reverse this weekend as there's a steep 2 mile downhill followed by the equal amount of elevation in the reverse direction uphill in 1 mile.