Gray Guys/Girls Masters Focus Triathlete Forum--OPEN! (Page 3)

Steve, that sounds like a great weekend!
Have fun Look forward to hearing the results.

Have a good weekend everyone get out and enjoy a long weekend.

I think I'll be shooting for a couple mile pool swim tomorrow afternoon and maybe a short run after, maybe a little speed work to get the legs starting to think about running faster.

Just noticed that I didn't introduce myself to the new group, so here goes:

Screen/Name: DJP_19 / Dave Proulx

Bio:

56 years old. Married with 3 children. Our boys are 25 and 22 and our daughter is 20. The boys are out of school and only 2 years of college remain for my daughter, so there's light at the end of the tunnel. I live in Farmington, CT

Story:

I was fairly active in high school, playing baseball and football. I gradually became more sedentary during my adult life and gained about 60lbs over my high school weight. About three years ago, I finally got tired of being overweight and hired a trainer. He whipped me into shape and taught me a lot about nutrition, stretching and a structured approach to training. I've lost about 50lbs so far and have become a bit of a runner. Started biking last fall when an Achilles tendon issue caused me to back off the running for awhile. This winter I began swimming so I could join a few co-workers in a triathlon. Joined the Gray Guys/Gals mentor group in January and have learned a lot from the folks here. Looking forward to learning more.

My goals for 2014:

Get my weight down to 175. (Currently 185.5)

Run a 5k in under 24:00.

Complete the 7.1mile Litchfield Hills Road Race in 61:30.

Complete 1st Sprint triathlon (June 1) before at least 20% of finishers.

Plan for this weekend:

Swim tomorrow morning, bike ride on Sunday, then a bike/run on Monday.

Nothing too tough in any of the sessions, since its a race week.

I swim in a pool at a local public school, which is closed for the holiday both Friday and Monday. I was feeling pretty spunky for doing my swim workout yesterday in my own pond despite a water temp of 66 degrees and an air temp of 51. Then you posted about swimming in 58 degree water; now THAT sounds cold!
I'm just sticking to my scheduled plan, which includes biking tomorrow and another (pond) swim on Monday, hopefully a bit warmer. Today is my scheduled DAY OFF!! I'm just going to catch up on my gardening and maybe later take in some bluegrass bands. I'll do my core work & stretching though.

Edited by ok2try 2014-05-24 9:04 AM

Just got back from a 25 mile bike ride along the route of the Jamestown Olympic next month. Was able to do almost 3/4 on the capitol to capitol trail and stay off most of Rte 5. Their still paving some of the section west of the bridge. Tomorrow I do some swimming and brick into bike. Now Masters swim practice on Monday, but I probably to 1 or 2 miles. Then maybe a BBQ and some beer?

Next week we kick off TNT training for the fall events and start building up my bike mileage. I have 3 events in June The Jamestown Aquabike in Williamsburg, the Jack King Ocean Swim in Virginia Beach, and A Sprint Triathlon in Wake Forest.

It's supposed to rain Sunday and Monday, so I'm planning a 15 mile bike ride today (Saturday). I'd also like to do two swim workouts this long weekend. My normal pools are both closed this weekend, so I'll probably try out the new Snohomish Aquatic center.

No running (sigh...).

Scott I.

Good swim in the cold lake yesterday afternoon. It was brisk to start, but really not too bad once I adjusted. Fortunately, I had my DeSoto insulated neoprene cap which made a huge difference with the cold. The other part was I was swimming up lake into good size white caps, which really messed with my stroke. The good news is it was pretty hard work so it helped keep me warm. Of course the return with the waves going with me was like riding a bike down hill. All in all it was a good swim...about 2600 yards according to my Garmin.

This morning I met another tri buddy and we cranked out our 57 mile bike ride. Nothing crazy in terms of speed, but a solid ride...we finished up in 3:10 minutes. We then did the brick run of 5 miles and averaged about an 8:20 pace. I was supposed to go 8 miles, but my Achilles is still bothering me, so I cut the run short and came back home for a nice session of ice therapy.

Tomorrow is an easy ride of about 90 minutes just to get the legs loose again. My wife is uncomfortable biking with me because I "go to fast". So, a recovery ride for me should match up pretty well with the speed she wants to go.

Hope you're having fun this weekend!

Steve

Hi Guys, This is jredlfy (James), I PM'd Steve last week to let him know I am in. I couldn't find the old thread to post the grid to but I think we all know who the winner of the coveted black dog mug will be.

I have a half marathon tomorrow and even though my final weeks of training were hampered by a hamstring strain I think I will be OK. Hey, anything will be a PB, being that this is my first one. I am just going to take it easy and enjoy the race.

I will post my bio soon, gotta hit the hay, 4:30 wake up call.



Edited by JREDFLY 2014-05-24 8:20 PM

Hope everyone is having a good long weekend, Looks like most of you are getting some good training in.

Had a good 2400m swim last night and just committed to a 10k tomorrow morning, we'll see how that goes? Should be fun, 0500 start to get it in before the heat starts building.

I guess I will take a rest day today and save the legs a little for the morning, haven't ran in the morning for a while now, it will probably feel good on fresh legs?

Looking forward to some open water swims in a few weeks although after being in a warm pool for the last several months those cold Maine lakes are going to be a shock to the system, might need to buy a full wet suit, I've used a sleeveless for several years now.

Dan

Hi James,

Good luck with the half. Looking forward to your report!

Dave

Had a fun morning ride and run with a couple tri friends today. It was a beautiful morning, temps were about 60 degrees. We did a very scenic 21 mile ride along the Farmington River, highlighted by my unscheduled dismount at a stop sign. I came away with a bit of a knee scrap and endured a few taunts from my partners, then I was good to go. I recovered well enough to push them during our run portion, a hilly 4 miler on my home turf.

After a bit of recovery time to ice my legs, its on to the joy of spreading mulch and topsoil this afternoon.

Hey James.....good luck! Give us a race report when you're done! I like your attitude...."take it easy and enjoy the race."

Steve

Dan--I've considered sleeveless. As the lakes warm up here in Washington State later in the summer, I feel like I'm too warm in my full. But then everything I read says full sleeved wetsuits are faster than sleeveless, so I'm reluctant to pull the trigger and change. Since I'm a crappy swimmer I need every advantage I can get!

Is the ice off the lakes there yet?

Steve

Steve I'm a fair swimmer, but no where near fast enough to worry wether my wetsuit is faster or not, but I do like the freedom of the arms. Not sure if all the ice has melted yet, still in the Middle East for a we more weeks, but looks like the lakes are warming up slowly up north.

Did my 10 K this morning, not the best but I can still say that I beat a lot of the kids, and that is all that is important
Did the run in 59:57, I wanted to break 1 hour, so I guess I reached my goal. Still warm this morning and a little humid, humidity started dropping once the sun came up a little, but the warmed up more. Did I mention I hate running in the heat?? Of course I am in the wrong place for that problem.
The good thing about being older is I was smart enough to let all the kids blow past me in the beginning and then slowly started picking them off as they quickly faded. Still a solid middle of the packer so I will take it.

Have a great day!

Edited by Mountaindan 2014-05-26 12:42 AM

Welcome everyone! Been a busy weekend for me between son's baseball tournament and training. Love it!

Here's my story:

I'm a 45 year old, married for 12 years with 2 children ages 9 and 10. I am a family physician with my own practice so I am able to schedule my hours to fit my busy schedule. I have always been a runner - I started running with my mom when I was 12 years old and I was hooked! I have done 32 marathons with 7 of those being Boston. Last year I was bitten by the tri bug and am planning on doing IM Louisville in 3 months. EEEK! I've got a couple of smaller races before the big one. Doing a sprint in 2 weeks, an Olympic in 4 weeks and a HIM in 6 weeks.

I have loved being a part of this group! Such great training advice and life wisdom!

This weekend was a huge training weekend. I did a 16 mile run with some tempo miles and yesterday rode 82 miles (my longest yet!) I'm taking it down today and spending the day at the pool with the kids.

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Solid race Dan. Always good to beat the youngsters!

Steve

Yikes...terrific training weekend, Wendy! Major miles, congrats...that's perseverance!

I'm heading back up to cold, cold Lake Chelan today for another open water swim just for the sake of blue toes!

Steve

Oh my, perfect forum for me! I am 50 and things are not the same...but I want to continue to improve and live as healthy as I can.
My name is Linda!

Hi, I want to rejoin the gray guys/girls masters focus forum. Since last October, when i completed my last sprint triathlon, i have been very inconsistent with training - mostly not doing more than 3 or 4 workouts /week including crossfit - and those would be good weeks. Despite multiple attempts, i have not gotten back into a good rhythm. The spirit seems willing but the flesh is very weak and needs a good kick where it hurts.

i started a new training plan today with the goal of completing a sprint triathlon in June, July, August and October. The training distances seem quite short. For example, run today is only 1.7 miles. Given my extreme inconsistency, would you recommend just completing the short distances that are within the BT custom plan or would you recommend starting at longer distances? thanks for any advice.

Good Tuesday morning everyone!

Ok, my rant of the week is on training attitude....or at least the mental aspects of approaching training with the right mindset. So here's what got me going this morning:

I had an open water swim yesterday as my only workout of the day. I normally take Mondays as a rest day so maybe I was a little cranky to start. However, I've got business travel this week that will essentially knock out any training on Wed/Thurs. so I knew I needed to put something in on Monday, so I scheduled the swim.

Yes, I was tired from the weekend and a wine party we hosted at our house on Sunday evening. So I wasn't all that enthused about dunking myself in the cold lake. When I got to the lake it was windy, cool, with whitecaps. I stood and looked at that water for the better part of an hour essentially having an inner debated over whether or not I really needed to go swimming. Training habit finally won out and I slowly changed into my wetsuit and hauled my body--with complaining brain--down to the waters edge.

It was not a fun swim. With big waves and wind it felt Iike I was running uphill. I drank a little water trying to breathe and struggled against the wind current. It felt like I was completely out of breath and I broke stroke and went into breast stroke recovery mode many times. I turned back too quickly after a pretty lackluster effort. I then put a check mark in the training log for a "swim" and called it a day.

In thinking about this now I'm really pretty disappointed with my effort. I totally talked myself into a crappy workout. The pre-swim negative thinking put me in perfect position to have all my worst fears confirmed as soon as I hit the water. Big surprise, expect a crappy workout, get a crappy workout.

Which goes back to the lesson of the day. Training time is limited. And for us gray guys/girls it's sometimes hard to muster the physical/mental energy to strap on the gear and hit the pool, road or trail. But once that decision to train is made, it absolutely must be embraced as a singular opportunity for improvement. Negative self-talk only squelches self improvement by poisoning the effort even before it gets started.

If only. If only I had looked at that water as a wonderful opportunity for a challenging workout....one presented to me offering a unique opportunity for self-improvement BECAUSE of the tough conditions. I could have had a spectacular workout that better prepared me for challenging race conditions making me even stronger in perfect conditions.

Negative self-talk is destructive and it's an area that I really need to focus on improving in 2014. "You can't do this, you can't maintain this pace, this is really hard," need to be replaced with "this is really cool, you're doing fine, this is what you trained for, you got this," etc. etc.

That's my long rant. I post it up because I'm probably not the only one that when the conditions get tough starts to focus on how difficult the challenge is rather than how spectacular it is to be pushing 60 and still able to race with the young stallions....even if though many of them finish ahead of me.

The good news is I turned it around this morning. I was on my indoor trainer at 2:30 a.m. I needed to get in 90 minutes, cool down, shower and head for the airport by 5:00. I got it in, no complaining, and (surprise!) had a pretty decent workout despite the early hour of the day.

Hope your training is going well.

Steve

Hey James.....good luck! Give us a race report when you're done! I like your attitude...."take it easy and enjoy the race."

Steve

I need to tattoo this on my body where I can read it. EVERY Time! I am the queen of negative self-talk.Thank you for this.

Edited by ceilidh 2014-05-27 1:29 PM