BamaDC's Mentor Group v4.0 - Closed (Page 30)

Race Report from Buster Britton is up: http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=256384&posts=1&start=1

Doesn't get much more MOP than that! 17/35 in the Age Group. 162/398 Overall.

Decent race, good string of 3 events all put together. Now to get faster!

Oh, Sands, go check out the time for Racer #3. He did the aquabike

#3 Swim 7:36

Talk about lowballing the swim time. I was #79 with a swim time of 6'. You were #31 with a time of 5:30. We were both pretty honest with our times.

Now you see why we all get so mad when we run over other swimmers out there b/c they can't predict their time! Sadly, he swims Masters with me some mornings and he admitted his lowballing and his reasoning: "I didn't want to get caught in the bike traffic and would rather be at the front of transition."

Oh well.

You had a good race.  A much improved run from last year. 

I'm starting a new training plan to get ready for my next A race in early October.  I'm looking forward to following a plan again because I got lazy after my last race.  I thought a couple of weeks of "unstructured" time would allow me to go out and have fun while I got caught up on other things.  Truth be told I just got lazy and found other things to do, didn't get up in the morning, etc.

First hard workout this morning... 20 minute bike power test and yes it sucked.  Got my 20 minute power up to 294 from 289 (remember I'm a Clyde so it's not really that impressive).  I thought I could get 300 but I just couldn't push myself.  I still think that might be my biggest limiter but can't seem to find a training plan that focuses on it.  I have the 5 min test scheduled for later this week and let me tell you I'm not really looking forward to it...

I'm the same way. Cant stay on track without a plan.

I'm still struggling with this ITBS. Ran 5k yesterday. 1st run in a week. Could hardly walk downstairs this morning. Getting really pissed!

Yesterday was the start of my 20 week training plan for B2B half. Not sure its gonna happen, unless this knee issue makes a miraculous recovery.

Interesting thread about learning to push yourself...

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=256297&posts=37&start=1

I know it's tough but you might be best taking some serious rest.  Don't do anything that bothers your knee at all for several weeks.  It seems like you keep testing it to see if it's better (but it's not) and I'm wondering if that's just prolonging your recovery.  Let's say you took a whole month off.  Could you still get ready for B2B in 16 weeks if your knee was healthy?

You sir, have hit the nail, squarely on the head! Tough to commit to taking a month off after training like crazy for the past 2 years. No doubt, if I had stopped working out completly back in April when the injury occurred, I would probably be back on track by now. You sound like my PT!

Does it only bother you when running?  If so you can swim and bike.  And the added bike fitness you gain might help offset whatever reduction in running fitness you have from taking time off.

I think this is a great idea. I'd do what you can as long as it doesn't impact your knee. If you can swim and bike I'd do it, and put a good bit of focus on those. In the time you have, you could make some pretty strong gains if you focus those.

In the meantime, give your knee as much running rest (if that flares it up more) as possible to heal up. You'll just have to know that the run will be easy and the swim/bike will be where you make your time gains.

Yep - if you can't run do the Dave Luscan thing and get your speed up to 29mph or so.  That way you can walk the run and still win your AG! ;-)

Rocketman guys:

Check your email and make sure to get a list of any anticipated guests to the RD.  I get on Redstone pretty often and it is a PIA.  You don't want to have a hangup at the gate.

@Sands, I know it's now 21mph like yours from last night, but I managed a 18.9 over the ride last night and that was me pulling the second line all the way through 5mi of Old Leeds.

I'm spent today!!

Done.  It wasn't really that bad last year.

Yeah, I'm pretty toasty today.  From the start of Ruffner to the end we averaged 23mph - yikes.  Pretty stoked about what I did on John Rogers.  Never below 19mph on the hill, hit 23mph or so on that grinding uphill, and then 35 or so on the nice downhill stretch.  26.8mph average.  Pulled a bunch of guys down the hill.  Like 309w average over that 2 miles.

The 500 improvement is quite good, actually.  200 is a hard, hard distance to pace right (which is why I hate them and yet do tons of them in practice - they do make you work hard).

That's actually solid improvement. You'll notice that the longer the set, the easier it is to bank time and make your gains. Just like Sands said, that's why the 200s are so hard. They're short enough to go all out on, but just long enough for you to easily lose it all in the first 100.

If you stuck all 100s of the 500 within +/- 5sec of each other, I'd say you nailed your pacing pretty well.

TJFry posted a good workout when it came up last in the TriTalk (but I can't find it). His whole deal was to do repeats of sets with a +/- 5sec window to help beat in the pacing. If I remember the MS was something like:
200yards @ tempo pace, repeat 5x with 1'RI. All of the 100s & 200 total time should be +/- 5sec. Then move up to 300yards and repeat the workout.

It's done when you start dropping pace.

But hey, the improvements are definitely worth bragging about!

Yeah, I'm pretty stoked about it.  The plan I'm following calls for testing at the beginning and again during the middle to make sure you're training at the right paces and to gauge improvement. I think the testing pretty much sucks.  I find it really hard to push myself outside of a race but the feed back on improvement is REALLY motivating. 

Sorry, I've been MIA.  Life has been too crazy.

This morning I received some advance notice on some news from my office that's going to greatly affect my training and I need some recommendations.

It's rumored that I'm going to be traveling to Missouri next week... and staying there for 90days. That takes me into late Sept. and/or early Oct.

I have Rocketman on Aug 28, Air Force Half on Sept 17 (probably), and Marine Corp Marathon on Oct 30.

If I fly up, taking the bike is out of the question as work won't pay for it and I'm not sure that I'm comforable flying with it anyways. Is it out of the possibility to see if a local bike shop up there would rent me out a bike and/or trainer time while I'm there?

I really don't want to lose the gains I've made in the bike and I want to be ready for Rocketman, which I still plan on racing.

Any suggestions?

As for the swim/run, I think I can handle that part... I'm just worried about the bike...

As much as it sucks to be on the road for 90 days it's actually somewhat in your advantage because you can take your bike, find a pool, etc and really get settled into a good routine.  You can try calling around some bike shops but that might be pretty expensive for 3 months.  I found this place on line that ships bikes (http://www.shipbikes.com/).  I've never used them but it came up pretty quickly when I searched so you could probably find others.  Looks like a pretty good deal.  For about 50 bucks you can drop your bike off at a Fedex/Kinkos and pick it up at another one.  And it looks like they might even do door-to-door.  Might be worth checking out.

You could check the local bike shops, and see if they would rent you a bike for that time period, or get a referral from your local LBS, possibly.  You might also consider looking at any available gyms (or local Y's) and working in some good spin classes during the week while you are away.  (I'm somewhat assuming you will be home on the weekends, so that's why you don't want to ship your bike back and forth).  If your up there for 90 straight days, I'd take the bike with me.

nice to see you back.  We were getting a bit worried about you down our way.

And, BTW, Sands said you don't stand a chance at Rocketman......he has the run wrapped up.

Oh, I assumed he was going to be there for 90 days straight.  If it's only for the week and home on the weekend, would it still make since to take your bike and borrow one when you're home on the weekend?