SBR Utopia ~~~~ Permanently OPEN!! (Page 30)

Yeah.  When I was having sciatica it was ultimately low spine/ SI joint.  Another thing I've come to realize from my Osteopath (I think the Canadian College of Osteopathy has a school in Montreal.....)  is that the cause may not be at the point of pain/tightness.  I almost always have issues with my right hip/leg but it's my left side that needs to be worked on.  The right side gets irritated because it has to compensate and overwork for the issue on the left.

Hope you get it all sorted out Marc.  

I rarely post in here, but I check in about twice a day, because I get a bunch from you all. Your racing, training, knowledge and helpfulness has been an inspiration. I too would like to say THANK YOU.  Great races across the board recently as well, congratulations!

Marc, I hope you get your pain issues figured out.

You're not 20 and James isn't 45…  As my grandmother used to say, getting old stinks, but it beats the alternative.    For ME, contralateral core work really helps stabilizing.  For some reason, when my lower back hurts, it's my abs (and I noticed that as I built pectoral strength swimming this winter, my rhomboid and teres muscles were screaming).  Balanced strength and flexibility - good plan, but hard to fit in with the s/b/r (said the shortsighted triathlete)!

James - that really sux.   Recovery is boring enough, but you gotta do what you gotta do.  I'm with Fred on the easy swim, plus lots of fluids and maybe a nice rare steak (or other iron source for a few days).  Prolly don't need the steak, but it's a good reason to splurge.  

SERIOUS question on kicking (ruh roh).  Arend, I think you said that you worked on the kick this winter but it's back to baseline now.  Do others feel like a strong kick is something that you have to work to maintain (as in continuing big sets even within a decent swim block, as opposed to big swim blocks without kick focus)?  Or is it something that once you get down you can maintain with just consistent swimming (rather than 3k kick sets!)?

Chris (and Rusty!) - nicely done on the track.  I reeeeeeally miss my Track-day-Tuesdays, but my hammy is still tweaky and I don't want to risk an audible POP!  Good job and good on ya' both.

Matt

Great point.  Look up and down the kinetic chain as well as side to side (Arend, you beat me to that one).  I've definitely experienced exactly this, but more with my joints (knee hurts from a tight hip, which hurts from… etc.).

Too many (slowly) moving parts...

Matt

Well, I worked on it but didn't keep at it long enough to really make it stick.  

I honestly think those 3k kick sets are complete madness!  I started out pretty simple - 8 x 25 hard.  Then 4 x 50 -> 6 x 50 -> 8 x 50 -> 4 x 100.  I don't think I got past that.  I just threw it in at the beginning of every (or most) swim workout after my warmup.  If you were to do a kick focus and get yourself to the point where you have a strong consistent and effective kick then I suspect you could maintain it fairly well with something like the 8 x 50 or 4 x 100.  The one thing I had to commit to was doing them HARD.  

I finally went sub-1:20 on a 100 free this morning!!  I'm super excited about it!  It's been a "goal" of mine for a while....and probably one I was capable of, but it's never been a focus and it's not all that often we do all-out 100's.

I will admit, though, that it came after 400m worth of kick sets, so I guess there must be some truth in doing kick sets

Coach said to do 4x100 on 2:00 and he wanted them all coming in sub-1:25.  First one (after 400 worth of kicking, so was basically a warm-up) was 1:23, second 1:21, third was 1:19-1:20 (so I wasn't goin to count it)....and the fourth one came in at 1:18, so definitely sub-1:20!! 

Nice work Nicole!  Even better to have done it at the end of a set like that.

WOOT!  Congrats!  That's a great feeling, knowing that your hard work is paying off.  

Matt

Edit: to spell my own name right.  Sheesh….

LOL, it's all relative, you're running nearly 2X as fast as me! 

I am taking another piece of the group's advice and going to try to sit in on our local roadie donut ride tomorrow.  A bit nervous, as it can get sketchy at the front (where I don't intend to be), and riding with new folks, not sure where to put myself.  I think I am a fairly good bike handler but sure I will screw something up....

wich me luck

niiiiiice.  Fanastic descending work!

Just remember, when you get a set of 4 times whatever, you only need to actually make 3!  

x2 - you don't descend a set better than that! The bolded part reminds me of the first time I did a one-on-one swim lesson with my coach. He had me doing 10x something on an interval and on the last one I crushed it, beating all the other intervals by 2 or 3 seconds. I popped up out of the water all proud of myself, but he immediately berated me for sandbagging the earlier intervals. heh.

And speaking of intervals I have a throw-away race this weekend in which if I race it like I am supposed to I will most likely have a rather crumby run. It has a lumpy bike (race name is "Tri the Mountains") and I am suppose to ride all the ascents somewhat over my current wattage cap. We are trying to figure out exactly where my edges are. So today I had 5x hill repeats on one of our local little "mountains" (1.5 miles @ 8% grade) just to give my coach an idea of how much over I should shoot. after a warm up, the first interval was to just ride up as easy as possible, and then the next 4 were assigned at 245 watts. I went:

Interval 1: 12:17, 182w/189NP, 143HR, Cadence 78
Interval 2: 9:31, 243w/244NP, 161HR, Cadence 78
Interval 3: 9:29, 245w/247NP, 163HR, Cadence 80
Interval 4: 9:26, 246w/252NP, 165HR, Cadence 77
Interval 5: 9:22, 247w/250NP, 167HR, Cadence 77

I am kinda proud of that set - interesting to see what one watt difference makes on each interval.

Hey Chris! 

Marc - I had very similar issues 3 years ago. The solution for me was pilates, yoga, and lateral strength work. And (the fun part!) switching a lot of my running to rather rugged single track trail stuff - mostly easy in the beginning, but GREAT for building lateral strength, which just about every one of us neglect, but need.

Glad to know you are still following the group - I have been meaning to reach out to you to see if you could help me with a little aero testing on the bike - would you be interested in that? I would be happy to share everything with the group.

You testing out the leg shaving thing Rusty?  

Old lady was probably wondering why you were shaving on the side of the road and not at home...LOL.

Not surprised.  

Tomorrow is the start of the Strava Rapha Rising 3 ranges challenge.  Climb 8800 meters (just under 29k feet) in 9 days.  I was hoping to get a 10k foot day in tomorrow and a 120ish mile (5k feet) ride Sunday but weather isn't looking too good.  The outskirts of a tropical storm is supposed to bring us heavy rain.  We'll see what happens.

Talk about dialed in - very nice set!  

I'm wondering what the rest interval was - just the descent?  I'm wondering if you think the HR increase was due to the extra W or possibly to HR drift across the workout?  

I know that a given Wattage for me toward the end of a workout will take a bit more effort and ever so slightly higher HR (much more so when I'm less fit, as short rides feel a LOT longer then) than just after the warmup...

HR aside, hitting those targets so spot on is impressive!

Matt

Guess it depends on "maintain". Some of these former swimmers will come into masters and out kick me from the get go. Think maybe 10 yrs or more since they were competitive. The one stayed out for 30 years or so!. I'd do Arend's 50 sets on a 1:05 s.i., coming in :57-:60.

Little family camping trip over the weekend up in Wisconsin. Wanted to get in a bigger ride and wasn't sure where to go. The answer was 42. As in Rt 42 going up along Lake Michigan.

Ha!

That answer usually doesn't have a question...

That answer has all the questions.