tcovert's Winter 2009 Mentor Group - FULL (Page 31)

Thanks everyone! Race report is up, if you're up for a long read!

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=148044

Morgan and Jocelyn,

 Great job on going out and racing even though you felt bad. That's strong! I guess that's where physical toughness and mental toughness come together. Way to go!

great news on the arch and sciatic issues Todd; and kudos to all of you who have sucked it up with sickness to continue to train and race.  i have not been able to muster that strength - been very sick for past +week and am still sick but at least i'm outta bed.  the good news is that i'm working with a great ent doc to fix my chronic sinus/breathing problems, yipee!  and more importantly, i am enrolling in a triathlon-focused swimming program on wednesday - they won't let me do it before then

or i would

The cycling group I ride with had a "camp" on Saturday. Thought I'd share some of the information we received since not everyone checks all the blogs on a regular basis:

Stretch and get on that foam roller even for 5 minutes to work out the kinks. My body will thank me in the end.

Keep your natural cadence on the bike. Intervals will make you faster, but if you've never done them don't rush into it. No mashing up hills. Go to the lowest gear you need and keep your cadence as comfortably high as you can. More power and less weight go hand in hand.

After washing  your bike down you can use pledge on the frame. Then put rubbing alcohol along the metal rim of the tire to get all the residue off so breaks will not slip or stick. Clean your bike and lube chain at the same time. 

Eat 1 to 2 hours before a workout of 200-600 calories, want carbs, a little protein and low fat and very low fiber. Hydrate well so urine is pale yellow. For heavy training and endurance events (not sprints) begin a little nutrition (recommended liquid) 45 minutes into event and then every 10 minutes take in a little.

Liver glycogen (carb) stores are about 400-500 calories. You can use up to 2 grams of sodium (drink or pills) up to 2 hours before hard workout or event to prevent cramping.

The calories to sustain 2/3rds of your body weight is burned in each mile you run. You want to replace 30% of those calories. Optimum time to replenish after workouts is 30 minutes. You need to stay hydrated or your food won't absorb. Get 1/2 liter to 1 liter per hour of liquid. Too much fluids is not good either.

What I learned: On the bike you use 500 to 1000 calories per hour depending on power output.  Again, replace 30% of these calories.

Good idea to calculate sweat rate. Weigh before and after hard training session, want to be within 2% on weight, otherwise not hydrating appropriately. For every pound of water lost you lose 200 to 500 mg sodium.

The stomach needs oxygen when digesting food as does the heart and other muscles. If your stomach is taking much of your oxygen there won't be as much for your muscles. 

Extra anti-oxidents are helpful during a heavy cycle of training to prevent illness. This nutritionist liked FRS (Armstrong's advertises) because of the Glutamine. Quercetin also helpful. 

Hope some of this info might be helpful to someone. I learned a lot and was reminded of things I had known but had forgotten. 

Feel better Cindy! And, hope Jocelyn and Morgan are all better now, too! 

Aloha all

apologies for being AWOL (see blog entry below) and I will look you all up this evening and start to catch up on the forum thread. (You guys write way to much for an old man like me to keep up).

Blog entry

Well back to writing this blog again. Last month has seen me continually in the grip of a cold only to find (after 4 visits to Dr {got to love uk health service}) that I have Rhinitis (or inflamation of the lining of the nose) which is why I am continually blocked up. Got some spray but minimum of one moth till it clears I am told. - What joy. LOL.

PF is clearing slowly. Seems to gradually get better for a few days the feel really sore for one then next day improves better than last improvement felt. Very strange. I hope it is going to be away by my first event but not sure I will have had any run time in by then.

Got myself a power tap and started to train with it to get used to it. Was a bit hacked off till I realised the batteries needed changing (How stupid am I? - Don't answer that.) Now it is working really good. Hope to start using it as a training tool by my race so the next training plan will have the beneefit of it. Certainly makes me get the heart rate up a bit.

Swiming okay and I am in fact quiet pleased but still being overtaken in pool by breast stroking pensioners! Oh well.

Had a friend with cancer pass away and my sister in law has a tumor of the pituitory so all is quite a rush looking after her wee one my kids and keeping the business ticking over. Still managed to stay on course with the training and I am still (slowly) losing weight so again I'm pleased with myself.

Looking forward to the new BT site upgrades coming in the next few weeks and getting upto date with the mentor group to.

Hi Paul -- Good to know you're still at it! I'm very sorry about the loss of your friend and your sister's situation. I hope your nose feels better and that snoot spray works. I didn't know there are some upgrades to BT coming...cool. Thanks for the info.

I'm at home with a sick kid today, so I'm hoping to get my scheduled 2 hour cycling hill interval in today -- well at least part of me is excited about doing it. It's that old love/hate relationship. 

Todd-- Any further dr. appts. yet?

Morgan and Jocelyn,

Congrats on the races. Reading the race reports has me totally jonesing for a race. I am looking at some early season short races just because I really dont wanna wait til May to run my first. There is a 2 mile run, 5 mile mountain bike race on March 7th I am considering and a 2 mile run, 6.5 mile bike, 2 mile run duathlon in April I think I am going to do. I am also looking at a 13 week grass roots trail running series that is in my area. It is every thursday night and they offer 5k and 10k runs. I figure I could use it as a weekly tempo run.

 On the training side of things, I have managed to take 6 minutes off my training 5k since the beginning of the year. I ran a 34:30 split yesterday and that was still with 2/1 run/walk intervals. I finally feel like I'm running and not just waddling. I am amazed at how fast my progress is coming. I am really glad that I started this at my younger age because I think that contributes a lot to my progress.

Swimming, on the other hand, is going to be an uphill battle. I am confortable in the water but I just am not an efficient swimmer. I started a 0 to 1650 swim program and I think that it will really help. I have noticed already that to make progress you have to be willing to push into the uncomfortable zone where you aren't getting the amount of oxygen you think you need. This forces your body to adapt.  I have a friend who used to teach swimming who agreed to help me with my stroke so once I have any type of stamina built up, I am going to take advantage of that.

 Hope everyone's training is going well. Looks like we are going to have a few clear days this week so I can get back outside on the bike. Keep it up guys.

Paul,

Good to see you back, and I'm also sorry to hear about your situation.  Hope everything gets better and works out for you and your family very soon.

Don't have splits yet, but I came in at 1:15:11, 14 out of 33 in my age group.  Not as fast as I had envisioned, but still very good and a vast improvement over my last two races ... yeah!

Want to know more? Try these:

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=127838&posts=11&highlight=power&highlightmode=1#M1968053

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=140280&posts=12&highlight=power&highlightmode=1#M1938418

matt, i can totally relate to the swimming issues.  good for you for starting a program; i'm signing up for one focused on triathlon swimming, not sure what that means but i'm hopeful it will improve my lack of technique.  i also figure that if i have to go to a class on a schedule i can't find lame excuses to not go swimming.  funny, but i have no problem getting myself to the gym everyday at 5:30 a.m. but it's always to run or ride never swim.

good luck on the pending runs!

Paul - great to hear from you.  Sorry to hear about your cancer troubles.  Cancer sucks.  Thanks for the inspiration behind the scenes.  I see you are using  Power Tap, too.  It really kicks things to a higher level. 

Thanks Lynn, for the great information from your camp.  It reinforces other things I've learned.  (Simple Green is also good for a lot of things that ails the bike, including cleaning and degreasing.  Cleaning is more than for looks.  During the cleaning, you can look for signs of wear and cracks on the frame.)     

The Power Tap measures watts and calories used.  After a couple of sets on it with someone who knows how, you can learn your peak threshold power (which is a hard aerobic reading) and your VO2 max, which is your absolute all out about to die reading.  Then, you do workouts based on percentages of those numbers.  For aerobics, my coach has me do things like start at 60 percent FTP and increase 2 percent every half hour.  Tonight will be killer with several minutes on and off at 110 percent VO2, then 120 percent and 130 percent.  The goal is to stretch yourself over time to increase your VOs levels and the FTP so you can do more over a longer period.  I absolutely love it. 

Most people do the same thing with heart rate by figuring their max and then working through various levels of 70 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent for various lengths of time.  The thought is that HR is fickle.  It can change depending on how you feel, whether you ate, whether you slept well. In fact, HR is probably plenty accurate for most purposes.  But watt meters don't lie.  You are either hitting the target or you're not. 

With a watt meter, you can also download information to free web sites like Training Peaks and actually see graphs of the things you do.  You can read them by intervals so you can see how you were doing at various points in the workout.  With GPS, you can match the location with your graph so you can actually see how you were doing on a hill or a sprint.  How your HR was doing, your watts, your cadence.  Pretty cool.

I had someone offer to loan me mine.  He is a cycling coach who volunteered to help me.  He is killing me, but in 3 weeks, I've lost more weight, toned up more, I'm spinning at a higher cadence, one legged drills are doing good and I feel way stronger. 

Swimming was good this morning.  We had a meeting of the beginning triathlon group for my club and the guy who spoke on swimming was first out at Kona in his age group.  He pushed bilateral breathing and I tried it today.  It really does help stretch me out.  Not so good at weak-side breathing yet but hey, I didn't drown. 

Just a quickie before I reply to posts later tonight.

Look at the above links I posted. Soon be able to download power files on this site! it looks like.

I wonder what they'll cost.  You can work them for free with a free program I downloaded from Power Tap and Training Peaks. com

Thanks, Scott for YOUR good info. My new coach has me using Training Peaks to log my workouts and she lists them on their for me as well. I've got my HR calculated and did a lactate threshold run last week (tough) to get them for my run. Now I'm trying to wear the HR monitor for her. On the Garmin site it allows me to download my route, mph, pace, HR zones, elevation, etc. and then on Training Peaks the same thing. I guess the power meter would give one more method of feedback and way to track your training.This is my first foray into using the heart rate monitor. I've been going by my pace on the run and speed on the bike. Sometimes all the gadgets get in the way and sometimes they help. Like today when the HR monitor stopped working after a big climb. I looked to see my heart rate because my heart felt like it was going to pop out of my chest and it registered something like 60 --. Probably just needs a new battery.

And, thanks, Morgan Paul (oops) for the updates info. I want to figure out how to get my new training plan from the coach into the BT site because I still like the BT site for social networking and tri-talking. 

Good job on your runs and swims Matt. 

Scott -- Bilateral breathing is really handy when you're in open water and want to sight something on your non-dominent side. I trained myself to breath every 3rd stroke on an endurance swim and it was a great practice for bilateral breathing. Good luck with it. You are really going to have a good season -- I can just feel it. Hell, we ALL are!! Right?

I'll second the thanks to Scott, saved me from making a fool of myself trying to explain.

Also with regard to the getting the plans on BT, look at this link it might help.

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=1066

Hope so, or else there is always cut and paste

Aloha all

I just wanted to say thanks for all the good wishes folks. The passing away of a friend was not unexpected but hey it is always a kinda shock I guess. (I tend to be a bit philisophical and makes me seem a bit cold). There are many having it harder than me and some of you have had your own rather personal battles so seems churlish of me to burden all you guys with more. But I do appreciate the thoughts, I really do.

Thanks.

As regards BT site and the impending upgrades:

I looked a lot, once again at all the various sites as I to want to save my power files. (Love having a new toy - just got to turn it into a tool - LOL)

I actually have a TP aaccount but don't use it as I like the interaction here so much. TP misses the social side definately which for me is important. I feel that BT has a good deal of credibility look even Gordo Burns has a mentor group here and a few pro's use the site to. The only advantage I can see that TP has is that you can use the free version and for extra get their power analysis tools. At present it seems more of a 'pro' tool.

Nothing wrong with all that but it does seem very impersonal. I think the changes coming to BT will give us all that (for a premium I know). I personally am looking for somewhere I can get it all in one place and soon this site will fit the bill.

Also you do get a degree of coaching imput here when you are a member (especially Gold). This comes at a price on other sites other than asking in the general forums but here you can ask a coach and get a reply (usuallu in 24 hrs). This I like a lot though I don't really utilise it much yet.

The plans are good (not awesome but good) and the new plan maker looks to be awsome and totally unique.

I know you can do it for free by having different sites do different stuff but I cannot see how you can get the advantages of the membership for less on other sites and shortly you will be able to get a high level of features in the one place for a reasonable cost (Don't let me down Ron).

Just my thought's.

You can download to TP and then share the files with people.  I've done that in emails but I haven't tried posting it in a forum or anything.  You might be able to do it with pasting a web address.  Totally unsure.  I'll try that sometime and see.

The endurance swim bilateral breathing is what I'm working on.  Every third stroke.  I only did it after the local guy who was first out of the water in his age group at Kona suggested it as a way to correct what ails your stroke.  It really seemed to help.  Harder of course - going farther on the same gas - but I think in the long run, faster and better form will result.

I think we are all going to have a good season too.  The temps here are starting to climb.  WhooHooo!

Anyone here on Facebook.  I am.