Dirk's Junkie group - CLOSED (Page 32)

Dina, that's a great story, love to read that stuff.  Gives me more ideas to try to pull it off.

Dirk, I won't even mutter my dream bike out loud, or print it.  It's reserved for lottery winning or if my company gets bought for a 1000% premium by google.  But a Cervelo is somewhat realistic, I just have to convince her that a few minutes (and a wicked cool toy) is worth $2500!  I agree that your daughter's times are sick - it puts our pitiful swimming in perspective!

That's a great sports injury site Jeff - lots of info.

Looks like I'll be in the pool Sunday for the 200 TT.

I can't view them  - it says the video is private.

You will have to decide if it's worth the expense.  But here is what I know.  Comparing riding a road bike with a proper road bike position (and no aerobars) to a tri bike with a proper tri bike fit...gains you 2mph for the same effort.  That probably varies based on your speed, so let's just say 10%.

Let's say you are doing an Ironman bike in about 7 hrs.  (420 minutes).  That would save you 42 minutes.

When people say "it's about the engine" all they mean is that the amount of speed you can gain from the bike is x while the amount of speed you can gain through training is y and x < y.   But x+y is greater than y.

Jeff, from my days as a teenager doing a lot of riding, I would tend to agree with that difference.  What do you think the difference is with just putting aero bars on your road bike?

I actually don't think that you are swimming horrible.  It looks like you can try to get a little more intensity involved in your swim.  It kind of looks like your just out for a "Sunday swim."

The videos are just a little short but here's a couple of things I noticed:

1. It looks like your legs are a little low in the water but it is a little hard to tell from the angle.  Do you swim with a pull buoy sometimes?  If you do try to pay attention to how you feel as your moving through the water. 
2. Your head and shoulders seem to over rotate when breathing.  When you take a breath what do you see?  Can you see the ceiling much?  You should be seeing more water from the lower eye and the opposite end of the pool with the other eye.
3. I think you could stretch out a little more.  When you stretch out really long you can actually feel the water moving around you faster (at least I can), your stroke count should become lower and it is actually less effort to go the same distance.

The good things I see:

1. It appears your catch and pull look decent.
2. You have a nice smooth stroke

I think what I see the most of is a lack of confidence in your ability.  Stretch yourself some while swimming (mentally) because I think you have the physical ability to swim faster.  You already have the cardio engine from the running and cycling, now just put it in the pool. 

Do some intensity sets.  Next time at the pool do a 50 all out once you've got a good WU in but make sure to get a solid time from a lap clock.  Then for some intensity you can do some set at a separate WO (allowing more time for planning) with sets descending from say :20, :15, :10 and :05 rests after efforts that are say, 5-10 seconds slower than your all out 50 pace.  You can also use this to set up other WO's for other distances.  But, depending on the distances for the MS you will probably not want to go for :05 rests.

I really think you can swim faster than you are allowing yourself to.  Just go for it.  Try to wind yourself some during your sets.  Make yourself uncomfortable but don't sacrifice form for speed.

I also want others to weigh in on this.  If I am off base make sure to say so.  I don't want to lead anyone astray.

I'll allow Jeff to weigh in on the percentages but from practical experience going from a traditional aggressive road bike fit to clip on aero's I saved a ton of time on the bike.  I have been riding with clip ons for some time and I noticed a pretty big difference very quickly.  I can't say what speeds exactly but I can check my logs from a couple of years ago to see what I can find.

I read this article a while ago and it is a great read to answer your questions better than I can.

Dirk, best wishes to your daughter this weekend.  I hope she has her best races of the season.  Sounds like maybe a family ironman relay is in order in the future!

Brenda, your stroke looks nice and smooth.  It looked like you might be turning your head and lifting it a little too much when you are taking a breathe (seemed like more on the right side than the left).  And I agree with Dirk that your legs seemed a little low in the water. 

After being sick for almost 2 weeks, I went to the doctor and got some antibiotics yesterday.  I have been taking it pretty easy lately but just couldn't get over this.  I used a lot of my downtime to study the swim techniques that people have been posting.  Very helpful! 

It's been beautiful outside here lately, so I couldn't resist the urge to run outside.  I took lots of meds before I headed out the door.  It felt amazing! 

I haven't attempted to swim yet because I am afraid that I will drown myself if I start coughing like I have been in the middle of my workouts.  Ugh.  I plan to get my husband to record my stroke sometime soon.   

I hope everyone who is injured and sick starts feeling better! 

I'll give my opinion then read the article that Dirk linked to.  After that I'll come back and stand corrected if I learn something new!

Ok, we know that over 80% of the aerodynamic benefits of a tri bike are from the better positioning of the rider.  The other 20% are cumulative benefits of the aerodynamic improvements from the components on the bike.  The biggest amount probably coming from wheels with the aerobars a close 2nd (that's debatable which of those 2 is biggest).

But you can put aero wheels on a road bike.

I have a friend with a road bike/aerobar setup who not only fits his road bike properly, but also happens to fit great when in his aerobars.  He gets a completely level torso.  But with his 73 degree seat tube angle, his waist is really folded over.  He is very lean and small waisted (unlike me) so he happens to be able to pull this off.  He also has some Zipp 404s for wheels.  In his case, he might only gain a few seconds per mile on a full aero tri bike.

It will really depend completely on how aero a person gets on their road bike and clip-ons.  But that's not the whole picture either.  Many times in this situation the power output goes way down because your waist will be too tight.  In my friend's case it just happens to work out perfectly for him.  For most people it doesn't....And because of that the tri bike is still much faster.  And again, just to be clear, the tri bike is so much faster than a road bike with clip-ons (when torso is the same in both) primarily because the power output can be preserved in most cases while getting aero.

I generally agree on your stroke being not too bad.  Your rotation looks pretty good.  I think you need to extend a little more; you don’t want too much glide before you start the catch, but you want some, or at least the feeling of some.  There is no doubt you are over-rotating your head on the breathing, but it’s not lifting significantly which is good.  Think of breathing in the wake behind you, rather than in the air above you.  Some people like to say one eye should remain in the water.

Overall, it does seem like you need to up the stroke pace just a bit, but do it in very small increments and not by shortening the motion.  The rotation should continue to come from your hips and not your arms/shoulders, if that makes sense.  And your legs might be a little too far apart.

Some video from straight on is always a good idea, and if possible underwater too.

After reading Dirk's article I want to elaborate on what I was saying about the hip angle.  Their testing maintained a given speed in all testing and measured power output.  The rider was more than capable of putting that power out.  What we didn't learn from this test was how much power, if any, the rider would have lost by using clip-ons on the road bike.  That was a big part of what I was mentioning.

Also, in their jump from road bike with aerobars to tri bike, they missed the fact that his elbow pads were lower on the tri bike than on the road bike.  Just a bit, but enough to see.  So some unknown amount of that improvement was not due to the bike at all.

Good article though!

Regarding that bolded statement above...I find that swimming at certain slower speeds that doesn't work.  Mainly because it takes a certain velocity before your head creates a void in front of your shoulder.  When you do that, it creates a nice little pocket of air below the surface of the water.  But I always find when I'm swimming slow, that I keep taking in water and need to turn a little farther to get air.

I think you look pretty decent.  The legs could be kept closer together.  They didn't look unusually low.  I would try to keep the head and shoulders down deeper which will help.  You will then need to adjust your breathing technique since your head won't be so high.

I didn't see anything wrong with the technique of your catch and pull, but I could see that it wasn't propulsive.  For the life of me I don't know how to teach someone how to find that 'grip' on the water.  But it's there for the taking.  Just keep feeling for it.

+1 - Being a slow swimmer, I usually drink rather than breathe using this method. Not pleasant. And your technique looks good to me... I'm not good enough to spot what's going on. Thanks for posting the video though, it's great to hear other people's thoughts on it!

John

I guess you all are right about needed a certain velocity to get a "wake" to be able to breath in.  In fact, if I've really hammered a bit in open water I think I revert to the over rotate to slow down and breath more.  As long as your head stays down I guess it's fine, or at least certainly better than swallowing water!

Not sure how to force that catch to be more explosive.  One way I've heard it described is that you're not so much pulling your arm back as anchoring your hand and rotating your body over your anchored hand.  This might also be something that works better at a higher velocity, I'm not sure.  Or maybe that you need to more forcefully rotate your body to get the lead hand in the water.  I think the rotation is what generates the speed, not so much the hand pulling.  Watch that smooth swim dude as he rotates his lead arm into the water and it's easier to see what I'm talking about.

I agree with you but just to be clear for everyone, the test was designed to show (via power) the gains from being more aero.  They were very close to the same speed but the power or amount of work applied was greatly reduced the more aerodynamic one becomes...........thereby leaving more room to use an individuals power to their advantage by being able to produce more speed at the same power output you might use in less aero configurations.

Also, I agree that certain individuals could probably do as your friend does with the combo road/conversion TT bike.  That would be pretty nice to be able to do.  A lot less expensive than having 2 bikes for sure.

Jeff - This is my favorite post EVER from you - love to see you dropping a little algebra on everyone! 

Curtis

Wow, wow, wow.  That's insane.  How did they not step on her head when she fell!!!  That's a great one.

I love this one too.

I just posted  in tri talk llast week about the injury asking if the cortisone shot was a good recommendation or not. I bookmarked the info you provided and am planning on starting some exercises tonight. Thanks!

Now today my foot feels fine. This is why I never follow through with another doctors appointment. I keep thinking I can take care of it myself.