Kenj - triathletes in training CLOSED (Page 32)

DJ, this is always hard to judge.  Typically for me, I find myself giving a steady effort or slightly building for 15 minutes.  The next 4 I build up slightly more than I was before.  The last minute I DIG DEEP! and expend any extra energy I may have left.  Your cadence should start out a little higher than normal.  As you build you can start using tougher gears.  At the end I like start using tougher gears I tire out.  I find it easier to make power in tougher gears as I get further into the test.  Bare in mind too that your bike HR may be lower than your run HR.  Mine is extremely different.  Most people I talk to have a 10bpm higher max on the run.  My bike max, last I tested, was 187 and my run max is 210!

You should never physically hurt, as in sharp pains.  Your legs should burn like you have nothing left, or fatigued.

I wouldn't worry about what the numbers "were".  You're gaining more and more fitness.  When I look back almost everything I did was in the upper HR zones when for the first year or 2.  But my rides were shorter and any physical activity I did was hard!  As my rides get longer and I gain more fitness, I now stay in lower HR zones more.  Mainly, I pay more attention to power #'s though.  I had a conversation with Bryancd about it here on BT and have been paying more and more attention to HR. 

IMO, I would use the #'s you got on your test.  Work with them for the next 8-10 weeks and re-test again.  You'll actually get better at these tests the more you do them.  They don't get easier, but your testing strategy and feel for it will get better.  So you may see some different numbers because of that as you go further too.

I'm glad you answered DJ's post Brian as I switched to power partly because I was all over the board with testing the bike for HR.  I think some of it is because my run fitness makes the lung and heart more capable than the legs were when I was trying to do that, not sure.

Now for the run, I have that figured out pretty good when I am in fairly good race condition.

I switched to power for similar reasons Ken.  As I said in my reply to DJ, I'm soooooo far off running/biking it messes with my head!  I always had a mental complex worrying that I wasn't working hard enough on the bike because I couldn't come close to achieving HR levels of the run.  It was better for me to bag HR.  I'm learning to accept things better now.  I've had conversations with coaches about the difference.  Most agree it's because running engages much more muscle that my HR goes higher before I fatigue.  Cycling is so isolated to the legs my legs fatigue before I achieve higher HR's.  I have REALLY skinny legs, so in my own head, I think the lack of mass in my legs accounts for the overly extreme difference I have.  Either way, I was making some pretty poor training decisions when I was dwelling on it.  I'm glad I was able to move to power.  I even stopped wearing the HR monitor for a while so I wouldn't have the mental block of making poor training decisions on the bike based on my run HR.

Hey Wesley......give 'em HE!! this weekend !!!

Crap……

Hate to say it but I think I tweaked my left knee in my last race. It seems like a classic case of runners knee. I had trouble the other day on my 4 mile run.

It didn’t appear until about 3 or 4 days after my race. I guess the muscle soreness kind of masked the joint soreness. All was going well - I was resting it, taking advil and using ice. It was feeling good last weekend. On Sunday I was helping my wife in the garden and the next day the soreness was back. I took Monday off and ran on Tuesday – and yes on Wednesday it was sore again. And near the end of the run I felt some discomfort in the knee.

Gonna try my bike tomorrow – Maybe it will work out and I’ll just do a bike focused program for a couple weeks. 

Ooh - sending GOOD THOUGHTS your way!! Take Emerge-C, and take care of yourself. 

{{{{{big hug}}}}}

I know for sure that my HR is different on the run than it is on the bike. I've reached upper 170's to low 180's on the run, and it didn't feel like "hard" effort, yet, if I reach those numbers on the bike (which isn't that unusual to see when I'm going on the hills), I feel like it's too much.

8-10 weeks sounds like a LONG time. I was thinking about retesting in about a couple weeks or even earlier, like next week. I wasn't even sore at all or felt "exhausted", and in fact I feel like I want to do the trainer again today (which I probably will because tonight's ride has been cancelled), not LT test, but just to kind of get close to the same effort. 

I'm not dead set on figuring out my zones, so it's more of a curiosity sake and kind of have a general idea.   I notice that many athletes I know have a low resting HR (40-50), while mine has always been at 60.

You mentioned, "Cycling is so isolated to the legs my legs fatigue before I achieve higher HR's.", I feel the opposite. My HR can spike up, my breathing can be a little erratic, yet my legs is perfectly fine.

I'm the opposite with Ken and Brian- I'm all over the board when it comes to running than the bike.  Should I do the LT for the run solely based on that statement? And just do HR zones for the runs instead of the bike?

Lastly - When you do the LT test, should you feel like you're out of breath near to the point where you're panting, and feeling like you HATE it? I looked at my Garmin, and my max HR was 159, while my avg for the LT part was 150.  I will listen to your advice and perhaps go in a higher gear and see if I can get the HR a little higher and work harder. I think I was paying more attention to the cadence.

Sorry with all the questions, but I would like to have something to go by when I start the HIM training since it does follow RPE, however I don't trust myself at times, especially during the run.

Anne and Adam - sending healing thoughts your way!!!!!

I have my long ride for the week today to celebrate the kids last day of school.  4 hours!  This will be my first really long ride by myself - so hoping for no mechanical problems! may do a short BRIC afterwards.

Training will get more difficult now that I will have the kids (6&8)  all day - looks like early morning workouts are in my future (sunshine won't be a problem as it is starting to get light around 3:45 am)

I'm nervous as a cat.  I have a race this weekend and it will be the longest swim that I've done to date.  Based on you guy's recommendation, I bought an entry level wet suit and I've been practicing with it the last week or so - it makes a huge difference. 

I was finally starting to think that the swim was going to be ok.  Now, the race director posted on the web site that the water temp is right on the line of if the race will be wet suit legal.  I think the limit is 78 and the temp was 80.5.  I think this reading was in the afternoon and we're still cooling off to the low 60's at night so I'm hoping and praying that the cool night will bring the water temp down.

But the not knowing is killing me.  I was planning on doing it without the suit up until recently, so I guess I need to go back to that way of thinking, but now I've got my mind fixed on having that extra help.

DJ, if you want to train with LT you should test bike and run seperately.  It's not how I train, but from experience and from recently reading The Time Crunched Triathlete, I can tell you that you will need both seperately to use them in training.

Yes, you should hate it at the end of the test.  I've even blown a couple threshold (very similar) tests in the past just mentally giving up because I hated it sooooo bad!

Thanks Ken, I am going to make the best of it and just go race for fun.  Forgot to mention that besides the cold, a big dog bit my leg last Sunday after my ride (my brother's Great Dane!!!!).  It's healing up nicely but after these flesh-eating bacteria cases in the news lately, I've been afraid to get in the water with a puncture wound.

I'm assuming you're referring to the flesh eating bacteria cases lately. Yuck!!!!

Hope you feel better Anne!

That I know (bolded part).  Sorry if my posts sounded confusing. I have planned doing both - Bike and Run LT, never using the other's LT results.   I just wanted to have a baseline for both sports.

 Hence why I feel that when I do the Run LT, I will benefit from the results and train better with the Run zones as stated for the training plan. I mostly always feel like I'm going too slow, or going too fast when I run, and I feel like my pacing is way off at times, so that's why I wanted to see if I can work on my run pacing by training with HR.  

The bike I could tell if I'm doing too much at times, but I still wanted to do the LT just to get a baseline and work off of it for just in case.

Then I must have not done it hard enough because by the end, while I felt like I got a good workout in, I didn't hate it. I actually thought it was great, and can't wait to do it again. :-P  Run LT will come up soon.

Hope I was a little more clearer! :-)  Thanks again for the advice. I'm actually SCARED of doing the Run LT, I guess that's a good thing! 

DJ - I did my run tests during 5k's.  Since it takes me just under 30 minutes to run a 5k race it is perfect - I just hit the HR button at around 10 minutes in and then take the average (I think - it has been awhile!).

I did it!  I got my longest ride in ever and it was solo!!! Just under 4 hours and shy of 50 miles w/ 2900 ft of elevation gain.  Pretty slow, but I was trying to keep HR down - Avg. HR 119. The weather was amazing (sunny, upper 40's to low 50's with no wind)! I need to get a new phone so I can post pics of the mountains.

Don't know if I will get in a long one next week, but the week after I have a 60+ miler planned with my hubby - that will be the last one before the bike relay in June.

Robin, that's not slow for that kind of elevation gain.

LTs run vs. bike.  I was told to expect 10 beats/min higher on the run.  It's working out that way.  I use HR on the run and watts on the bike but I monitor HR on the bike too for drift.

I'm doing good.  Wife had surgery today so I've been preoccupied for a bit. 

Bike - 21.7 unofficial average for a 20K windy time trial Tuesday.  Official may be a bit lower, we'll see.  Testing puts my FTP at 314.  Highest last year before Ironman was 319, virtually the same and it's 6 months earlier in the year. 

Run - doing great still since the 12K race when I took 30 secs/mile off my PR. 

Swim - still improving.  Taking another lesson in 30 mins. 

Strength - kettlebells.  I'll never give them up now. 

Nutrition. - down another pound on Paleo.  Hit 205.  My goal.  I'm going to try to shave some more, what the hell.

All good. Gotta go.

Yes, I guess it's just two cases in the news but they seem terrible and I think the young blond gal caught it somehow after falling into a lake during a zipline tour (correct me if I'm wrong).  It does make one stop and think about what we are climbing into the water with!

Woot!!! Nice long ride!!!

Have a great race Russ!! Don't let the swim get into your head, think about the things you can control!!

Same here, doing it in a race helps with the mental side of putting out the effort.  The only exception to this is I will do a treadmill test for both pace and HR prior to the winter just because I seem to be naturally faster on the treadmill then outside. 

Nice riding Robin!! That is a lot of climbing, and not slow at all! 

Best wishes to your wife Ice!!  I hope everything went well with the surgery.

Great work with all of your physical activities Ice!! That is huge to have your FTP at that level in mid May!!

I had the preliminary check up with the ortho doctor yesterday.  Good news is my BP is real good! The bad news is that although he didn't kill my hopes to still do IMFL this year, he did stick a knife in it.  I guess I have torn it extensively and my best hope for complete recovery is to avoid stressing it for as much as 6 months (or even a bit more).

Good news is that I can return to running sometime over the summer so a fall marathon is a viable plan B.  I can also get back on the bike fairly quickly as long as I set it up on the trainer in a manner that I don't need to rest that arm on the bars or in the aero bar pads.  Maybe its time to finally look into a computrainer. 

ETA: Most of what he told me isn't a big surprise based off of what I was told by his PA the week before and other people that have had this or a similar procedure.  Just wishful thinking on my part.  Its all good!

Ok, lets see, who is racing this weekend?

I know that Wesley is at IM Florida 70.3

Russ and Anne have races as well. 

Anyone else?

Good luck and more importantly, have fun to all of you that are racing!!

TGIF!

Yeah for good low BP!!! But six months? It does sound like you will be doing some shuffling of plans for this year. Sounds like you are going to get really, really good at running and biking!!!

Ken, sorry to hear about the 6 months.   Let's hope you can build a monster bike/run in the meantime!

I got back to some biking and running yesterday.  The shoulder is a little sore on the bike yet, but I had no problems on the run.  That's the good news, bad news is I strained something in my achilles now! ugh!  I doubt it's anything serious, but I can't stand resting things this close to a race. 

I'm working at home today to avoid the downtown Chicago kaos of the NATO meeting and protesters.  I was planning on going to the pool this morning to give swimming a go.  But my shoulder was a little sore when I woke up so I'll save it for later or tomorow.  So far it seems to be getting a little better every day, so I hate to go to the doctor for it.  I think swimming will be the moment of truth though.  At least I got a few extra hours in my day saving me the commute this morning!