Slornow and Wannabefaster's Winter Mentor Group-CLOSED (Page 32)

I worked today from 5am until about 30 minutes ago, with the exception of a 30 minute swim in place of lunch.  Yeah, Jason, winning the lottery would make it easier.  I don't know how many more 16+ hour work days I have left in me.  I seriously questioned whether work is really worth it today.

But seeing the great training you guys are doing, and how you are challenging yourselves, gives me some hope.

Chunga - 2013-01-29 8:34 PM Week two for me of adding in some jogging. This week was half a mile jogging broken up between walking laps. Kind of a boil the frog for walking to jogging since I am going to add one tenth of a mile each week which should put me on target for my June sprint. Though there will be no "sprinting".

Mary-you are doing it the right way. Just keep with it and you will get where you want to be.

Stuart-good advice on the swimming. Sometimes I get too wrapped up in hitting the intervals in my workout rather than shifting gears to try to fix a problem. I did try to back off yesterday toward the end of some hard intervals to see if I could "fix" the problem. By that point I think fatigue had taken over and I just didn't have it.

Michael-those are some tough hours. I always thought being a college professor would be a pretty good gig. Lots of spare time. Sounds like just the opposite.

Blanda-hang in there!

Racing-last year I did a triathlon about once a month on average from late March through mid-October. It was nice to have something close on the horizon to keep me motivated. Nothing like a race to energize motivation and training. I'm 2 months out from my first sprint and in a bit of the training blahs myself.

Looks like nasty weather here today. Thunderstorms and very windy. Scheduled for an easy run but may swap it with tomorrow's bike workout. I have a mix of dread and anticipation for tomorrow's bike workout. Longer and harder intervals than the workout I was unable to complete last week....but I have had a couple of "leg rest" days and I'm hoping that will help.  

Another abbreviated day due to work demands.  I only had 30 minutes to really dedicate today so I hit the pool.  Just a warm up, 10 x 200 and cool down.  I will do my core routine later and maybe see if I can get out for a power walk after dinner with my wife.  She has been down for a few days with a strained neck but walking is ok.

It's bad enough when I can't train like I want to but even worse when the weather was perfect today for a nice long ride.  Maybe tomorrow.

I finished my Wednesday brick workout (30min trainer/15min run) earlier tonight. It was definitely the worst weather I've run in this year, but it was only 15 minutes, and I only run in my neighborhood. It's only two roads, so I pass my house every 5 minutes, or so. I felt good pretty much the whole time. 

Swim #5 for me tomorrow, which means a straight set of 2,500 meters; I need to psych myself up for that!

Saw the above and it seems to be appropriate as we try to figure out why we are doing some of these workouts in January with races still way down the road.

I tackled my tough bike workout this afternoon and it was much better than my intervals over the weekend. Felt strong throughout and was actually able to push it toward the end of the last interval. Best bike workout in weeks. Feels good to have some progress. A couple of days away from the bike/run definitely had my legs feeling much fresher. So, today was a good day....no guarantees that will continue when I get in the pool tomorrow so I'll stick with today until then. 

Thanks for the kind words. When my kids are hurting I want to take them into my arms and fight with everybody. My daughter knows not to tell me "who" after I asked her what the car of someone who hurt her feelings looked like, lol! I was joking, but that's just the feeling I get when someone messes with my kids.

I teach my kids to stick up for themselves and to toughen up, which they do, for the most part, but still... Mama Bear will always rear her ugly no matter how tough my kids are.

Rene: I smacked my poor lane partner in his most treasured parts doing the back stroke. I felt horrible, but we laughed about it later. Much later.

I've only been doing strength stuff at home since Saturday. I'm going to power through and do something at the gym at lunch, and then run at home tonight when husband gets home. I gave myself till today feel all the feelings, then it's time to move forward no matter how things are. The lack of endorphins is making things worse.

Happy training!

Please forgive me if this is a dumb question but how long and/or far do you need to train for any given event?  I have three sprints coming up.  The swims are all in the 900 yard range give or take.  The bike route is identical on all, just over 16 miles.  The run on the first two is a 5k and the last, 5 miles.

I know it would be great to train for an IM but time is not an unlimited resource and the abuse on the body is also a factor.  If I were advising someone who was not a strong swimmer on how far to get good (a relative term I know) at would be 2000 yards.  Yes they would get better swimming 3000 or 4000 but there are three sports they need to train at.  If they got good at 2000 yards a 900 yard competition would be easily doable even under adverse conditions.

I would tell them to spend the time they would be doing the extra 1000 yards on getting to the same level of expertise on the bike or run.

I ask because the last two days I have been time crunched and I know they will not be the last.  I also know if I ride for an extra hour that is time not running or swimming.  On Sunday I rode for 35 miles.  It was challenging and I will do that distance again.  But I am not sure that riding 50 miles would be more beneficial for a 16 mile race distance than spending that extra hour getting in another run. 

So where do I say 'enough is enough' given the race distances in front of me?  Any insight here or is this more a philosophical question?

Not exactly the voice of experience here -- but I have been loosely targeting 150% of the distance for each discipline.  That is -- if I'm running a sprint with a 5K run segment, I should be able to run 7.5K standalone.

Hence for my upcoming Oly, I would love to be in a position where I can comfortably swim 2250m, bike 60km, run 15km (not together -- each on their own workout, on their own day).

Just my $0.02

Scott.

This question is why I haven't tried training for a race without a specific training plan. Depending on your race dates, you might want to consider looking at some of the plans here on BT. Since you've already started training, you could just hop into the plan a few weeks into it. 

Well, I'm a philosopher... :-)

I agree with Jason.  The 3x rule is too little for sprints, and not practical (though might actually be close to ideal) for IM.  (If time were not an issue, ideal IM for me would probably be something like 16K/300/70.)

But it's very individual, as Jason also said.  You personally can get away with less swimming and since you need to work on the run, you'd want to make that a priority.  The marginal benefit of a 50 mile ride over a 35 mile ride for a sprint race is not very much, especially if it keeps you from running.  I do think that there is benefit in doing some long rides that take about as much time as the entire race will take, but 35 is fine for that.

Thanks guys for the feedback.

Scott I am kind of on the same page as you right now.  I was thinking in terms of each discipline and 2x as a standalone.  Hence the 2000 yards for the swim.  But like you, I have little tri experience to base that on to know if it works for the bike or run.

Jamie I agree conceptually with the idea of having a training plan.  I looked at several and even put
one together for this season.  Where I am struggling with it is the point Jason makes. The swim routines are interesting but not particularly challenging and the run program is more than I can handle right now.

Jason I never thought of it in terms of weekly distance.  As you pointed out, to reach that on the swim is one workout a week. BTW – you are spot on about my current swim training.  Yesterday was my first (and last) day in the pool this month.  I will get a few more days in over the next few months but my focus is on the run.

As I was accessing my training for the month I think my needs are fairly specific and don’t really fit an off the shelf plan.

Swim – I am fine here. I will add one day a week in the 3000 – 4000 yards range and leave it at that.

Bike – I can ride hard for 25 miles now.  Obviously I can still ride a lot faster so I will continue to push myself.  My concern is a big hill towards the end of the course I will be riding.  I think I need to get better at hills more than longer distances.

Run – I stink at it. The plan this group helped me outline seems to be working.  I will stick with it but for quite a while it will be less than most training plans.

As always, thanks for the great insight.

Thanks Michael.  This is where I landed as I was looking at it.  Having so little experience I just wanted to mke sure I wasn't way off base here.

Stuart, Macca (if you're not familiar, he's a fairly outspoken multi-IM World Championship winner) just covered what you're talking in his latest podcast. He calls it blending, and he offers a few scenarios. For instance, he starts out with a scenario of a strong runner, with little swimming/biking background. Then he presents a few other different scenarios. He and his coach basically said, for sprints, the focus should strongly favor what you're weakest at and de-emphasize what you're strong at, i.e. focus on what you're weakest at to get the biggest bang for the buck.

I can attest to this: look at Nate's swim results from last year. He's already swam more this month than he did all of last year, but because he had swimming background he was pretty much always in the top 10-20% of swims in his age group last year. He was consistently much faster than me, even though I logged 42 hours of swim training last year, and he logged 8. He's good at swimming, and I suck, so I need a lot more time in the pool than him.

Here's the link to the podcast, if you want to listen: Macca Raw!

Also, just to go with the training plan, BT does have Sprint plans that are run-focused or bike-focused. You could always modify these based on what you get out of them. 

Well, my January is in the books. Lots of hard work on the bike and in the pool. Hoping that after another week off from running was enough for my calf issue to resolve. 2 months out from first race of 2013 season-a sprint

Monthly totals:
S:  52650.00 Yd - 16h 32m
B:  381.01 Mi - 17h 56m 41s
R:  59.18 Mi - 8h 35m 42s 

Those are some crazy numbers, Randy! That's how you start a season...

Here are mine:

 I'm really pleased with those, but I'm happier with this:

That's a full month with no missed workouts! *pats self on back!* I hope everyone else had an equally great start to the year. 

Here are my numbers for the month ... best month ever .... 

Well, I guess I'm on some sort of road to returning to former levels of training.  Not sure I'll get there this year, but looking back at January, now, it isn't as depressing as I thought it would be.

 February will be better!

Yep.  And it isn't just time to train but time to recover.  If you're training that much, you're sleeping 9-10 hours or taking a nap mid-day (or both).