Newbz' Spring Fling Mentor Group is FULL! (Page 33)

I think everyone is hitting on some good points so I'll just toos in some drills that might work well with improving your stroke

1. Pull Buoy: swim with this at a slow easy pace and almost over exaggerate your stroke. At the end of each stroke try to almost touch the bouy with your pulling arm. Doing this will force a complete stroke out of you, and going nice and easy with get your muscle memory and mind to remember just how to stroke correctly. Also while swimming notice how it feels to swim with your butt out of the water. This is something that I noticed with your stroke mainly due to your kick, but once you get it out of the water you will swim better. Chest should almost be pushing down as well, kind of like swimming downhill.

2. Kickboard: Use this a bit each day in warmup. Work on keeping your legs tight, and your toes pointed. Really focus on these two aspects when drilling, don't go to fast and try 2 or 6-beat kicks, I have noticed the more I kick the more I stay afloat. 2-beat kicks only work well when doing IM or HIM swims and I am going easy, but in turn my hips drop. Try to flex your ankles and have your toes pointed as well as you can. Again isolating to just a kick will get your mind to focus more on the problems in your kick.

This is my .2 about what to do to correct your problem. The idea in both of these is to isolate the problem and work on it from there. Since swimming is such a full body exercise sometimes it is best to get aid from toys i.e kickboard, pullbouy to isolate the problem and really hone in on how to improve it.

The foot doesn't feel that bad today.  It's still a bit bruised, but that's about it.  Was a lot easier than people make it out to be.

I'll leave the swim comments to those that can see the video (damn old computer), but yeah, gas was 2.79 here and milk is 3-4 a gallon;-) Although i did do my entire run in trenches in the snow today......





Jonathan, glad the foot is on the mend!

Jonathan....glad the foot is feeling better.

I got in a 5.5ish mile run in this morning with a few miles at a slightly harder pace.  Felt good overall.

Not sure if I asked this recently...but does anyone have any races coming up?

My first race of the season will be a 8.15 mile run on President's Day.  Hoping to go around 1:05, which is about a 8:00 pace.  This is like a C race for me. 

Anyone see any problems with dropping long trainer rides until they can be done outside?  I'm hoping that is in a month and a half or so.  I can do the time easily but it is boring as can be and making me really not look forward to trainers those days.  I would replace the long day with intervals. 

No road races for me until tri season (april/may I think).  I'd love to throw a 5 and 10K in there somewhere, but I gotta monitor this foot thing pretty carefully.  Everything is going all right at this point and I don't want to mess it up!

Brent....what do you mean by long trainer rides???  Like anything above 1:30-1:40 sucks for me, so yeah, I'm going to get as quality of a workout as possible in that time and I'll build once I'm outside.

My current long rides are 90 min.  After 60 minutes I find myself staring at the clock bored until the ride is over.  I'm going to try a 90 min ride in a few minutes that has more structure to see if that keeps me busy til the end.

Originally had nothing scheduled until June, but I did come across an indoor sprint at the end of Feb that I may do.

Some of y'all are paying WAY too much for milk, but it seems gas prices aren't quite as bad.

I looked at the exploratorium.edu picture of hand motion and it seems odd to me. Of course this is without having tried to use this "description", but is this picture a little over-emphasized?

Knee feels great, took pain killers for nose only to have the packing taken out (not as bad as expected, but still not pleasent). As soon as getting my blood pressure up won't cause a bloody nose, I'll start running and cycling again. I'm not looking forward to how much my fitness has degraded, but I know I'll get it back.

I want to have a look at a lake about an hour-and-a-half away to see about swimming.

Today is a chilly 60 degrees with very little wind (8mph).

I am planning on doing an indoor tri in late March at the local Y (15 min swim / 15 min spin bike / 15 min run on treadmill).  All very short, but it is nice to get a race in.  May do a half Mary in April or May.  Real run does not begin until June 6th when I've got the Tour De Cure Century Ride....

Planning on running 6 miles later today, possibly even outside!  It is a balmy 32 degrees here in Albany and I'd always rather be outside than in if I can swing it.  We will see...

I can currently manage about 2 hours on the trainer before  I start to go crazy.  I only do one long ride a week so its not too bad.  The rest are only an hour, maybe 1.5 hours.  Do you go long more than 1 time a week?

I switched up my workout today due to the weather.  I ended up doing a 30 minute hard ride today instead of a 45 minute run.  I will probably not do a brick tomorrow (as usual) but a long run on the treadmill plus strength training.

My week usually consists of 2 rides that are around an hour then my long ride is currently 90 minutes but increases to 120 next month. 

I mixed up the long ride with a few different interval drills and it wasn't quite as mind numbingly boring as it has been.

Got 40 mins in on the drainer.....felt fine.

Went to the pool and had to share a lane with ms. swim america herself.  I hate not being able to circle swim.  It just screws me up.  I feel like, "I'm in the U.S....I'm in England....I'm in the U.S.....I'm in England!"  So I was trying to focus on my catch-up drills and keeping my arms wide, but I felt like I just couldn't get the hang of it with the lane line and ms. swim america there.  Whew...that is all. 

Got in another good interval ride this evening.  If these rides I've been having recently are any indication...it's going to be a good season on the bike.

First race of the season for me is a sprint at the end of March in Columbia, SC.  Pretty much have a race a month after that.

So, I had a great swim last night and a mediocre run this morning.

I really feel like the swimming is coming along.  Corny as this sounds, I am starting to feel the water more.  I know I've improved on my body position.  I did time myself last swim (not focusing on speed right now).  I was surprised to be going at the same speed as before.  I figured I'd be going slower, because I consciously slowed down to shift focus to my technique.  The cool thing is, I'm not working as hard to go that speed.  I think pushing it right now would come at the cost of form, but once I've got that form down even more, I'm pretty confident I'll see a nice speed increase.

As for my run this morning, blah!  We've had beautiful weather lately.  It means that some of the snow has melted, which has made lots of pools and puddles on the sidewalks.  It's still cold enough to freeze overnight though.  This morning there were so many patches of ice.  I was constantly having to stop and walk so that I didn't slip and brain myself.  It really messed with my rhythm and I just didn't enjoy it that much.  I think I'd almost rather run at the track...

My next race is a 10k St Patrick's day race, so not till March.  My first tri isn't till June.

My first is going to be May 7.  It's a sprint tri and I don't anticipate setting the world on fire but it should be a good fitness gauge and transition practice.  Unfortunately, it's a pool swim so I won't get to test my new wetsuit. 

My 20 week plan for the HIM in September starts April 24 so this will be the end of the 3rd week. 

February 13 - marathon (26.2 with Donna)
March 20 - Gator Half ('cause it's near the in-laws but that is what is making me nervous!)

Then a long break in races.  Ending the year with Beach2Battleship at the end of October.

I can only to long trainer rides if I have a movie.  I hit redbox and find something appropriately stupid (I need mind candy for this purpose!) of the right length.  If possible, I get one with subtitles so that I don't have to crank up the volume.  If it's enough like mind candy, dialogue doesn't matter much though!

For those that have done a HIM I have a question.  Triathlon is a fun hobby to me, not my occupation obviously.  I have a lot of work and family commitments with a wife and 2 kids so training time is a premium.  One such commitment is a family vacation.  My wife has it planned for June.  There is a plus and minus.  The minus being, I won't be able to take my bike and it is in the middle of my 20 week training plan.  The plus is it falls on week 8 which is a recovery week.  Workouts have been good and consistent since I started back up after the New Year. 

I guess the question is, am I going to waste my training plan by not being full go at week 8 or should I be able to maintain fitness with a few runs and possibly an ocean swim or two while on vacation?  Will it hurt to not have the bike or is a week off not going to sabotage everything? 

Again, I only have 1 sprint under my belt thus far so I have no illusions of a podium finish.  My goal is to finish and hopefully finish strong.