SBR Utopia - OPEN (Page 34)

Yup.  That is what I usually do or occasionally 20"on at 120% and 40" off if it is a VO2 workout.  Sometimes I will do 2 or 3' at 95% to get warmed up for threshold work.  Overall I usually do 20' of warm-up before the work starts..especially first thing in the morning.  The afternoon workouts I can shorten that up and be fine.

I agree.  I'm adult-onset.  I was stuck (self-taught) at 2:15/100m.  I hired a coach and after just a few sessions with my coach I was easily under 2:00 and within a month 1:45 was no problem.

Personally, I have never fought with PF (yet), but have plenty of friends who have...pushing through only lengthened total recovery time. I would recommend: 1) rest, ice, etc and 2) get thee to a PT who can help "break up" the crap on the bottom of your foot (it almost sounds like rice krispies being exposed to milk) to speed it along.

So sorry you are going through this.

I think we don't have the complete picture here. I'm more with the Experior perspective...that much time with that level of improvement is not what *I* would expect.

Had PF a few years ago. I laid off running for a bit (not the answer anyone wants to hear) and used every non-invasive therapy as aggressively as possible. I slept in the boot (not the strasburg sock, that just made my toes numb), went to PT and stretched. Icing post run is also good. I kept an aluminum can (beans, veggies, whatever) in the freezer to roll my feet post run. Aluminum conducts cold better than plastic. I still am very conscious about stretching my feet/lower leg. And it did resolve and hasn't returned, even when I ramped up to 40+ mpw. 

The fact that you mention morning pain specifically suggests that wearing a boot at night might help, or at the very least make sure you loosen the sheets/blankets at the foot of your bed. 

Agreed, I would be very disappointed with the return on investment.  That's a lot of hours spent swimming, and (presumably) a lot of dollars spent on coaching, with not a lot of improvement. 

I've been a little disappointed with my recent improvements (over the course of about a month, I went from 2:00/100 to 1:45/100....and over the past few months, I'm down to maybe 1:40/100), but I'm also being realistic that if I want to see big improvements again, I'll have to put in a lot more time (I have decent speed on sprints, but can't hold it over long periods of time). 

Honestly, I found that thread frustrating to read.  I think it's fairly clear that she needs to try a different approach....but refuses to do so.  When people ask questions and ignore responses, I get the urge to post something snarky....hah.

This is a recurring phenomenon.

Sometimes, even with a good warm up (and some "wake-up" intervals -- 5x 30" hard/fast, 30" recovery), the first couple intervals feel brutal.

Yesterday's ride, for example, I was basically bargaining with myself...."If you do five (of the ten) intervals, you can call it a success and make it a short training session", but managed to gut it out in the end....after a few intervals in, I started feeling fine, hitting and holding my target power.  But I was tired and really would have loved to just stay in bed!

Ok...I just posted something here and realized it doesn't belong here.  Lets all try to keep the TT "noise" separate from this thread.  Marc's question was certainly valid to ask here...but lets not derail the conversation as I was about to...

<raises hand>

I pretty much 'fought through' it but then at some point I did back off.  It still lingers but is manageable.  Stretching toes (both directions) felt good and helped, I think.  But the big thing was massaging the bottom of the foot against something hard.  I have a paperweight (the dome-shaped kind) under my desk and I'm constantly massaging my foot on it.  It helps.  I think.

Man - you know the moderators are tough when they self-moderate ;-)

Not trying to derail the conversation - but I was able to guess who the OP was.    And while the onus is on the athlete to determine if their coach is meeting expectations, :10 over 160 hours (at that level) is ridiculous IMO.

Agree with everyone else - if I didn't do the 5min of short/hard intervals, there is no way I'm hitting the targets in the first full interval when it needs to be over 95%.  That said the short ones can also be a warning about just how much the session is about to suck.

Must.

Not.

Read.

TT.

Seriously, I see what you are all trying to do - you are trying to TRICK me into breaking my self-imposed ban on TT reading. But joke's on you - just based on the topic I don't even have to read it to have a very good guess at who is having the issue. At the end of the day IMHO it is the athlete that is responsible for their performance and improvement, not the coach.

Same here. It takes me a good 30 minutes to warm up. That is going to include some power bursts (5x 10 sec HARD, 50 sec recovery) 4-5 minutes at 95% followed by 10 minutes of base spinning just to blow the freshness out if the legs - that usually keeps me from going gonzo on the first intervals.

I had a quick question. When we are talking about swim speeds and improvement; Over what distances are we talking?

Example, when someone says I went from 2:00 per  to 1:40 (or whatever) are we talking about an all out 100m or are we talking over the course of a sprint distance or what? Also, is it assumed it's over 100M not yards? 

The reference to Marc's question was 500 yards. 

I will never reference my swim speed as my 100y all out unless specifically asked what my 100 all out is.  I don't think it makes sense as a triathlete to gauge your speed that way since none of our competitions are that short.  If someone asked me how fast I swim, I'd probably reference a 500-1000y TT pace.

I think it's all over the board in common usage (even the thread in question had paces listed for two different distances).  I always sort of assumed the fish were talking about T-pace, which I understand to be pace over a 1000yds (or meters) time trial.  I guess yards or meters just depends on your particular pool. 

I have seen people use 400m, 500y, 1000m, 1500 and even 3x300. I think the trick is to be consistent. The shorter, the more people have a tendency to repeat it. 1500m TT are not a pleasant experience in my opinion.

I believe "officially" threshold on the swim is a pace you can sustain 30min and is also known as T-30. But I am not sure

I really didn't want to drag a TT topic over here. I chose my words carefully, because it's not obvious if the problem is the coach, the athlete, both or none. I sincerely thought maybe my expectations are out of whack and I cannot appreciate what it would be like to be swimming at that speed. Maybe I'm an elitist

My question is more along the line of how long do you give a coach to show results, what are realistic expectations and I guess even can a coach fire an athlete.

How long do you wait for results before changing strategies ?

I'll take it one further. Should one ask a coach for reasonable goals, and if the person does everything they were told to, hold the coach accountable ? Should the coach fire the athlete or reset expectations if the athlete is not holding their part of the deal ?

I wish Shane was around :-)

I think you underestimated our ability to bring TT in here.

personally I would want the coach to fire themselves if they see they are not making an impact.  I am not so sure how realistic it is to expect that but I wouldn't want to keep coaching someone who was not working out (and there could be many reasons for that).  It does no one good, not even the coach when you think about word of mouth, etc etc