Swbkrun mentor group - Closed (Page 35)

Who's lacing up the shoes with elastic (or standard) laces and getting ready to race this weekend?  What's your goal?  What's the plan?

What is one of your strengths and one of your weaknesses?  What are you doing to build on that strength and address that weakness?

Nice work Mike.  I see a lot more PRs in your future.

Suzy,

That is a good question. I had never thought about what to do after I reach a PR. To be honest this is my first one. I have thought about this and dont really know what to plan. I would like some advice and ideals on what to do to make sure I can get the "official" sub 40. MY answer would be just go and try and do the same thing but I am clueless

Thanks?

I am using standard laces this weekend. I am doing a mini indoor tri sat 12 laps in pool 5mile ride and 1 mile run. I didnt really have aplan but to go do it. I think the goal would be an hour or less.

Sun I am doing a 4mi run. Yesterday I got a 4mi PR so the goal would be to do as good or better. I guess the plan would be to try and stay on pace.

I am new to race plans, I usually just go wing it. I would love some advice on a plan of attack of how to do my PR or better.

My strength is I can train alone( have been doing this since joining BT). I think my weakness is that I am Guilty of not pushing myself as much as I should. I can improve on this by setting goals and maybe training with people who are faster at the event than me. The only thing is I dont know many people in the sport locally.

AWESOME!  Nice job!

No racing for me...    but I am going mtn biking  

Strength - transitions - I try to emulate fattyfatfat  - the fastest T1 in the south.... 

Seriously, I haven't given much thought to what they (it) are (is).  I spend a lot more time dwelling on my weaknesses, of which there are plenty.  I guess I would say swimming, not because I am fast, but because I generally have confidence about what is to come.  I need to spend more time in the pool, but that has been a bit difficult as of late due to life pressures. 

Weakness - running and hills on the bike.  Mtn biking and some strength training is helping me a bit with hills, but the real answer will be hill repeats...  As far as running - I usually get dinged up with injuries and erase all progress as I heal...  I think the key is going to be reduced body mass to take some of the pressure off my joints...

Great job Mike it feels awesome when we can quantify progress. The gains will keep coming just keep doing what your doing and tweak as you go.

Well, if it were me, I would look at the pace progression over those four miles.  Your fastest mile was the first, your slowest mile was the last.  Is it possible that if you eased into things a little bit on that first mile you may have saved a little more in the tank for the remaining ones and been even faster?  When I first started running, I would start out fast, jack my HR and then be forced to slow down the remaining miles.  As I learned more about running, I used the advice above to maintain a faster overall pace.  Make sense?

No racing for me....unless of course you count the rat race...try not to run that one too hard.

I use regular laces, actually keep them fairly lose and can slip in and out of them, leave some room for the feet to swell. Might have to try the elastics.

My strength is hills on the bike, up and down (down is more fun and easier ). My weaknesses is my mental attitude with swimming, although I can swim well, I just hate training. I have to mix it up a lot and just do it.

On another note my training partner returned, he is half my age and helps to push me in the pool. I am not sure if I am happy that he returned , I liked my own pace but he will definitely make me work harder.

No racing yet. 2 strengths are the run and bike and I am not working enough on the bike trainer now. But I am getting some good runs in. Weakness is swim confidence...While I am swimming, I currently focus on drills and being relaxed in the water. I have a lot of difficulty with this!

Do you mean Carbo Pro? I used it for the IM marathon twice.  I mixed it with H20 and carried it in my Fuel Belt.  I liked it because it has a low osmolality which made it very easy to digest.  I also liked that it was virtually flavorless.  When you are at the marathon stage of an IM, you can get pretty sick of sweet things.  By the last 10K even this wouldn't go down and I would switch to H20.

I did stop using it in favor of a custom Infinit blend for both the bike and run last year.  What I realized is that the sole source of sugar, malodextrin was causing me some post effort GI issues which made recovery fueling difficult.  Since I elminated the vast majority of malo from my sports drink I feel better post.  Since I had such a tough race in '12, I can't say whether the switch was a good one or not. I can tell you that I was super sick of the Infinit at the start of the marathon, but gutted it down.   If my new PowerBar gel blasts work in the March marathon, pretty sure that will be my choice for IM '13.

My one caution to you is to watch how much you put in a single solution.  As the density increases you have much greater likelihood of GI distress on the run.

Mike, over time you will learn how to run by perceived effort and then watching the pace will be less important.  Given where you're at, I would say your first mile should build to feel somewhat hard, next couple hard and the last one very hard.  You may consider watching your pace for the first two and then prepare to ratchet it up a notch and go by feel.  My fear is if you are a slave to the watch you may be disappointed if the pace isn't increasing as much as you had hoped.  just prepare to feel like crap the last mile and keep pushing to the finish line.  Don't leave anything out there.

No racing for me!!!

I would say my biggest strength is consistency.  I don't skip workouts just because and I work hard to complete the bike and run workouts as written no matter how frickin' hard they are.  I have gotten better at this over the last year due to a strong commitment to visualization.  I actually spend time going through the workout in my head and know where I need mental help to push through the pain.

My biggest weakness is not applying that same fortitude to swimming.  While I will do the workout, there is this little demon on my shoulder holding me back from really pushing to meet the objective no matter how much visualization I do beforehand.  I am my own worst enemy.  It is a definite shortcoming in my game and I have yet to determine how to change it.

No racing. No elastic laces, ever. (Said in my best "No wire hangers" Mommie Dearest voice...)

Strength: Swimming. How am I building on it?? Ummmmm.... not doing any?

Weakness: Cycling. How am I addressing it? Ummmmm... not doing any?

In my constant quest for Life Balance I am doing what makes me happy, and right now that is run. I'm challenging myself, yet not stressing myself out. I have time for my life commitments, and the occasional lunch with friends, date with my book, and trip to my local brewery. I'm also not exhausted when my kids get home from school (usually), or racing them to bed at night. I'm happy. My triathlon strengths and weaknesses will be there when I am ready for them again... I'm sure of it.

Standard laces for me - I tie them a little loose and never untie them. I just slip the shoes on and off for training and racing.

My gut reaction is to say swimming is my weakness and running is my strength, but I went back and looked at the results from my HIM last year.  Of course, some strategy was involved in getting those results, but they clearly show that bike is my weakness and running is my strength.   My swim is actually pretty good relative to my age group, but I know my form needs lots of work and I've never had confidence for the swim leg.    For the run, I am trying to build up to 5-6 runs per week and get to the 40-50km per week level.  That is work in progress.   For the bike...hmmm....I wanted to build up a stronger base this winter, but I have been holding back and putting my priority on the run.   It is not a matter of available time.  Whenever I try to crank up on both, something gives, i.e., knee or hip flexor pain.   I'm thinking the key is to crank up the bike and keep the intensity in low-mid Z2.

Darin--BIG Congratulations for really adopting the healthy lifestyle!  I think it is terrific.  You are obviously very motivated to succeed.  One question, are you telling us you dropped 17lbs in a month?  I'm no weight loss expert, but that seems like an awful lot in four weeks.  Are you being mindful of nutrition when you create that daily deficit?

X2 on the big congrats and X2 on Suzy's concerns.  Actually, if you do the math, assuming you started on Jan 1 to loose those 17 pounds, you have maintained a 1600 calorie per day difference and that is a lot.

Great job  on the weight loss!  I haven't seen that weight range since high school.  And I'm not saying how long ago that was...