Ironman Coeur d'Alene : Official Thread (Page 37)

3Aims - 2010-12-20 11:08 AM Anyone with knowledge of the course think 80mm wheels are too deep given the 3,000 feet of climbing each loop?  I train on 40mm wheels and my wife talked about getting me some 808s for Christmas.   

Second, I have a 52/38T, 12-25T cassette now.  Is a 12-27T the best choice for CDA? 

T in Liberty Lake - 2010-12-23 8:07 AM

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated so cancel the search party and put away the blood hounds.  If anyone was starting to plan a good old Irish wake for me you can keep those plans rolling, June 27^th will work well for me.

My log is accurate, I have not worked out since mid-November.  The kids are healthy and my marriage is strong.  However, mentally I am beat up.  I’m going through a very rough patch with work right now (that I cannot post about).   I’m not worried about getting fired but it’s sucking the fun out of life.  80++ hours per week and I’m not sleeping well.  Something had to give. 

Thanks for the concern, I will try to check in more often.  The big push is almost over, I hope to be back at it soon.   But for now (5:00am) I’m at work…      

ironeric2010 - 2010-12-22 2:37 AM

A lot of the pro's at  Kona (including Lieto) were wearing white arm sleeves.  I remember hearing during the live broadcast that these were something like the Craft Compression Arm Cooler which are somehow supposed to enhance evaporation, and possible reflect more sun. 

Not the same as the more standard arm warmer sleeves.

JoshKaptur - 2010-12-22 7:23 PM
I have DeSoto arm coolers and will vouch for their effectiveness... and I am generally VERY skeptical of the claims of clothing to do the miracles it says it does.  Once you are sweating faster than evaporation (for me anything above 50 degrees, especially if there's any humidity), I honestly think a tee shirt is just as good as technical fabric.

But the arm coolers really did FEEL cool during my trials in training and during IMLP for me.  They come in black and white and I've had people I swear the black ones are just as cool, which means they work via evaporation not so much reflecting heat/light.  But I'd rather play it safe and have white ones.  If it's not humid, and if you dump some water on them at each aid station on the bike, it will definitely keep you cooler.  I do not wear them for the run, though might consider it if I was racing in a particularly hot/sunny but dry race (to keep the sun off of me and keep me cool).  I do not like messing with sunscreen any more than necessary on race day.

JoshKaptur - 2010-12-22 7:35 PM

Any uphill where you bottom out your gears and spike your power but still can't maintain the same cadence you would have been riding on the flats will hurt your marathon.  Any downhill where you spin out on a 50+12 combo you'd be better of just tucking into the most aero position you can maintain and letting gravity do all the work.

It's no surprise by this point (since I've preached this sermon a few times) I feel pretty strongly about this.  All I can ultimately say is that I plan to ride 5:10 or faster at CdA, and I'll be doing it on a 50/34 + 12/26 or 11/28 (I will bring both with me and decide last minute since I won't be able to preview the course).  I plan to run 3:15 or faster after doing that.

ironeric2010 - 2010-12-28 6:17 PM Wow...that's insanely fast.  Boggles my mind. 

What are your plans relative to early spring racing?  I've been thinking about a May 15 HIM (rev3 knoxville ).  But am afraid it's too close to CDA. 

ironeric2010 - 2010-12-28 3:17 PM Wow...that's insanely fast.  Boggles my mind. 

What are your plans relative to early spring racing?  I've been thinking about a May 15 HIM (rev3 knoxville ).  But am afraid it's too close to CDA. 

phatknot - 2010-12-29 5:38 AM I have to make a confession. After coming off of a solid IMFL, I went back to work asap, which was great. Banged out a sub 40 10k not too long afterwards, and was sneaking in hard efforts on the bike against coach advice. I pretty much have stayed away from the water though. Then we came away for a 2.5 week holiday and I caught a flu bug that had me down for 5 days straight. All of a sudden I started rethinking my decision to line up IMCDA after a November IMFL.

I am now mostly past the flu bug (darn those swine in England!) and am now starting to come back to the idea of going through the build for IMCDA. But it is not coming back easy. I think I need more downtime, but then there is the money part and the traininng part which I'll probably do anyhow. So I may just go ahead, hold off cancelling as long as possible and probably bang out the day on lowered expectations.

I never thought I would experience burnout, but that flu bug forced me to confront the possibility. Figured it was worth a bit of mention on here. Also, I am trying to be more mindful of the burnout issue as I plan future races, letting my brain not my heart do the leading.

My hiatus was pretty difficult.  Although I was coming off a bad race, I'm pretty much addicted to aerobic exercise.  I had tremendous trouble sleeping the entire time, and my doctor thinks my total break from triathlon resulted in some chemical changes in my body.  I was used to twice daily endorphin doses.  But I was also mentally fatigued, and knew that if I had to start KQ training this winter in that state of mind that I would eventually burn out.

So I took 4 weeks off.  It was supposed to be two originally, but I made a rule for myself - that I wouldn't start back up if I wanted to.  In other words, I had to wait for the desire to train subsided before I would let myself (and now make myself) do it again.  I would have LOVED to go for a trail run after two weeks.  I forced myself not to.

Basically I concluded that as long as my brain was craving it, I wouldn't let it have it.  That took 4 weeks, until all the sudden I was feeling like a couch potato and didn't want to workout.  That was the sure-fire evidence that I was mentally recovered, and that I needed to workout.

Even after only 2 runs I'm really liking what I did.  Yeah I lost some fitness and yeah I gained a little weight... but I feel like a million bucks and even after two 3 mile runs, I'm able to picture the IM finish and mental race prep has already started.

Next year I will be even more conservative with my race schedule... I know I take grief for how little I race.  Only part of that is me being cheap.  The larger concern is that races take so much out of me, and it's really hard for me to recovery from them mentally and physically.  I got sucked into doing too many post-IM races this year, and the result was burnout.  I was racing when I didn't want to simply because I had paid the entry fee.

When I took my hiatus, it was because I was questioning whether I even wanted to do triathlon next year.  That was irrational, because I loved doing it this year and just weeks before that was having trouble sleeping at night because of how excited I was about CdA next year.  The fact is I love this sport, but was not appreciating the toll serious training and racing can take on you mentally.

I lost some physical fitness in the past month, and I'll need to be smart about building it back up.  It did allow some very early warning signs of injury to heal up completely too, which is always a good thing.  But best of all, I'm mentally in much better shape then when I signed off.  I'm back to thinking like an ironman, and it only took 3 miles to make it happen.  Whereas if I had run 3 miles at any point during the two weeks I originally planned to take off, it would have sucked me further into quitting the sport.

All that to say, strange as it sounds, I trained really hard at not doing anything in the last 4 weeks.  I'm really expecting it to pay off for my upcoming ironman

PS - slept like a baby last night too!

ps.  CDA and the surronding area is a great family spot.  If you were going to take a race easy and use it as a family fun trip I would do it.  We are going to Glacier for several days after.  Just a glorious part of the country

kstater39 - 2010-12-29 9:54 AM

Phat, I agree with Josh.  ...

ps.  CDA and the surronding area is a great family spot.  If you were going to take a race easy and use it as a family fun trip I would do it.  We are going to Glacier for several days after.  Just a glorious part of the country

katachapin - 2010-12-29 1:05 PM This may have been discussed in the previous 46 pages, but I couldn't find it!

Anybody shipping a bike through the Airline and trying to get it down to CDA via shuttle or rental car?  I'm wondering what the best option is in regard to if the shuttle company will charge an arm and a leg for a bike box last minute or if u all think just renting the larger SUV is a better option.

The shuttle company up there is Payless Airport Shuttle and I haven't called them yet to find out their rates.

Thanks,
Kata