Fast Twitch Tri-FULL (Page 37)

can i hijack here to wish a stellar guy a very, very happy birthday?!  can i?!  can i?!  

well, i just did anyway.  happy birthday, dear friend!!!!  i thought i might find you here  

for your birthday, i arranged for the pats to win.  enjoy it now, cause next week they're going down!  

i thought you were going to be leading a brand spanking new group and i was gonna try to jump in on it.....but, alas, i am way too late.  next one.

training has been just barely better than nonexistent.  barely.  

i started running 3 weeks after having koa (baby girl born in august for those who might be "listening") and ramped up training pretty quickly and aggressively to try to do a fast, competitive half mary in december.  i started having pretty darn bad pelvic pain (who would have thought) and the ART guy told me that i was cruisin' for a bruisin' if i didn't let things rest up.  so, i bailed on the half, took a bunch of time off and have just enjoyed being a new mommy.

i'm slowing getting things started again.  i'm back in the pool and have my long rides back up to over 2 hours.  i'm going to start running again (easily) tomorrow.  

it's the strangest thing, though.  the computrainer must be broken because the power numbers seem way off 

...ack, at any rate.  i hear a baby girl just woke up in the next room so thus begins my bed time battle.  

happy birthday, steve.  i hope it was a great one......and thanks to the rest of you for letting me jump in quickly and say hi to my friend.

Happy birthday Steve.

Today I road my first at home Spinerval.  It turned out to be a 20 minute Time Trial.  I found it to be harder than my twice weekly spinning sessions.  Harder in that I couldn't maintain the same paces and cadence that I do in the classes.  Maybe there's something to be said for the benefits of working out with a group - even on trainers.

When I finished the ride I went immediately onto our treadmill planning to run 6 intervals in 5K but after 6 weeks of no running I found it really hard to do.  Tomorrow I'm planning to run again after swimming and see if its a little easier.  I hope it won't be too hard to get back to where I was last November.

Are there any skiers in our group?  I understand the powder on our local ski hill is waist deep and we're getting more tonight.

We're coming for ya, Brady...we're comin' for ya!

Amazing how fast it all goes away...  I haven't ridden in 2 weeks (my LBS is turning me into a runner, ironically) and swam once in near 2 months (that's my orthopod's doing...), and I'm terrified to see the numbers after I get back to both!

To your last question, I ski.  We're going to Sugarbush for the weekend, and I'm curious to see how the skiing goes after an "off-season" of doing tris!  I suspect that I'll feel better at the end of the run than last season, but I have a 105' run scheduled for Sunday morning, so maybe not... 

Looking forward to getting out again, as we missed the early season DUMPING they got around the holidays.

MIKE (and LISA!!!) --

I think the trick is to pester Flacco enough so that he can't get a thing to Boldin.  If that doesn't work, the the secondary is going to have to play way over their heads to prevent Anquan from stealing the day.  I can't see I'm feeling too confident, although if Brady ahs the kind of day of which he is fully capable, then Baltimore may need more than one Ray Lewis.

What a weekend for football, at least the first three games!  They were all doozies, each memorable in it own way on many levels.  And I was just happy to avoid too much drama during the Pats' game.

New England 45, Baltimore 38 ---- and I'm sticking to it!

MATT & GEORGE & KATE & & & ??? --

Seems to be a lot of that sort of thing -- decline in performance following time-off -- going around here, yes?  I posted yesterday or so about my own sluggish return to running, and I guess I could say clsoe to the same about cycling.  It's just one of those occupational hazards of having a "position" that "allows" vast openings for "vacation-time".  Gotta love it?  Hmmmm.

What I can say without many doubts is that this too (sluggishness, pondeousness, slowness, ad nauseum) will indeed pass.  A few week sof pretty consistent work should solve all our similar woes, as it has for me, always.  HOWEVER, that siad, it doesn't mean I don't worry along about this stage of any off-season.  And even having just said it all above, there is no doubt in my mind that I harbor lots of doubts in my mind.  So while I extoll the virtues of hard work coming up, as well as being patient with yourselves between now and then, I also recognize that for some of you, anyhow, your finger is itching its way towards the panic button.

Same thing with weight, too, where many of us may be peering at scales that read uncomfortably higher than we might like.  For me, right now, I am at about 176-177, up about nine pounds from '12 race wieght.  that's about 5% gain --- and it's about time I started working at not letting it creep any higher.  Yes, yes, yes, every year I get into mid-170s and think the sky is falling.......and as long as I put in the work from April-Aug, the weight tumbles down.   But ------ WHAT IF?!?

GEORGE -

Interesting observations on the diffs between the spinerval and the spin classes, and the possibility that working with a group might help you (i.e., "push" you?).  As a virtual non-group loner workout person, I really can't offer my own thoughts -- other than how races can best bring out the beast in many of us.  But is that the same thing?  Dunno.

I'm not surprised that you had trouble doing the 'mill intervals within a 5km setting following the 20minTT on the bike -- partly because you have been off from running for a while, and partly because both workouts demanded work in the higher zones, which this time of the off-season does not accommodate very well.  While neither workout was long in terms of time and distance, they both required that "upper edge" -- best served when you have a full Base, probably, are further into Build or maybe even Peak phases of your training.

A few "rules" I follow, in no particular order:

• Don't swim after upper-body lifting.
• In the early weeks of an off-season Base period, try not to run and cycle on the same day.
• Swimming can go easily with either run or bike on the same day.
• Limit upper-zone workouts to one-a-day, and in the early off-season -- one a week, period.

Those listed, well, they aren't necessarily hard-and-fast rules, but rather things that have worked well for me over the years.  (The first took me a long time to figure out, as to why my post-lift swims were usually vast disappointments.  It seem spretty obvious to me now, but like I just said.......it took a looooooong time to figure it out!

I'm just a cross-country skiier, and a rudimentary one at that.  That is, i don't skate-ski, AND I have lousy skis and boots and binding AND I wear the lowest-tech clothes I have.  I like the activity of it, just not enough to invest anything into it.  We had a couple of weeks of great x-c skiing up here, but 2.5 days of thaw has reduced our "snowpack" to hardwetgranular stuff -- not much pleasure at all in that stuff!

LISA -

If you are here checking, which I think is unlikely, but just in case...............

As you have seen, no giftie yet for Koa.  i have now passed on three proposed trips to the U.S., each of which I thought would be fine for sending purposes.  And seeing as how mail from Canada to the U.S. is both unreliable and more expensive than it should be, I keep waiting to get to the U.S. to do the mailing.  (Of course, had I sucked it up back around Dec 20, it would've gotten there by now.  DOH!)

ANYHOW, hoping to be down there on Th/Fr/Sa/Su, so should be able to send then; we can only hope!

More later in an email.  Stay tuned!

Steve,

Happy Birthday!

Thanks for all you do.

Remember, you aren't old, just aging up into an easier age group.

Hoosierman

So, here's one to consider around pacing...

HM on Nov 4th was 1:43:30ish.  Just did a 10k Sunday (OK, not a real race, but 0.5 warmup, 6.2 running as hard as I could without the competitive setting of a real race - or someone chasing me, and then a short cooldown).  Did 46:30 - for me, that was the fastest 10k in years (maybe a PR - can't remember my exact PR from the early 90's, but it was in that range).

Felt really good about that (still do, really)!  I've been more run focused, as my LBS is just tooooooo slow for comprehension and still has my bike weeks later, and thought - great, it's paying off!

Then.... I went to the McMillan Calculator, plugged in my 10k time and expected to see at least a slightly faster HM prediction (remember, that was a fast 10k for me, and after months of running!).

Yep - predicted....    1:43:30!!!!!  

Still makes me laugh.

(I know, the 10k wasn't a real race, I have 5 weeks more training for the HM, my legs were probably a bit tired from all the hill runs/sprints in SF the week before, the moon was in the wrong phase, etc. - but still, the EXACT same time?  Cosmic...)

Just thought I'd share a ridiculous moment with y'all. 

That's pretty funny right there!  I think you need to go out and prove it wrong.

Well, I'm mostly back to working out again after slacking during the holidays.  Ran 17+ miles last week, and a 5K on Sunday.  Doing a little swimming, need to get back into the regular routine.  Should have biked last weekend when it was 70F here, but....  

I'm thinking of doing a HM in Feb.  That's about 5 weeks from now.  Not enough time?  Longest run last week was 5 miles.  This will be my first HM.  I want to run the whole thing, but finishing time isn't terrible important.  My training runs are in the 9-9:15 mm range, even the 5 mile run was (9:03 mm), so for me that's a pretty training pace; about a 1-1:30 mm slower than my 5K pace.

I'll have to pick up the long run a mile a week or so instead of 10%, which would only be 1/2 mile increase right now.  Issues?  Concerns?  Or take it easy and look for one later?

MATT -

That is cosmic. Maybe there is something to the New Improved McMillan Run Calculator! I've played around with that thing to give me an idea of what I can expect for my first marathon in May. I think I'm the opposite of you, my times this year seemed to get better for shorter distances than for long, although I did train pretty hard and get faster later in the year.

I plugged each of those race results into the run calculator and got very different marathon predictions (in parentheses). Shave 5 minutes off of that time predicted from the 5K and I've got a Boston Qualifying time! Not likely.

May HM 1:54 (3:59)

Sept. 10K :44:16 (3:27)

Sept. 5K :20:33 (3:20)

MATT -

That's a really fine time for an off-season 10K!  It's 7:30/mile, which is pretty much a righteously good pace even in-season --- and if you could hold it for those extra 6.9 miles, you'd do Hyannis in 1:38:18.  How's THAT sound??

The wild card in calibrating off of McMillan pretty much comes down to those Usual Suspects -- the race-day conditions, and your training.  I think your training must be preet good to get you to a 46:30 in mid-January, so that bodes well for coming in faster than the prediction of ---- 1:43:30.  (You're right, that is a nifty coincidence!)

And yes -- all the things in your final paranthetical sentence apply to what'll happen at Hyannis.  Cosmic, indeed!

DOUG -

Don't rush me, don't rush me!  I'm in for my last go-round in 60-64, thank you very much, and then in '14 I hit the promised land of being an a.g. "pup", once again.  What a double-edged sword that'll be --- the good and bad of hitting 65.  Ack!

WAYNE -

Yay!  You're back!  

My two cents say to wait a while for that first half-marathon.  There a re enough of them around, and the whole experience will be that much better for you if you haven't gone nreathless trying to ramp up the mileage too quickly.  Were I to have tried that leading up to my first h-m, I almost certainly would've injured myself --- but as I have said before, I am hardly "bionic" when it comes to training hard and staying injury-free.

I know how these races can worm into one's brain; my grey matter has been eaten alive in the process of yielding to sweet temptation time and time and time again over the years.  It really did take a long time to respect my body's wishes and not try to engulf and devour my way into any race that tickled my fancy ---- and I can say with complete confidence that I would've spent far less time on the shelf recovering for that, that, and the other thing if I had gotten more prudent way, way earlier.

You performedf a valuable service for yourself in just looking in the mirror and recognizing that your longest run last week was five miles, and that 5 is still a ways from 13.1 (although you could do decent justice to the h-m if you made it up to 11.5 or so as a longest race before a taper).  And then the question is -- what is your longest run in the past two months??  If it's still five miles, then I think you may have too much ground to cover in five weeks.  BUT, if you were at, say 7 miles on Dec 15, then you could probably do a run of 6 miles this week and then leapfrog a 7-miler and proceed to 7.5 or so.  But even that is not fail-proof, and I would still worry about going into the race with too much crammed-in training and not enough all-important rest&recovery time.

As for pace, the 9:03 for five miles is good, and running it at  ~1:30 slower than the 5km pace is a strategy recommended by many -- that is, keep a long run training pace significantly slower than hoped-for race-pace.  I find it really ahrd to dom, but for those who can pull it off it works really well -- whether you planned it that way or not!

Let me know what you think, okay?

KATE -

Almost forgot your question -- but to which I only have a fence-sitting answer, to wit:  I currently have NO races in my sights.  I am very much weighing a few disparate options, which point to having my first truly down-season in ----- forever??  Part of that relieves me, but part terrifies me, and how it all plays out is anybody's guess.  I really think (know??) I need a break......but even saying that with oomph, I cannot promise that i will abide by those feelings.  I pretty much had the same thoughts this time last year ---- and ended up with a ten-tri season.  (What the......?!?!?!?)  And to make that even dopier, seven of the ten came between Sept 2 and Oct 7.  (Did you realize how consumed I can get by racing?!?)

So, stay tuned.  Were I to be aggressive again this year, I do have a tenative schedule in place....but for now it is under menatl lock-and-key, not to be opened until I absilutely positively cannot control my competitve urges any longer!!!

Belated thanks to all for the birthday wishes, and also this reminder:  Only 363 more shopping days until I turn 65!!

----------------------------- "HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT" REVISITED!!!!! ------------------------------

Back on Nov 4, on page 21, I posted a homework assignment that addressed your thoughts on cadence -- how fast your legs move when you run, how many revolutions you do while cycling, and what your arm turnover is when swimming.  Remember?

My plan was to get a short-course-influenced "summary" of cadence in place before Jan 1, just figuring that would be a good time to start working on those issues as many of you chose Jan 1 as a good time to up your activity levels...........but i am now over two weeks behind that goal.  I apologize!  Profusely!!

So, within a day or two I will indeed be posting just a few thoughts about cadence, and I hope they will be useful to you all if you have a designated short-course season planned.   As a teaser, though, I will say that bumping up your cadence works well -- even really well -- for most of us in two of the three disciplines................and I'll leave it at that and let you take an (educated?) guess as to which two those are.

Wheeeeeee!!!!!

Yeah, I kinda figured that.  I could probably do it, but I'd also be ramping up the the injury risk.  The Feb race is fairly flat and one in March was put together by a sadist.    It climbs from mile 9 up to the finish with a brief decent from 10.5 to 11.25, but all of that and more up from there to the finish.  And mile marker 9 is the low point and the start/finish the high point.  What were they thinking?

I have to go back to the beginning of November to find an 8.6 mile run.  There's a few 5+ mile runs in there, but not many.  Should of thought about this in December.  Crud.  If the March run wasn't so rolling and climb at the end it wouldn't be too big a deal.  Mostly I wanted to wrap up this much running time to start spending more on the bike in March.  Hmmm.  Time for Plan B, whatever that is.   

Maybe I'll see if I can search further from home.  Then I can fly myself somewhere fun for the weekend and do a HM there.  Beach trip?  Runs near the beach are generally pretty flat.

10 in a season is AWESOME!  I'm a bit of a bet taker, and I'm not betting on a full down season :-) 

Maybe a few vacation races as an option?  Boulder is a really nice place to race :-)

I keep getting antsy- but then I remember it sleeting at some of the early races last year and I hate cold water.

I'm still trying to put together my plan.  My husband just signed up for a 3 race Xterra series - so those will be fun camping weekends.  I backed away from the Xterra I was going to do when I saw water at that time of year is 55ish based on fishing reports. 

I'll jump the gun here and let you know that I actually worked on the homework assignment over the past couple of months (OK...done patting myself on the back now ).

Measuring cadence on the bike and run are easy for me, because I have the little Garmin gizmos that do it for me.  So, I am constantly reminded of my cadence (it's on the main screen for both disciplines, plus it's in big numbers on Trainer Road). 

For cycling, it's taken a very concentrated effort but I think I've been able to up my average cadence 3-5 RPM since starting this...I am now able to "mindlessly" spin the low 90s where before I was in the high 80s.  I've also done some experimenting on cadence vs. HR at the same wattage...results aren't really conclusive but I can say that I can really FEEL the difference between spinning at 100 vs. grinding at 80 vs. climbing out of the saddle at 70 for the same wattage.  For me, having a full "repertoire" of difference cadences for different situations when moving back outside should provide some improvement.

For running, I've had the unique "opportunity" of starting all over due to some injuries.  Based on what has been discussed in our group and elsewhere, I've been REALLY trying to up my cadence from the mid 70s, which was my "natural" cadence before my maladies started.  So, I'm 6'4", running really slowly (5.7 mph) at 83-85 cadence, and I look like a penguin and it's pretty awkward to say the least.  BUT, over three months I've slowly upped my speed (to 6.0) and distance (about 24 min per session) and I can "mindlessly" run at 78-80 cadence vs. 75ish before.  I just started some "speed" work (at 6.5) and I'm in the mid 80s there.  I've had limited running outdoors but even there I've seen some improvements in cadence. 

I'm interested in how all of this is going to translate into performance, and more importantly for me, injury prevention.