Sdanaher's HIM or IM Group - CLOSED (Page 4)

I have a question about fitting other sports into training.  I play hockey, generally once per week, occasionally twice.  Games usually fall on a day on which, according to my program, I should be doing a bike and a run workout.  So my question is, do you try to do all 3?  If not, which workout do you drop?  I am competitive--I generally go all out at a hockey game.  So should I drop the 'hard' workout (which would be the bike)?  Or do I drop the run because it is my strongest sport (only because I have been doing it much longer than biking)?

Thanks.

Hi Dave,

good to see you are hitting this bike fair and square! This sufferfest certainly does sound like it's a great motivator. So far I've been on the trainer with Superbad and Gangs of New York, sweat was there but in moderate proportions :-)

I am officially in for Ironman 70.3 Mont-Tremblant on Jun 24th, quite a thrill! I have also listed potential other events as inputs for my 2012 plan.

Are you guys done with your 2012 plan yet?

Congrats on your breakthrough on the swim! I know I was thrilled when I finally learned how to properly control breathing while swimming. It feels really nice to be able to swim continually without getting totally winded. Keep at it.

That is awesome. Congrats!

Next stop is 1000yds.

Sounds like you had a major breakthrough.

Kirsten - way to go on the swimming.  I'm getting back to the pool on Friday - should be interesting.  I am going to use this program: http://ruthkazez.com/ZeroTo1mile.html.  Anyone else used this before?

Johnny - have fun with the trail run.  I agree that a treadmill workout is still a workout and 14 degrees is below my comfort level.

My boot camp instructor had to take a job in the city, so no more boot camps, unfortunately.  So today I did some insanity including upper body weight training with some extra pushups and pullups.  There are a lot of different opinions about weight training and whether it benefits tri training or not.  I'm going to keep doing it mainly because I like it and it gives me a break from all the s/b/r.

Have a great day!

I cheated a bit and bought my training plan from triathlongeek.com.

I had great success with their plan last year and decided to buy their long distance (HIM) plan this year. I liked it because these plans offer three different levels of training and are very detailed.

I improved my sprint time by almost 20min. after starting to use them half way through the season.

Okay, I know I should create my own plan, but I would rather spend that time training. Do any of you create your plans using the Joe Friel “Training Bible” book?

Any thoughts on this approach?

I've got a couple thoughts in reply to this... first, what's the real goal in doing this?  You WANT to do both races or you want to do the best you possibly can at Eagleman?  Regardless if your answer it may still be an OK idea.  If Eagleman is supposed to be your super-duper A race, and mentally doing an OLY 4 weeks out messes you up because you need to think of things in terms of periodization, then I wouldn't do it.

If you can approach training a littler differently and still react OK, you'll be fine.  Also, an OLY is a great threshold day.  You are going to be going hard for a while, maybe 50% of the duration of your HIM.  But you'll be going harder in terms of RPE or possibly HR.  Great training day.  4 weeks for recovery from an OLY should be very, very reasonable.

Now, if your goal is NOT to do the best you possibly can at Eagleman, but rather to do both races because you WANT to, then do it and disregard anything else.  You can definitely do it if you train for Eagleman.

Agree, let's avoid race nutrition right now.  As a note, IM race nutrition is pretty different from other distances.  

For just training days, it is just the general eating advice that most people get.  Eat big early and slow down throughout the day.  I'm usually finished 70% of my food by 5pm.  If not more.  

And it isn't just calories.  It is quality of food.  Nuts are dense and high in nutritious things, those are great calories.  Soda is worthless calories.  It won't fill you up nor provide anything your body needs (ok, ok, maybe caffeine ).

I snack on some combination of the following: nuts, homemade granola bars or muffins (make 1x a week and eat all week), fruit.

I eat a big breakfast: maybe 3/4 cup of steel cut oats with some agave nectar, walnuts, and blueberries, a muffin (I make them, so I know they are healthy), orange juice.

On days I do a good job tracking my nutrition my breakfast can be as high as 700 calories - especially during peak IM training.  Sounds like a lot, but I eat well the rest of the day.

Oh, and generally people recommend to eat something after any workout 30m or longer.  It doesn't need to be a full protein bar or anything.  Maybe a glass of choc milk, or whatever makes sense.

Note: Not trying to provide weightloss advice there.

I have the same issue, I play Sunday nights though so usually do whatever I am "supposed" to do anyway, that being said, hockey is a great cardio sport depending on how you play and how many lines you have.  I would say if you avg 2 lines, then I would substitute it for one, if you have 3 lines though, I would just add it to the pile...

One other question/thought.  If, when you are biking, you are working on form and applying pressure all the way around the cycle, then I don't think I would skip this as there is a lot to be gained in "perfecting" this muscle memory...

This is great info. I appreciate you sharing this with the group.

Care to share your muffin recipe?

It looks like I need to focus more on the "more calories early in the day" than spreading it out evenly throughout the day. This seems like great advice. I will give this a go for the next few weeks to see how it feels.

Hi Shane, trying to set my personal objective for my HIM. I know my "meet" will be to finish it! But I would like to set "exceed" and "far exceed" targets, and I have no baseline apart from 2 oly (super flat course)  and 2 hm. Also, this is the first year of this race, so no stats to play with.

I have seen online tools to predict marathon time based on half. Have not found equivalents for tri. Would you have ideas on how to approach this? As for the 'why' for this, just for the personal pleasure of setting targets and measure deviations...

Got my first swim of 2012 in this morning - it went pretty well.  Not very long but that's ok with me.  I guess this kind of kicks off my HIM training plan, at least the swim portion.  Somebody mentioned something about buying a fully made plan vs. creating your own.  I am all for the fully made plan, but a lot of times those plans don't seem to fit my schedule both week to week and as my season gets going.  Another lame excuse is that especially with the BT plans, they almost get too detailed for me (especially the swim workouts) that I don't understand or want to remember all of that.  So I am opting to take specific sport training from different tri and/or running plans.  I mentioned the 0 to 1650 swim plan, then I stole the bike plan from the trifuel site, and I'm probably going to use a Higdon plan for running due to my half marathon at the beginning of the season and marathon at the end.  Any thoughts on this?  Or would I be better using a HIM-specific tri training plan, maybe adding a little more running, then picking up a marathon plan after my last HIM (about 7 weeks then until the marathon)?

Race fever picked up a little this week - my oly race opened up so I am registered and managed to save a whole $5!

I'm using it for the first time this year.  So far so good.  I had to do about 5 or 6 builds to tweak the settings how I wanted them.

In regards to too much detail for swim workouts... don't totally ignore the drill stuff.  It really helps.  They all have reasons... FTP (fingertip drill) is to help you ensure your elbow is high enough outside the water...  CFD (closed fist drill) is to give you a better feel of how to drag your open hand underwater to best create motion... catchup to learn how to glide the best...

etc, etc... important stuff.  I dropped 6 or 7 minutes year over year for the same 140.6 swim split and I swam less the second year, but more drills, especially early season (ie. now).

I'm quite fond of the custom training plan, but as Shane already said, it does take some tweaking. Last year I used the custom plan to train for a HIM and at the end I was in great shape and didn't have any injuries. I like that the plans take the guesswork out of things like peaking and tapering for me. I did vary from my plan when it came to the swim because I got a swim coach last summer. I think if you can get the personal one on one attention from a swim coach that understands triathlon training, you can probably get away with not following the drills listed on the plan. In fact, I really really recommend getting a swim coach if you can, as my swim experience a huge breakthrough.

Did my 25k trail race this morning. It was my first time attempting this kind of distance on trails, but I had a blast. The trails were fairly muddy and the hills were enough to leave my legs in shambles. The race distance was actually 15.8 miles, and I ended up taking a wrong turn and losing 5-6 minutes, but I ended up crossing the finish line 2:53 after the start. It was a great workout and I learned a lot about how to properly run on trails at a longer distance, but the real lesson for me today was nutrition. I debated my strategy for today over the last week, and decided I would use today's information to help me better prepare nutritionally next time. Hopefully recovery goes well and I can be at full training next week.

Wow!  10:45!  That's unheard of in my house.  I mean.. with a 4 year old... to be expected.  My NY resolution was up by 5am M-F and as needed for workouts on the weekend.  

Trainer is a great workout if you push yourself.  Really great place to use an HRM to ensure you are hitting the RPE you want to.