SBR Utopia - OPEN (Page 4)

Geez, you guys are killing it already.  I saw 4 pages of posts and couldn't believe I fell this far behind so soon.  Then I got to page 4 and realized 3/4 of it was Rusty's bio. 

Let's just say that 2013 is going to start with me eating healthier - I've given in to the glutony and just plan to roll with it for the next week.  Why stop now!  Got in a 2 hour ride in -3C weather.  It was the wind that was the tough part, lucky for me I rode straight into it on the way out and got to enjoy it for the way back.

4,450 at Masters, and it wasn't too bad. I paced it a touch slower because the send-off was noticeably tighter today. Could have gone faster, but oh well, still feels like some good honest work.

I'm trying to work out how to best approach IM/Stroke night for Masters. We can do whatever when it says Stroke. Many of the others like to rotate through the strokes or alternate something like br/bk throughout. I'm of the mindset of doing bigger blocks of a single stroke than so much switching. The thinking being is to learn and develop something well instead of just kind-of doing everything. So I'll have say  backstroke dominate the stroke choice, if not all of them. Going to work in more fly, but for that I'd put it together in blocks. Like say on a 6x50 section, 1,2,4,5 fly and 3 & 6 something else. Since I can't do fly the entire time yet, bunch blocks like that so I can get in more fly overall and still have it be focused. Thoughts?

Ben, I think that's a great way to approach it.  

For a 6x50 fly set, I'd be tempted to do 1,3,4,6 fly and 2 & 5 something else so you can finish the set on the stroke you were focusing on.

I've done both.  If there is a group of us and we swim at similar speeds, we've done sessions where we work on drafting or just plain trying to beat the others to the other side of the lake.  If I'm mostly on my own from a speed perspective I may swim towards a target but do some higher bursts of speed to simulate 50s or 100s.  

Swimming in the ocean with surf and waves to contend with can be challenging enough so in conditions like that I would probably just swim.

Hey Melissa - sorry you are having trouble sleeping. Typically most of my OWS is like what Arend describes, but last summer was a lot different due to my knee injury I was working through  - I could swim all I wanted but could not push of the wall/flip turn, so almost all of my swimming for 3 months was done in open water. I did a lot of modified pool workouts, with the primary difference being that I swam everything by time rather than distance. My coach also had me take advantage of being in open water to both recognize and work on correcting some of my imbalances.Every workout was different, but here are a few examples:

A muscular endurance set:
Bring your swim equipment with you to the lake.
Warm up 10 minutes. Toss some drills in there in that 10 min.
Put fins and a snorkel on and do 6x point-to-point kicks in a streamline position with each effort lasting about 2:00. Lightly descend 1-3, 4-6
Sculling: 6x with a buoy and snorkel. Do 20 front sculls 20 mid sculls, and 20 rear sculls straight into 20 freestyle strokes. Moving your hands out-and-back counts as one. You don't have to count exactly.
Paddles and buoy (no paddles if the water is rough). 10 min swim slowly building from beginning to end.
Swim EZ 2 minutes.
Main Set: 4x a 3 minute easy swim 30
seconds rest
Swim butterfly as far as you can before your stroke completely falls apart (maybe about 1 minute).
Warm down well.

This is a set done on a weekend when the cove we swim in actually has race buoys set up:
Warm up 10 minutes, then do 4x different drills from a point to another point (maybe 100 yards apart if there's anything like that)
Swim back between each drill (so basically the set would be 8x 100s. Odds drill, evens swim)
4x ~5 -7 minute or 350-500 yard swims (depends on the course) Descend 1-3, then hold number 4. Make numbers 3 and 4 as hard as you can go.
Warm down 10 min REALLY stretching it out on the way back in.

A shorter recovery swim after a high volume day:
Warm up for about 10 minutes
10 minutes of drill work in open water. Alternate between a drill for about 1 min and swimming for about 1 min.
10 minutes of plain old easy swimming.
5x "fast" point-to-point swims. Pick two points that take about 2 min to swim between. Swim fast in one direction, then EZ back to the start. Do that 5 times.
Cool down 5 min or so.

The snorkel stuff was hysterical at first - I did A LOT of swimming in circles, and was always disoriented when I finally looked up and I was nowhere near where I thought I would be - I was actually usually completely turned around backwards. In fact the first day I did sculling with a snorkel in the lake a guy actually asked me what I lost and did I need any help looking for it... I got much better at sculling a straight line by the end of the summer...

I guess it depends on how big the open water is and how comfortable you are in it.  I am not a fan of gassing out when I can't reach/touch.  What I usually do is try to go negative if it is out and back or if I am swimming a loop really pour on the last 1/2 or 1/4 of the loop depending on distance. 

Got in a run with a friend this morning which was exactly what I needed since I've barely run at all this month. About to hit hot yoga knowing I won't do anything tomorrow.

Today is so much fun! The kids are super excited!  Hope everyone has a great day!

Adrienne (Asalzwed) Salty, hey you, whatever you want me to be …

Notes: I have always been involved in sports. But it was always the “weird” ones like hockey, pole vaulting and snowboarding. I raced boardercross between the ages of about 11 and 16,   (think motocross but on a snowboard and the rules being, “Anything goes except punches to the face but accidents happen.” ) pole vaulted in HS, played hockey in college. After college I was pretty overwhelmed by life and more or less stopped exercising, became depressed and generally unhappy with my life. I decided I needed to make some changes, specifically to my diet and become more active. I read everything I could get my hands on about nutrition and began logging my food and making changes. Also, a friend encouraged me to sign up for a triathlon. I began swimming, running and biking and discovered I really loved running. I found peace when I ran. Also, I loved how simple it was. I randomly won entry to a half marathon and REALLY became hooked. I have now been running for about a year and a half and have set some pretty lofty goals of qualifying for the Olympic Trials Marathon in 2016.

Family status: I’m 28 and my partner and I own a home in West Seattle. We have a pug and 3 cats (who are all grey by coincidence.) I am a retail designer for a larger corporation in between all the running I do  I heavily believe in a balanced life. Although I am very dedicated to running I always make time for friends, family and having a good time in general. This is both extremely important AND extremely challenging. 

Current training: I’m in full on marathon training where I am running between 70-85 miles a week. I bicycle commute and swim occasionally but that will be limited until this cycle is over(April.) I have some decisions to make in regard to going to AG Nationals. ALSO I’m planning on climbing Mt. Rainier ( 14,210’ ) sooooo we shall see if I can fit it all in

2012 Races:

January-Ragnar Miami

February- Cupid Undie Run, Love em or Leave em 5K

May- Bloomsday 12K, Rock ‘n’ Roll Portland Half-Marathon

July- Light at the end of the tunnel marathon

August- Danskin Sprint Tri

September- Iron Girl 5K, Magnuson 10K

October- Portland Half-Marathon, Salty’s Half-Marathon

November- Mustache Dache 5K

December- Jingle Bell Run 5K

2013 Races:

February- 3K Snowshoe Race

Lake Sammamish Half-Marathon (?)

April- Boston Marathon

May- Bloomsday 12K

June- Seattle Rock ‘n’ Roll Half-Marathon

July- Mt. Rainier Summit

August- AG Olympic Distance National Championship (WI) or Danskin Sprint Triathlon

Fall Marathon TBD

Body Composition: Since I decided I needed to make some changes in my life I have lost about 40 pounds and have gotten my body fat percentage down to about 18%

I can offer you no-nonsense advice. Actually, I can give you a lot of nonsense as well but that is a separate category. 

Then what's the point of a holiday dinner!!

That is the difference between someone who likes to swim and someone who doesn't. I'd have shrugged, said it's not my day to swim and headed for the closest Starbucks

Bah ha ha. MUAH HA HA HA HA HA!

I hooked you in. Oh, goody.

In somewhat triathlon-related news ... I'm officially representing Indonesia at IMNZ (this really doesn't mean much to anybody but a bunch of endurance-crazy Indonesians, crazy that way because some of us infected them). Also, Indonesia's never had an Ironman so ... well ... they're just going to have to go with the fat slow crazy one . Anyway, there's dough coming in from the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce, the Indonesian Embassy in New Zealand, and some kind of international health-products company (I'm a little foggy on the details of that one, but I'm kind of a ho, so I'll take what I can get).

Hopefully this can translate into dough for other Indonesians to do crazy cool tri stuff ... oh ... very sadly, the Arafura Games got cancelled by the Australian Government for 2013 so I won't be taking any athletes to that would have been the perfect venue for some of our young, smokin-fast up-and-comers to start putting their international cred together.

mndymond - 2012-12-25 2:51 AM Thanks Rusty and Arend!! Will try some of those ideas out!!

x2

Pretty much any endurance main set can be adapted to OW as well--except that the recovery isn't treading water or being in the shallow end, it's easy free (or breast, or whatever). Helps to have a watch with an interval timer, but it's not necessary (you can count in your head for short "recovery" periods).

Something like:

Increasing-effort 10-minute warmup ending in effort = (HIM/IM swim pace/whatever).

2 x (5min hard, :30s easy)

3 x (4min hard, :20s easy)

4 x (3min hard, :10s easy)

Also, holding steady at different SPMs can be helpful in open water.

Sometimes I just go swim with joy, freely; other times in OW it's more structured.

That is a vomitous yet excellent idea.

Also, Ben, does that mean you can do freestyle in between as well?

Yes, it does. We all tend to do one of the other 3 strokes when it says Stroke though. There is usually freestyle mixed in places as well. This was just a subset we had the other day, composed of 6 total interval subsets of 300 each, and alternating free & IM/stroke each subset. The entire main set is normally 1600-1800 on IM/ST night, plus additional warm-up or skills work to get ~2,500-2,700 total.

I should probably do *less* stroke in my workouts, but ... anyway, can't recall what you said a few pages ago, I know you were looking for benefits of the other strokes but did you say you weren't particularly familiar with any of them?

I do like your idea of focusing on one stroke at a time. If you're okay with not-really-focusing on another non-free stroke for some of the repeats in between, that's great. Otherwise, I'd recommend something like (just for example, from yours) 1 fly / 1 free or if you can do it, 2 fly / 1 free.

I had some idea from piecing things together and from doing stroke/IM workouts over the summer. Arend & Shane explained it more so. Should have a rather good idea now.

I do want to get more fly in, and that's what I'll likely have to do for it. I can do ok with it starting off, but lose form rather quickly and everything tends to go downhill. It'll go a lot better when I can get the rhythm to stick better. I can't kick worth anything (dolphin or otherwise), so working on that whenever I can.

Two things, snowboarding is not crazy, and let me know if you want any tips regarding Rainer.  One thing I can confidently say about climbing Rainer is - Do not unclip from your rope team to wander off and go to the bathroom.  The odds of falling into a crevasse increase greatly apparently...  The next year my team wouldn't let me unclip, like I was even going to think of it.  Once in a crevasse is enough thank you very much

Yeah, I don't get it....

Meal #1 is done for me, I feel totally gross and can't wait to do it again tomorrow!

Fly is a fantastic stroke if you can do it properly.  It takes some strength and timing and you are right, when it goes bad, it goes really bad.  I've been doing it a bit more lately and have really enjoyed it (until it goes bad....).  

Keep at it, it's a beautiful powerful stroke when you get the hang of it.

Welcome to the new faces.  I'm in for another go 'round.

Name:  Marshall

Short Story:  In 2009, I found myself a fat, lazy, high blood pressured father of two young kids.  My primary care physician essentially told me I needed to get it together . . .  soon (I love her).  I started with a couch to 5K a run group at the local running store and progressed up to a really slow HM in late 2010.  Started swimming in late 2010.  I was DFL in my AG at my first duathlon in 2011.  I think it was like 16mph.  I did a few sprints in 2011 and ended up with a Olympic.  Racing in 2012 was just 3-4 sprints, but saw big times improvements from 2011.  Currently battling a lot of foot pain.  According to the chiro, my feet are "designed for pain."  Awesome.  Riding a CAAD10.5. 

Family Status:  Married (wife races) with 2 kids.  6 and 3.  The 6yo has had the fastest swim split in his triathlons this summer and won a few.  I am constantly reminded that I have not.  The 3yo is going to be a better cyclist than all of us.  She's fierce.

Current Training:  No real plan.  Target 3x bike (two group ides 30 & 50 and one computrainer at the LBS), 3x Masters swim (these were the good ol' days, not swimming no and need to start) and 5x run.  Really trying to run 20mpw consistently and let that creep up to about 25 over the next few months.

2013 Races:  8 mile trail run in early February.  Not sure after that.

Weight loss goals:  I've dropped 70lbs since I started running.  6'4" and holding around 172. 168 is the target.

What makes me a good mentee:  I have plenty of room for improvement.