Dirk's Junkie group - CLOSED (Page 40)

Great job Dirk and Allison on your race!

Allison that time is a couple seconds faster than my PB!

Dirk and I are in the same age group and he'd be another of those "fast guys" that are standing around chatting and already recovered when I finish.

Good job on all the workouts, everyone. Have a fantastic day!

I totally agree!  I was following it, very exciting!  I postponed my run this morning because it was 14 with a 20 mph wind, so I got to watch the race unfold online.  I also got Kate's bike built up, so she's pumped to get outside.  Too bad the front derailleur clamp is too small.  I have to fix that this week.  

I got a longer run in today.  6.4 miles.  I had that weird thing where after about 3.5 miles I started feeling all wobbly and felt like my legs weren't attached or something.  It's very strange and I can't quite put my finger on it.  The first few miles I felt really good too.  Holding my HR below 150 and cruising along at about a 9:15 - 9:30 pace.  Very comfortable (besides the wind blowing 20 mph and it being so darn cold!) and feeling good.  I think I may have over dressed and I got hot, even though I didn't feel it because my face was literally freezing.  I wish I took pictures of the icicles I had on my beard.  Pretty awesome.

I hope everyone had a great weekend.  I see people are getting good training in and some swim lessons to boot!  This is music to my ears!

Dirk, how's that watch treating you so far?  Can you directly upload your workouts to BT with it?

Haha, that was a killer workout.  I thought it was a misprint when I first saw the intervals.  I cheated and rested 3 minutes though!  Great job battling through it, and to do this the day after a 10 miler - serious HTFU.

I'm also excited about Lance's race.  It was interesting to read this quote from him:

"I have been running a lot," he said. "It's no secret that's the way you're competitive here. That's the way you win races. I said the other day, I think you ride for show and run for dough, and I mean it. At one point in my life I was a decent runner, so I just need to get back and rediscover that. I need to stick with it, get the repetition in, lose some weight, work on my stride, stay consistent and stay injury free."

Notice 'stick with it, get the repetition in, lose some weight....stay consistent and stay injury free'

Sounds like all the same things all the rest of us are focusing on.  Seems like our mentor is at least as smart as whomever is coaching Lance!

Ouch - great workout!

Ok- I need your help to keep me realistic. I am finally feeling recovered from injuries enough to start rebuilding my fitness. Of course I'm all gung ho and want to do everything at once. Build power/speed/whatever on the bike, build my running mileage back up etc. I need some focus! Where to start? Help!

My little test workouts - 1.5 ride on Saturday (longest I've stayed on the bike in months) and my back held up great. 3 mile run yesterday and my foot did better than it has in months. I was slow, very slow, but I felt really good so that is all I care about right now.

Running injuries have haunted me for years so I will be happy just running a little bit. Should I add a couple of shorter runs this week - like 1.5 or 2 miles? Then I'm thinking about starting Jorge's plan on the bike and maybe even learning about HR training.

I should be able to get back in the pool this week too.

What do you think?

Never sure what will work for any particular individual and their circumstances...the usual recommendation I give for someone that struggles with injuries is to reintroduce running a little bit each day (or 6 days).  It sounds reckless to run every day doesn't it?  That's because you don't know how little running I'm talking about.  You have to pick the number....but when I had to reintroduce running after my last really good injury I only ran for 5 minutes per day. 

Some people think that's too little, but at least it's 6 days per week.  And that works out to 30 minutes.   You could pick 10 minutes.  The point is for it to be short enough that the stimulus (or trauma!) of running is spread out over the whole week.  If you follow that plan and do it correctly your weekly mileage will be higher in 2 months than you would have expected.

I don't see any reason to hold you back on the cycling and the swimming.  Just let your back be your guide on the bike.  But for your foot, I say throttle back the running according to my recommendation.

Each week, you reevaluate that running quota.  If you felt 100% awesome after the first week at 5 minutes, you might be able to jump past 10 to 15.

x1000.

I can't agree more strongly with this running advice.  I'll give you my experience.  I came off a injury riddled year, and just wanted to get back to running and not hurting.  Jeff gave me this same advice.  I thought he was a little nuts  - run 6 days a week?  I got hurt running only 3!  But, he seemed passionate about it and knew his stuff, so I ran 15 minutes as a max starting in November, 6 times a week, took a long term approach and slowly added minutes every week.

As I added time, I left three runs at only 15 and added a few minutes to the other runs.  Slowly.  All my running was at an easy pace.  Now it's Feb, and my long run Saturday was 1:41 and I still have no pain.  My logs are accurate and up to date if you want to see the progression.  I'm still running all easy pace since I'm still progressing time.  Once I reach my time max, I may talk about speed work, but not until I've hit the max time I can devote to running.  I'm pretty close, btw, so I'll be asking soon.

I've also been following Jorge's bike plan at the same time, which is basically three hard bike interval workouts a week.  He adds an optional long ride for those on bike focus, but I'm on a running focus. Also, on weeks when my legs aren't feeling good, I cut down to only two hard interval bikes since I really want to work on the run.

Figuring this stuff out may be my favorite part of this sport.

First let me say I'm jealous, but in a good way. Congrats!

Last year, after my first recovery, I took it real slow coming back to the run. I would walk 10 minutes, run ten minutes and walk another ten minutes. When I felt ok after (no additional pain) then I would decrease my walking and add more running little by little. I believe it's all up to you. You know what your body is telling you and when you come off an injury you tend to be very tentative or try to do too much. I think finding that happy medium between them is key, but ALWAYS listen to your body.

As far as biking, personally I always tend to go harder. I fit my bike to my condition (injury) to a confortable position. A position that allows me to keep a medium to high level pace. It may not be aero in the beginning, but I believe comfort makes a happy rider. As I built my base up more I would then start moving my bike set-up slowly back to a more aero position. As for as Jorges plan, I have read it and really like it, but I still haven't had the balls to really go for it. I think his plan and workouts are for a healthy and well developed rider. Just my opinion.

Take your time PLEASE! If anyone can relate to you, I can. I know we are antsy to jump back in balls out after dealing with the physical restrictions as well as the mental aspect. The brain says "Hmmm... I hear your body is feeling good. Lets kick some a$$"  I find sitting down and writing out a progressive plan of each of the disciplines with my limitations and my expectations helps put things into perspective.

I am soooo happy for you!!!

Be smart and safe and I know you are on your way to a great year of training and competition.

That is just what I was looking for.  I've read a lot on BT about running more but coming off of injury I just wasn't sure how to go about it. 5 - 10 min a day sounds good.

So no 2 or 3 mile run at all? I think those runs are mostly just to get me out of the house for a while .

Jeff, I know you are a trail runner and had some advice about trail shoes a few weeks ago. I found some I am thinking about ordering: http://www.runningwarehouse.com/descpageWRS-SPEREW3.html

What do you think of these? Bonus that they are on a really great sale price right now!

I think Jeff's point was for you to do a very thorough self evaluation to determine where to start.  Once you have assessed your injury and the history of said injury you can proceed but progress very slowly.  If you think you are capable of running 10-15 minutes 6 days in row, then start there and run that everyday.  But it will be very important to do a daily evaluation of your injury, or lack thereof, before heading out on the next run.

For the cycling and Jorge's program, I would pretty much hit that as it is written depending on how many rides you would like to do each week.  The first few week's are more or less an adaptive schedule to get you ready for the real work in the following months.  This is a good place for you to begin learning the HR method of training too.  Use the HR plan for the cycling.  Warren has a really good plan for the cycling plan while doing a run focus.  I would think you might be able to do both (Jeff's running and Jorge's) at the same time because the time aspect for the run will begin pretty short.

Thanks for this Stan. I know I need a reality check and that you can relate to where I'm coming from. I've spent so many months just sweating enough so I can eat chocolate . It's like I'm coming out of hibernation or something. I agree about the bike position too. Right now I'm still riding on my road bike. The angle of my hip feels really tight on the tri bike since my clumsy bike fall.

 I would like to get 3 bike rides a week for sure and maybe 4 if I don't start to hate my bike . The HR stuff will be a challenge for me but I'm ready to learn something new.

Daily evaluation of the injury - now that will be the other part I'm not very good at. I don't know about all of you but once the endorphins get going I always think I'm feeling great. Then an hour or so after the run I pay the price!

Dina, I think we are all of the same sort as you.  It is really good for us to be able to dole out our own advice to others, but to actually take it and follow through personally is really difficult.  We all desire to feel those endorphins and push through pain to a goal that lies ahead.  What's important is that we arrive at the goal at all.  Sometimes the discipline to rest and recover has the same importance as the discipline we apply to our training.  Without that recovery there is only one destination, injury.

I'd say make sure you get those 3 bike in if you can.  Like I said, Warren has a pretty good approach to handling the bikes.  Depending on your injury, you may have to really work to determine whether you are fatigued or just sore from the bikes.  The Jorge's plan is pretty brutal!

Definitely.  Thanks for adding this.  The self-assessment is daily!  And it may be minute-by-minute while training.  It's so important not to relapse.  When you are hurt, the time you take off is an investment in healing.  I see each day off from training as an emotionally painful necessity.  After putting in all that time to allow healing, the last thing I want to do is waste that investment by having to start healing all over again.

You may be fine to start with 5, 10, 15...but you need to evaluate that yourself.  Maybe 5 the first day, 10 the second day.  But don't be afraid to 'waste' a week at 5 minutes to find out you can do more.  Be safe.

Keep this in mind.  You aren't just doing this for the cardiovascular conditioning, or the muscular endurance.  A very real part of this running is to condition the tendons and bones to the running stresses too.  The cardio and muscular systems adapt much more quickly than bones and tendons do.  That's why injuries happen so much, and why they are perhaps even more common in triathletes.  One of the key reasons for daily running is specifically for the purpose of a gradual, yet continual conditioning stimulus for bones and tendons.

I haven't seen the shoe in person, but looking at the shoe's specs, I see all the things I would hope to see in a good trail shoe.  Keep in mind that it's a lightweight trail shoe.  It would be good for off-road racing, but whether it works for long off-road training runs will depend on personal factors.  Me personally...I find something like this fits the bill.  Off-road I don't find that I need a ton of cushioning and a lot of cushioning would make ankle-twisting a problem.

In short, I think these shoes look like Saucony's answer to the Adizero XT that I use and love.

Running Warehouse has a liberal return policy, so if you get them and find that they aren't what you had hoped you are only out shipping. 

I'm a happy camper and wanted to share with the group.  I scored a 910xt at 25% from Road Runner Sports.  My wife has always bought her shoes there and has some VIP membership.  They sent her an email for 25% anything in the store, and since she didn't need new shoes, she asked if I needed anything.

I checked and sure enough saw the 910 on their site, but assumed it would be excluded from the offer.  I had to call to redeem it, and the offer was only for one item and not a code so I couldn't share it with you guys - it would have been awesome to have a huge purchase of 25% off stuff. 

Anyway, it's ordered but I have to wait until Mid-March.  Maybe having a toy like that will get me to swim in the pool!

Oh man!!! YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!?  That's awesome!  Both of you guys?  I need feedback about the swim data asap!!

The only reason I want one of these is for the Garmin software.  Right now I can upload my workouts to training peaks, but I can't analyze the data and tinker with it.  I love to tinker.  Unless I buy an upgrade to training peaks of course...which I don't use very often anyway.

I've been up really late for me the last couple nights.  Yesterday had no time at all for training and I'm right on the edge of coming down with a big head cold.  I haven't done any real rigorous workouts this week because I know it could push me over the edge.  Hopefully a good night's sleep tonight and I'll be good to hammer.  Another long weekend without the bike coming up, so I need to put the time in today tomorrow and thursday.

I'm jealous of both you all - I'd love a 910. I use my phone and MapMyRun. I'd like a GPS to race with because I'm a little like Jonathan and love to dig through data. I can't take the phone with me to race though.

I'm glad people are beginning to recover from their injuries. I got 1300yrds in the pool today and it was probably the best swim I've had. I even tagged an extra set of 4x25 on the end (was supposed to be 1200). I was able to focus on form all the way through and not worry too much about breathing.

For those who ARE struggling with breathing, try and focus on only taking in what you need, not what you want. my problem was that I was taking in more air than I actually needed which destroyed my ability to correctly control my breathing.

I was a singer for a band in college and one of the things I learned was at the end of every note your lungs should be empty - it's the same with swimming. If you breathe out all the way, your breathing will feel FAR more comfortable. However, to do this properly, you have to focus on not sucking in too much air while you're breathing in - take what you need and NO MORE. Otherwise, buoyancy and breath control both suffer, making you more uncomfortable and making you feel like you need more air than you actually do.

I hope that makes sense - I'm in a little bit of a rush, but that really was an awesome swim!

Have a great day everyone!

Thanks for the great advice everyone! I really see the merit in starting slow. In fact, I kept my spirits up walking for the last month by telling myself it was a little step to introducing my feet and ankles to the road again.

Back in the pool today. Took Dirk's advice from my swim video and worked on my glide. I counted strokes and I was shocked - 21 strokes for a length of the pool. Way off - I used to be around 16 - 18. That explained a lot but I know it was just compensation for the back pain. Shorter strokes did not cause as much pain.  My last 3 50's were 29 strokes for a lap or around 14-15 for a length (which was exaggerating the glide).   

Wow, that's a great big difference during your swim session.  14-15 SPL is darn good.  You obviously know your way around the water.  Is the back OK now when you swim?  Do you flip turn?  And is that better or worse for your back?