Dirk's Junkie group - CLOSED (Page 42)

OK, I know it may be a little rough to read, but above are my thoughts for getting to my HM on April 22.  Too aggressive?  I have been holding steady at 20-25 mpw and feel no issues or soreness so I think the base is there.  My thoughts are that before my last HM I didn't have enough long runs so I wanted to make sure I had several runs longer than race distance!  For the Tuesday/Thursday longer runs I will most likely have to split them into 2 seperate runs, time is just no available during the week for a straight 2 hour run.  All runs will be easy pace except for Friday (?) where I will throw in some tempo work.  Also considered making Thursday the tempo run, and then Friday would be another recovery run.  I will continue bike on Monday/Wednesday.  No holds barred, tear it up!

Update Time!

Little trouble on the home front. Wife was in the ER twice the last couple days with TIA symptoms. They did an MRI and found no blood clots in the brain. Did some blood tests to check electrolytes and other things and came out ok. She was talking garbled with blurred vision and headaches and a couple other symptoms. She has a history of High Blood Pressure and anxiety problems. They tweaked her meds and is doing ok. I guess it's time to really lay into her a$$ about her health and get her on track. I've pretty much left it up to her to do what is right, but she isn't taking the initiative on her own. It's really tough watching someone you love not care or put off what is needed to do to make ones self healthy. Especially since she has been hounding me for the past year and a half to do the same.

On a good note, I'm feeling soooo much better. I have the next 2 days off and I'm going to relax and get some things done around the house that need attention. Then... it's back to training! I'm excited. Tomorrow I'm going to the pool and look into a swim coach. There's so much more for me to learn. With the weather the way it is, the drainer is my only option to get a ride in. Later in the week I'm going to start working into running. Man it feels great to get back to training.

I have a new Ortho, but don't see him till March 13th. I just hope something new can come of it.

Anyway, thanks for letting me rant. I love all the topics being discussed here and I'm soaking it all in.

Everyone keep up the great training, racing, and most of all, the come backs from injuries I'm seeing.

God Bless everyone and thanks for your friendship in these hard times.

I think that is a pretty good plan with a lot of mileage for a HM.  That extra mileage will serve you well on race day.  A couple of thoughts though:

1. If you are going from 25 to 34 miles in one week that might be to excessive a jump that soon.  I am not against jumping slightly faster than 10% but I am not confident you should jump 10 miles in 1 week.  That said you don't indicate what the plans are for the rest of this week.
2. I think it would be better to try to put the Tues/Thurs run together where you could do them together, even if you could cut the longer one's later down a couple of miles.
3. Make sure when you start your tempo work that you start it slow.  Don't try to hit those at 3-4 miles right away.  You need to progress slowly with intensity.

Matt, I love your thought process of more miles and a longer long run, but I'll throw my hat in the "too aggressive" ring.  Going from 25 to 34, and then 2 weeks later from 36 to 43, is a lot of added mileage.  Everyone is different of course, but I know if I tried to make those kind of jumps while also adding some tempo runs, I'd be a pile of tendons and ligaments in a pool on the floor!  35-40+ seems to be some sort of sweet spot where the injury risk goes up.

How about going something like 30-34-38-42-45-47-37-20.  But evaluate how you feel every day and every week and make adjustments if needed.  And I wouldn't be afraid to add a 6th day as another recovery run and make them all a little shorter.  You've got a nice base of 10 milers the last few weeks, so I think you can keep the long run similar to what you've listed.

I'm not sure what the best plan for the tempo part of the run would be - I'll let Dirk and Jeff answer but agree that adding tempo pace miles slowly is a good idea.

Matt,  Basically I think it's a great plan and well thought out.  But it reflects where you want to be and how you get from here to there is the question.  It makes me just a little uneasy for your running health...but then again that's often the name of the game.  I personally tell people not to put their training at risk but the fact is I do it all the time myself because that fine line is where we find the progress we desire.

I too hope that you could find a 5k to race to set a bench mark.  But here is how I would approach the tempo work.  Don't 'pick' a pace.  Don't even look at your watch, keep it in your pocket.  The first mile is always at your easy training pace.  Then you gradually pick up the pace a comfortable amount repeatedly.  You may go from 9:45 to 9:15 then after a few minutes 8:50.  Then at the 2 mile mark maybe 8:30.  You only pick up the pace to that point where you feel like you could keep it up fairly indefinitely.

You go as fast as you want while it stays aerobic and you are sure you have a pace that you won't need to back down from.  If you do that, then you've mis-paced the workout (which is not a tragedy, just slow down and find that pace).  I'm basically describing a perceived exertion approach. 

On any day you don't WANT to go faster, you pull the plug and make it a recovery run to just cross off the miles on your plan.  The first sign of being over trained and on the verge of an injury is that you don't WANT to run or don't WANT to run fast.  No one tempo run is that important in your HM plan.

If you use this plan as a goal and are willing to flex it and back down as needed then I cautiously approve.

Ok, I need to publically rejoice a little.  Yesterday was my biggest run day since the 1980s.  My usual routine was off due to a dentist appointment in the morning so rather than swim/run I did a bigger run in the morning of 10 miles.  

At lunch, my strength training was a little lunges/squats/calves.  It was pretty light because I'm just reintroducing legs to my strength routine.

Last night I met my daughter for the usual group run and did another 5.5 miles.

Legs felt great overall.  Just a tiny tight/sore after my drive home.  This morning my legs felt great.  Perhaps even better than normal.  I did my swim/run routine and my 5 mile run felt wonderful.

As a few of you have experienced recently yourselves, it's so encouraging to be able to do this and not break down.  For others of you, I really want this to encourage  you because my personal story has a number of years of being broken down.  I nearly gave up hope of being able to train freely myself.  But every one here is likely to be able to experience this in time.  Unfortunately it's often a long time getting there.  Just don't give up.  Instead, be patient and do what you can in the now and bide your time until you are through the 'issues' stage.

I love the plan and I hope you're able to keep it up. I'll let everyone else talk about the technical parts, but I'll add to Warren's point about listening to your body - You have plenty of mileage, so I wouldn't be afraid to back off a little if you need to.

My current HM plan has me up to 21 MPW before the "race" (it finishes 2 months early), so don't worry too much about losing a few miles or skipping the day's second run to avoid injury. You can't PR a race you don't start! I may actually take a little from this to add to the end of my HM plan. I'm not going to get to 45 mpw before it starts, but I may borrow some of your ideas to get to 30 :-)

I swam again this morning and it was AWESOME!! 1300 meters in 26 mins-ish (started at 6:28am and some seconds, finished at 6:53 and some seconds). Even tagged 50yrds of breast stroke on as a warm down while I was doing the math (subtracting 28 from 54 is hard before 7am). That's exactly on pace with the 200 TT we did at the start of this mentor group, and I struggled through those 200m.

I DID have a little stiffness in my neck from breathing too much on my left. As I was getting the distance in I was doing some lengths breathing on my weaker side, as well as stopping my hands from making an S-curve through the water. It's something I was taught as a kid and it's very annoying.

Stroke count was 20 for one length of 25yrds. I have two things I can do to improve it - keep my elbow high and remove the S-curve. My body position has improved 100% since our discussion about that. Once I have the S and elbow iron out, I'll see about getting some video.

On the whole though I really enjoyed it and didn't really want to get out of the pool. I'm excited about going back on Monday!

Now on to today's 6 mile run in the rain. Oh boy!

Wow.  Solid swimming there!  Even your SPL seems respectable.   I predominantly breath just to one side (I know, I should fix that), but I never have a stiff neck.  It could just be a matter of getting the time in to adapt to the movement, but I wonder if it might not be that you are turning the head too much relative to the body.  If you have a good body roll, the breathing requires actually just a little neck turn.

I think you absolutely hit on the problem there - I'm over-rotating my head and under rotating my body. I also have a sort of flick when I breathe sometimes because when I first learned to swim I had longer hair and would flick it out of my face when I was breathing - I've been working on removing the flick, but I'll try to rotate more as well.

Thanks!

Stan, what your wife has been going through sounds extremely frightening. 

Please keep us informed as to her condition.  Is there an explanation for her symptoms?  Was it medication? 

Wow, when it rains it pours.  Adding huge prayers for your wife, and do keep us updated.  Happy you're feeling a bit better, and hope your re-introduction to training goes ok.

Stan,  I hope your wife is doing well and her prognosis is not something that she can't overcome.  It certainly can be very scary for the both of you.  I am not sure I would start jumping up and down on her about her personal fitness just yet.  I think it would be a good idea to let it sink into her head a little bit and then come at her in a loving way.  Tell her how important she is to you and so on.  Use that as a means to communicate to her that her overall health is your concern.  Encourage too that you are not necessarily looking for her to share the same interests in triathlon etc. and for her to find her own interests for securing her health.

Be careful with your own training too.  Don't bite off more than you are ready for.  You have just heard us caution Matt to be conservative in his approach to building his running up so I hope you can get a similar message.

Jeff,  I'm glad to hear you are able to progress into a new phase of your training too.  It sounds like you are getting a bit of  "training high" right now.  I am ready for one of those myself.  I have been in a bit of a slump for several weeks. 

John, I'm glad to hear you are doing well in the pool.  Now is a great time for you in your training because everything comes very fast in terms of gains because your fitness has been low.  Now, with a focused training regimen your body is adapting fast and you are seeing some really impressive times.  For the most part I am still in this phase of training despite training for about 2.5 years.  Eventually things will slow down but you have a very long way to go before this catches up to you and I hope I have the same too.

Now for me:  I am heading to Ohio in a few minutes and I am not sure how much I will be around until Sunday night or Monday afternoon.  I leave all of you in good hands with my three amigos to blaze away with their training guns aimed at you all.  I am down this week on my training due to unforeseen circumstances (nothing bad, just family stuff) so I will be speding some time running this weekend. 

I hope to get 5 miles running each day for the next 3 days while away.  All of it easy but on some hills.  The new Garmin 910 has a barometric altimeter that is supposed to be more accurate than the old GPS formatted device.  I am kind of anxious to see what the differences, if any, are in elevations for these runs from other runs on the same route.

Lastly, Stan,  I am will add your wife to my prayer list for a safe and speedy recovery.

Matt - aggressive plan - go for it. listen to your body and not be afraid to take an extra rest day or skip a run if needed.

Wed weigh-in - at start weight - no gain/no loss. I suspect if I weren't trying to lose-I'd be gaining right now.....

Today - had to work - long drive, so I skipped morning swim. woke up tired from yesterday's late run - I just rolled with it. When I set-up my schedule-I leave Friday's open as rest/option days. since today now my rest day==I'll do a trainer ride tomorrow evening.

having fun...

I swam slow easy laps at the Y this afternoon. 50 yards at a time just focused on breathing. Resting 30 seconds or so in between each 50. Here and there I would roll onto my back and just kick for a minute, breathing easy. The result; no gas pains after the swim. I even went for a short run about 1 hour after the swim and had no discomfort! Now I just need to figure out how to string those 50's together into a half mile continuous before April.

Tomorrow is a rest day before Saturday's Fun Run/Race.

Just sent in my registration for a 3 mile race on March 3rd. It's the final points race in the Frosty Fun Run series, but it is also a more publicized event with kids 1 mile run, a 3 mile run, and a 10 mile run.

Prayers for those who need healing, and travel mercies for those on the road. Praises for those able to get back to training and for those who are pushing through some hard training. This is a pretty amazing group of people and I count myself blessed to be part of it.

Stan - so happy to read you are feeling better!

Keep us posted about your wife. I know what you mean about getting your loved ones to take care of themselves. My husband is a prime candidate for health issues - mid 40's, stressful job, does not eat right, exercises very little. Lucky for him he is not overweight. Those are some scary symptoms and I pray she is feeling better.

Glad you felt better after your swim!! Good luck this weekend!

If you all get a minute stop by the redesign thread. The mods are looking for input and there is a good discussion about where the Dashboard should be placed. Time to share your opinion!

I have a couple of questions about your marathon:

1. How are you looking to finish the marathon?  PR or just finish?
2. When in May is your marathon?  (This will impact the way you would train.)

I have not done an IM but I think it would be key to begin to base build early to get ready for IMW and I would suggest you do so as soon as you can.  I see that IMW is Sept. 9 so you have all kinds of time to get ready but I can't imagine it's something you will want to put off at all.  I know you are looking to qualify for Kona this year too, so getting the bases up as early as possible are going to be very key.

Edit:

As far as coaching, I think coaching can be a very good idea but I tink yhou should make sure that you have one that fits you very well.  I have not used a coach but after reading several threads about this in the past, many people hire any coach available and have been disappointed.  So make sure the coach fits well with you personally.  I am not sure of anyone else can provide better thoughts n coaching and where the source came from, i.e. BT, ST or others.

Also here is a link to help you determine where you may need to finish to actually make the trip to Hawaii.  

   IMW qualifier results

Kind of a side note about IM:

I read a thread the other day in the main forum where the OP asked what kid of time frame for weekly training was required to complete an IM.  The responses obviously varied as everything does on here but most people thought in the neighborhood of 13-18 hours a week would "get you though the race."

I wasn't allowed to view this thread.  I guess I am not as special as you are.......

Well, and then there's the thing that I may not be smart enough to figure out how to get there.. LOL

Huh? That's weird?! I wonder why that would be. I just clicked on the sticky in the tri talk forum.

Maybe I can link it:http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=426189&posts=40&start=1

You might also try a compression wrap for your ankle. Just the ace bandage type that you get at the drugstore. Good luck!