Slornow and Wannabefaster's mentor group...Closed (Page 43)

Back from most of the week in Northern Michigan. Got in some good cycling and running but the swimming was lacking (my fault).

The bike continues to be a mystery to me. I did do a workout on Wednesday that two months ago would have destroyed me and this time I thought, "that wasn't so bad...." Maybe some progress.

I am still strangely unmotivated to race. I am two weeks out from my first multisport race of the season. Maybe getting out there and racing will jump start my enthusiasm. A little more than a month out from Steelhead and I still haven't signed up. Maybe I need a race break and do a block of training for fun and not for goals. Not sure but it is very different from how I have felt in the past about racing. I'll keep you posted :-)

Bummer. But, good for you to get right back at it.

Last spill l had was about an hour in to a five hour day (two years ago). I decided to call it a day and rode most of the way back to my car. On the way there I decided to HTFU and do the ride anyway. I had a hole in my jersey and my shorts and was bleeding a moderate amount. I earned some street cred when I ran in to some friends later in the ride. Of course they also thought I was insane. They may have been right.

ps. to add to the crazy scale, I just walked in from a long work day and still need to get in an hour run. I think I may still do it. Not right in the head.....

Since we're on the topics on bumps and spills, while working on a boat I fell and either broke or bruised a rib. Very painful, especially at night. I have been in denial and try to swim and run but it's just getting worst so I suspect I will have to stop that for a while.

Honestly, at this point, life is so bust maybe it's a blessing in disguise.

I am seeing lots of cool stuff going on in the tri world andI hope I can share more about in the near future.

I would love to hear more insights in to what is going on at the elite levels.

I am crushed for Javi Gomez that he won't be racing at the Olympics. Years dedicated to a singular goal to have a freak fall pull the rug out from under you......

I don't want to spoil anything for anyone but you have to watch the end of today's TDF stage up Ventoux. Wild !!

Watching Frodeno and Ryf doing Roth.

The Lionel is doing Racine in about an hour.

Exciting stuff

Sub-20 off the bike is impressive! Still out of reach for me I think but I'm getting there.

It's encouraging that one can be fast without speedwork... I really haven't gotten anywhere near the amount of speedwork in that I would have liked this season (I was just starting to get into it again and then re-aggravated my achilles after a weekend of re-shingling the roof on my garage) but hopefully that doesn't matter all that much.

Any of you guys going to be at Whistler this weekend or Mont Tremblant next month?  I'm headed up to Whistler tomorrow, hoping for good weather this year   This is not my A race but if you're tracking, I'm bib #1069.

Edited by spudone 2016-07-20 2:15 PM

Good luck. I love following along.


Tomorrow is my first multisport race of the season, Battle of Waterloo. Ten stages of SBR, 40+ miles, supposed to be a riot. I had been kind of dragging in my training but the prep for this race has me excited. Hopefully it will jump start my season. The fact that it is the middle of July and I haven't raced yet is not a good thing. I won't let this happen again. Not good for my mental (triathlon) health.

Here is a link to the race format for anyone who is interested:


http://epicraces.com/battle-of-waterloo-race-day-guide/battle-of-wa...



It should be fun! Planning on taking about four hours to do it. I have a couple unique things I am going to try out on race day as part of my strategy for this crazy event. I'll let you know how it went afterwards (if I don't crash and burn too badly). I am mostly doing this as a fun day of goofing off but I would be lying if I said I wasn't interested in going fast.....

Well the race turned out to be a bit of a bust, for me anyways. The cancelled the swim due to water quality (which was forseeable given their choice of venue) and that pretty much robbed me of my motivation - I'm a far better swimmer than I am a runner, so right away I knew my odds of doing well took a pretty big hit. My main goal was to see how I stacked up as a triathlete, and this event wasn't going to do that. So my head wasn't really in the game. A comedy of errors ensued (see my race report linked below) and I had an underwhelming race. Frustrating to have a race I've based my whole season around not happen. Now I've got to shift focus and hope for another chance to execute my best race. I was happy with my run though. I know I've got a good race in me, so hopefully I can make it happen this season.

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp...

Stuff happens.

Sorry to hear it wasn't the day that you wanted but this gives you a chance to find another race and knock it out of the park.

Mark is cruising along in Whistler.

http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/events/americas/ironman/canada/res...

Well, I killed it at today's race. 2nd OA. Masters winner. Won my AG.

The guy who beat me trains with Lionel Sanders in Windsor. He just missed the course record. I wasn't even in his time zone at the finish but my time this year would have won the whole thing last time they held this.

This race was an absolute blast. I made a couple mistakes but adjusted on the fly and managed to fix things. Someone must have knocked my bike off of the bike rack because when I took it off for the second bike both front and rear brakes were rubbing and my handlebars were about 10 degrees off center. I managed to loosen up the front brake but the rear rubbed horribly for the whole segment. Alas. I'll take it in to the shop tomorrow. I can't really figure out what is wrong but something sure is not right.

The format of this race is Run 1.5, Bike 20.5, Swim 0.45, Run 4, Swim 0.5, Run 3.2, Swim 0.7, Run 3.5, Bike 5.8, Run 1.4.

You have to carry everything with you (except for the bike and helmet) for the whole race. Lots of different ways of doing this. I had decided that I was going to swim with my shoes on and not really stop for any transitions. I had also put platform pedals on my bike with toe clips. My transitions were like lightning and I passed about six people in "T1".

Run one, leg one, ran very controlled. Trail run with lots of hills. Just under 7:00 pace.

Transition one, passed six people.

First bike, leg two, was great in my running shoes (so great that I would consider doing this again.....?). Passed no one, got passed by no one in 20+ miles. I could see two guys about 1/4 mile ahead of me but never made up any ground on them. Lonely ride.

Passed 2-3 more in next transition.

In to the water, Leg three, with the shoes on was like towing an anchor. Just sucked horribly. I stopped at about 300 yards and took my shoes off and stuffed them down the back of my jersey but it wasn't that much better with the drag it created. I spent the rest of the swim brainstorming what I would do..... Of course all three people that I passed in transition passed me back on the swim.

At the next transition I pulled my shoes out of my jersey and put them on while still in the water to avoid getting sand and dirt on my feet.... and passed all three people again.

Run two, leg four, I killed it and passed one person.

Transition, I passed another person.

Swim two, leg five, I had a dramatically better swim. The shoes..... I ran in to the water, took them off in waist deep water and stuffed them up the legs of my tri shorts with the toes facing up. They were pretty hydrodynamic under the trisuit and almost acted like a pull buoy. Much better!

Transition, I was all alone.

Run three, leg six, passed one person and ran like a man possessed

Transition, botched this one a bit because it came up quicker than I expected. No one there. Just got it done.

Swim three, leg seven, went amazing and had a great swim.

Transition. Alone again.

Run four, leg eight. This had a tremendous amount of uphill. It was a brutally hard segment and I was hurting a bit. The nice thing was that I could see behind me for the first time and no one was back there for as far as I could see.

Transition. Bike all jacked up. Made the best of it and decided to ride with the brake rubbing.

Bike two, leg nine. Just pushed as hard as I could. I could tell that I wasn't going as fast as I should be for the power and I was nervous.

Transition. Took just a couple seconds. Two bikes in transition when I arrived. Announcer says, "second place is less than a minute in front of you."

Run five, leg ten. I could see that no one was behind me. I could almost walk and be assured of third place. But, I wanted to finish strong so I ran as hard as I could. 6:30-40 pace. Felt damn good. Never saw any one. Came out near the finish line and the announcer says, "He passed number two in the woods, great run!" What? Never saw him. Turns out second place missed a turn. Not sure why. It was very well marked and this was the second time we ran this particular loop. Could I have caught him? Probably not. But, we will never know.

Sorry so long. Wanted to share. Just an amazing race.

Congratulations Jason, that sounds like a really cool event and an incredible result

Arend, hopefully you will drop in more often. We could all benefit from a little more action in here. I'm the first to say I am delinquent.

Mark finished in 13:57.

It looks like the run might have hurt a bit.....

Congratulations! That one is definitely on my must do list.

Hi Mike,

Sorry to hear it. That sucks.
I didn't even realize this was on less than 2km from where I live. There is a big ITU race in Montreal early august. It's a WTS/World cup kind of thing.

That sounds like an awesome race Jason. I'd like to see more of that type of thing happening, sounds super fun. Congrats on the result, you crushed it!

I'm just not strong enough to bike that course. If you can't do about 3 watts/kg in zone 2, it will blow you up in all kinds of bad ways, even trying to be careful as I was. Also got dehydrated on the last climb as it was about 90F.Windy all day. Bear on the run, again. That said, my goal was to save my legs for race #2 next month so I walked every uphill and stopped to chat with a former coach of mine. And my legs don't feel bad now, so I guess that's something.

Your legs might feel better than mine today :-)

It is my belief that the recovery from an IM is totally dependent on how the run went. If you went too hard on the bike and end up walking the run it is amazing how good you can feel the next day. Pace the bike right and then really run the 26.2 and you should be hobbling for a week or more.

Good plan to take it very easy on the run if your goal race is next month. You will have gained a bunch of fitness and be ready to go when race # 2 rolls around.