HILDEBEAST'S Magnificently Motivational Mentor Group - CLOSED!!!! (Page 44)

The rings I'm wondering about are the ones that your pedals are attached to.  My bike has two front rings to work through all it's gears.  Some bikes have three, some bikes have only one.  Lower gears (easiest) = smaller front ring.

I'm most comfortable working on the small ring at about 100 rpm.  But have read I should try to work on the big ring.  Maybe this is a longer term goal than this season to make sure there is energy left for the run.

It's Friday.  And I am NOT AT WORK!!!  Whoohoo!!!!

Have a great day everyone. 

Janet, I agree with the majority here that you should do all races as planned.  The du is short enough where it shouldn't take too much out of you and I actually feel less stressed after a 10K than the shorter but harder effort of a 5K.  It sounds like you have some really fun races picked out, so have a blast!  I absolutely love duathlons.  Only have done one but definitely going to pick out some more this season!

Melanie, I almost always stay in my big ring, too.  I am probably guilty of not using my granny gear enough.  But you can definitely get in some good spinning with the easiest gears of your big ring on the flats.

Good luck to everyone racing this weekend!

Can't wait to see pics of the new car, Hilde! (Does it have cool racing stripes like your other one?)

Good luck to everyone racing this weekend! I'm hitting the halfway point in the show's run tonight, so the craziness around here continueth. More anon, whenever I get the chance to log in and a brain cell or two to make my fingers work!

Alex

Alas, new car has no racing stripes... and I'm hestitant to put them on because most of the white checkerboard squares on the old stripe had cracked from being in the Texas sun.  Maybe later though!  This time I will probably buy actual Mini stripes that seem to hold up better!  I AM buying new wheels though, and I'm really excited about that!!  Right now they are all matte black and at first glance (to me) it looks like I'm riding on 4 donut tires and haven't had time to get them fixed.  So I will be going with a gloss black wheel with a fairly thick aluminum rim which should set it off nicely! 

Wow, that's some dressed up car!

I got my initial weight for the wellness challenge.  Let me just say that weighing at night is not a good thing.  I've started tracking my food and wearing my pedometer.  I'm looking forward to some progress.

I've been slacking on the SBR.  After my trip I came back to some chaos at work.  Now that it's the weekend, I need to plan some good foods and get in some training. 

What she said! Considering you just covered 70.3 miles powered by nothing but your own body, I'd say you looked friggin' fantastic! And how funny, the shoes were the first thing I noticed... and I thought my neon yellow ones were crazy . 

The chain ring question is an interesting one... is there any "best/recommended" way to do it? I almost exclusive work/shift on my back ring. I have three rings up front and am nearly always on the middle ring. 

Nutrition/weight loss question - I am carrying between 10-15 pounds more than I should. Based on my age, weight, height and normal lifestyle, my normal calorie expenditure is about 1,700 per day. This, of course, does not include whatever training/exercise I do each day. I know the recommendation is to not go below 1,200 (net) per day, but I am beginning to wonder if even that is too low when a person is training. Thoughts or suggestions? What does everyone else do?

Hilde - thanks. I'll see what each shifter actually shifs.

 Rustymom - +1 to weighing at night but if you remain consistent on when you do it you'll see the progress all the same.

soccermom15 - 2012-04-22 6:22 PM Well I finished my first duathlon!  I'll try to get an actual race report up later tonight or tomorrow but I did OK.  A little slower than I had hoped but the weather didn't cooperate today - cold and rainy - and I lost 5-6 minutes waiting at a train crossing.  I wasn't the only one though - there were about 50 of us waiting for the train to go by.  All the people I had passed on the bike leg (which wasn't too many but at least there were some) caught back up while we waited.  Overall it was a good race and I'm glad I did it.
Janet2

Congratulations on your first duathlon, Janet!! 

kpringle - 2012-04-23 12:50 PM

soccermom15 - 2012-04-22 6:22 PM Well I finished my first duathlon!  I'll try to get an actual race report up later tonight or tomorrow but I did OK.  A little slower than I had hoped but the weather didn't cooperate today - cold and rainy - and I lost 5-6 minutes waiting at a train crossing.  I wasn't the only one though - there were about 50 of us waiting for the train to go by.  All the people I had passed on the bike leg (which wasn't too many but at least there were some) caught back up while we waited.  Overall it was a good race and I'm glad I did it.
Janet2

Congratulations on your first duathlon, Janet!! 

Thanks!  It was fun.  Here's the RR with all the details if anyone's interested.

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=436666&posts=1&start=1

Janet - Congrats on the duathlon.  Glad you had fun.  You'll never forget this race because of the train!

Michelle - I use My Plate (Livestrong) when it's clear I need to track food & exercise.  I am supposed to have a net calorie goal of 1,300 to lose 1 pound per week.  I find this helps me figure how much food is too much and how much is too little when training.  This approach has worked when I've tracked my exercise and food closely for three weeks.  But if I have just one or two days a week of > 1,300 then the scale moves back up a bit.  Snacking before dinner is the worst time for me.  If I can just control this time of day (5:30-6:30pm), I can keep the scale moving downward.

It's a step back training week for me.  I'm not following any plan but a quick look at the past months shows that I need to have a bit of a recovery week.  

Have a great week everyone!

Well, I just clicked register for a 5K this Sunday.  I've been planning to do it, but didn't sign up.  Then I wondered about the weather.  Right now it looks to be 50s and partly cloudy, maybe breezy.  Sounds good to me. 

Erin, awesome that you won something again!  You lucky dog!  Or you HAVE the lucky dog!  Never done a bike TT, but sounds fun!

Congrats on signing up for the 5K Andrea... 50's sounds PERFECT!

Erin - what fun!!  love the pic.  I hope you get another really funky suit.

Andrea - the weather does sound perfect for a 5K.

I may have asked this before:  What kind of supplements to people take?  I'm interested in what brand too.

I take a women's multi-vitamin, vitamin D, fish oil, mineral supplement, and low-dose aspirin.

I'm experimenting with a few more items since they seem to have done wonders for my dog.  He is 15.  Our vet recommended a home-cooked diet and supplements based on work done at the University of FL for Degenerative Myelopathy.   His hind quarters were failing him.  Within 1 week of home-cooked food and a variety of supplements (including Chinese herbs), all of his symptoms disappeared. 

So I've added some ginseng (two types) and grape seed extract.

Erin – congrats on the prize!

Andrea – sounds like we’ll have similar conditions for our races this weekend.  Good luck on yours!

Melanie – I used to take a multivitamin but don’t do it anymore.  I probably should get back to it, it’s seems like I felt better overall when I was taking it.  Right now I don’t take anything except a calcium/vitamin D combo when I remember (which isn’t too often). 

So I have another dilemma. There is a half marathon in October that I was originally going to sign up for (the one that says “on hold for now” in my logs).  I was looking at the website yesterday and realized that early registration ends on 4/30.  I was thinking that I had a little more time to decide if I was going to run it.  I still don’t know if I want to – my runs haven’t been what I want them to be lately, but I still have over 5 months to change that.  I like the race (did it last year) and part of me says “you know you’re going to do it so just sign up now while the entry fee is lower”.  OTOH, I don’t want to spend the $50 now and end up bailing on the race or doing it just because I paid but not really enjoying it.  If I don’t sign up before 4/30, the entry fee goes up to $60.  That price is good until 7/1.  I’m thinking that it might be worth the extra $10 to give myself a little more time to decide.  It would also give me time to put together a decent training plan so I could be prepared to do the race in October.  I think that’s what I’m going to do – I guess I just needed to talk it through to make me see that it’s the right decision. 

Janet2

Janet... so what's 10 bucks?  Less than it costs for movie snacks!  Go ahead and wait, you'll still have plenty of time to get a training plan together to run it well.  I've only bailed on one race, thankfully, and that one was when my son lost his hand.  I HATE to waste money!!

Melanie, I don't do supplements... although I do take a daily Calcium/vitamin D also.  I have to take folic acid daily to go with a prescription I have, otherwise I just don't do it.  Used to in the past, but it can become overwhelming.  I guess you could include Gu as a supplement??  Ha ha!

I don't take any supplements either.

And sounds like a good plan to wait to register, Janet2!  You still have plenty of time even with that later registration deadline to put together a great training plan if you decide to do it.  I'm 99% sure I'm doing a HM in October, as well!

I second all of that - the supplements and the waiting to register!

Well I think I'm finally back in the swing of things post-cruise.  My husband's first tri is next weekend, so we are all getting ready for that (hubby is getting his first set of "tri nightmares" and DD & I are shopping for cowbells)!  I had my first OWS of the season today with my tri group.  I don't own a wetsuit, but once I finally got in, the water was okay.  I've been slacking on my swimming lately, but I could certainly tell that I am a more confident swimmer that I was last season!  I may not be much faster, but just not feeling as scared would be a huge improvement for me.  Looks like my group will get in about 4-5 more OWSs before June, so that should be good.

A delayed congrats to all the great racing from the last two weekends!

Congrats Janet on your first duathlon! 

Thanks Hilde and Melanie for the nutrition/tracking info. I am using MyFitnessPal to track food and calories burned. I think what I was really wondering, is how much cutting calories affects other people's training, if at all. And by how much folks were cutting back, if at all. 

Andrea, good luck on your 5K this weekend. I just pulled the trigger on one for this weekend myself - same weather forecast. This means I'll have a 5K on back-to-back weekends. 

Erin, that is so cool that you won the swimoutlet photo contest!! Super-cute dog BTW, although he looks like he might be ornery . 

Melanie, hope you are enjoying your scaled-back training this week. The only supplements I add are protein (Nutriceuticals Lean Supreme), because I just don't like meat enough and tart cherry juice for recovery. 

Hope everyone has a great weekend! 

I find that if I go into the negative too much for too many days - then I get really, really tired.  Then the workouts just don't go very well and the ease of my bike commuting is definitely impacted.  So I guess the trick is finding just the right amount of calories needed to lose weight a bit at a time (if that's the goal) without compromising the training.  If we could figure out this and make it easy --- we'd all be rich!!!