Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED (Page 49)

2014-10-14 10:54 AM

in reply to: mtnbikerchk

Master

3205

ann arbor, michigan

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Early Christmas at my house.... My new PI Octane Tri suit plus the Saucony Kinvaras came yesterday. Hokas and a new case of UCan today.

I have the day off after working over night so I am testing out the Tri suit and nutrition right now.

Stuart, it is the shoes (I think). I love the Hoka shoes but I tend to get blisters under my second toenail when I wear them too long. It is worth it to me for the extra padding on the long runs. FWIW, that is one of the reasons I like the Kinvaras so well, they never bother my feet no matter what.

Randee, the Cliftons do feel a bit narrower than their other shoes. I'm going to have to wear them around the house for a couple hours and see what I think.

2014-10-14 2:57 PM

in reply to: wannabefaster

Master

3205

ann arbor, michigan

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

The PI suit was very comfortable. I think I have found my race suit for AZ.

Th UCan worked well too. The orange was pretty tasty and the plain combined nicely with Infinit.

Still not quite sure about the Hoka Cliftons.

2014-10-14 3:29 PM

in reply to: wannabefaster

Extreme Veteran

1190

Silicon Valley

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Thanks Jason, I will check out the shoes you mentioned.

I need some advice from the group. Over the past few weeks I have gone on rides with some riders I have met here in town. Today for instance I rode a 28.5 mile ride with a guy I met last week. The issue is the speed. The pace was a little slow for me, under 17 mph. Not terrible but very noticeable. When I got home I didn't feel like I had a workout.

Likewise I have been invited on a 60 mile ride on Thursday. But I know this group and the ave speed will be around 14 mph. So I love the distance but hate the speed. I feel guilty spending that much time on the road and moving that slow.

So do I give up a training day for what is a leisure ride or continue on riding mostly on my own where I can keep the tempo up?

2014-10-14 5:39 PM

in reply to: Stuartap

Master

3205

ann arbor, michigan

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Originally posted by Stuartap

Thanks Jason, I will check out the shoes you mentioned.

I need some advice from the group. Over the past few weeks I have gone on rides with some riders I have met here in town. Today for instance I rode a 28.5 mile ride with a guy I met last week. The issue is the speed. The pace was a little slow for me, under 17 mph. Not terrible but very noticeable. When I got home I didn't feel like I had a workout.

Likewise I have been invited on a 60 mile ride on Thursday. But I know this group and the ave speed will be around 14 mph. So I love the distance but hate the speed. I feel guilty spending that much time on the road and moving that slow.

So do I give up a training day for what is a leisure ride or continue on riding mostly on my own where I can keep the tempo up?

I hate to say it but this one is up to you.

You will get some training effect from four hours in the saddle, even going only 14 mph. However, you will get much more out of the same four hours if you push the pace.

The question is: what do you want to do? It can be a lot of fun to spend a few hours out in the fresh air with friends and you shouldn't feel guilty about doing it. If your goal for the day is to get more fit then the group ride may not be the best idea.

Totally not helpful, I know.

2014-10-14 5:55 PM

in reply to: wannabefaster

Extreme Veteran

1190

Silicon Valley

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

You're right Jason...totally not helpful!

So let me ask this. I understand a 4 hour ride at that speed would have some value. And I understand a 4 hour ride at my speed would be a lot more beneficial from a training perspective. So is there a way to estimate the time differential to equalize the benefit?

In other words, would I get more benefit from a 3 hour ride at 17-18 mph than a 4 hour ride at 14 mph? If I would need to ride 3.5 hours at my speed to get the same benefit then enjoy the company for the marginal time difference. If it's a lot less the decision gets harder for me. Any thoughts on this?

2014-10-15 7:14 AM

in reply to: Stuartap

Master

3205

ann arbor, michigan

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Stuart--

Here is a link to Training Peaks Training Stress Score calculator:

http://help.trainingpeaks.com/entries/22985260-Training-Stress-Scor...

About half way down the page is a link to heart rate based calculation of Training Stress Score (TSS). If you can get some sort of estimate of your heart rate at the two different paces and have an idea what your threshold heart rate is (there is also a link to threshold info on the page) you can get a rough, back of napkin, calculation of TSS. By plugging in different numbers you can (theoretically) figure out what duration and intensity of workouts can give you the same amount of work (TSS).

It gets pretty complicated. Training Peaks has you plug in your numbers and automatically calculates a TSS for any given workout. It is a great way to compare work load from day to day, week to week and month to month.

Hope this is somewhat helpful.

2014-10-15 11:08 AM

in reply to: wannabefaster

Master

3058

South Alabama

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Stuart-the TSS calculator can be a great way to track your total training load. Kind of a pain to set up and certainly not perfect but another metric.

Hokas-the last pair I bought had the really thin tongue. Even with socks it rubbed a raw spot on the top of my right foot. Never had any issues with the Bondis I had before. Hoka has certainly expanded their brand and are making a nice variety of models.

2014-10-15 1:59 PM

in reply to: slornow

Extreme Veteran

1190

Silicon Valley

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Thanks guys. I just gave it a quick read. This looks like a good place to start doing some more formal tracking of what I have been doing. I think I am getting to that point that I need more structure and more data than just time and distance would be very useful.

2014-10-15 2:53 PM

in reply to: Stuartap

Extreme Veteran

1190

Silicon Valley

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Jason I saw your comment on HIIT training on the Triathlon Talk forum and have a question and comment. I opted to post it here so I don't side track their discussion.

Comment: Have you ever done this in the pool? Like you when running, it is a workout I like to do when swimming. Do a long warm up of 500 yards. Then 25 yards all out. Drive the legs hard, increase the number of strokes/breath, head down and drive hard to the wall. Depending on the shape you are in do 10 - 15, one every 90 seconds. Assuming you can do that in 30 seconds or less you get a 1 minute rest. I personally would use that time to swim slowly back to the other end of the pool but some people just rest.

Question: Can you suggest a cycling variation?

Thanks,

glfprncs

2014-10-15 7:38 PM

in reply to: #4996375

Member

836

North Augusta, South Carolina

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Jason, I had heard that Hoka's quality control had been suffering over the past year. My first pair were great. I didnt get 3 months out of my 2nd pair before the sidewall blew out. I'm now in Altra Paradigm. They dont,feel as cushiony while running, but I notice the cushion after my run if that makes sense. My lefy calf/achilles likes the zero drop, too.

http://www.active.com/cycling/articles/high-intensity-interval-training-for-beginners

2014-10-15 9:03 PM

in reply to: Stuartap

Master

3058

South Alabama

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Originally posted by Stuartap Jason I saw your comment on HIIT training on the Triathlon Talk forum and have a question and comment. I opted to post it here so I don't side track their discussion. Comment: Have you ever done this in the pool? Like you when running, it is a workout I like to do when swimming. Do a long warm up of 500 yards. Then 25 yards all out. Drive the legs hard, increase the number of strokes/breath, head down and drive hard to the wall. Depending on the shape you are in do 10 - 15, one every 90 seconds. Assuming you can do that in 30 seconds or less you get a 1 minute rest. I personally would use that time to swim slowly back to the other end of the pool but some people just rest. Question: Can you suggest a cycling variation? Thanks,

Stuart-here is a link I found re: cycling workouts:

My coach sometimes prescribes 30/30 workouts with 30 seconds hard on 30 seconds easy. My hard is typically 120% of FTP which is Hard. Maybe not overwhelming at first but definitely builds on you. My workout tomorrow is 20 of those. It will really suck from about #10 on. To get a feel for the effort level maybe do the following after a good warm up:

5X(30 sec hard/30 sec easy + 3 min easy)

See how that feels and then adjust numbers upward. It is hard to measure effort on these by HR due to the short intervals so maybe use RPE. Just my thoughts.

2014-10-15 9:40 PM

in reply to: slornow

Master

3205

ann arbor, michigan

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Stuart

I have been doing some all out 25s but not on really long rest. I am going to try that with one of my next swim workouts just to see how it goes. The long rest will mean that I don't hold anything back. I have defaulted to one basic swimming speed. My warm up speed isn't much slower than my 100 hard speed. I need to differentiate my swim paces a bit.

Randy's 30/30 workout is one that I get fairly frequently on the bike. 30 seconds is not much recovery and this gets hard very fast. A true sprint eight bike workout on the bike would just be 30 seconds all-out, as hard as you can go, with 90 seconds of recovery. On the bike you can probably do more than eight! or you can do 8 x 30/90 then five minutes easy and then repeat as any times as you can tolerate.

2014-10-15 11:16 PM

in reply to: 0

Extreme Veteran

1190

Silicon Valley

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Randy that sounds like a good place to start. I will also check out the link.

Jason If you want another really 'fun' swim workout try this one. Take you 100 sprint time. Add 15 seconds. Then do a series of 100's on that time and see how many you can do.

So if your 100 sprint time is 1:05 then do 100's every 1:20 until you can't finish one in 1:20. This was real fun when I was doing sub 0:50 100's. Coach would give me a big break and let me go on the 1:00. It was always a big deal to see who could hang on the longest. When your rest gets down to a second or two is where you will begin to question your sanity.

OOPS - Sorry but I made an error in the first workout. It sounded wrong with 30 seconds to do 25 yards. It's 50 yards NOT 25. You were probably thinking how hard is 25 yards in 30 seconds and get a minute plus rest. Here I have a 50 meter long by 25 yard wide pool at the aquatic center . So I was thinking one lap but that's long course. I guess the mind is the second thing to go!

Edited by Stuartap 2014-10-15 11:25 PM

2014-10-16 5:53 AM

in reply to: Stuartap

Master

3058

South Alabama

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Stuart-that sounds like a tough swim workout. On the 30/30s or any other high intensity intervals I find it much easier/safer to do these on the trainer since I don't always feel like I'm in great control of the bike....might be a little scary on the roads.

2014-10-16 8:56 AM

in reply to: slornow

Extreme Veteran

1190

Silicon Valley

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Randy trying to do 100's on the minute wasn't tough, more like punishment. I don't think I ever broke double digits. But when you are young and crazy and trying to show up your teammates you do stupid things like that.

2014-10-16 10:56 AM

in reply to: Stuartap

Master

3205

ann arbor, michigan

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

50 yards in 30 seconds is beyond my current ability. The absolute fastest I can do it is 35 seconds and that is a stretch.

Same principle however. I'm going to give it a try.

2014-10-16 11:01 AM

in reply to: wannabefaster

Extreme Veteran

1190

Silicon Valley

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Originally posted by wannabefaster

50 yards in 30 seconds is beyond my current ability. The absolute fastest I can do it is 35 seconds and that is a stretch.

Same principle however. I'm going to give it a try.

Yeah but if you are doing 50's every 90 seconds pushing hard for that 50 should be doable a reasonable number of times.

Back in the day this was the easy one. 100's on the one minute was the killer. I don't think I will ever see those days again. Fortunately I don't have to.

2014-10-16 4:02 PM

in reply to: slornow

Extreme Veteran

1190

Silicon Valley

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Originally posted by slornow

Randy in case you don't know, I hate riding on a trainer. I just cant seem to focus. I like the outdoors. So trying to think how/where I could do intervals I believe I have found the perfect place to do them. About a month ago a friend suggested a side route that takes you off the main road briefly. I have been riding it 3-4 times a week for about a month and have seen two cars in all that time that were moving (only 5 houses on the whole street and two of those five are vacant).

It is a dead straight road 1.26 miles long. The road is OK, not great, but empty for the most part. So doing a little math if I could do the whole length at 20 mph it would take 3.75 minutes to travel the whole length. So if I was to do 30 seconds all out 30 seconds recovery I should have plenty of road to do that 4 times per run and then turn around and do it the other direction. That way I could do it outdoors where I like to be and safe.

Does that sound like a reasonable plan?

BTW - ended up not riding with the group today. A friend called and we rode for 43 miles at a quicker pace than the group was going to do.

2014-10-16 8:26 PM

in reply to: Stuartap

Master

3058

South Alabama

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Stuart-sounds like a good option. Glad you were able to get a ride in today. I survived my 20X(30 sec HARD/30 sec easy) main set this evening......ugh.

2014-10-17 3:47 PM

in reply to: Stuartap

Master

3205

ann arbor, michigan

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Originally posted by Stuartap

My swim workout today was 8 x 400 on :30 rest but I wanted to try some sprint/top end work as well. Soooo, I did 400, 30 seconds rest, 50 as fast as I could go (which ended up being 37-38 seconds) then rested until I the clock hit 8:00 from the start of the last set and started over. So every 8:00 I started another set.

This ended up being an interesting mix of endurance and top end speed. The even more interesting thing is that I got faster with each 400 interval. There was something about the all out effort that seemed to transfer over and make the longer efforts "better".

Anyways, it was an interesting swim. Felt very good considering the distance swam.

2014-10-18 11:24 AM

in reply to: wannabefaster

Extreme Veteran

1190

Silicon Valley

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Jason great job. I hadn't thought about it but I get the 400's picking up speed. You were thinking more about speed and pushing faster on the 50's so not surprised it carried over.

Keep it up.

2014-10-19 6:12 PM

in reply to: Stuartap

Master

3205

ann arbor, michigan

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

How has everyone's weekend been? Hopefully out training and/or having fun.

I am currently in the middle of a 24 hour shift at the hospital where I can't leave because of how busy it is and the acuity of the patients. However, I had a 90 minute run on the schedule for today so I got up at 4:25 so I could be running by 4:40 and leave the house for work at 6:30. It wasn't very far in to this run that I began to question my sanity....... I seemed to have a hard time getting up to speed. Don't know if it just took my legs awhile to get awake this morning or if it is residual from the harder than expected bike effort yesterday.

I will say that the world is very peaceful that early in the morning. Very dark. Just a sliver of the moon. Zero cloud cover so the stars were especially bright. 34 degrees, brrr. Overall a very pleasant experience. At one point a very large bird flew scarily close to my head. I think it was an owl. Shortly after my close encounter I could hear the classic, movie theater, children's book, whooo, whooo of an owl from nearby trees.

In other news, my Detroit Lions won today. I was watching the game and they were down 13 points and doing absolutely nothing. I got called to do a case and assumed that they lost because they didn't appear to have what it took to win. Imagine my surprise when I flipped the TV on a few minutes ago and heard that they actually won.

WoodrowCall

2014-10-19 6:18 PM

in reply to: wannabefaster

Extreme Veteran

990

Collierville, Tennessee

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Originally posted by wannabefaster

How has everyone's weekend been? Hopefully out training and/or having fun.

I am currently in the middle of a 24 hour shift at the hospital where I can't leave because of how busy it is and the acuity of the patients. However, I had a 90 minute run on the schedule for today so I got up at 4:25 so I could be running by 4:40 and leave the house for work at 6:30. It wasn't very far in to this run that I began to question my sanity....... I seemed to have a hard time getting up to speed. Don't know if it just took my legs awhile to get awake this morning or if it is residual from the harder than expected bike effort yesterday.

I will say that the world is very peaceful that early in the morning. Very dark. Just a sliver of the moon. Zero cloud cover so the stars were especially bright. 34 degrees, brrr. Overall a very pleasant experience. At one point a very large bird flew scarily close to my head. I think it was an owl. Shortly after my close encounter I could hear the classic, movie theater, children's book, whooo, whooo of an owl from nearby trees.

In other news, my Detroit Lions won today. I was watching the game and they were down 13 points and doing absolutely nothing. I got called to do a case and assumed that they lost because they didn't appear to have what it took to win. Imagine my surprise when I flipped the TV on a few minutes ago and heard that they actually won.

My weekend has been pretty good; I had the best bike and run I've had in a long time, mainly because, now that training is over, I was able to do what I wanted! It felt great; I biked for 60ish miles on Saturday and ran for 7 this morning, but I was able to go whatever speed I wanted and didn't have some goal time/pace/etc. to shoot for. It's amazing how short 60 miles can feel when you know that you can stop whenever you feel. It's nice to go and ride/run for fun again!
Also, I noticed today that BT and Strava have gotten access to Garmin Express, which is a life-saver for me! I really like using both to log my workouts, but I was getting tired of uploading, downloading, uploading. Now, I sync my watch and voila! Good stuff.

2014-10-19 7:41 PM

in reply to: WoodrowCall

Master

3058

South Alabama

Subject: RE: Slornow and Wannabefaster's Summer Group-CLOSED

Have to agree with Jamie.....my bike workout yesterday was pretty much get out and ride...push it if you feel good. Ended up doing 63 miles over 3 hours with about 100 minutes a bit above HIM watts. It felt good. I did another easy hour on the road bike today followed by an easy run. No races coming up so things are a little easier. My coach told me to just ride next Saturday with no intervals.......not sure I'll be able to do that but I'll sure try.

Been nursing some tightness/soreness in my left ankle/achilles the last 3 weeks. So, this week I did 3 pool running sessions to try to give it a break. Did get out for an easy run outside today and it felt pretty good. How it feels tomorrow will be the key. It is hard not to run outside with the cooler temps...plus aqua jogging is pretty mind numbing.