Frostbite Force - Du-December Challenge (Page 5)

Almost feel guilty.  All you guys and girls are braving the cold and living up to our team name, while I'm training in 60 degree weather.  Well, almost guilty.  Does rain count?  Think we might get a sprinkle on Sunday.


Anyways, good morning everyone.  How's it going?  What do you have planned for the day?

April, nice job at the pool.  I probably would of left once I realized I didn'tt have a jacket.

Jen, enjoy your off-week; it always ends too soon!

If it is a wetsuit legal race, you have a bunch of floatation, so sinking really isn't a problem.  If you position yourself kind of off to the side and towards the back you miss the main pack somewhat.  My IM was in a river, so even though the numbers were lower, everyone was fairly packed in.  One of the benefits of being slow is that you don't have to avoid people that much, they just avoid you.  It is motivating to keep your tail end up so you don't get run over as much.  It is just like starting a big running race, it is kind of packed for the first bit and then it thins out. 

CDA, however will be a different experience with the mass start of 2500 plus people in a fairly confined area.  I will let you know how that goes 8).  Swimming in whitecaps is another skill that is harder to get used to.  My first swim in waves last spring had me way off my comfort zone for the entire swim.  It is very unnerving to not have a reliable mouth full of air when you come up to breath.  Really cold water is another thing that can set off your pace, breathing and HR.  I had some swims last spring in upper 40's water temps and it took a bit for the face to numb out and to settle in to a rythm.  You will settle in and then just keep at it.  If you are not too close to the cutoff time and swim the typicaly 1:30:00 ish pace, then you can just hang in there once the thrashing is over, swim your pace and enjoy the day.  A couple minutes at the beginning of the swim is not going to destroy your time if you are not shooting for a Kona slot.  IM is a long day, so there is time to get everything done you need to get done.      

I concur.  My first cold water swim almost put me into a panic attack.  I grew up surging, so I thought no big deal.  Yeah, the water is cold, so what!  Oh, how I was wrong.  I just waited around on the shore for the horn, jumped in the water, and immediately I couldn't breath.  I couldn't even keep my face in the water for one stroke.  Ended up having to breast stroke the start, then uni-lateral breathing, and after a couple hundred hundreds, I was able to settle in and resume bilateral breathing.

Lesson learned for cold water:  get in the water 5-10 minutes before the race.  Float around for a while with your face in the water.  Take a nice, easy swim to acclimate.  Then return to shore right before the start.  I haven't had the problem since someone passed this information onto me.

Hi everyone.....I got a bike session in today!   Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Hillwork on the trainer today...it was rough...although my heartrate maxxed out at about 142.  I should be closer to 152...

On track...about 13% through the month, about 13% to my goals...

A short 5k run for me during lunch and some strength training this evening. 

It still amazes me that a little snow that will melt in a day can shut down an entire region.  Heck in Southern CA there are many folks who won't go to work or go shopping if it rains because they might slip off the roads or melt or something. 

Oh well all lite stuff here until Sunday when the work begins again, have a 17 mile run scheduled for Sunday and then next week looks down right brutal.  I guess that will teach me to look too far ahead in the plan.   

Don't feel so bad.  We live with snow for 6 months of the year and you'd THINK we'd be able to drive in it, but without fail, if there is snow falling, whether it's sticking or not, my commute home is extended by 20 minutes!

Be safe!  I trust your driving.  It's the rest of the loonies out there you have to worry about (usually overconfident SUV drivers barreling down the road at 75mph and that you eventually see in the ditch 5 miles down the road ).

I've been swimming laps since I was on a swim team when I was 9 (which was many, many years ago). I just started this swim clinic to improve my swimming. We did 100 warmup then 100, 500 and 1000 meters last night.

Hi fellow frostbiters!

i've been a real slackard this week - but no worries - i'll meet my goal!

this Sunday begins the winter race series i signed up for

it's really pretty cool - it's sponsored by the local running club

basically for $30 - $15 for the membership and $15 for the race series - i have a running race every weekend from 12/6 - the end of Feb - how cool is that?

Thanks for the tips, Steve! Even if I didn't really want to hear that bit about the additional 2-3000 ft elevation gain. Hopefully I can still make the cut offs. As long as I finish I'll be happy! Funny about where you live, because I was telling my husband when we were driving through that area that you probably lived around there. I knew you lived in Northern Cali at elevation and thought, yea this area seems about right Beautiful place by the way!

Tim- Yep that's my number! I'll be wearing blue running tights, a blue jacket and a grey "Runner's Edge" hat. See you there!

Very cool!!! Go Beth!!!

seems to me we need a team roster with links

anyone know how to do html? 

i can do it, but i've been known to blow up entire threads - and it might be util the end of the challenge before i figure it out

Hmmm...yes and no.  Where would we put the roster???

That's a very cool deal with the running club.  Are there varying distances for the races too?

Dee has a thread in the challenge forum that explains how to put the table together

once it's created, we can copy and paste it into our logs - and then easily send inspires and updates - i'll see if i can find an example


as far as the running club - it is very cool!  the race schedule is in my blog - all different distances

hmmmm

what happened to Dee's post?

the Christmas Cookies have a nice team table - we could use that as a reference

Swim finished. The best part is that I got to see how pretty everything looked in the cold before the sun came up.

x1,000,000 on the kick thing

doing kick sets are awesome too. it puts me so far behind everyone else in group swims! i bet that's similar for all of us.