Newbz' group is FULL (Page 5)

I think that six weeks between triathlons is plenty of time. I think that you will gain a lot of experience between the two races and you will be able to apply that newfound knowledge in your ‘A’ race.

There is nothing wrong with riding an older road bike (or even fat tire) in your races. It is nice to have a new bike and it could motivate you to train more but it is definitely not necessary. I would say that adding aero bars is not even needed in your first few races. I added aero bars to my road bike and it may have added (don’t know for sure) a little bit of speed but it made the bike much harder to handle. A lot of weight shifted up front and the bike was not as stable. I would hold off and just make sure that your bike is in good and safe working condition.

Besides, if and when you want to upgrade your bike your will probably want to go for something a little higher up in the components – not that there is anything wrong with the bike you are looking at. My first road bike (also on that site) was a Scott Speedster 60 – the cheapest road bike I could find. That bike served me well for many years and thousands of miles. In fact I still have the bike and I want to change it into a single speed bike.

I am going to have to agree wildly with the crowd that advocates distance/doing more running to get faster. fo two years i did the 3 run focus, now and again running a bit more. i went from a 24 min 5k to a 21 min or so. sat there for another year or so. this past year i started running consistantly. starting around 20miles a week or so. this fall after my last race, i took 6 weeks off, and started running almost daily in mid oct. dec 14th i ran a 5k off of an ave of 23miles per week or so. ran a 17:45 on a HILLY course in pouring rain. no speed work at all. highest week was 34 miles so far, lowest in thre was 18. just running a pace that would let me get out and run almost every day. right now i am working up to 40-50mpw and cannot wait to see how speeds improve from here.

in short, anything over 400m is going to require a big aerobic base to get faster, and there is no substitute for milage for that. the issue i think a lot of people run into is they think they need more speed, when honestly what they lack is endurance. the more you run (or bike), the more efficiant your body is going to become. adding more milage/running daily, your easy pace will gradually drop over time. so if easy pace two years ago was 9min pace, you run 4-7 times a week over two years, the new easy pace is 7 min. all paces aside from sprint speeds will keep dropping with this. then, ONCE you have a good base built up, add in a BIT of speed work, and you will see some nice gains from it. do it off of little milage, and a much smaller base, and aside from the increased injury risk, you may as well just be doing the easy runs because your body is not going to make the adaptions it would off more milage + speed.

most of us will keep getting a lot faster on simply doing hte milage without any faster work for a long time, but most epople cannot handle it being that simple and try to add more had running than they ever should.



As for the bike choice, i'll take a look at the link in a min. but i would say get the bike you have checked out/tuned up if it needs it and start on that, see what you think of hte sport, and go from there. people race on anything from BMX bikes, single speeds, old mountain bikes up to bikes that cost the same as a car



KC, very nice totals for the year!

for everyone else that has been training this year, what do your numbers look like? would be fun to post them up and then maybe some goals for 2010 numbers.

so far for 2009:
all but a tiny bit of the swim and bike took place from jan to sept. and no training at all realls in oct.
Swim: 345,400 yards swim (good swimming year for me:-) an some good swim PRs
Bike: 206 hours, faster on the bike this year but numbers not up much from last year.
Run: 833 miles. some good PRs, first time i have not been hurt running in a long time.


2010 goals:
Swim: up in the air on this. if i dont start enjoying swimming here shortly i am going to do enough to get through the few tris i need to do and make the switch to duathlon for a bit. otherwise would like to hit around 320-350k for the year again. seemed like a good balance for me.
Bike: this and the run need to go up. looking to get in closer to 300-350 hours this year.
Run: goal for 2010 is to hit 2000 miles or so and get the run times DOWN to match up with the other two sports

if you are worried/nervous about hte open water swim i would keep working on the swim now and do the tri and not the du for the early race. it will let you get a bit more practice in and know what ot expect. that said i love duathlons, they are a blast and a nice change from tris in that therei s very little that needs to go to the race, and less to worry about/have to set up!

David,

Here are my totals for running and cycling year to date: