kaburns1214 Mentor Group 2012 - CLOSED (Page 5)

Carrie - you crack me up!  Nice of you to offer your hardware to your brother.  Hope he's ok.

Jeremy - I used Don Fink's competitive plan for my two IM's.  I really like it, and plan to use it for Vineman.  I followed it pretty closely, but did move things around during the week if work got in the way.  I felt well prepared at the start of each IM.

My 2012 goals -

Try to stay injury free as best I can.  I'm always tripping while trail running (heck, I even trip running on the road), so if I can limit my injuries I'll be happy.

My one real goal for 2012 is to better my IM times at Vineman.  I know each course is different, and you never know what the day will bring, but I really want to do "better".  I'm shooting for sub 13, we'll see.  One of my training buddies was studying prior Vineman results and told me my goal was 12:45.  Ha!

bulfrog - 2011-12-20 4:41 PM

carrie639 - 2011-12-21 8:11 AM OK, I am just being lazy, but what does 90kg equate to?  If we are going to talk European metrics (LOL) I at least want to understand what you are saying.

Haha, I think its more rest of the world, than a European system , but 90kg is about 198lbs

 

Here is me, approaching the finish of my first tri, last summer. 

The United States is one of only two countries in the world that do not use the Metric system, seems like us stubborn Yanks are a little behind the times, the other is Liberia i think...yeah...exactly...who???

To give you the lawyer answer -- It depends.  You can gain a lot of speed just doing base work (and by base work I mean doing most of your training at an aerobic intensity.  This is not slow, its "steady" -- and determining what steady means is a whole different discussion).  But you do reach a point where you need to add intensity to get faster.

There are differing schools of thought as to where that point is.  My opinion is that for most triathletes in their first few years of consistent training, more base is better.  Bryan (who is a fantastic resource) may differ on this.

In my situation, I'm doing 12 weeks of base, but my base period still includes some faster work.  In particular every 4th week, I'll have tempo bikes and runs and will begin to add in Tabata intervals.  In addition, I'll run a short race once a month and try to go as fast as I can.

You don't have to make it complicated.  Start doing consistenet steady efforts.  When you're feeling good with the steady efforts start to add in some harder, faster efforts.  More so than anything else, getting consistent is going to give you the biggest gains. 

A good, professional bike fit is going to be a couple of hundred dollars.  Generally speaking the bike fit take a couple of hours and the bike fit technician takes a ton of measurements, finds your "perfect" position on a fit bike and then adjusts your current bike to the new fit.  They can also set you up for your road position but also take measurements if you want to add on aero bars later (for shorter races, I think you're better off in your drops than putting on clip on aero bars). 

Brian at Fast Splits is fantastic (http://www.fastsplits.com/bikefit_process.cfm).  If you make an appointment with him, let him know that you know Shaun and I. 

If you dont want to spend the money at this point, Shaun does a pretty good bike fit and would be willing to take a look at you and your bike (you'll just have to make the trip down to Southington). 

If your curious here are pictures from my bike fit last year.  Its pretty cool to see the position change. 

If its done well, its worth the price.  Most places will also save your cordinates so that if/when you purchase a new bike you can purchase the bike that has the best geometry for you.

Yeah our club uses Shama Cycles for the most part.  They're the top custom Guru dealer in the States (I think) and Philip is great about recommending whatever brand/model fits you even if it's not one he carries.  Really cool shop.

When's the last time you beat either one of us?

Ouch

Was doing the 30 minute test on the trainer this morning and forgot to hit the lap button 10 minutes into the test.....LOL.  I'm still going to use the data, because the zones seem pretty accurate for trainer rides for me.  Heartrate seems to climb much, much higher when I'm riding outside.  My legs are tired. 

Recovery run this afternoon. 

Christmas shopping this afternoon (just odds and ends).  That ought to be fun.  People are so kind and patient in stores this time of year

Since I slacked and didn't put a pic up of me here ya go:

You are brave.