Birkierunner's group - CLOSED (Page 5)

Cooper River Run.....where are you located?   I am in Greenville, SC.  My first Tri will actually be the one in Mt. Pleasant in April.   Are you in Charleston??

Small world! I live in Mt. P, and plan to do the TryCharleston sprint distance on 4/21. How cool!

I am signed up for the sprint too....I will be there!  I will be lost and confused but I will be there!  We are staying at the Courtyard.  2415 Mall Drive,Interstate 26 and Montague Avenue North Charleston  Happen to know if that is anywhere near the race?  I will send you a PM with my email address.

I know exactly where it is - I even stayed there for a few days during my relocation. It is not super-close, but it will be very easy to get to the race from there. Sure - ask me anything, this tri is basically right down the street from me!

Not sure what the temp was in Houston that morning but I did see one of the 3 top men finishers wearing a hat so it may have been a little chilly at the start and some runners may simply have been wearing black arm warmers (all the pics I saw were black ones) to keep their arms warm.  I doubt they were compression sleeves.  In very warm/hot temps you see more and more people wearing white arm sleeves to keep cool and ward off the effects of intense sun on the body.

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Sorry for not being online this weekend...my laptop is in to get the hard drive replaced.

For workouts less than an hour I don't worry too much about refueling, although those short ones are typically at lunch so I usually have something right after the workout anyway.  For my long workouts I'm a smoothie junkie, especially in summer.  I have no specific recipe and don't do any measuring.  I grow my own strawberries and have tons in the freezer.  I also keep a huge bag of frozen blueberries in the freezer and will usually freeze whole, peeled bananas that have gotten too brown to eat.  Peel them and put them in ziploc sandwich bags which makes it easy to break into chunks when you take it out of the freezer.

So...in a blender that has very good cutting teeth I start out by putting in one scoop of chocolate whey protein isolate, frozen blueberries, 5 or 6 whole frozen strawberries, cut up banana, couple spoonfuls of tropical fruit salad chunks and pour in a bit of the juice from the can, and then I pour in orange juice until it comes almost to the top of the ingredients in the blender...then I add a couple heaping tablespoons of lowfat yogurt (favorite is black cherry but strawberry or blueberry will do) and start blending until you're sure all the chunks have been smoothed out.  The frozen ingredients makes the mixture very cold.  This is a fairly thick smoothie so you can add more OJ to thin it out if you want and experiment with the other ingredients.  It also makes a HUGE amount of smoothie so be hungry!!

The UPS man delivered my new Garmin 910XT yesterday!!

Reminds me of a x-c ski race a few years ago north of Duluth.  It was minus 40 degrees when we were driving up to the race venue early that morning.  They postponed the race for a few hours until it WARMED UP to minus 20 degrees so they could legally hold the race.

I was in Maine for X-mas and I did a few runs in zero degree weather... Being an L.A. guy I felt quite manley.  Some of the best runs I've ever had, along a frozen river with snow on all the trees and an eagle flying by, so cool!

I was able to get on my trainer last night.   My broken foot is healing quick but I could only do about a half hour until the throbbing started.  Gonna try to do the same tonight with a swim today.  Hopefully by the weekend I will be able to do a long ride. 

I don't think I'm pushing it too much but am trying to keep it reeled in so as not to re-injure.  I'm supposed to do a small 5 k Super bowl Sunday, we'll see

Looked briefly at my logs and feel pretty lazy.  I battled an upper respiratory infection for close to 3 months and that really put a damper on my training from late October til now.  In fact, 2011 as a whole was pretty much a bust for me.  My divorce was finalized in early February, we had to put my dog down the same week, and my Dad died in April and I was executor of his estate which took a good part of the spring.  My spring was shot, and I never really got on track last season.  This week I really need to start ramping up, and luckily it doesn't take me long to get back to a place where I can start to train seriously again. 

Sounds like everyone is starting to get some good workouts in!!!  Have you noticed the daylight hanging around a little longer in the afternoon??

Thanks for the invite...looking forward to it.

NAME: coachh/Marcelo

STORY: I'm 47..teacher/coach.   Also spin instructor 3x/week.   Have been involved with running since ms and through college...started doing road races early 90s.  Got into cycling bc of running injuries and have done it periodically....Periodically bc my coaching in season (cross country and track and field) is my off-season.  Have done 3 marathons.  Over the last 5 years, i have done several short sprint tris.  My monster is definitely the swimming.  

FAMILY STATUS: Have 19 yr old. 

CURRENT TRAINING: Would love to do more longer ows tris.  Have done one ows tri and struggled with the swim.  The running is the easy part.  Getting to enjoy the bike but the swim is a whole different story.  Looking forward to adding swimming at least twice / week.  Have also joined cycling group..figured i could offset my weak swim.  

THIS YEAR'S RACES: 2011 was not a competing year.  Just not enough training...It is one thing to stay fit and another to train to compete well.  

2012 RACES:  In the back of my mind is an OLY in late summer.  Also have a few short sprints.   For now, going to try Captex Memorial day.  BUT, have to get over this swim fear.  

ANY help would be appreciated....Looking forward to it.  

Thanks for posting the bio Marcelo.  Can you expand on the "swim fear" issue?  Is it the mass start swim in races that you don't like or is it a general uneasiness in the water?

double post deleted

Swimming is my weakness...ows just doesn't seem to happen for me...as it is, all my swim workouts are broken down into 200s, 150s, at most 300s...but once i get into ow, it just doesn't happen.

I entered a small 400 ows last spring and made it ok through 300...after that, it was a struggle...not so much the mass starts, just making it through the length itself...

Hope this helps...

Welcome, Marcelo!

I never really thought of hard times like this, but I suppose it is true. I'm sorry that you had to go through all that last year, Jim, and I hope that 2012 really makes up for it.

My workout today was a swim, 1750 yards. After warming up, I did two sections of 600 yards each, just to time myself for the sprint swim distance. My focus is form, since my times are not fast and I'm sure I have a lot to fix there. I am at around 2 minutes for 100 yds, sometimes a little under or over that.

Recovery drink/food: smoothies are very popular here, too. I also fix a whole-wheat + peanut butter sandwich or a w/w tortilla with scrambled eggs and fake-meat sausage, cheese and salsa. I make about 8 of those at a time and freeze them so I can heat them up for a relatively low fat, high protein fast meal. I do love smoothies the best, though, and my mom just bought me an immersion blender for my birthday last year, so making them is much faster and cleanup easier.

Marcelo, do you have anywhere to practice OWS? That's what I have always heard is the best way to get over nervousness. A local tri group or anything?

My workout today was a swim, 1750 yards.....

WOW....I am in trouble...Maybe that's it...Just get in the water!!!!

OWS is usually around April, May...with track and xc stuff it is very much limited..Redid my sched for Tue/Thu hoping to get time in the water...

Stay tuned!!!  

I just cross-posted with you. That's a bummer that you don't have an opportunity to practice the ows, but really it sounds like you would benefit from building up your distance. I also like to group my workout into separate pieces like 300yd warm-up, 50-100-150-200-150-100-50, then a cool-down of maybe 100 yds. Or check out a website like swimplan.com to get yourself a customized workout to do each week.

Another thing that helped me last year was joining a women's tri training group.

What she said....!!!!  Yep, it basically sounds like a swim fitness issue.  I was worried you had a fear of open water swimming itself, and I wouldn't be much help there other than to say take baby steps until you are accustomed to open water.  But, what you describe can easily be diagnosed as lacking in swim fitness.  There is no way around that other than to get time in the water.  What is your average swim workout like as far as total time and yardage?  Personally, I hate the pool....hate it...hate it....hate that black line at the bottom of the pool.....LOVE open water swimming.  BUT..for me the pool is a necessary evil.  I think there are tons of swim workouts out there because people try to distract you with complicated workouts to get around the dirty little secret that everyone tries to hide....swimming in the pool is extremely boring (unless you were a swimmer and racer as a kid and its like second nature to you).  I don't get fancy with my workouts....you could say they are boring as well.  My speed workouts are 50s or 100s and my longer workouts are either 500s in the pool or out and backs in the lake I train on (about an 11 minute lap). 

As you get more swim fitness you won't be bonking after 300 m. 

Swim Question:  Second swim this morning....cranked out 1250.  Around 1100 i started to get a cramp in the arch of my right foot....had to roll over and try to stretch out my foot in the air (yes I looked like I was doing water ballet)....didn't really work.  Anyone advice (regarding the cramp....not water ballet....got that covered).

Also....perhaps its my attention deficit disorder....but how the heck are you supposed to keep up with the amount of laps you complete?  I had to constantly remind myself where I was.  

Mike

Hi Mike.  I occasionally battle arch cramps too.  The pool director where I swim said eat bananas because potassium levels affect cramping and will reduce the arch cramps.  I didn't say it, but I call b.s.    I know my cramps aren't related to electrolyte levels...its mechanical.  It seems to occur more frequently when I push off the wall very aggressively, especially with my toes.  If I push off more with the whole foot it seems to help.  In a workout I try not to stop because of cramping and try to work it out as if I'm in a race and don't want to stop.  If I stop pointing my toes while swimming and keep the cramped foot pointed down to stretch out the muscles it seems to alleviate the cramps.  Then, when my rep is over I stop and massage the arch.  Perhaps some stretching before your workout will help as well.

As for lap counting you can try using the lap/split button on your (water resistent) watch...try not to press it underwater which I know can be difficult in the middle of a long rep.  They do sell some gizmos that you can put on your finger and use as a lap counter - google it.  I just try to keep reminding myself which lap I'm on and hope for the best.  I wonder how many extra laps I've done without knowing it!  Or how many workouts were shorter than they were supposed to be!!

Some people use pennies stacked at the end of the pool or little lap counters on your finger that you hit with your thumb.

Keeping count of laps in my head is something to keep my mind busy during all the laps. I also keep my eye on the poolside digital clock,  which gives me a sanity-check for my lap count. Basically, if I did 300 yds in 5 minutes, I probably missed a lap. But if I did it in 5:50, and I felt fast, that means my count was ok. 

I count every length of my 25 yd pool. I know that going up is an odd number and coming back is even. I make a mental note of each 100 yds.