RE-OPENED Birkierunner's 2013 mentor group - RE-OPENED!!! (Page 5)

I will add another comment.  It sounds like you have no formal swim training in your background.  If that is the case, I would
STRONGLY urge you to seek out a swim team of some sort.  One that is willing to spend time with a novice swimmer.  The local Masters Swim Team is probably a good choice but any type of formal swim team will work - even private lessons if that is what is available.  Learn proper stroke technique.  All the hours will be useless if you are doing it wrong and as a beginner it will be very hard to objectively judge your own stroke.  I am one in the minority because I don't necessarily think you need to perfect all four strokes, I think only freestyle as that is what you will be using in a triathlon.  I am sure there are many that are going to argue that point, but reality is that freestyle is the fastest and the most efficient stroke.  That is not to say you shouldn't learn the other strokes, just that you don't necessarily need to perfect the other strokes.  I am not a big believer in kick-boards, however this is a case where a kick-board will be helpful.  Get a coach to help you perfect the freestyle flutter kick.  Most beginners will have their legs bent at the knee and their hips to low in the water.  Using a kick-board will help to eliminate those problems - if you have proper instruction and coaching.

As to time in the water.  I would not spend any more time in the water than you can maintain PERFECT stroke technique in the beginning.  That presents a bit of a catch-22.  You need to be in the water to perfect your technique but you will fatigue fairly quickly in the beginning.  At first, in my humble opinion, your stroke technique is more important than anything else.  As you perfect your technique you can add on the time and yards/meters.  You want to get to the point where your stroke is automatic; you don't have to think about it.  That will take some time.  I would suggest minimum three times/week to start, again, only as long as you can maintain proper technique.  After a couple weeks, it will be starting to become automatic and you can adjust your time/yards from there.

Just my two cents.

Good Luck!

Scott, thanks for the great advice.  I looked into the Masters Program at my gym but they may be too advanced for me at this point.  I will look into an intermediate swim class or a private lesson to set up a good foundation.  Thanks again, and happy new year.

Great way to get things going Chris!  Happy New Year!

Scott, congrats on getting the bike trainer.  Which model did you end up going with?  One thing about training with power....you get a lot of numbers thrown at you!  I'm not familiar with the Wired Power Computer that you mentioned, so I don't know how accurate it is relative to the actual work that you're doing in a workout.  But at least it can be used in a relative sense to monitor progress in your training. 

A "watt" is a measure of power and is simply the number of joules (unit of energy) expended over a given time period (see article).  1 watt is simply 1 joule per second, 100 watts is 100 joules per second.  So, in your workout you were averaging 113 watts or 113 joules/sec and your maximum work level performed at any time during the 68 minutes was 223 watts.  The question of whether these numbers are "good" or "bad" and how "accurate" they are depends....as I mentioned, I don't know how accurate your computer device is so its hard to address that one.  But as far as "good" or "bad" the only thing you can say is "it is what it is" because they are numbers specific to you.  In order to know if its a good number is to determine what your power at lactate threshold is and then base your training intensities in relation to that power level. 

If folks want to dive deep into the training with power approach there are some good books out there such as Training and Racing with a Power Meter and The Triathlete's Guide to Training with Power.

Apologies to the group.  I got sick after Xmas and did no training for the past week, and also put myself on a self imposed web hiatus.

Looking forward to being around daily going forward.

No worries...I think everyone is battling some type of bug lately.  Its a new year!

I've been away too; holiday travel and such. Glad to see the group is so active though. After 3.5 months of hoping my foot wasn't really that injured, I'm going to make an appointment to get it checked out... can't wait to be able to pick out a race and make a plan and get to it. Happy new year all!

I got the Kinetic Road Machine and the Kinetic Wired Power Computer.  I got the computer so I had a way to log distance and speed; the power numbers were a bonus.

In between football plays yesterday I spent a fair amount of time researching "training with power."  By no means am I an expert, and in reality I have more questions now then I did before I started reading, but it is a start.

My how things have changed in thirty years!

As you get to the HIM distance, bike fitness becomes more important and is rewarded by being able to have a good run off of the bike.  I would aim for a 4 hour ride about 4 weeks out from your race, with 2 more 2.5+ hour rides in the next 3 weeks.  Assuming you have worked up to it, I would try to get in 10-12 rides of 2.5+ hours in a 20 week HIM program for a beginner and more than that for intermediate level athlete. 

Brick runs are somewhat controversial here on BT.  Many believe they are not needed and are not an effective way to become a better runner.  Well, we aren't training to be a better runner....we are training to be triathletes.  So for someone to say that brick runs should not be included in a triathlon training program is fairly ridiculous in my opinion.  One way to train for running off the bike in a race is to...ummmm.....run off the bike!!! :-)  I agree that the majority of training runs should be done as standalone workouts, but I firmly believe that athletes should include at least some brick runs.  The frequency and length of those bricks will vary by race distance.   

Jim - I fully agree on the bricks.  For me, it comes down to pacing, and knowing what pace I can reasonably expect to run following rides of different distances and intensities.  I think some people make the mistake of always keeping their brick runs too short, which for longer distance racing is not beneficial.  You need to see what the impact of the ride is having on your running legs, HR, etc.

For intermediate athletes, what volume of 2.5hr+ rides do you think is appropriate?  Also curious about the ride intensities - are you thinking they should mostly fall in the 80-85% range, or do you mix them up?

Finally got my bike cleaned up from my last race (That was a disgusting job - the brakes were so sticky and caked with sports drink that they wouldn't open/close properly) and set up on the trainer.  First actual ride should be tonight, though it probably won't be anything but a 30-45 minute easy spin session.

As for BRicks, I like to do a couple per week, always coming off of a hard bike session.  I rarely run more than two miles off the bike as I find it takes me too long to recover. 

This year, I'm going with a much heavier run focused training plan so I may do one or two longer BRick runs as I get closer to my HIM, but I don't expect to do so regularly.  

Oh, I use a Cycle-Ops Mag5 trainer that I don't especially love, but it works.  Wish I had something that I could adjust resistance without having to get off the bike. 

Longer bricks also provide an opportunity to work on ironing out your race nutrition strategy.

As far as intermediate and advanced level athletes, again assuming you've prepared for a HIM training plan, I would be doing 2.5+ hour rides almost weekly.  And on some weekends a long ride on both Sat and Sunday would be appropriate.  The intensity is going to be quite varied.  I wouldn't do your primary long ride of the week at only one intensity.   Every ride should start with a good 20-30 min warmup before starting any higher intensity sets within the ride.  You can be as creative as you want with mixing it up with some longer main sets (e.g. 2 x 30 min with 2-5 min rest) at zone 3 and some shorter sets (e.g. 4 x 6 to 8 min with 2 min rest) at zone 4-5 and then finish up the remainder of the ride at zone 2-3.  If you did a Sunday ride the next day you may want to keep more of that ride at zone 2-3.  Earlier in the week you'll be doing shorter more intense rides. 

Mike, sorry to hear about your injury.  Just curious what kind of recovery you had after the 100 miler?  If you took off for quite a while I would think that the stress fracture would have had a chance to start healing.  I had a stress fracture in my tibia my summer after high school and it wiped out my freshman x-c season in college.  I can't recall how long healing took though.  I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night so I won't pretend to be a doctor    Hopefully the x-ray will shed some light on the diagnosis.  Fingers crossed.

Back when I was swimming, this was so easy - we did a hard 400, took our carotid pulse for 6 seconds, multiplied by 10, then took 80%.  That was our "training zone."  I guess I need (would like?) some clarification on zones.

I did a Conconi Test earlier today to determine my LT (I thought this was the best "quick" alternative).  From that, I determined my training zones according to Joe Friel's guidelines:

 So a couple questions for clarification -

1)  I am not using a power meter yet - still learning about that.  It seems some of these HR zones are very narrow.  Won't it be difficult to stay in a zone given HR drift, etc., or am I being to anal about hitting an exact number?

2)  Are the zones you referred to in your response generally the same as the zones I have above (percentage)?

That will do for now.  I could monopolize the thread with just this topic so I'll stop while I'm a head.

Yeah, I'd think similarly. I took a week off completely, then tried to run and it flared up after 30 minutes. After a month of mostly cycling, I tried to ramp up and it flared up again. Since then I've been doing a little cycling, a little running, pretty unorganized. Got lost on a run last week and so did 7 miles, my longest in a while, and it was getting pretty painful by the end.

The idea that it would never heal is unthinkable to me. We'll see what the Xray and podiatrist say, for now, maybe I'll do some strength training and cycling...

I am going to try to figure out how to use the training logs and how to add people as friends.  I've pretty much just come on the BT site to read articles/forums/etc, so I need to learn to navigate the site in general!

I have a couple of questions: First, from the reading I've done it is apparent to me that the ideal way to get in the winter bike workouts is to use a trainer.  Well, I'm not ready to shell out for one just yet since I've already dropped a bundle on the bike, wetsuit, etc this first year.  Also, I think I would hate it, but that's secondary!  So, my question is this: What's the NEXT best alternative?  I just joined the Y, which has both Cybex bikes and spin classes.  I expect to utilize both, but does anyone have any suggestions about how to maximize my time for the best transfer of training once I hit the road in the spring?

Second, I want to avail myself of some swim instruction.  I can swim breaststroke till the cows come home (so I know I won't drown!) but have been working on my crawl with the goal of being able to swim freestyle the entire race distance.  I am getting better but I think it is time to have someone help me refine my stroke before I lay down too many bad habits through repetition.  I can either pursue adult swim lessons at the Y with a general swim instructor (cheaper, closer option,) or I can take a few group swim clinics with a tri coach (much more expensive, further away, but tri specific.)  Any thoughts on this?  I am leaning toward the tri coach, but if a general swim instruction program would be just as good, I can save myself some $$ and drive time!

Thanks!
Amy

I'm not quite sure how you tested, but the zones don't look quite right - the zones should be "bigger" for lack of a better word.  You should have more like 7-10bpm in each zone rather than 3-4.

This is a good articale on how to field test, plus links to the BT calculator that figures out your HR zones. Haven't looked at it in a while but I believe they use Friel's methodology, and I'm still using my run zones from when I first tested in 08.

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=633

You can also look up Jorge's winter cycling program, but the HR zones from his calculator seem a little low to me based on the 30min test. The power zones though are really good.