Jim Kelley's (Birkierunner) General and Long Course Group (OPEN) (Page 5)

Way to tough it out, Carrie.

Jim, 63F and sunny here tomorrow. We just got through our "cold snap" of the year... it dropped below freezing for a few nights there. 

I'll be curious to hear what the swimmers say, but I use my (very approximate) time in the pool as the workout duration. If I had a watch that recorded my average split time, I'd record it as the pace or in the workout notes to see how it's progressing over the season. 

Don't worry about trying to subtract rest periods.  You are not really "resting" anyway ...you are recovering from a set and its part of the workout.  You will be able to measure progress in the long term by how fast you can perform given sets and periodic swim tests at a certain distance (e.g. 500 and 1000 yd swim tests).  Keeping track of avg speed for workouts (time per 100) will be misleading because workouts will vary in their intended purpose. 

Hi everyone!  I'm back in town after our week in Upstate NY- getting back into training but it's a really busy week so I'm not being too hard on myself.  I did get on the trainer last night.  My goal for January is to fix my hamstring/glute whatever it is, so I made an appointment with the chiropractor (who does ART) for tomorrow- hopefully she can help me get back on track.

Good luck with the hamstring.  I have a right hamstring that has some chronic tightness that I need to address myself.

Welcome to the group Dan.  You're going to be a busy man   Hopefully our group can help you with time management

I'll address both of these at once.  I'll start off by saying I did my first 2 Ironmans with my Trek 2300 road bike with clip-on aerobars. That is a perfectly acceptable alternative to buying a new tri bike if you are limited to one.  I would highly recommend the clip-ons if you are limited to a road bike.

A road bike with clip-ons will have a definite aero advantage over a road bike without them.  Plus, assuming you fit them correctly, using the aerobars will allow you support your body more comfortably and with less work than sitting up or using the drops on road bike handlebars for extended periods of time.  This will allow you to spend less energy getting through the bike portion of the race.

As for reducing the cycling workouts to 2/week I would not recommend that.  Instead I would try to get 3 bike and 3 run workouts/week and if possible increase that to 4 runs per week (even if it means shorter but more frequent runs).

Bill, that's a tough situation to be in.  The only bright side to this is that you can spend more time building bike (especially) and run fitness during the period you are without pool access.  You can however work on addressing swim strength using stretch chord exercises designed for swimming.  The other high-end alternative is to get a Vasa swim trainer.

When I converted my road bike to a "tri bike" I went to our local tri shop to have them help me out.  If you aren't going to spend the money on a new tri bike I think it would be worth the money to pay for a bike fit at a tri shop and have them help you convert it.  They ended up putting a shorter handlebar stem on and also rotating my seat post/mount so that it put the seat forward...i.e. no need for a new seat post.  It's hard to give specific advice here on what would be needed to get your specific road bike to have a more tri-specific geometry.  Here's a good article on the differences between tri and road bike geometry.