Slornow and Wannabefaster's mentor group...Closed (Page 5)

I love it

My bib number is 1554.  I assume they'll have the typical live tracking on Ironman's website, but I know the RD has set up for ChronoTracking through ironmanpucon.com's website.

Had a really nice (short) run last night, a good swim this morning (main set was 7x200 with 50 fast/strong and then 150 settling into HIM effort), and have another short run this afternoon.  I fly out at 9:30pm my time -- hoping to be able to sleep on the plane.

... I think we caught up at Chattanooga OLY this past year didn't we?  You did the bike leg of the relay?  Most of that weekend is a bit of a beer induced cloud as it was our annual Team road trip.  You doing the Mount Mitchell ride this year?  Definitely on my "to do" list.

Marc - is the maths linear, or is it more complicated than that? Jason, when you do upgrade to a newer PM I have found there to be much, much less offset drift during a ride than there used to be with my older quarq models. I assume it is because they do better internal temperature compensation either via hardware or firmware, but Marc will probably know better if this is actually the case.

Randy, you ride eMotion rollers, correct? Do you have the ones with a resistance unit, or do you also ride a regular trainer for prescribed interval workouts? I rode rollers all the time years ago, and would be interested in trying them out again if eMotion could every get their "smart" unit for sale in the US.

I also use Power2Max but the Classic model.  No complaints, but after reading Jason N's post above I wasn't aware that a PM's reading could drift during a ride.

Is this specific to Quarq or should I be aware of this for the Power2Max?

Bio: tl;dr Version:
I have been doing this consistently for a fairly long time.
I am currently on injured reserve.
My primary focus this year is getting healthy.
I look forward to learning from so many experts in this group and am honored to be a part of it!

Bio: War and Peace Version:

NAME: Rusty - yep, that is right: a grown man with a dog's name.

STORY: I come from a bike racing background - started racing mountain bikes when they were nothing more than beach cruisers with gears. I was really, really good at it, until the sport actually became popular - then, suddenly, I was not so good any more. I actually went backwards from most at the time and purchased a road bike to cross train for mountain biking - everyone else was crossing over from road to mountain - oh! the road bikes you could buy back then for next to nothing, simply because everyone quit buying them! Of course then LeMond went and won the Tour for his second time in rather dramatic fashion, and suddenly road cycling became slightly more popular - but it took a guy named Armstrong to come along later and make road bikes really expensive again. Fast forward a bit to 1991 - I had just graduated college and fell in with some strange folks that called themselves "triathletes." My roommate and I began racing dualthlons (called biathlons back then - no skis or rifles though) with this bunch of hooligans. Throughout that first summer we would train with them, which mostly consisted of hammering group rides, hammering runs, and then drinking beer on the boat while they swam to and fro. I still remember thinking how awesome it would be to be able to actually swim from one place to another. Near the end of that first summer and late on a Friday evening one of my buddies called me up to let me know that another one of our friends would not be able to make it to a triathlon race they had all signed up for, and wanted to know if I was interested. I laughed, as the extent of my swimming up to that point was basically from the back of the boat to the end of the ski rope. However I was easily convinced that I could do it when he told me the swim would only be 400 yards. Had he told me it would be a quarter of a mile, I most likely would not be typing this right now, but 400 yards on the other hand just didn't seem that far. Needless to say I did the race, and was 12th to last out of the water. I know this because the 12 of us dog paddled the entire course together at a nice conversational pace. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "your first race?"
Them: "oh, yes!"
Me: "mine too!"

I crushed the bike, and did great on the run, and was totally hooked - both line AND sinker. I have not done a straight up bike race, and very few duathlons since. I will never forget the day when I could finally swim 1/2 a mile in less than 20 minutes. I celebrated the occasion by immediately going out and buying my first speedo, which back then was the de rigueur race suit. Ah, the good old days. Just thinking of Kenny Souza almost brings a tear to my eye...

Kenny Souza:

Me, circa 1992. See the resemblance???

Over the past 25 years I have raced regularly, often competitively, in all kinds of events: dus, tris, adventure races, mountain biking, stage races, marathons, ultras, and relays. Over the years I have been healthy, injured, overweight, under weight, wicked fast, depressingly slow, absolutely rabid for the sport, and completely burned out. I would describe myself now as rather balanced all around. On occasion I can still find myself out competing for the Weekly World Championship trophy, but am trying to be a lot smarter with my training and racing. no matter what, first and foremost, this sport hobby is FUN!

FAMILY STATUS: That roommate I mentioned earlier? we lived together for 6 years and eventually decided that we liked each other a little bit. We subsequently got married and have remained happily so for the last 19 years. My best friend is simply awesome. She races herself, so she completely gets this ridiculousness. Training and racing is a big part of our social life - not sure if we travel to race or race to travel. No kids, dogs, cats, or even a fish. A friend gave us a chia pet as a joke a couple of years ago, but it is still in its original packaging.

WORK: I am an educator and college administrator. I am the currently the Chair of the Architecture Program at Auburn University, and the Associate director of Rural Studio, our remote design/build program in West Alabama. I live in Atlanta, Georgia however, so I am on the road quite bit between it all. I am fortunate  to be both humbled and honored by the opportunity to do what I do for a living, and would even do it for free if my wife would let me!

CURRENT TRAINING: After being self-trained my whole racing life, I took on a coach five years ago, and have really enjoyed it. I like the accountability, and I have learned a tremendous amount. At 50 years old, I have found that the things that used to work no longer do, and it has been important for this old dog to learn a lot of new tricks in order to remain competitive.  The number one thing my coach has done over the years is to actually slow me down a bit and have me train a good bit less, but a whole lot smarter. I am a self-professed technology wonk - but gave it all up a few years ago as I really began to feel a little bit of a slave to it all. I got to where a poorly functioning HRM could really wreck an otherwise great workout. That said, as part of my coaching, I am completely jacked in: HR/GPS/Power - at first I did not pay much attention to it, it really just provided information for my coach. As the years have gone on and with his guidance (as well as through the guidance of many smart folks in this very group), I have come to be able to use the feedback myself as another set of data points marbled in with RPE. We don’t overtly test very much, but through constant monitoring we tend to have a more of a synthetic sense of where my numbers are. On occasion I throw all the gadgets away and simply go by feel. Call it a deep cleansing. On the whole I average slightly less that 14 hours per week of training annually.

LAST YEAR'S RACES: I came off of a breakout 2014 season in which everything went my way: I stayed 100% healthy, hit 98.6% of my workouts, and podiumed (AG or Masters) in 14 of the 15 races I entered (all but AG nationals). But 2015 year did not go as planned. I suffered a work-related elbow injury in the fall of 2014 that limited my swimming. I could manage a couple of days per week in the pool which only got me 8~9000 yards, which as an adult onset swimmer that is what I have found I need to simply maintain. That DID give me time to work on the other stuff, and I started out 2015 with a good running and cycling base, and even managed to crack 40 minutes for an open 10k during the winter, which is pretty good for me – I thought those days were long gone. I was excited for another great season. Then in my first tri of the season due to a stupid, rookie mistake I hit the ground very, very hard near the end of the bike. Garmin says I went from 31mph to zero in a hot instant. Miraculously I did not suffer a single broken bone or separations (I have had several in previous bike crashes) but I did have significant soft tissue and tendon/ligament damage. Due to injury I was unable to swim or run for a majority of the summer, but I was able to get back on the bike fairly quickly, and just worked that the best I could and commenced to trying to train myself back into race shape. I should know better, but all of that cascaded, and the week after AG nationals I found myself with a compounded knee and shoulder injuries related directly to the crash earlier in the season, along with an elbow that had regressed significantly. I threw in the towel on my fall races, and committed to focus on getting healthy, no matter how long it takes. After a solid dedicated year of PT on my elbow with no significant progress, I followed my doc’s advice and had both Tenex and PRP procedures performed acouple of months ago. That has had me out of the pool completely since then, and off the bike for a significant portion of that as well. It finally seems to be progressing (fingers crossed) and depending on my next follow-up I hope to get back in the pool in about 3 weeks. I have been back on the bike a little bit here and there for the past couple of weeks, and have been running easy but consistently since the procedure. I am on a little mini streak of 76 straight days of running. Prior I doubt if I had ever run more than three days in a row, ever. Next week my training will become much more structured, so the running streak will most likely come to an end soon.

2016 RACES:
2016 is a little up in the air pending the elbow prognosis, but the significant races I am currently signed up for are Escape from Alcatraz (I know, I know we are suppose to be boycotting it, but this was the year that a whole big group of friends committed to racing it together, so we stuck with the plan), and Chattanooga 70.3 (see you there, Randy!) I race for a local shop (Podium Multisport) and we have a lot of other local races on the team calendar to choose from. I have am also registered for a number of trail races, early season duathlons, and cycling time trials and sportifs, the most fun of which is the Assault on Mt. Mitchel. We will see how it goes, if the elbow is not ready in about a month or so I may pull the plug on swimming altogether and just be a runner/cyclist/duathlete this year.

WEIGHT LOSS GOALS: For years when faced with the inevitable question "Why do you train like you do?" my stock answer was always "so I can eat and drink whatever I want." At about 35 years old, that was revised to "so that I can drink whatever I want." At 45, even that was no longer the case. During my ironman focus a few years ago I raced at about 156lbs (I am 5'-10" tall). A couple of years ago when I turned my attention back to seeing if I could get fast again (as opposed to simply how long I could go slow) I patiently cut weight to find out where my optimum race weight might be. I dropped to 139lbs at a low, and took a significant performance hit. I eased back up to 145lbs, and found that I race very well at that weight, but it is not sustainable for more than a couple of months. I just began the process of working my way there for the late winter/early spring running and duathlon season here, and then will drift back up to around 148lbs for the remainder of tri season. After not being able to train as much as I normally would AND the holidays, I am currently at 158lbs, so I have a little bit of work to do, but know exactly how to do it.

LIMITERS: This year focusing on recovery along with my work schedule will be my limiters as far as race results. While I work and travel a lot of hours, my normal work schedule does afford me a lot of training flexibility. Every six years however academic programs like ours go through a year-long re-accreditation process, and we are just entering that cycle. It is one of my primary responsibilities to shepherd us through that process, so for the next year work will require even more time than it already does.

WHAT WOULD MAKE ME A GOOD MENTEE: OK - I make a living as a professional mentor. As such I have learned that for better or worse we spend the bulk of our life knowing all the answers and simply trying to figure out what questions we need to ask to get to the answers that we want to hear. I am here to forget the answers that I know, and to learn new questions to ask. I am wide open. Also, I am pretty scientific, but do often defer to experience over lab tests. This is a long game. As such I have always been a regular logger - I have about 10 years of paper logs followed up 15 years of digital logs. In addition to understanding that what works for me may not work for you, these logs have allowed me to see that what works for me last year may not work for me this time around. I look forward to learning from all of you - this seems to be a remarkably knowledgeable and accomplished group. My coach and I use TrainingPeaks to communicate, but I also auto-log here as well as strava if folks want to see - my logs are open. I speak with my coach several times a week, and we meet often. In my logs I sometimes include the short notes he provides when he builds my week, so they sometimes read kinda strange. I am really honored to be a part of this team.

Today I decided to work a little first, then get out. Just didn't want to get out in the dark again before the temps got above freezing (I know, I know, Canadians - us southerners will be complaining about the heat before you know it, hoepfully). I decide to channel a little bit of Marc and set out to do 3x7 @ 110% with 4 minute recoveries. Usually I would just "set and forget" the power targets in erg mode, but having not done any kind of hard intervals for a long time and knowing this would be tough I decided to do it a little differently than normal and did it in Zwift. The available course today is Watopia, and I set it on the "flat route." I warmed up for about 25 mintues or so, then started the first interval, working to steadily move up from rider to virtual rider, all the while watching the "time-gap" list for riders up the road. the first seven minutes flew by, as did the second. The third was tough, but I decide to give one more a go for a bonus of four total intervals. It was challenging to say the least, but I am not sure I would not have been able to complete even the third if I had simply ridden the trainer like I normally would. the forced variation in cadence due to slight undulations in the course (a little overgear mixed with a little over spinning) was great, as well as the challenge of chasing riders up the road coupled with pressure from guys sitting on in the draft. Up to now I have mostly just noodled around in zwift, attacking sprint zones and KOMs, or dropping into a race here or there. I have been completely surprised how much I actually enjoy it, and (at least this time) how it can coax me in to putting in harder efforts than I think I may be capable - very similar to group rides.

Anyone else in the group zwifting?

As Rusty mentioned above, the newer models like the Quarq Riken and I think even the P2M classic have much better temperature adjustment on the fly.  For me, usually the drift happens within the first 15 minutes of the ride, so as long as I back pedal after I warm up, it should be okay the rest of the ride...but usually best to back pedal every hour or so.  Yesterday I just forgot...probably because I was doing my intervals on a hill, and had to climb up some of it to get to a good starting point.  Hard to back pedal when riding uphill.  

Hi Steven - that is actually really great that you started out that way. Most don't, and like me spend YEARS unlearning a lot of bad stuff. I still am, even after swimming for half my life. It is a journey.

Hey Jim-I think we will close the group with your entry.  Will be great to follow you on your road to Kona!