Got Your Mojo WORKIN'! group - CLOSED (Page 52)

Not too many vendors it was a small expo. My husband and I did get a good deal on the bike fitting about $200 off total so I can't complain!

Shannen


Edited by shannen 2011-01-25 8:47 PM

SHANNEN -

I had missed your post from a few days ago; I apologize!

With whom did you register for a bike fitting, and when it will happen? Bike fittings are always quite exciting, and have the potential to make big, positive changes. May that be the case for you!

JAC -

No, it's not at all you being contentious -- it's the topic itself!

To roll or not roll.......to kick or not kick......to finish the stroke far back, or closer to the hips........to breathe to one side or bilaterally........to "S-stroke" or stroke straight back.........to use a pull-buoy, or never........to have hand entry deep or shallow......to maximize glide, or barely glide at all. These are the questions that have vexed the minds of traithletes far and wide!

So many words have been spilled/spilt over them - and others - with ary an end in sight. Perusing various forums, these topics keep cropping up over and over and over; like a bad case of athlete's foot, never really going away!

I think one of the best things we can do here is be contentious, or, rather, bring up topics that are contentious and/or confusing. I love this sort of thing, just because it gets me thinking and. quite often, experimenting with something on my own. I find that for a lot of things I try to explain here, I actually have to get out and do them myself. that is, I THINK I know what I'm doing with a run technique, or where my pedal emphasis is on the bike, or where my hands are entering on the swim, but it seems at least half the time I have to get out and do it myself just to verify it.

A great example of this was from about 7-10 days ago, and involved CATHY asking about bubbles around her hands and arms when they were entering the water. I had a bunch of ideas that I have read about over the years, and I mentioned some of these to her, but I actually had to get to the pool and spend some time watching myself swim and playing around with various entry points and hand angles and pitches before i could come back to her and be somewhat more definitive in my answer.

I love this stuff! Be "contentious"! Be "controversial"! Be "provocative"! Tilt at all those windmills!!!

So I was watching TI videos yesterday,  The guy talking i the videos recommended placing your arm toward the same spot your looking at ~8-10ft in front of you.  he said this should also help reduce your body drag.  Does anyone do this?  I am heading to the pool to get a swim in, if there is a 'mill open I might try to get a 2 mile run in after, kind of like a brick but a much slower transition.  I will report back on how the are placement affected my swim.  I will also try out this popye mouth thing.

Boy since I joined this group there has been a lot of talk about swimming.  I plan to start swimming in March when we join another gym and yall are making me nervous.  I have seen a lot of posting about swimming downhill, what is that all about. Is there somewhere I can read about it?  Also I know some tri will not allow wetsuits, but I did not see anything about my yellow and purple float duckies that I wear around my arms.  Are they allowed.   But back to a serious note my 1st tri is June 4th and I plan to join another gym that has a pool in March so I hope I will have enough time to feel comfortable with the swimming.  Feeling comfortable in the water is not a problem, its just the swimming and trying to get the breathing down.  I have always been a big kicker when I swim and that is going to take some time to get used to not kicking. ( I want to save the legs for the bike and run).  I have been keeping notes on what everyone is saying about the swimming and I want to thank all of you for that, I'm sure it will help out when I start training.

Thanks
George

Steve - I'm with you when it comes to dragging our decisions....fortunately my wife takes care of that! Of course it is a little easier for us because the main decision driving this move is to move into a good school system before our 4YO is ready for school!

Steve/Shannen - I'm not sure she is quite aware of her accomplishment other than the fact that she loves going to swim lessons. Believe me when I tell you, the amount of confidence she has gained in the water is quite remarkable!

David

This weeks short run 26 min
10 min @ 13:02
10 min @ 12:00
06 Min @ 13:02

I thought I was going to have a tough time after last nights spin class but it wasn't too bad. Spin class was modeled after a ride I did last year and gave the profile to our instructor.



Edited by ckallpoints 2011-01-26 3:22 PM






Attachments
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Butte Falls Ride.JPG (27KB - 11 downloads)

GEORGE -

Ack! Not trying to make you nervous at all! Please don't be! The fact that you are already comfortable in the water will go a long ways towards helping you become more competent. And with the race not until June 4 ---- loads of time to build those skills!

I am not a golfer, but have been told that golfing and swimming both share lots of complexity. Much in the same way that golfers will work through a mental checklist of their form and proposed execution as they are teeing off or lining up a putt, swimming can involve a similar checklist involving just about every part of the body. The just swim-swim like we did as kids, is easy; to swim well (competitievely? ) as adults gets slightly more complicated. But Rome wasn't built in a day, and you're a pretty young guy, so take the long view of all this swimming stuff and chip away at it slowly and - hopefully! - surely.

The concept of "swimming downhill" is really perceptual. Of course, you are not actually swimming downhill, but by a subtle shift of your body position you are bringing your lower end closer to the surface ---- which really does carry the snsation of swimming downhill. this is especially true for people who have previously swum with thier rear end lower than their shoulders, and their knees lower than their rear end, and their feet lower than their knees. This is very disadvantageous, as it leads to a ton of drag -- all that lower body serving as a big, awkward keel!

The trick for swimming downhill is called "pressing the buoy". To do this, simply "lean'" on your chest -- in effect, press it downwards into the water. The effect of this for most people will be that it will automatically elevate the lower part of your body, from the waist to your feet. ANYTHING that raises your hindquarters closer to the surface is a good thing!

If you followed my conversation with Daniel about this, one problem he might be having is thta in swimming downhill he is also burying his head. this is very common for people first learning to swim downhill, as it is almost automatic to bury the head entriely under the surface while pressing the buoy. I just think that part of Daniel's problem with breathing is because his head is way down and he needs to work harder at getting it to the surface for a breath.

So, even as you are pressing the buoy, work at keeping your head in its normal position --- especially if "normal" means that the water line intersects at the upper part of your forehead, which I guess would be about your hairline. But this is one of those "contentious" matters I mentioned to a few people last night, and Jac again this morning. Sometimes you'll hear that the water line should be where I just said it, while other people will say just above the eys, and still others will advocate the middle of the crown of your head.

Welllllllll.........you're not in the pool for a while still, so maybe make a note that this discussion is happening on Jan 26, on whatever page we are on. For now, anyhow, I hope it is useful and gives you something to think about.

(Also, just watched "Red", and as you probably know, one of the scenes was purportedly filmed in Mobile; so, I was thinking of you at the time!)

CRAIG -

What a sweet ride that looks to be!! A nice long warm-up, a first climb, a brisk descent, and then a tough 5-mile climb.........and then it's mostly a deserved break on the return. A true beauty!

How long did it take you to do the route last year? And where exactly is Butte Falls?


Good job on that run! Those are getting closer to the times you want, yes?

DANIEL -

Good progress to report? I hope so!

Anxious to hear about Popeye (don't dismay if it doesn't happen immediately), and the alternative if you tried it, which is not to "bury" your head.

Get the run in, too?

Your comment about arm placement -- Does that refer to where your hand is pointing as it enters the water? If so, I am curently working at just that -- getting my hand and bit deeper and also having it point slightly down.

If I am not careful and just motoring along in cruise mode, I can find that my hand is doing two bad things:
(1) Staying too close to the surface
(2) Actually lifting as it extends, so my palm is facing away from me -- much as a traffic cop would look when he is indicating for you to stop. The effect of this is to almost stop your forward motion, or at least slow you down, as it is a great source of drag -- that hand just sitting out there!

Hope it all went well for you today!

DAVID -

Sadly, not all school systems are created equal, so I fuly understand the imperative of the move. We did a bbig one way back when for just that reason......and still got it wrong! Well, that's not quite true. It was fine until the kids got to middle school, but the choices for high school were terrible. It was at that point that they went down to Massachusetts to a private boarding school. Yikes!

Hopefully, though, your move will be good to last you until she's about 18 years old!

JOHANNE -

I haven't forgotten about you! It's just that it's taken me about 48 hours to figure out what I wanted to suggest and how to say it. So.......

The first thing is from a great book titled "Running Injuries - Treatment and Prevention", by Jeff Galloway and David Hannaford, and published by Meyer & Meyer Sport:

"Supination should be eliminated, and in fact temporary overpronation may be needed."

Hmmmmm. You already overpronate, or someone has told you you do, and you are in a shoe that is a good stability shoe. That means that it will have a dual-density midsole, which should be obvious as darker and denser material under your medial arch, and extending a bit both front and back of the curve of your arch. Yes?

As you probably know, this is designed to pervent your foot from rolling inward too much, which is the action that accompanires over-pronation. That is good for a few injuries, but not so for illiotibial band syndrome. So what Galloway is saying is that you might want to move away from a stability or motion-control shoe, as that is causing your foot to tend more towards supination (under-pronation), which is a big causative factor in ITB.

In effect, your chiro is saying the same thing, although he is coming at it from the point of view that some pronation is not only normal, but desirable. When the foot is pronating, it is working to absorb shock. This is why for people who under-pronate, they need a show that will reduce, seeing as how their feet are not doing the job for them. So, within limits, you want your foot to do what it is designed to do, which is work to naturally prevent shock by pronating.

Too much pronation is not good, and common injuries in this case are shin splints, achilles tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, and the grab-bag that is broadly called "runner's knee" ( or patellofemoral pain syndrome). At the other end of the scale are the injuires for people who under-pronate, or supinate, too much, and these include stress fractures, hip-area bursitis and -- ITBS. (This is NOT to say that these injuires are restricted to just that type of foot motion, only that they are more prevalent for those types of feet.)

Something else to be aware of (and you probably are already) is that ITBS may be a knee problem, but it is really in a different category altogher from that grab-bag of kneecap-based problems. These can often be due to the kneecap not aligning properly, which is exacerbated by shoes that do nothing to curb excessive overpronation. Thus, the foot flops over too far inward, and this torques the shin which then forces the knee to move too much. At the upper end, relatively weak quadriceps muscles can contribute to knee probelms becasue they are not strong enough to keep the knee consistently aligned during the cation of running....and the knee then misaligns and wears of the cartilage and pain results. Of course, it's much more complicated than that, but that's a quick way to explain at least some of the more common knee problems.

With ITBS, none of the above matters. The culprit is really that long fibrous structure that extends from your hip down to just below your kneecap. Most sources say that the symptoms begin when the IT band rubs against the end of the femur, which has a name something like lateral epicondyle. If the IT band stays where it should, excessive friction doesn't occur and thetre is no pian. But when the IT band tightens, then it can rub harder against the end of the femur. This can come from plain old tighness, or factors such as underpronation or running on a cambered surface ( which I think I mentioned two days ago). But I'll just add to that by saying that the effect of running on a cambered road is similar to what people who have bow legs regularly face.......and that when your running shoes force your foot to slant too far outwards, it's essentailly the same thing. Well, it could be essentially the same thing.

Blah, blah, blah. (see? I needed more than 48 hours, i'm afraid, to do this without all the verbiage! )


What I would tenatively suggest, then, is that if ITBS is seeming to be kind of a chronic problem for you, you really should look into a different running shoe. One route would be what Road Runner calls "performance stability", which is a lighter shoe with, often, less medial posting than regular stability shoes. Or, if you over-pronate just slightly, you can maybe get away wiith a neutral shoe, which would provide no extra medial support at all. (Many people who just slightly overpronate can get away with any shoe other than those for extreme overpronators.)

In fact, Galloway recommends that ITBS sufferers might look into a trail shoe that has LATERAL support, thus working to force the foot to roll inward. And one more important thing to consider in changing shoes is also from Galloway, and that is to examine your injury history. If you suffer from other knee problems or especially shin splints, be very cautious about going to a shoe with no medial support.

Finally ("Yay", Johanne says, "He's almost done!"), look at your running shoes and try to decribe the wear pattern. (Did you do this a few weeks ago?) Try to tell me where wear is most obvious, and then we'll go from there. And where is the nearest Fleet Feet store to you? They usually provide great video analysis of foot motion while running, and that would be the best first step in assessing what is the best shoe for you. And don't feel bad if the assessment recommends a shoe that is different than what you've had up until now, as over time what are feet do can change dramatically. It's much like our eyes -- the exam we have tomorrow will not be the same as the one from five years ago!

Let me know what you think of all the blather above!!

Things I know I still owe:

LORI -- run thoughts, as to where to go from here, once you get outside again

BRENDA and GEORGE -- USAT thoughts, especially about the rankings


Anything else, anyone?

BRENDA -

ba-Bump? How goes the monitoring of waking heart rate?

Something I think I forgot to mention a few days ago is that I also do it to help me keep track of possible overtraining. A couple of times in the past when my training was really heavy and I got to where I wasn't looking forward to working out......my waking heart rate betrayed (or, rather, supported) that my head and body were indeed struggling. I can't remember the numbers, but I suspect it was 48-52 or so, for a couple of days.

This morning it was 48, then a couple of tries later 47. This is a pretty big increase from the usual 42-44, but I'm not worried just because my head is in a good place. I'm not feeling at all over-tired, either, nor at all sickly, so I just view this morning as an anomaly; likely from waking from a strong dream. If it is 47/48 tomorrow, I will go "hmmmmm". If it's like that again on Saturday I will circle the wagons, call a council meeting, and try to figure out what is happening. My guess is that tomorrow it will be "normal" again --- those low numbers that indicate that I'm either about to devolve into a reptile or amphibian, or die. Naw, not really! Just kidding!

ba-BUMP!

GEORGE -

This is just a slight follow-up to the swimming one I posted to you yesterday.

At thre outset of your post at the top of this page you mentioned that there is a lot of talk here about swimming. Well, for what it's worth, this is how my other two mentor groups began, and I suspect it is aldo how most mentor groups start out. I would estimate that of the specific sports-related discussions, ~70% are about swimming, ~28% running, and ~2% cycling. And of the latter, most of those have to do with type of bikes, as opposed to how to cycle better.

This is just to say that many adults who come to swimming have real worries about their abilities, and those are heightened by some of the things they hear about triathlon swim starts. There are lots of ways to avoid the occasional chaos of those swim starts, but getting people to believe in themselves about swimming ability, that it improves for virtually everybody with focus and determination (and not necessarily a lot of either), is a bit more difficult.

As I posted to JAC yesterday, I love all of these discussions bevause they cause me to think. In practice, I know how to do everything I do, but often when I try to explain something to the group, I realize I have to get out and actually DO what I'm talking about --- just to make sure I have it right! And even though I have my set ways of doing this stuff, getting into the pool, say, and playing with some concept I either don't use or have abandoned in favor of something else, is always useful to me.

Blah, blah, blah!

Finally, as to you comment about the float duckies on your arms, here's a quick true story.

Two of three years ago at Ironman Florida, a competeitor was caught on camera walking into the water for the swim start, and sliding out from his wetsuit a pair of swim fins that he none-too-sneakily put on his feet. Now, this is a clear breaking of tthe rules, to the extent that were there an Eleventh Commandment it would read "Thou shalt not wear swim fins during any USAT-sanctioned race." I mean, it is almost sacrosanct!

For a day or two after the race the guy was referred to on tri forums as Finman, but then the more clever folks figured out what his real name was, and at that point he was fully "outed". As I remember, he wasn't too apologetic; maybe just a bit remorseful was all. He certainly ewasn't gunning to qualify for Kona or even be at the top of his group, but just wanted to complete the 2.4-mile swim comfortably. I think he received a year ban from USAT races, and of course at this point in time there are maybe three people who remember his name; I sure don't!

JOHN -

You still around? You're not in any football-induced hibernation, are you?

I guess you saw how villified poor Cutler was by so many players around the league. Wow. He isn't exactly Mr. Popularity, is he?

It was impressive, though, how the rest of the Bears rallied around him, and I was especially impressed by all that Hanie said in his defense. It may have been in Hanie's best interests to just keep quiet and let Cutler get flogged, but he stood up for him quite vocally. What's the current term for this? "Having his back"? Hanie had Cutler's back; does that sound right?

JOHANNE again (about 12 hours later, but connected to the long post to you) -

I think I got off on a tangent or four, and may not have siad clearly and succinctly that the 8502 you are in now, having a dual-density midsole are working to cause you feet to, in effect, supinate. Not radically, of course, but by way of preventing you from over-pronating too much, they are doing the opposite -- to some degree.)

So, when Galloway says that for ITB problems "supination should be eliminated", you MAY want ot re-examine if the 850s are doing their job too well, and thus creating some under-pronation that is causing ITBS issues.


(It's a good indicator that I have written too much when I find it easier to re-post like this, as opposed to re-reading all of what I wrote earlier. )

(And for that I apologize!)

GEORGE again -

Another afterthought....

Last night I likened the effect of having your rear and your legs and your feet hanging down in the water to the keel of a boat. Um, I think I meant rudder --- a big, cumbersome rudder, not a keel. I am terrible with boats and don't like them much at all, so it's understandable that I goof up with their anatomy.

Anyhow, whichever part -- rudder or keel -- of a boat is capable of sticking down into the water and creating drag.......that's the one I meant!

Steve,
Now I'm going to take a day to digest all that YOU have written! You are a technical guy Half the time I have to try to remember, do I supinate or do I pronate??? Oh, heck, I think I just run funny! I'll get back to you with my thoughts on your thoughts soon. Right now I'm headed to the barn. I'm taking care of the 4 legged kids while my barn owner is away and I'm sure they are calling my name.
Johanne 

It was a fun ride but when I got back home I was toast. I spent about 4:20 in the saddle but I stopped in Butte Falls and had lunch and cooled off for a bit, they had a little fair going on that day that I found out about when I got there. I stopped a couple other times and refilled my water bottles and just took a break. Over all It was about 6 hours. Kathy left early that morning to go visit our youngest in NM and I needed to do something with my day.

 It was a HOT HOT day that that day. 95*+ at one point I looked at the temp on my bike computer and it said 114*. needless to say I needed all the water I could get.

Next time I do that ride I'll do it in a different part of the year or leave a lot earlier. another lesson learned.

Butte Falls is a small town population of about 400 up in the mountains to the east. I'm pretty sure it started as a logging town.

Edited by ckallpoints 2011-01-27 10:05 AM

Here is a nice video of a TI swimmer.  I can only dream about swimming like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJpFVvho0o4

Not much kicking either.  Very smooth, nice stroke rate. 

My cold is still hanging tough.  Hope to get to the pool this week if I feel better!

Steve,

I would love to go to a lighter shoe but I definitely need a double A width in the Asics.  Asics fit me the best by far, not even close with any other brand.  I have neutral feet based on a recent running gait analysis.  So, I think I am in the right shoes.  I have previously worn Asics 2140s and Kayanos which both caused ITB issues for me.  No ITB issues with neutral shoes.  I am quite the mess aren't I? 

Hoping to take my run outside next week depending on the amount of snow we get early in the week.

David,

Hooray for your daughter!  I wish I had started swimming at a young age.  I love that she "loves going to swimming lessons"!