SBR Utopia - OPEN (Page 53)

Ithink you are too far back and seat is slightly low

I would go seat forward, slight up, front down.

I see your knee angle at 141 and hip angle at 115

Use your seat height and distance behind BB to figure out your effective seat angle and I suspect it's less tah 72deg and could be a bit steeper

Fred -- seat fit looks still maybe a little too far back, maybe OK.

Competitiveness -- I find myself competitive in very different ways in tri and in running.  In running, it is pretty much all about pursuing certain performance goals, mostly measured by time.  In tri, as someone said, it is more about 'having the perfect race', which is really more about nailing al aspects of the race (preparation, pacing, nutrition, surging at the right times, etc.)  For now, at least, I measure success, here, at least in part by overall placement, though that isn't the sole measure.  I've won OA in a (small, local) tri but didn't account it a huge success (even though it was definitely cool to win) because I underperformed on both the swim and the run.

I finished the RRCA training yesterday.  It was a somewhat surprising experience in a couple of ways.  The instructor was quite good, and definitely has solid credentials both as a runner and as a coach, and he was entertaining but also task-oriented and no-nonsense in his approach.  I really learned a lot from seeing how he thinks through various coaching challenges.  On the other hand the factual information that was given was all stuff I already knew, so that aspect of the course was pretty boring.

The most surprising and depressing thing was that at least half the people in there were next to clueless when it comes to a pretty basic bread and butter aspect of coaching -- designing appropriate workouts for an athlete.  So the instructor would present us with a scenario and say "How would you approach preparing this individual to meet such-and-such a goal?"  Very few people in the room began with asking questions.  Instead, they just wrote down some weekly plan.  And oh my goodness, these plans bordered on mal-practice.

Example:  one scenario involved a 52 year old currently running 25mpw who wants to qualify for Boston in 12 weeks and was 15 minutes off qualifying earlier in the year.  Out of 35 people, only about 5 in the room began with "Really?  Let's rethink this..." (which was the correct answer).  And then the plans that some of them wrote had stuff like Mon 10 x 800, Wed 5 x 1 mile, Fri 8 miles tempo Sun long run 14 miles.  All in the first week.  And these people are going to now go market themselves as 'coaches'.  Scary.  I will give the instructor kudos for calling them out.  He didn't mince words -- he just said "that's wrong...there are many ways to approach this problem, but that's just wrong".  So they know that they were wrong, but I doubt they got much further than that in their understanding.

Anyway, I got what I needed.  Now I'm 'certified' (so I'm told...) and can run with the kids at school...

2500 in the pool for me today. I don't think my lats have ever even whispered to me. Sigh. Shoulders/delts yep, they can scream.  I need to find a way to get some video to post for you guys to give me feedback.

I just wanted to say thanks to this whole group. You all have a very down to earth, honest manner about your training and your interactions with each other.  For that I am grateful.

Fred, your question got me to thinking and the ensuing discussion actually helped me settle some internal questions I've been having.

Thanks everyone.

Yeah, Lats, triceps and pecs are what I feel in the really tough stuff.  Shoulders don't really get tired or sore unless it's really really long - such as the 100x100 I did.  They were sore after that but it was my lats, pecs and triceps that were struggling during the swim itself.

Re Fred's post on competitiveness, I actually thought about this for a bit. I grew up very competitive in equestrian sports. Very. I rode at a barn that put out Olympic riders. I was trying to make international teams and rode abroad for a while. I was good, but not nearly good enough and I quit. I was totally burned out at 18.  After I left for college, I never really rode again. 

I'm at a very different place in life now and look at S/B/R with a different view of how I can be competitive. That's not to say there isn't some element of competitiveness, very similar to what others have described. I do think one of the reasons I started doing longer races was I was so slow that if I couldn't be fast, at least I could go farther. Not the smartest reason, but if I'm honest it was part of it. 

We are lucky to have this group. sometimes I forget it's not "just us" and people not in the group may be reading, so I have to watch what I say :-o

I think that most who lose interest prolly lose interest after a few seasons, or after participating in "the big race". I also think a lot of people quit coz they are not very crazy about swimming. I've been cycling, running, swimming for several years, and only combined them recently when I was able to obtain a decent bike and find a race that was travel wise accessible to me. Personally, I like doing the the 3 sport balance, build/recovery/don't injure yourself dance. 

This goes into my thinking, as well. It's also part of the motivation for running trail races. I am much more competitive on trails than on roads because I already have a short stride. I'm also pretty nimble with regards to roots, rocks, etc. And I have no fear of deep water crossings. The mountain biking in Xterra frightens me, otherwise I might try the offroad triathlon, as well.

I normally don't really feel much after my 3,000 yard-ish workouts.  Does that mean I'm not gettin' after it enough?  I have only been swimming 2-3 times a week but I want faster swim splits this season so I want to try and do at least 4.  I did feel something after that 100x100 but that's extreme for a workout.

Also, is a certain type of soreness indicative of stroke deficiency?  I'm guessing lats, pecks, biceps etc. are all normal areas but shoulders?

Way back to Fred's post....  I've gotten involved in a few different things and moved on somewhat.  Not totally, but for example I used to scuba a lot, over 100 dives per year.  Started swimming to get in better shape, and off I went.   I still dive, just not as much as I used to.

I also wonder the stats for those that grew up runners or into one of the other sports.   I was a sometime swimmer, occasional cyclist, never a runner.   I am entering my 8th season and am faster than ever - ran my first 7:XX mile yesterday (albeit mostly downhill, but it was 7 of 7.5).   So I am still seeing improvement. 

I also had a medical setback which seemed to "reset" the counter back at sprints.  I see a lot of people progress to IM and ten concentrate on that distance.  I honestly don't know how people do an IM a year for several years.   That would lead to burnout for me.

I also try to find odd distances/events to keep things interesting, or iconic locations.    Alcatraz Challenge, e.g.

Had a great weekend.   Saturday had a 50 miler in Malibu, climbing my favorite climb ever, Latigo Canyon.    I was actually up at 4:30 and couldn't go back to sleep I was so excited.   Yesterday ran 7.5 in the morning with two good friends, then went paddling for 1:30 on my new board, lots of feeding dolphins and sea lions, pelicans diving right next to me. 

And today I have off.  So, building a PVC bike rack for the garage, going out now for a 2 or so hour ride up in the hills, tamales for lunch and maybe another paddle in the afternoon.

Me too.  The main difference now for me) is that unlike endurance sport, my earlier activities had very little positive impact on health and well-being (and some of them had downright negative consequences).  That's one reason that I have a hard time seeing how I would entirely give up on some form of endurance sport, even if it were training and zero racing.

Way to go!!

I don't know how I feel about IM anymore.  I could do it regularly without training burnout, but family burn-out would be a different matter, and I'm certainly not willing to go there.

Possibly. My workouts at or under 3,000 can have me really wanting to be done well before I get there. The mindset I take into swimming for effort is similar to that of doing various threshold intervals on the bike. It's going to be burning within a few minutes of starting the main set, then push it what I can the rest. Swimming: mostly hard, sometimes moderate. We're not really doing enough volume to do to lots of moderate or easy. There are exceptions, but that's the general idea.

I tried an IM a couple years ago and realized it wasn't for me. My training volume is plenty high, but I didn't like the distance. I haven't ruled it out in the future, but have no current plans to schedule one in. It would definitely be one of the incredible courses if I went for it. On the order of Tahoe, Canada, Norseman, Swissman.

And nice job on the run!

I've had the shoulders/delts getting sore first before too. One reason was the wetsuit, but also was because mine were not conditioned very well and lats were rather tight. Working in some of the non-free strokes helped to open things up more and develop more well rounded conditioning of the entire shoulder/back area.

Great discussion going on!

Really stressful weekend for me.  We have had lake effect snow and high winds off Lake Michigan and we had our power knocked out late Saturday night with temperatures currently at 9deg F and negative wind chills.  Got the furnace hooked up to a generator last nigth and then power came on 6 hours later...though still spent the day and night at the in-laws a half hour away.

This morning we had our 20 week ultrasound and have a baby boy due in June...so that was some great news at the end of a messy weekend.

Missed my bike yesterday and taking a day to get my stress levels back to normal before I get a bike/run in tomorrow...be nice to finally run in some fresh snow!

I often don't feel much after a swim but during it, those are the muscles that are fatiguing.  It's pretty rare for me to actually be sore after a swim, it would have to be something pretty extreme or after a long time away from the pool.  Tired yes but not sore.

Congrats Ryan!    

Fresh snow is always nice to run in (as long as it's not on top of a layer of ice!).

June is a great month to be born.    Congrats.  I remember once being at my house when I was still a kid and my parents were out of town and the furnace went out.  My brother and I each picked a fireplace to sleep in front of and the next morning said screw this and called our grandparents to come pick us up.  A body can only take so much cold. 

Congrats Ryan!

Congratulations !!

He'll be racing Bryan's son's age group :-)