Fred D Mentor Group - Part II (Page 54)

Fred, how far are you from Trexlertown PA??

Bear FTW.

I don't pre-attach my valve extender.  You just have to make sure you tighten it as much as possible when you use it.  You can / should test the seal with a little CO2 before you blast the whole cartridge at it, though.

hahahah - that's awesome!

Wait...you mean Neil is accepting more members to his tool club?  How do I join?

HaHaHa that is fantastic! I second the motion. Fred, can you PM Marma to see if he will change our group name to "Fred D and his Bag of Tools?"

That is some kind of thread James started. I still have high hopes for his Lance thread, so long as it stays on the front page til Friday morning...

I have a spare with an 80mm valve for my FLO 60 and I took a dremel to my disc cover to make the opening longer so I can get a Co2 chuck on it.  Note that I haven't actually tested the theory to make sure it will work but everything seems to line up ok now that I opened up the cover a bit.

TSimone - 2012-08-30 12:32 PM That dude could have at least called Neil a multi-tool. It's not like he's one dimensional.

Thanks guys....

Fred's idea to follow the BarryP plan made me think I wanted to jump on this bandwagon and see what I can do for my running over the next 6 months.  But after giving it a little more thought, perhaps I should focus on riding instead.  I've followed Jorge's plan in the past, but am now thinking that if running 6 days per week can build your run, what about riding 6 days a week?  I've raced well this year, and apart from needing some swim coaching, I fully realize that I'm quite a ways back from the really good cyclists and want to improve in that area.

Considering this will be mostly on the trainer (depending on the weather it may be exclusively on the trainer), I'm wondering; a) Is this a good/bad approach, b)  What would be the best way to structure it to see the most gains, while also avoiding burnout.

So, I did something I've never done before and something I said I probably never would.

I bought a set of pictures from IMMT.  Normally I find race pictures to be crappy and not worth much but this time they got a ton of shots of me (but I had to root through the lost and found for a bunch of them) and some really good ones!  Finish line ones are horrible but the bike shots are pretty good.  I tried to find myself in the shots of the mass start but they didn't seem to have the cameras pointed in quite the right place.

Going for another run today, hopefully it will be better than the last couple.  

Finally back home tomorrow, I can't wait!

Neil...I'm going to try and answer this before completely hijacking. 

As someone who has ridden 6+ times a week this summer, and 5+ times a week last year, I will tell you that the gains are quite significant.  I would say the benefits (in most cases) are better than the results you would get in running when moving from 3x a week to 6x a week simply because in biking, you can ride 6x a week hard and not hurt yourself.

Ok...so this is how I structured my bike focus.

Day 1 - Easy Day...roughly Z2 just to spin the legs out.  If you're feeling good, maybe push it into Z3, but if you pushed hard the week before, you'll probably want Z2.  Another option would be to swim or go for a short run.  Really the only goal is to get some blood flow into the legs.

Day 2 - Intervals...bloody hard intervals.  This should be your most intense ride of the week.  You're coming off a easy day, and you'll have a optional rest day tomorrow.  This is where you bang out the 5-10 minute intervals.  Focus on Z5 and higher.  Don't worry about it if you need to coast or soft pedal in z1 to recover.  This is where a hard group ride is ideal.

Day 3 - Optional rest day, or Z2 ride, or swim. 

Day 4 - Long intervals.  2x20's or long hill climbs.  Focus on Z4 or threshold power. 

Day 5 - Z2 ride if you're feeling totally wiped out, but try to stay in Z3.  This is sort of like a short HIM ride.  Throw in some hard 1-2 minute bursts, but most of the ride is Z3.

Day 6 - Long ride with hard efforts.  Try to stay mostly in Z3, but when you get to hills, attack them in Z5.  Recover back in Z1/2, then resume into Z3.

Day 7 - Long ride steady in Z3.  Sort of like a long recovery ride, but not really.  You're going to be pretty tired by now, and Z3 is going to be a challenge.  No more attacking or hard Z5 efforts as you likely burned most of your matches by now...so just a long steady grind.  If you're feeling good, a few 5-10 minute Z4 efforts.

I bought race pics for the first time in my last HIM.  I had some good ones of me on the bike, and a group finisher pic with me wearing my finisher shirt backwards...LOL.  It also emailed the photography company to see if I could add pictures to my profile and they said okay.  So in addition to my pics, I got pics of Lance and other pros, pics of the mass swim start, and some other random pictures that wouldn't have normally been included.

Ha, well yeah I did that too but I didn't ask.    I didn't get pics of the pros but I threw in the mass swim start ones hoping I was in there somewhere.

Ok...so sort of hijacking Neil's questions.  I heard the old economic term "opportunity cost" on the radio yesterday and it got me thinking about how it applies to my training.

The past two years for my HIM, I've been doing about 2-3 hours of swimming (2-3x per week), 5-7 hours of biking (3x per week), and 5-7 hours of running (5-6x per week).

I know the 5-6x running has really helped, but I'm wondering about the opportunity costs involved.  Running 6x per week takes it's toll.  If I were to cut it down to 4x per week (eliminating one 6 mile run, and one 40 minute run), that would likely mean I could get in 1 additional ride, and another swim.  I would also likely be able to push harder on some of my workouts due to the lower recovery costs.

The past 2 years, I really felt like I was grinding through HIM training due to the running.  My first year, it was fun because it was new to me, but last year I didn't really enjoy my training...it felt more like work that I was slogging to get done.

So for next year I'm thinking of cutting back on the running, but add a little more intensity.  Focus a little more on swimming where I have a lot of room to gain, and also add a little more biking which is what I enjoy the most.  I'm also hoping to crack the 5 hour mark, so I still want to train in a way that produces the most fruit.

So have any of you who have run 5-6x per week seen benefit in moving back to 4x a week and focusing on other areas?  I'm guessing that if I could manage to up my swim and bike to 4x a week, and still run 5-6x a week, that would be the best of both worlds, but I don't see that happening.

Thanks Jason.  To qualify this a little bit (which means making you write more).  What would your average ride times look like for each of the days, and how would you quantify those zones compared to power %?

i.e.
Z1 = below 75%
Z2 = 80-84%
Z3 = 85-89%
Z4 = 90-94%
Z5 = 95-99%

I'm just making these up as an example.  I'm curious how you would define the zones.

Thanks

My view on this is that people can be overly cautious with their running - and if I recall correctly you did almost all of your prior running in Z1/2.  This obviously worked for you, but I do think there are additional opportunities/improvements to be had by adding in some intensity.  Whether that intensity outweighs the benefits of the moderately paced extra 1-2 runs, I couldn't say.

And take this with a grain of salt, because I have historically had low run volume, and likely push my pacing a little harder than perhaps I should, but have also been successful so far.  I am really curious what would happen if I went the opposite direction and upped the volume.

One final note on the swim.  I mentioned a couple of pages back that I swam more in the past few months than ever before, and I really think it helped my racing overall.  That said, for the amount of time I put in in the pool I've had very little ROI in terms of speed, even though my stroke has been something I've paid attention to - quite a bit.  We'll see what happens in a week and a half at the HIM, but I don't expect to go much faster than last year (if at all).

Day 1 and 5 would be 60-70 minutes.  Day 3 (if applicable) would be 50-60 minutes.

Day 2 can be as short as 60 minutes, but I like to throw in some Z2-Z3 work for about 30-40 minutes before I get into the meat of my intervals if possible.

Day 4 is likely going to be around 90 minutes.

Day 6 and 7 are usually in the 3-5 hour range.

I use WKO+ (Coggan) power zones.  I *think* they're something like....

Z1 - 55% and lower
Z2 - 56-75% 
Z3 - 76-90%
Z4 - 91-105%
Z5 - 106-120%

I should also add though that the roads I ride on are often not long stretches.  So my power levels might be on the high side as I do get to recover at stop lights or during group rides when we regroup.  I'm not so concerned about riding steady the whole way.  If I were doing this on a trainer, I would have to lower the power goals a smidge.