Friday 6am flight out of Boston to Phoenix and then onto Santa Barbara arriving before noon after 9 hours of travel.

I wonder how last 10 days of vary little training and being sick will effect how I feel with lots of training mostly on the bike. They have Facebook page and they have campers there this week. Mid 70s sounds perfect weather.

Hi all - I didn't fall off the edge of the earth, I was just in Cuba.  Had a great vacation, weather was really good (although crazy windy for most of it), beach was great, and all in all had a good time.  As you can imagine, Cuba is a bit behind the times and I was not willing to fork out the equivalent of $12 for an hour of internet time to update my logs, etc.

Anyway, I've only slept 3 hours in the past 36, because of travel and the need to collect kids from grandparents, so the brain is not fully functioning.  Will be catching up over the next couple of days.

I constantly count strokes for 25's while swimming (I'm bored a lot and it gives me something to do), but I don't find a huge variance between number of strokes vs speed, .  I find that my number increases as I progress through a) the interval I'm on and b) the workout.  So for instance, in warm up, I'm at about 14-15 a length.  then for the main sets I'm 15-16 for the first 1-2 lengths per set.  As the set goes on (say for the last 100 of a 300) I'm 16-17.  By the end of my workout I'm 16-17 early in the sets and 17 by the end (I never really go above 17).  I hold similar pace though.

Do you guys see similar trends?  I'm guessing it's just my endurance.  I feel really fluid and smooth when I'm in the 15-16 range, but I just can't hold that form for long enough I guess.

Also, maybe I haven't mentioned, but I'm not a huge swim fan.  After much fighting with my insurance to get into the doctor, I've got three prescriptions to take and have been banned from the pool for a least a week with a pretty bad ear infection.  I had no idea it was infected, but it got blocked Sunday night and I went to the doc yesterday thinking it was wax buildup or something.  I can't hear through it now so I've had the "underwater" feeling since Sunday, it hurts pretty bad too.  Any tips for preventing this in the future?

The stroke count thing happens to me also. I don't know if it's fatigue or sloppy form but I would guess that I stroke 4-6 more times per 25 yd toward the end of my swim as opposed to the beginning.

I always swim with ear plugs and I love them. I don't have issues with swimmers ear or anything like that. If you find a pair that fits good, you don't even know that they are there.

Joe
 
For me I don’t worry to much about stroke count.  I am at steady 13 strokes per 25 yards @20 seconds on average.  This is more of a moderate pace.  My strokes go up the faster I go like 16-17 for a1:10100 pace.  Is that normal?  It is for me.
 
I would much rather concentrate on good body position.  For me staying very hydrodynamic going though the water with good effective rhythm is I one of my swimming assets.
 
There is a product Auro-Dry that I use.  Acutely I also use just plain alcohol as well as a preventive.  I don’t always use it but when the water doesn’t drain well from my ears.

Thanks for the heads up (I turned off my email notifications for the group).  I'm off to bed and will check it out in the morning.

Happy Mardi Gras!

Kathy good luck at camp! Wish I was there too. 

Neil hope you had fun in Cuba (isn't it great for us Northerners to go to the warmth in Jan/Feb/Mar)

Looking forward to some solid hours on trainer tommorrow. I can't believe that now that I am used to trainer I don't really want to ride outside... the trainer seems much more time efficient for time crunched me.

I want a trainer......and netflix.

phxphotog - 2011-03-08 11:38 PM

I received my big bag of nutrition today from trisports.com. I'll try it out this weekend.

mmmmm...looks tasty

I think I'm one of the few, but I actually really like the Powerbar drinks they had at my 70.3 last year.  They sent us a free case since the drink was so new so we could try it out before the race too.  I like the idea of controlling my calorie to water ratios (so you can get enough calories without over hydrating), but I'm too lazy to actually do it.

Todd, will you use this for training or for your HIM as well?

Thanks everyone for all your advice the past few days...I'm just a walking pile of problems right now   Saddle sores, ear infection, foot swelling and to add to the list I pulled something in my back pretty bad in our broomball playoff double header.  I think it's a lat muscle, so if I had to do it, now is the perfect time since I can't swim anyway.  Thank heavens for small miracles  

I'm using the desatin, it's nice and thick and seems to really be helping.  The sores are basically gone now, but I've been putting it on to make sure it stays away, then I'll go back to the chamois cream only.  My ear is still blocked, and I have a pill, a nasal spray and ear drops to take twice a day...fun   As of this morning, it's less painful, I still just can't hear anything.  I have noticed, that when in a loud room or if there are multiple people talking at once, I have a very hard time focusing on one person that I'm trying to listen to and everything is just a jumble of sounds.  It is interesting.

I will investigate the ear plugs and the drying stuff - If the ear plugs don't bother me, I'll start getting in the habit of using them.  Next time I'm in the drugstore I'll pick up some of the alchohol drying agent too.

Lastly, I'm curious if people have heard of this concept and/or what you think about it for us age groupers: http://www.endurancenation.us/blog/2011/02/28/another-reason-against-year-round-swimming-plus-a-challenge/#

Basically taking 5 months of the year off swimming.  I followed their advice this offseason (unintentionally though), and honestly, I feel like I have a better stroke and am swimming better and faster than when I stopped (after 2 months back in the pool).  I know my running and biking have had large gains this offseason because I could focus on them as well (well, the powermeter is probably the real reason for my biking gains).

 The trainer is awesome.  I think I'll continue to use it year round as I've come to appreciate that it is the best way to hit key workouts (well, if they're under 1.5 hours or so).  Check craigslist, you'd be surprised how many people buy them then realize how mind numbing boring it can be and never use them (I didn't use the first one I bought for 2 years).

Also, there are some VERY interesting movies in the Netflix streaming section...and by that I mean very random B-list foreign movies that were probably used in Mystery Science Theater 3000.

+1.

Safer too.

Didn't get in much training for the past couple of weeks, and have been completely off  the bike - that's a bit depressing since I worked so hard over the winter to make the bike gains, and I'll really need to bear down for the next couple of weeks and get the mileage back up.  I did get in 3 runs, and made two of those runs barefoot on the beach for about 8km each.  No watch, no HRM, no shoes!, just a water bottle and off I went.  That was a really enjoyable experience, although I'm paying a bit of a price since I engaged the calves and soleus much more with these runs, and I'm a bit tight (and sore after a treadmill run today).  But it was worth it for the experience.  Tried swimming in the ocean, but it was a bit rough and I wasn't enjoying it, so I relegated myself to just splashing around and relaxing - which was the point of the trip anyway.

Joe - read the EN article, but it didn't really seem complete to me.  If you're a strong swimmer, or have decent technique, then I think you can afford to stay away from the pool for quite a while.  However, if you struggle a bit, or are looking to make some solid improvements, I don't see that happening by staying away from the pool, and then focusing on it when you return.  I agree with them that too many people are probably just banging out the mileage, but if someone took 8-12 weeks in the off season and focused consistently on technique, and then added the endurance back in I would suspect you'd come out further ahead.  How the swim gains would measure against the potential run/cycle gains by not swimming would make for some interesting conversations.

I'm going to try it out over the next 4 weeks and if it works out, I'll use it on my HIM. I know that the mini Cliff bars work well for me but chewing 3 an hour for 3 1/2 hours gets my jaw tired. I'm just trying to get more calories from a liquid form. I use GU and sports drink on the run for nutrition and I'm fine with that. I've heard great things about it and wanted to give it a try while I still have some time to see if I like it or not. I got the RIDE formula which is suppose to be mixed for biking. I just don't want to do GU's for the ride and run. There's only so much GU I can tolerate.

Another reason to ride inside:

Arizona runner Sally Meyerhoff killed in bicycle accident

by Jason Pacini and Richard Obert - Mar. 8, 2011 10:15 PM
The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team

Professional runner Sally Meyerhoff died Tuesday after her bike collided with a pickup truck in Maricopa, police said.

Meyerhoff apparently biked through the intersection of White and Parker Road and Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway around 1:30 p.m. heading south and collided with a truck heading east, according to Maricopa police spokeswoman LaTricia Woods.

The driver showed no signs of impairment, Woods said.

Meyerhoff, considered one of America's top 10 marathon runners, was training for the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston. She won the women's section of the P.F. Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Arizona Marathon in January.

Tempe Marcos de Niza High track coach Anna Rodriguez, who ran on the same cross country and track teams with Meyerhoff at Phoenix Mountain Pointe High in the early 2000s, said she confirmed the death through Meyerhoff's younger sister, Samantha, whom Rodriguez coached three years ago at Marcos de Niza.

"It's shocking; I still don't believe it happened," Rodriguez said.

Meyerhoff, a 2002 Mountain Pointe graduate, was a seven-time state high school track and field champion in the 1600 and 3200 meters. She finished 12th at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships in 2001.

She graduated in 2006 from Duke, where she was an NCAA All-American in cross country in 2004 and in track in 2006. She was the Atlantic Coast Conference cross-country champion in 2004.

In January, Meyerhoff celebrated a marathon championship in her home town, winning the P.F. Chang event in 2 hours, 35 minutes, 49 seconds. It qualified her for her second Olympics Trials in the marathon.

"This is what she dreamed about," Rodriguez said. "She wanted to have a family and kids. But I kept telling her, 'You'll have that, too.' She was so driven. Nothing was going to get in her way."

I think it worked for me because I'm not a swimmer and the hassle of going to the pool and getting home and added time it takes (an hour swim really takes at least 2 hours of my time, more or less) makes it less fun than bike/run.  Time off was definitely needed to come back with some motivation for it, where as if I never stopped I would have had little motivation and burnt out. 

Also, I know, more or less, what my stroke flaws are (at least the ones the master's instructor always yells at me for).  In my time off, I "forgot" my stroke and my muscle memory of those flaws was lower.  Therefor, while relearning it was easier to correct them...less effort before the new stroke became muscle memory.  I'm still not perfect, but I do feel like my stroke has improved since last fall.