Jmk-brooklyn's mentor group- FULL! (Page 6)

Swimming:
I know you said you have a handle on it, but I’d do a search on the forums and see if you can find BigFuzzyDoug’s post about 10 ways to improve your swim. It’s a fantastic read and probably has helped me more than any other single thing I’ve read. A couple of things he talks about are ways to keep your body balanced in the water and the idea of keeping yourself elongated like the keel of a racing yacht. He says to imagine that you’re swimming through a tube that’s only as wide as your shoulders, and to imagine yourself pulling yourself through the tube when you swim. Visualizing this really keeps everything about your stroke efficient, elongated, and forward-moving.

Biking:
Do you have clipless pedals? If not, get them. They’re the single easiest way to get faster & stronger on the bike. Pedaling in circles (instead of up and down like pistons) is critical to efficiency and you can’t really do it unless you’ve got clipless pedals. You should think of your pedal down stroke (imagine a clock face) as going from about 10 to about 7, instead of just 1 to 6. You should try to push your foot over the top of the stroke, drive it down, and then “scrape” it backwards at the bottom, like you’re scraping gum off your shoe.

Focus on riding as much as possible and trying to vary the terrain—climb hills, do some out of the saddle sprints, and work to improve your handling so that you don’t have to slow down as much when you turn. Can you remove your water bottle from the cage, drink, and replace it without slowing down? Practice until you can.

Running:
Running at least 3 times a week is ideal. I usually (when I’m training for a race) do one long run, one short, fast run, and one brick run.

For the fast run, you can vary between speed intervals or try running hill repeats. Find a hill that takes you about a minute to get to the top. Sprint up to the top, and then jog back down. See how long that takes. Let’s say it takes 2:15. So that becomes your interval. You need to be at the bottom, ready to sprint to the top every 2:15. The faster you get to the top, the more time you have to rest on the way down. The longer it takes to get to the top, the more you have to hurry down to be ready for your next interval, so you’ve got real motivation to push yourself on the sprint.

This is exactly the guide I've been reading - I downloaded the pdf version. Between that and swimsmooth.com I'm getting there.

Not yet but working on getting some. Making do with cages for the time being.

I seem to have the water bottle removal/drink/replace down quite well and I tend to keep pedalling when going round corners.
What sort of weekly milage should I be aiming for? All of the BT plans are either 2x or 3x a week, but I want to aim for 5x a week if I can manage it.

I think the main parameters you want to shoot for are total time, time in the HR zone you want to train in, and average mph(or kph). If you want to train for more speed and power (like for sprint events) you would train in more zone 3-4. If you want to train for the longer events (ie oly, 70.3, IM) then you want to keep it between zone 1-2. You also want to focus on maintaining a constant pace you can replicate on race day for the distance you want to accomplish. I don't know your fitness level, but try starting out finding a pace you can hold for an hour. Ride for an hour at that pace and then train at that pace 3x a week and see how far you will go. That should give you a decent base until you want to start building for a race you want to accomplish. 

Frequently checking the local weather this afternoon.  Hoping to get my ride in tonight...

I would agree that time is a better measurement of your workout than distance. Your cardiovascular system doesn’t know how far it’s travelled, only how long it has had to work in a particular zone. Depending on your fitness level, running 5 miles in Z2 could take 35 minutes or it could take over an hour. It’s easier to plan workouts when you know you’re only going to be out there for X minutes. When I run, I usually run an out-and-back, and I say I’m going to run, for example, 45 minutes out and 45 minutes back. Depending on the conditions, the traffic, or just how I feel, I end up at different distances on different days.

When I’m getting close to a race, I’ll do a couple of runs that are at or close to the race distance, just so that I can get a feel for what the distance looks like, but usually, I run based on time.


Jayne, were you able to get your ride in? My wife had a class last night, so I had to content myself with an evening of foam roller torture. Tonight I’ll swim.

I never appreciated that more than when I took my bike on vacation with me last year and I decided to ride up the Blue Ridge Parkway and then to a specific overlook there (Waterrock Knob) -- got most of the way there but turned a bit early.  That took a lot longer than the same distance at home!  The uphill was way slower than I expected but the downhill was way faster!



Yes!  The last bit of rain came through at about 4:30 and the ride started at 6:00.  I was watching the storm come through and cheering it to get it to hurry and get through.  The trainer was available but I much prefer outdoor rides.

Edited by jmkizer 2010-04-22 9:13 AM

Someone sent this to me and I thought that this podcast was both interesting and entertaining. 

Limits of the Body Radiolab podcast

FWIW, I have definitely experience the sugar landing on the tongue thing.

Well, that was not the greatest swim I ever had. The water felt "thicker" somehow and I felt like I was dragging myself through it, instead of skimming through it. Meh. They can't all be great workouts.

its one of those things tho sometimes you just have a bad one, just take from the positive's such as was your stroke smooth,breathing ok etc.

and as always with a bad session aim to eclipse it next time

Got a 20mile ride in, pretty windy this morning. Volunteering at the Mini Mighty Man tri tomorrow morning. It's gonna be an early morning!

Swim workout this morning. 

I don't know what happened during my first set but I was LESS SLOW!  The second set was decent and the final two were normal paced.

Progress?

(yeah, OK, I do know that I was trying out downhill swimming but don't think that I held that for the full 500m)

I swear I have some days where the water just feels as thick as pudding and impossible to swim through.  I usually take that as a sign that I should be doing something else.

Great job--both the ride and volunteering. Have fun tomorrow.

Ok, so...

What's on tap for this weekend? I'm going to try to go for a long ride tomorrow. Sunday I'll try to put my crappy swim behind me and get a good swim workout in, and then a long run in the evening.

Long ride Saturday, short ride Sunday.

I'm sure that your next swim will be great! 

went for a small run this morning it felt nice, im house bound with the kids as my wife and Sicone/Stav are climbing Mt Snowdon. so i might dig out my wieghts or try the 100 push up program again

So I rode about 20m yesterday. Not quite as much as I had hoped, but we wanted to take advantage of the nice day and go to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden before it got too insanely crowded. By the time we left, I think people outnumbered flowers.

It's raining today, but I'm taking the boy to swimming lessons in a little while and I'll swim for about 45 minutes while he has his lesson. The pool's usually packed so I can't do much other than swim endurance sets.

Later, my inlaws are coming for lunch and I think they want to take the boy to a movie, so I'll try to hit the gym for an hour or so.

TOnight is my tri club's season kick-off party. Hoping for good raffle karma--there are lots of great prizes!

Very overcast and drippy outside.  The radar looks clear so I should be able to get my ride in.  I'm planning on an hour and a half or so.

That's great you can get a swim in during your son's lessons, even with the crowds. My daughter go for lessons every Saturday but we can't even stay in the pool area.


good luck with the raffle!!

So I rode around the neighborhood this past week to try and make nice with the bike.  A slightly hilly 2 mile loop that I did 6 times - and I gained a bunch of confidence.  I realized I had been really nervous and unsure of myself.  Today I went out and did a new route (15m) and I had to ride past the highway on-ramp, and I wasn't scared at all.  I feel like less of a fraud now.  (Had a similar fight with the swim.)  Now if my ITB can be kept in check, I feel ready for race day.  Only 2 weeks now.

Congrats on getting over that fear! You give yourself so much more flexibility in your training when you feel comfortable riding different routes IMHO.

That's awesome! Do you have a foam roller or a Stick? I have mild ITB issues, but those two medieval torture devices... ummm, I mean... "training tools" really help me keep it in check.

I won a $20 gift card at my favorite local tri shop!

I was going to go on a long ride Saturday, but I woke up to rain and didn't really want to brave that. There is a huge criterion race every year in downtown Athens (30k people last year), but it was pouring and none of my friends wanted to go so we did something else. Yesterday, it was really nice and I went for a long run. Ended up doing 13.1! I don't feel sore really at all today and today is my off day in my training program. I feel like I'm making progress and yesterday was really rewarding for me. I've only done half marathons on race day, never a training day. 5 months away from the half IM.