SBR Utopia - OPEN (Page 61)

I'm so slow that my long runs are events in and of themselves. _______

_____________ HAHAHA....and do u get tired of holding your arms up, Kate?

Howdy, Utopics! All sorts of you topics brought up that I can brilliantly, with detail and links, answer when I'm training ... and it all disappears at the end is that like having better recall of drunk thoughts when drunk?

My friend the monitor lizard was not at the pool today, although a giant bubble came up in the middle of the pool that made me think so.

As for my titanium taint trainer time ... there's a lot of debate about long sessions / big days (there just was a thread in TT ... ) I say unequivocally this 7-hour ride was tougher than the 10-hour one leading up to IMWA (likely owing to a higher level of effort overall, plus 2 hours split up in 30min chunks throughout in Z4--big ring, little cog).

However, unlike the 10-hour one (and the IMWA cycle), I was *not* thinking GET ME THE HELL OFF THIS BIKE yes! a marathon sounds great, I'm ready to rock it, does that mean I get to get off the bike?! I attribute this to better bike fitness.

Considering my PM session is hill repeats the night before, recovery may be a more appropriate term. But I will call it a "shakeout" from now on so that people think I am fast 

To add on, we had a set last night that was pretty hard, and the bolded section was very true.  I can flail around, destroy my arms and hit 1:XX, or I can actually concentrate (i mean, really concentrate) on form when going as fast as I can and actually go 1:XX - :01.  But you have to have decent form first I think in order to both swim as hard as you absolutely can and still maintain some semblance of form.  yes, it starts breaking down after 50 or 75 yards

There is a lot of talk, here on BT and elsewhere, of drills, and form, and technique.  That is all appropriate.  But you won't learn how to swim fast unless you actually swim fast in training at times. 

At our masters we also do sets that are ba**s to the wall, but also do sets where we try to recover our stroke and work on form.  As to the former, a good friend and fast swimmer describes that you are doing it right when your body starts tingling

My book is at home so I need to double check this BUT I seem to recall him giving a variety of options for the recovery. The interesting thing about VO2 work is that it takes 2 minutes to get up to max consumption of oxygen. So, if your rest is on the shorter side, you won't be starting from zero to get back up to max. But of course this is a fine line because you need to be able to complete all of your intervals.

R pace is more about speed and economy, not training the VO2 "system" so it's generally a quicker pace (but not necessarily) and not what you would call "harder."  The purpose is really to work on your mechanics so you aren't confined to running over those 2 minutes to get into V02. 

Ugh. I hate to be that guy. Errr girl. 

Especially because I think the majority of people can get a hell of a long way simply getting out the door as often as possible and running ... mostly easy and sometimes hard.

Arms are not the problem. 

I don't actually have the book, but this seems to be the section we're looking for. Excellent read. Recovery is not quite fixed, but he gives some guidelines in there on how to make it work for various durations of work.

Well, they are rather similar. If we had started with running and then moved on to power, one could say the same thing. I think it's a good connection to make because then one can more easily see the bigger picture of how to do workouts. For those of us that understood the power part, we just need to learn how to equate those ideas to pacing. The bigger picture becomes much easier to see when things are more alike or more simple.

Yes, that's  it. Those graphs are exactly what I was thinking of when talking about VO2.

Perfect.  Thanks Ben.

I have been doing 0.5mi-1.0mi 'I' pace intervals over the last couple weeks.  That would fall into the 3-5 minute category that he mentions and keeping the rest periods about equal to that but really cool to hear the reasoning behind it.

Truer words haven't been spoken about swimming. I think a lot of folks are (initially) so pleased to be able to complete the distance (myself included) that they stay at the speed that got them there. For true improvement - you need to swim fast during training times. I kind of liken it to running fartleks. Kind of.

Yes, that's it.  Bear in mind that not everything is in the book.  JD used to post quite a bit on letsrun (though not so much any more).  I recall one very interesting post (I think it was him -- but maybe Canova?) about rest intervals and he pointed out essentially what you already said, namely, that the nature of the impact of the workout can depend a lot on the rest interval.  A shorter rest interval is going to stress different systems than a longer rest interval.  Neither is wrong -- they're just different workouts.  Obviously you can do more reps on a longer rest intervals, but sometimes more reps isn't the point.

x2

I am by no means fast in the water but I was stuck at a 1:45 pace for the longest time until I learned to get uncomfortable and swim "fast" in training.

Love this! There's a temptation in Triathlon to over complicate things...I think the "mostly easy and sometimes hard" philosophy is spot on. I use this for both my run and cycling training, and in other areas of my life such as nutrition: mostly good, sometimes bad (mostly wine, sometimes beer/mostly dark chocolate, sometimes milk/mostly coffee, sometimes decaf) ... you get the picture ;-)

I don't use a HR monitor, PM etc, just gold old RPE....I get decent results, without the stress :-)

Sunny day here. Hoping to go to the pool in a bit. 

Feeling a bit banged up today. So dumb.

Last night I decided to go for a bit of a bike ride in the late afternoon. I was so happy to sneak it in and not have to ride on the trainer. So I'm riding my new bike and feeling great. I got to one of the busiest intersections in our city, unclipped my left foot, started to move foward and somehow leaned to the right and down I went.

Scraped my knee and bruised a few places. Bike is fine though but it scratched the edge of the seat a bit. grrr. 

Wishing everyone a great workout weekend. :=)

Well, rats ... but welcome to the club. Glad the bike is okay! And you too Heal up fast.

This is the understatement of the year.

Salty uses no electronics (watchless crazy lady!!!) and she gets pretty decent results, too.

I'm still on RPE as well.

Is there a right way to fall over clipped in?

Swam fast 25's today interspersed between 100's. Asked coach to inform me when my form fell apart. it didn't. pace was 24 sec for the 25 meters.  For some reason I would like to know how fast I can go to lose form. that's for Monday I guess.

Coach suggested I do kicking drills without a board and work on my extension. I do not like those drills, they are hard for me. I guess that means I should do them more....

Doing a bike ride in the morning ...no matter the weather. Might be windy/ drizzly...maybe 20 mph not too terrible but its on the lake so maybe  stronger wind. Races in Texas are notorious for being windy at times.

Running coming along ok. don't care for the tenderness on hip pointer tho. hmmmm....

Great Weekend to All !!!

There is no guarantee your form will fall apart in a 25 by going fast (not saying it won't).  You may simply just reach a point where you don't go any faster.  Now start extending that out to 50s and longer where the time spent swimming is long enough for you to fatigue more and it becomes way more likely.

As to the suggestion of kicking without a board, your coach is probably right.  I'm not a big fan either though and rarely kick that way.  A strong flutter kick on your back with a good streamline including flip turns and a few underwater dolphin kicks off the wall can be a tough set.