Beginner 1/2 Ironman Plan Group (Page 64)

Good luck and enjoy your race! Come back and keep us posted.

I do a little of everything. I have only been swimming 2 x a week for now. On Tuesday I combine 2 of the workouts from the BT plan into one session. On Thursdays I go to swim for fitness class. Our coach posts workouts that combine drills and sprint intervals. Hopefully when it warms up a little I will be able to add one more swim workout a week in open water. The swim is my strongest event though so I really don't worry about the individual workouts too much.

Thanks for the replies thus far. Today was the 1500 continuous (2500 total) A while back, I posted that I had given the Total Immersion technique a try. Now, I think I am doing some kind of combination of the two. I get tired and am slower! Urrrr! Because I am trying to imprint the new style, I broke the 1500 into 15 x 100 and that allowed me to focus on technique better. Does not do much for the total effort as mentioned above, but was what I felt was more important today. It was interesting in that I could start to feel things like legs dropping or not on side, lifting head, etc.  so for me at this point, I do not think it was a wasted workout. I believe time in the pool is time well spent. I am going to try to get more efficient with TI but at the same time, I still do the kicking drills and pull drills (very contrary to TI) but I believe it is all good cross training. And in the end, should TI style not work out for me, at least I will have some of the fitness gained from these drills. Thanks for wetsuits!

Still lots of ice on the lakes up here so not much chance of outdoor swims for a while.

Had a bit of a taste of good running yesterday. I was doing the 7x5 min (3T,2R) workout and started to feel kind of loose for some of the tempo efforts. I always feel "rigid" when I run and as much as I try to relax, it never felt like I thought or heard it should feel. Yesterday, I got a brief taste of it. Heart Rate was down a bit and speed was good. Legs felt "loose".  The light bulb went on. :-)  Now to try to repeat that feeling next run. 

Cheers,

Good luck!!

Finally had a nice day for a ride yesterday. 72 degrees and not freakishly windy. I got to ride in shorts and short sleeves - so nice. I bought a tri bike in January and have been a little timid to push myself on it in all the windy weather we've had. Last night at about 1/2 way through my ride I just decided to go for it. Usually when I have the wind at my back I look down and see I'm going about 23 mph and just don't push any harder (see timid). Last night I experimented with going to a harder gear until I felt my legs were working. Then I watched my speed: 23, 24, 25.5, then I hit a little rolling hill - 28 mph. I passed my son in the yard at my SIL's and he was screaming "Hi Mom" right at that the time I hit 28 mph. I didn't even want to flinch from aero to say hi! HA.

Fun ride and now I realize I can push myself a lot harder on that bike. My legs were not even very tired when I finished and they feel fine today. So different than my roadie!

Sounds like a fun ride trigal. I'm not sure what 28 mph feels like, but there's sure a big difference between 21 and 25. Today was my first solo ride on the roads and when I hit 25 with the wind at my back I was like, "Damn....this is kind of fast!"

Can anyone tell me why my heart rate would start so high (upper 150's) and then gradually drop throughout the ride ending in the low 140's? Did I just start out too fast? 

Could be artificial on the HRM, which is pretty common, or could just be not enough warm up and your body working pretty hard before settling into any type of volume.  Happens to lots of people, including me.  I'm never concerned about it (then again, I'm no high authority).  Just my two cents. 

I'm having trouble with this plan - when I started the general consensus seemed to be to just keep doing your workouts and wait until the plan catches up but as I continued my workouts I also continued to increase and find myself at 8 weeks to HIM and still ahead of the plan, but SURPRISE (not) my legs are a little dead.  I had a 9 hour bike week last week (and 3 hours run) and am trying to limit my riding this week but I'm still ahead of the plan.  At this point I know I need a recovery week and I'll do that next week but should I just drop the riding?  Swimming is fine and running is fine but I'm WAY OVER the plan cycling workouts.  For example, here is HIM (left) and me (right):

 The 4.5 week was a rest week - I just couldn't fathom only 2 hours of riding.  I don't think I'm just super slow either (though maybe I am) as a 5-hour week is 160km.  I normally average around 30kph.

By the way, that looks like a beautiful place to swim!

If you are using a Garmin HR it is is pretty common experience to get some screwy data when you start out.  I've read that it takes time for the wireless HRM to synch up correctly.  I've seen my Garmin read 190 at the start of a ride and knew it had to be wrong and wound up averaging a much more normal rate.

Wow Kathy, You really have been working that bike! What does the plan call for this week for you? Is it still a high volume week? Maybe you could just ride however many hours the plan calls for instead of going over and that would be enough of a rest for your legs? Maybe more rides at a lower intensity would help too. Keep it in the small ring for a large portion of your ride? Just some ideas.

Are your legs shredded? Do you have pain like an injury or just tired? Too many questions I'm sure LOL.

Plan calls for a measly 4 hours of riding.  I had 7 planned.  I'm PR'ing my rides, consistently taking time off previous ones and hitting Z2 but my legs are definitely tired.  I haven't felt fresh legs and that glorious feeling of wanting to HAMMER HARD for a long time.   I do feel strong but I'm wondering if I should dial back the bike dramatically to give more power to the run.  Legs feel strong on the run but I haven't felt glorious and fresh for a long time.  I think I've probably answered my own question but just didn't want to face up to it.

Ride like the wind and as often as you want.  The more miles you got in your legs the better.  Don't even be conscious of the hours you do and just log them in.  You'll be surprised how fast you're gonna be on race day.  When I was following the plan, I did a couple of century rides and 50 mile rides almost every other weekend.  I didn't care which sport focus it was and rode all I want.  I went from 18.5mph on a sprint race last year (my fastest split) to 21.1mph on an olympic race this year.  I didn't expect that and I was surprised I was able to sustain the speed.  In any of the 3 sports, mileage matter...

Very jealous.  With my race next weekend, I wish I had done something like this.

Oh!  Well, that is good news.  I was sure I should dial down the riding but as long as I'm getting in swim and run I'll keep the kms high.  Thanks!

cheekymonkeys1 - 2011-04-10 6:23 PM Got my new longest ride to date in today. 40 miles, but oh so SLOW 13.2 mph.

That is farther than I have been all year! Good job!