Fred D's triathlon training group CLOSED (Page 7)

Fred, so sorry to hear about your friend's crash.  What's worse is the circumstances, it's not like you can do anything to avoid that, except perhaps make yourself more visible with rear lights, neon clothes, etc..  and even then, who knows, can't control what a driver behind you does.  It would unnerve me as well about outdoor rides......

Here's hoping for a full recovery

Has anyone told you you suck today Bryan???

As to the bolded, wasn't it you trying to sell me on IM Coz????  Late November is a bit nicer, and "cold" for them.    It was 62 and drizzly at Calif 70.3, and perfect weather for me 

Ok - here's my current question.

Base Training. I'm planning on at least two Half Irons this year. I want to set up some rough guidelines for my base training to make sure I'm not doing too much or too little.

I'm thinking run 15-20 mpw, ride 60-80mpw, swim when I feel like it... which is about 7-9 hours per week, not counting swimming. Sound reasonable for now?

Completely agree.  The thing that makes it even more unnerving is that you can be the most cautious and safe cyclist  (i.e. aware of your surroundings, cautious at intersections, obeying all traffic laws) and all it takes is one person not paying attention to ruin your day or take your life.

It is the main reason why I do not mind riding on the trainer all week long and stick to one outdoor ride.  As much as I love riding outside..it is always in the back of my mind. 

Sorry about your friend and hope he has a complete recovery.

Fred - I am so sorry to hear about you friend...there is always that fear that something like that will happen when riding without a shoulder.  I will keep him in my thoughts and hope for a full recovery.

To answer what numbers do I use when training, for the most part it is RPE and HR during the run.  On the bike, I do not have power but I do have RPM and I watched those numbers during training for HIM Texas and used what I thougth I learned during the race....it seemed to work because I improved by alot on the bike this year and I still had the legs for the run.  In the swim I use RPE.

Fred, that sucks, i am very sorry to hear this. Sending good karma and thoughts your way.

This is also the reason i do very little riding outside solo anymore, larger groups may be harder to control, but at least you are seen (usually) by cars. I know that is not an option for some, fortunately for me it is relatively easy.

did the truck stop, or was it a hit and run??

I always work backwards from a race.  Start with the type of training I want to hit just before the race taper, then work backwards to see what I should be at 3-6 months prior.

So my question would be...when are your races, and what volumes do you plan to build up to?

In general though, your proposed plan sounds about right.  If I was not marathon training last fall, I likely would have been running 20-25, biking 70-90, and swimming 4-6k per week as my base build with the goal of getting to running 35-40, biking 120-140, and swimming 6-8k per week.

Sending positive thoughts for your friend, Fred. Scary.

We've also been dealing with heavy hearts within the Houston tri community. Lost one of ours to cancer late Monday. He was a BT'er and had completed IMTX in May...leaves behind a wife and five young children. Tough loss...great guy.

I knew you were up with a bunch of your local training friends.  Lets hope that he recovers to defend his title, if not this year then next!

There is a lot of talk on these forums about spouse support for our training and racing and I must say that I have the best as she may chuckle once in a while, but she lets me do about what I want when it comes to triathlons.  It helps that our kids are adults.

That said, long rides alone is the one thing that makes her nervous about any of this.  It seems to make the news far too often.  Riding in groups makes her feel a bit better, but she still worries.  It is why if it is questionable about getting it in before it gets dark or in-climate weather, I will just do the trainer to make her more comfortable.

I am very lucky that Tif and I are both triathletes and I always have someone to train with and do rides with.  It is very rare that we ride outside....short or long....alone.  If it does happen it is only the short rides and never the long ones.  We are lucky too that we have roads with nice size shoulders and we are not mixed in with the regular traffic that often.  As a matter of fact, I just told her we would not be doing any rides on rodes without shoulders from now on no matter what.

Fred - what defines TSS as high/low/sustainable on a weekly basis?

Fred, I agree with training with power and racing with RPE and HR with power just as a "ballpark" metric...especially in the beginning part of the bike where you might feel like superman.

I haven't fully learned the whole CTL and ATL balance yet...it's probably something I need to revisit.

I have been hit by an automobile twice and run off the road once. One of the times I was hit was pretty bad and the time I was run off the road was worse. Nowhere near where your friend is though, Fred. The time I was run off the road was actually by a driver that was giving wide berth to a cyclist headed the opposite direction from me - they did not see me until too late and I was head over heels in the ditch. Evidently the driver stopped, took a look, and then took off. In the worst of the hits A guy pulled out in front of me and I t-boned his front left quarter panel and went head over heels over the hood landing on the pavement on the opposite side of the car. The other hit the driver gave me plenty of clearance but unfortunately he was pulling a trailer with a front end loader and when he pulled back into the lane after passing the trailer came a little further over and he clipped me with it. I don't think he ever even knew he hit me. In every one of these I truly believe they were accidents, and accidents happen. The guy that left the scene would have done so whether I was cyclist or a motorist and he was certainly a jerk, but not because he ran me off the road.

We are all cyclists and runners, but most of us are drivers as well. I will admit that I almost clipped a jogger once when they were running through an intersection and I was turning. I never saw her. Several years ago I pulled out in front of a motorcycle (I am a motorcyclist as well). I never saw him. I would be willing to bet that most of us have done similarly and most likely never even knew it. While neither of my incidents resulted in an accident, it just serves to remind me that when we are on the road we are really small and very hard to see, even when we are familiar with us.

My accidents haven't kept me off the road and it won't in the future - it is a calculated risk that I take because I love to ride. I really hope this does not come across as insensitive, because incidents like this are really quite upsetting - these are just the thoughts that come to mind when tragedy like this occurs. If you are going to ride on the road, just please don't ride scared.

whoops - I see that you edited your post - I was about to get in an argument with you Fred!

As usual Fred that is a really clear explanation, and I appreciate everyone's responses. I use both power and HR bracketed against each other on the bike - in a shorter/harder effort or race power takes precedence, but I monitor HR to make sure nothing is too far out of whack. In longer efforts and races, I do the opposite: current HR is primary and I monitor lap averages on power and keep an eye on 30 second averages for climbs, etc. For running I use HR & RPE, again in shorter/harder efforts I use RPE (with an eye to HR to make sure I am pushing as hard as I should, or to check my fatigue) and in longer/easier efforts I watch HR as RPE can be really misleading for me, especially early on.

Two of the other metrics that have not really been discussed with which I am really interested are Time vs. Distance, at least with regard to training. I train by time for almost everything. So I will run x amount of time at x effort, or ride x effort or x power for y minutes, and only start thinking about distance really for shorter, track type intervals (4x400s, etc). Even in the pool on the rare occasion I have a long straight-through swim, it will be assigned by time (it is awesome to not have to count laps - you just have to sight the clock on occasion which is good triathlon practice!). On my bike computer I don't even have distance or MPH displayed. Just lap time, lap watts, 30 sec watts, HR, and cadence. (Oh yeah - there's cadence....) This approach is relatively new to me, and seems to really be geared toward IM training. Not worrying about distance covered has really helped me to slow down when I need to slow down, and in a funny way go harder when I need to go harder. What works for you in this regard?