willie05's Group - Closed (Page 7)

First off - my apologies for being away the last couple weeks.  I'll not let that happen again.  I'm happy that you all kept the group going.  There's no doubt that having these groups and being able to give advice and ask questions definitely helps.

Hope you're all doing well, but Mark I'm sorry to hear of the back issues you have.  I hope you get that fixed up quick.

Wendy - belated congrats on your race!  Now for Rage in Sage I have some advice - practice hills on the bike!  I actually rode the Olympic distance course there in October (on my own, not in a race).   Leaving T1 is all uphill for a quarter mile (make sure your bike is in low gear when you rack it), then it's all rolling hills after that.  Great scenery of Lake Mead!

I have a 305 and used it all of last year.  It was definitely excellent!  I use it for both my running pace and biking speed and elevations. 

My only complaint with it is that sometimes I have to take the elevations with a grain of salt.  It especially doesn't like the valley that I ride in, and shows all sorts of climbs that aren't there.   It's hilly enough here with it adding some more! 

I agree with you that it's a big drawback.  I only used it in the races for biking and running.  I just wore it on my wrist for the bike, just like I do for training.  I figured that during the race, I'm not concerned with overall time, just what was happening with my pace and distance for either the bike or run.  So I left it with my bike gear (I think in my helmet) during the swim.

In the first race, I did make the mistake of not starting it for the bike.  I didn't catch that until after almost two miles.  So I only had my pace for a while until I passed a mileage marker, so I was then able to see that the watch was about 2 miles behind actual distance.

Then I forgot to stop it and switch it over to run!  I caught that one almost right away coming out of T2, but I was annoyed at the extra fidgeting I had to do while I was trying to run. 

I read a tip in one of the threads to turn it on before the race so that it acquires the satellites, then turn it off.  Then turn it on again at T1.  I didn't bother with that because the swim was going to be less than 20 minutes, so that wouldn't be an issue with battery life, so I just left it on during the swim.

Even without the swim info, I was very happy to have it for the bike and run.

Squishy - I had a look at your logs, and you're doing a lot of kick and pull and other drills.  I believe that these are designed to build strength and definitely wear me down when I do them.  I'm not surprised that you start to lose form as your swim session goes on after doing those.

Now I'm not saying not to do them because they should help you in the long run, but you may also want to have some sessions where you're only doing regular freestyle so that you're concentrating on that technique without getting tired out.