Baowolf mentor group is [ Closed ] (Page 72)

Carol, congrats on signing up for Cowtown.  I think training is so much easier with an end goal in sight.  Completely agree about fitness being addicting.

Steve, I am finding maintaining my weight is easier, simply because I told myself as I neared my goal weight that I never would be done.  I still count calories and eat healthy foods, but just more of it.  I would completely agree that it is a daily act of will.  I've lost weight in the past, got close to where I wanted, and was like, thank God the diet's over, I can eat whatever I want now.  Fortunately, that mind set is gone. 

Mike, have fun at your swim meet!  Wish I had some advice on the hamstring, but haven't had that particular problem.

Larry, totally agree.  I don't believe in doing anything diet wise that is not sustainable (for me), like elimination of whole food groups.

Steve, glad your CPE is beneficial.  Glad you are going to mentor again....I'm there, and may see if a couple of friends who are considering doing tri's want to join the fun.

Joe, don't let the grinch catch you up in the Christmas rush too much!

Samantha, hope you are finding the right balance for you for this (off)season.

Had a really nice run yesterday w/ some intervals, and my legs actually felt light, yay!  Getting back on the bike 2K miles in 2012 goal...32 per week is all I need, and I'm able to get that mostly via 30 minute easy spins on the trainer.  Tomorrow is long run day, so hoping the legs/feet will still be springy.

Mike, let us know how that swim meet went.

Finally had a good long run.  Stuck to the 14 miles on my plan, but felt like I could have kept going.  Also bought a new car today.  Honda CRV.  Our first "not Camry" in many years.  We were feeling wild and crazy . 

Ah, the swim meet. For a first timer like me, there were many questions, and thankfully everyone was super nice, and helpful. Sign-ins started at 4 PM, and so I arrived at 2:30 just to be sure I'd be there in plenty of time . I'm usually horribly early for things like this, and at tris I'm one of the first in transition. The event, with an important sounding name of "2012 New England Masters Swimming Championships", was held at the swim center at Boston University. Beautiful, quite new place.

Checked in, found a locker, and changed up. The only event being held on Friday night was the 800M free. Sat & Sun had all the others.  The pool opened at 4;30, so I jumped in and did a real easy 600 meter warm up. I have to say the pool water was colder than I am used to. By the time I got out, the place was full of folks, and the atmosphere was one of folks there to have a good time and race. I also did a few practice starts. One thing I learned quick was to pay attention to the 'floating' lane end. I am so accustomed to having a wall at both ends of the pool I nearly swim right into the far end of the pool where the floating end lane deck was stationed. That would have been quite embarrassing.

The first heat was at 5 PM. They were going fastest to slowest, alternating men & women's heats. I was in heat 13, so I had along wait. the first mens heat was good to watch as they made it look so easy. Winner cam in at under 9 minutes. My swim coach was in the 2nd women's heat, and managed 2nd in her heat. While waiting I jumped in a did a few more warm up laps, just to keep loose and warm. One thing I learned was to bring a heavy sweatshirt with me next time to wear while sitting on the deck waiting. It can get chilly just sitting there.

My wife and youngest daugter showed up about 15 minutes before my heat. They had made signs for me as well, and I'm happy to say I was the only competitor of the day who had any sort of sign made for them. They are the best!! . My daughter did the lap number flipping for me, so she was able to ake part in her own was as well.

They called my heat, and I was a bit nervous as I climbed up on the blocks. Heard the start, and was off. Had a good dive in and felt really good on the first lap. Just concentrated on stretching out my stroke and being smooth. After a few laps I noticed the guy in lane 3 (I was in 2) was a few meters in front of me, and I made it my task to pass him. I managed to do so in the next couple lenghts and put some space between himself and me. A couple of times I could catch  glimpse of the pool and didn't seem to see anyone, and figured I had to be really far behind. So, I just kep plugging away. The first half of the race I felt great, and was having a good time. Very happy for the lap counter as I was doing a horrible job of it, and just stopped trying after 13 or so.

Once I passed the 550 meter mark, I honestly don't recall much of the rest. I just kept trying to keep my stroke as long as I could, and not let my form fall apart. What was shocking was to hear the final lap bell when I still had 150 meters to go. Was I that far behind? Thought I was doing OK, but what the heck? Put that thought aside, and decided I'd just plow ahead with everything until the finish. Finally saw the last lap count, and pushed as hard as I could to the finish -- it would turn out to be my fasted 50 of the entire race. Made it toward the finish, hit the touch pad, and I was done. Poked my head up and checked out the scoreboard. Took a second to get my brain to work, but when I finally did, I realized I'd come in 3rd in my heat (out of 10 swimmers) and put up a time of 14:06, which was 45 seconds faster than my seed time. Yeah! I felt great about it, jumped out of the pool, and, after taking a second or two to make sure I had my balance, was greeted by my cheering section .

Did a quick cool down swim in the other pool, hit the showers, and checked the results. The guy who won my heat did it in 12:05, so he totally sandbagged his heat time. The 2nd place guy was 13:46, so he's my next target . I felt afterwards I could have gone harder, so next time I'll know. Was a great learning experience, and I had a blast. Finished 5th overall in my age group for the race (out of 9). Can't complain about that. The folks ahead were in the earlier, faster heats so not much I could do about that, but next time, I'm taking 1st in my heat.

Overall, an awesome experience, and a fun time.

Nice job!  Thanks for the details about what real swimmers do and such.  I will probably never be there but I will know just in case.  Ya I'm thinking sandbagger 8) 3:00 ish below his stated pace is quite a bit of a gap in a 15 or shorter minute race. 

Hamstring is a tricky bugger.  My hamstring pull took about a year or 18 months to full heal.  I mean ya I could run on it and compete, but I had to sit up out of aerobars for 6 months or so, avoided hill work and backed off the speedwork when I could feel it.  That is one of your longer muscle groups to get back up to snuff.  I would recomend going taking a month of walking/jogging nothing that is going to irritate it at all, no long strides down hills, no hard efforts on the bike where you are pushing really hard, etc.  Just low effort to moderate effort flat ish stuff until you get it under control.  Walk if that what it takes to go without pain, pain is bad.

Yay new car. 

Woohooo!!! Great job in the swim meet, Mike.  Seems that you were far from dead last .  Sounds like you had lots of fun with it too.  Hmmm....I see more of this in your future.  LOL on saving the legs for the bike and run.

Steve, hope you are enjoying the rest...at least on the workout front.

Hey to anyone else lurking out there!

Recovered well from my long run on Saturday, and had a frisky run this morning.  30 degrees w/ 20 mph winds helped encourage me to not dilly dally.  Run was supposed to include 5 marathon pace miles, which I'm targeting as 9:45ish (4:15 mary goal), and wound up a bit under 9:30 feeling good.  I think I had been underrating the value of recovery.  Throwing in some easy spins on the trainer seems to be helping as well, and I'm on the trail of that 2K annual miles biked goal.     

Carol, glad to see that running is going smoothly for you. 

Mike, love the details of the swim race.  I felt like I was there.  Great job on the time, as well.

I'm still hanging in, eating pretty good, biking just a little bit, and lifting a lot.  It's what I'm into right now, I guess.  I'm finding it not so easy eating 3500 calories a day, and doing it eating lean meats, veggies, protein powder, protein bars, fruit, whole grains, etc. 

Larry, good job on the workouts and eating healthy!  I picked up another Quinona concoction at Costco today.  It's called "Seeds of Change" - quinona & brown rice with garlic.  Haven't tried it yet.  Let's see, at 240 calories per serving, it would only take about 15 servings to get to 3500 calories.

27ish degrees, no wind, and clear skies on my run this morning.  Really, really nice!

Question for Steve: Thursday of next week, my plan calls for "30 minutes alternating between 30 seconds at nearly all out pace, and 1 minute at easy pace". For context, it's during week 11 here:  http://www.runningplanet.com/training/marathon-training-beginning-competitive-runner.html Running that many intense bursts worries me, and I wonder if the risk/reward is worth it.  Would I perhaps be better off starting to incorporate some hill repeats instead??  I haven't done a lot of those, so I'm also wondering about length, # of reps, and intensity if I do. I'll have one day of recovery (3 mile run) after that and then long run of 16, so I don't want to bugger that up! 

Thanks Steve, I much appreciate the feedback.  Legs/feet/achilles are feeling better, and I would really like to keep it that way.  I will definitely modify that workout.

I just posted a message to my diabetes/exercise group to let them know about beginner triathlete, and also about this mentor group.  Several of them are runners and aspiring triathetes.  Nice to be able to recommend what has been so beneficial to me to others. 

Thanks to Steve, and to all of you for making this such a great and encouraging "place".

p.s. Larry, the new brown rice/quinona combo was excellent and only takes 90 minutes to heat up in the microwave.  It was on the dry goods aisle at Costco.

Hey, everyone. Hope all the necessary shopping and other holiday specific tasks are being done so you can enjoy the upcoming days. I certainly need to get moving.

Carol -- way to go on the running. Wish I were in the same shape.
Larry -- Hope the weightlifting is going well. what is your schedule for racing next year? We need a 12/31/12 weigh-in for a final 'loser' total! Amazing how much you've changed your life in the past 12 months. Inspirational.

Steve -- Hope you are feeling healed up and ready to go.

I'm getting back to running/biking this week now that I feel my back & foot issues are sufficiently healed.  Nice to wake up and not have a pain in my left backside.

One thing which I'm struggling with is being tired all the time. The past few weeks (months) have been unusual, and as I suffer from sleep apnea, I'm wondering if the condition is getting worse, and impacting my nightly sleep. My wife even gave me an earful about it this AM as well, so I'm lucky I have the Dr. appointment already set. Not getting enough/good sleep isn't going to help me get ready for next year.

On a positive note, my swimming feels like it is making a leap forward. Held steady 1:35 or so for my masters swim set this AM, and I feel smoother in the water lately. Too bad its only 1/50 th of most races.

Carol, thanks for the tip.  That defintely sounds like something that I will try.  I'm always looking for easy and healthy foods.

Mike, the lowest I got was 187 pounds for a loss of 113 pounds total.  After eating at maintenance levels my body gained a few pounds, and I've been holding steay in the low 190's, which is where I want to stay.  I'll never compete against the 140 pound ex cross country runners, that's for sure.

Larry -- that is just incredible. You lost nearly 40% of your body weight in a year. Holy cr*p.    I'll never be racing with the 140's either. I'd have to go back to grade school to do that.

I can weigh in the 140s but probably won't be winning against those cross country runners either.  Amazing how fast some of those guys are.  The thought of running faster than a 5:00 pace doing anything other than falling off a cliff is just mind boggling.  The good news is that getting sub 7:00 mpm pace for a 5k is obtainable for a lot of folks.  But ya it does take years of miles over 1200 per year. 

Happy other folks are on the mend, weight loss is going well for you guys and reestablishing healthy bases to set up next year's training.  Get the toys you want for Christmas people like it when you have so many specific needs.  You can also help them with knowing where to shop.  My family typically pay 2-3x what I do for tri gear.  Between now and 2 weeks into January are key stuff bying sales.  The shoes sold out earlier than usual this year and were not marked down as much as in the past so I had to pay a bit more for my shoes $65 ish per pair for Aesics GT-2170s and $35 each for Pro-race 3 tires.  Those are my biggest maintanance costs for the year 5pair of shoes and 4 tires.    

Mike, that Garmin would be awesome!  I hope Santa brings it your way.

My parents were looking for gift ideas, so I came up with some pedals for my trainer at Nashbar, and a new visor from Headsweats.  I think the visor suggestion took, but not the pedals.  May have to play santa for myself on that one. 

Steve, do you mind sharing where you get your shoes?  I look at runningwarehouse.com and occasionally pick up deals there, but don't see anything great right now in the shoes I wear.

Tweaked my back a little on the run this morning.  Yep, you guessed it...it was "speed" day.  Not the kazillion interval run that I'll pass on next week, but today's included a couple of compound sets of 1600 at 10K (8:45), 800 at 5K (8:25), and 400 at 3K (7:59).  The 3K pace felt unnaturally forced and is unnecessary for me right now as has been pointed out by our wise mentor.  Just maybe, I'll not get caught up in "get the workout done exactly as written even if it seems like a dumb move" mode next time. 

Carol - hope you heal up quickly, and can get back to building that great run base.

Was thinking about what I'd done in 2012 today and thought it was a good year overall, but left room for getting better in 2013. Best thing of the year was getting through training for my first HIM, and executing the race exactly as I planned, at least until the lowest point of the year, the bike crash which ended my race. While this threw me into a training funk for a good long time, I also now knew that I could do it, and maybe even more. Here's my quick 2012 summary

Good: HIM training & race; Ran my first half marathon; competed and did well in my first swim meet; nearly doubled my 2011 training volume; Having my LBS come through to bring my bike back from the dead in 5 days so I could race 1 week post crash; confidence is good knowing what I accomoplished

The Bad: DNF at said HIM. Foot pain severly limiting running in Nov/Dec; mental funk post bike crash;

2012 Best thing ever: Seeing my 9 year old compete and finish her first tri @ the New England Kids Triathlon in Boston. Just awesomeness!

Looking forward, I'm going into 2013 feeling very positive, ready to take on my biggest challenges in this sport, travel for a few races, get in great shape, and have fun with it all. If its not fun, why do it?

How is everyone else looking at 2012? And looking at 2013?

Finally wrote the race report for my 9 year old daughters first tri from this past July.  

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=471465&posts=1&start=1

Great race report Mike!  I can see why that was the best part of the year.  She looked like she was very focused, yet having tons of fun!  I also really like your perspectives on 2012.  Not just accomplishments, but also what you leared from it and how it will help you going into 2013.  Good idea to step back and look at the big picture.  I often get a little too tangled up in what's been happening recently to appreciate that like I should.  Will take some time to do that soon, but need to have some work to show for myself today .

Iced the back last night, and did a short ez run this morning.  Could still feel it a little, so skipped the strides at the end.  But I think it will be OK if I avoid doing stupid again (at least for a little while).

Yes, I'm obsessing over the marathon plan again.  1st plan I tried was too heavy mileage, 2nd plan too much speed and too few miles.  So I've hatched my own plan taking into account what I liked from the plans I've tried, what I've learned from Steve, and where I think I am right now.  I would welcome any input on this.  With 10 weeks to go it looks like this:

Goal = 4:15 marathon (9:44 pace) on 2/24/12

General Plan: Mon = 1~1.5 mile repeats @ 10K w/ 800 recoveries, Tue = Easy 6-7, Wed = 9-11 w/ most @ MP, Thu = rest/cross, Fri = 4-5 easy, Sat = long (easy w/ a few MP miles at end), Sun = rest/cross

TTL Miles (Long Run) 44 (16), 42 (13), 47 (18), 43 (14) 15K race, 49 (20), 45 (15), 52 (20), 41 (12), 33 (8), 10 (marathon)

Recent mileage history leading up to now: 38,41,40,40,20,35,34

Paces: 10K 8:45 * 15K 9:02 * HM 9:15 * M 9:44 (will probably aim for 9:30 MP to account for walks to test, eat, drink, etc.)

TTL Miles (Long Run) 44 (16), 42 (13), 47 (18), 43 (14) 15K race, 49 (20), 45 (15), 52 (20), 41 (12), 33 (8), 10 (marathon)

Alright well... I like this one better.

TTL Miles (Long Run) 44 (16), 42 (12), 47 (17.5), 43 (19) , 49 (20), 45 (12), 52 (20), 41 (12), 33 (8), 10 (marathon)

But I bet you are married to the idea of that race...So I would shift it this way.  That race is gona chew you up in the middle of what should be your big build.  But this will make it meh better.

TTL Miles (Long Run) 44 (16), 42 (12), 47 (17.5), 43 (14) 15K race, 49 (12), 45 (20), 52 (16), 41 (12), 33 (8), 10 (marathon)