Mad Manatees Mentor Group - VERY CLOSED!!! Sorry! (Page 78)

4agoodlife - 2013-01-25 11:46 PM

mn_av8or - 2013-01-25 12:03 AMI can't wait until I can accrue enough races to have some awesome race stories like these!

Apparently I am INTJ. No idea.

Sometimes it only takes one race for THE BIG story...but I'm still waiting for mine too. ISTJ...now to read up if it's "right".

Every race is a big story. Get out there and party; you paid for it!

Racing Manatee

This week we have one Racing Manatee and his name is Chad!

January 26-27
Chad - Vancouver Chilly Chase run on Sunday

Forecast for Vancouver is a damp low of 37 and high of 43

Go Skrat!  Go!

Kirsten should hopefully be coming of the DL soon (cleared for test runs, last I heard).

On deck for next week: Salty and possibly TJ.

Racing Manatee

This week we have one Racing Manatee and his name is Chad!

January 26-27
Chad - Vancouver Chilly Chase run on Sunday

Forecast for Vancouver is a damp low of 37 and high of 43

Go Skrat!  Go!

Kirsten should hopefully be coming of the DL soon (cleared for test runs, last I heard).

On deck for next week: Salty and possibly TJ.

YANTI STORY TIME!

I wear big sparkly dangly earrings on every single one of my long runs (I had Christmas earrings in my IMWA trans bag but forgot to put them on!) and marathons. Ah! You can see them here in my Calif In'tl Marathon finisher photo.

But why, you ask? Well, see ... I went to this Hallowe'en party (dressed as Princess Jasmine, but like evil and on crack, from Aladdin) and kinda sorta went home with this lumberjack who turned out to be a triathlete. ANYWAY ... OF COURSE the next day is our marathon long run training day ... I totally oversleep and do not remotely have time to go home to get my things. Triathlete boy (no, I have no idea what his name was ... I think it was Chris something or other; he was an undergrad at USC while I was teaching there. But he was a music student and they're weird so it doesn't count ) had a pair of running shorts and tech socks he loaned me, I had my runnies in my car so that was all good ... ARGH! Sports bra! We made one out of a pair of his tighty whities (see below for example). And he actually gave me a triathlon finisher shirt to run in--very cool. I was not a triathlete yet, but I thought that was very cool.

So I show up at the long run--I really have to because, gulp, I'm the pacer/guardian/cheerleader for my group--in this getup, a crapton of (smeared) makeup on my face, and it turns out to be a good thing because my group burned a good 10 miles just making fun of me.

I had forgotten to take my big dangly sparkly Princess Jasmine earrings off. I ran the whole damn run with them on!

Ever since then, it was just a thing. I had to wear my hooker earrings on long runs/races.

Racing Manatee

This week we have one Racing Manatee and his name is Chad!

January 26-27
Chad - Vancouver Chilly Chase run on Sunday

Forecast for Vancouver is a damp low of 37 and high of 43

Go Skrat!  Go!

Kirsten should hopefully be coming of the DL soon (cleared for test runs, last I heard).

On deck for next week: Salty and possibly TJ.

Racing Manatee

This week we have one Racing Manatee and his name is Chad!

January 26-27
Chad - Vancouver Chilly Chase run on Sunday

Forecast for Vancouver is a damp low of 37 and high of 43

Go Skrat!  Go!

Kirsten should hopefully be coming of the DL soon (cleared for test runs, last I heard).

On deck for next week: Salty and possibly TJ.

Racing Manatee

This week we have one Racing Manatee and his name is Chad!

January 26-27
Chad - Vancouver Chilly Chase run on Sunday

Forecast for Vancouver is a damp low of 37 and high of 43

Go Skrat!  Go!

Kirsten should hopefully be coming of the DL soon (cleared for test runs, last I heard).

On deck for next week: Salty and possibly TJ.

So, what do you do?

Have a nice race, Chad.

Give us a running update Kirsten, how are ya doin'?

Racing Manatee

This week we have one Racing Manatee and his name is Chad!

January 26-27
Chad - Vancouver Chilly Chase run on Sunday

Forecast for Vancouver is a damp low of 37 and high of 43

Go Skrat!  Go!

Kirsten should hopefully be coming of the DL soon (cleared for test runs, last I heard).

On deck for next week: Salty and possibly TJ.

I AM TRI-ATHENA!!!

posted 04/10/05

Many thanks to my well-wishers (and by the way, I've enabled non-member comments again).  I am tremendously pleased to report that I am indeed alive, moreover, having as much skin as I entered the triathlon with, and if any other racers don't, at least it wasn't on account of me.

And, since I am making the world a better place simply because people laugh a lot when they see me (not sure why ... must ponder ... ) I tootled my turtle-squeaky-horn with vigor every time I passed a race volunteer. By the third lap some of them were chanting, "Squeak that cute horn!" I hope they were talking about the turtle.

I didn't come in dead last, either, which really surprised me.  Triathletes are a pretty dedicated bunch--I mean, THEY didn't have squeaky horns or streamers on their bikes--but I finished in the top five in my division (okay, okay, there were only five in my division).  

I wasn't last in the run (the first leg), but I was by far the last cyclist in--even the runners behind me had overtaken me.  However, I passed several people in the transition between bike/swim and then charged ahead of several more during the swim.  And now I really am going to tootle my own horn (I deserve it, dammit!)--I'm a great swimmer.  I clocked a faster swim time than some of the top finishers, despite that on the last 150m both my legs were completely cramped up and I was windmilling ahead on arms only, pulling dead leg weight behind me.

Not bad for a little girl who just learned how to ride a bicycle.

A final note: technically, this was a 'sprint' triathlon--4mi run, 10mi bike, 400m swim. All I can say is, no bloody event lasting more than ten minutes should ever be called a sprint.  Ever.

Racing Manatee

This week we have one Racing Manatee and his name is Chad!

January 26-27
Chad - Vancouver Chilly Chase run on Sunday

Forecast for Vancouver is a damp low of 37 and high of 43

Go Skrat!  Go!

Kirsten should hopefully be coming of the DL soon (cleared for test runs, last I heard).

On deck for next week: Salty and possibly TJ.

Kirsten and Skrat -- overall, yes, I agree with this. Some finer points:

I assume you'd be adding TWO ~1500m swims for a total of 4 workouts per week? Yes, I'd definitely add the two workouts, and do them in intervals ... HARD intervals. If you really need to, take the first 1-2 intervals as warm-up, but frankly, you're not gonna die if you don't. You might feel like it, but that's kind of the point.

There are two general ways to do HARD intervals: either on a send-off time that's just barely within your grasp (and perhaps not at all for the last 2 repeats or so) OR to extend them 50-100m beyond what you feel like you can swim hard. In that sense, an A x 100m type set with some B x 250m could be ideal, provided that around 200 is where your hard swimming starts to trail off / break down in form / slow down / etc.

I'm not sold on the value of a long continuous swim unless someone's swimming 5-6x/week and really focusing on swimming ... honestly, possibly not even then. There is no doubt that if you can suffer through a tough 1500m main set or workout, you can swim a solid continuous 1500m in race conditions. In terms of ROI for swim time, unless someone's actually swimming TO BE A SWIMMER with that kind of training time available and actually done, I think the long continuous swim is weak.

The exception is that a 1000/1500 yd/m time trial can be very helpful for setting productive interval training paces and gauging progress. With a proper warmup and cool-down, seems like a good idea (if you're swimming a lot and want to focus that much on it) every couple of months.

Racing Manatee

This week we have one Racing Manatee and his name is Chad!

January 26-27
Chad - Vancouver Chilly Chase run on Sunday

Forecast for Vancouver is a damp low of 37 and high of 43

Go Skrat!  Go!

Kirsten should hopefully be coming of the DL soon (cleared for test runs, last I heard).

On deck for next week: Salty and possibly TJ.