SBR Utopia Season II - OPEN (Page 78)

I seem to remember a post ages ago from KathyG that recommended putting your shoes in the top rack of the dishwasher. If that had come from anyone else I might have dismissed it. Have never tried it though.

How do you all decide how to structure your off season training? 

Is there some sort of rubric that you use to guide you in this?  Do you do something all together different?  Those of you with coaches, do you discuss goals that are time-based for the next year? 

An extreme example might be the new triathlete who was a D1 swimmer in college and can crank 1:10/100yds for an oly, but she's biking at 20mph and running 8:30mpm for that same oly distance.  It would seem her off season should be realy focused on bike and run, but what factors do you look at, if any, to try to judge targeted improvements in each?  Is that even reasonable?  Again, in our example, would it be reasonable for her to try to structure her training to hit 22mph and 7:30s her next year (or some other numbers) and what metrics would you use to try to establish reasonable off-season gains?

Jeez, what an awkwardly worded question.  Hopefully someone followed me on that :)

I've removed my bike insoles, put a small dab of liquid laundry detergent on them, and hand washed them many times.  Makes a big difference.

If you had one of those laundry plastic cases that it could fit in, I wouldn't hesitate to throw it in the washing machine either...you just don't want the insoles to bend. 

I know some people put their entire bike shoes in the dish washer...not sure I would try that though.

Never drilled the soles of my shoes.  Too scared I would compromise the carbon.

Pretty much this.  Depending on what you're trying to work on, go by some type of test/race.  10k or half marathon would be ideal for an Oly athlete looking to work on the run...wouldn't recommend a marathon though.  The marathon training itself would be great, but trying to compare fitness by marathon results...not so much.  Too much recovery needed afterwards as well.  For the bike a 20 minute test with PM, a TT, or maybe a long hill climb if you can find one.  Hill climbing removes some of the factors of aerodynamics/wind so they are a little easier to compare on different days if you don't have a PM.  Going strava hunting (even if just trying to set your own PRs and not KOM/QOMs) is also a pretty useful way to track your general progress.

I checked my logs and ran after at least two of them, felt OK, not fantastic, but then again only ran between 20 and 40 minutes, depending, and these rides were hotter than Whistler.  They were mostly at IM effort or close to it

Continuing with our hypothetical athlete...is there some sort of formula or way to calculate the work that would go into taking a given athlete from 22-23mph on the bike for an oly distance or, say, a 7:00-6:45 for a 10K.  Maybe this is a stupid hypothetical exercise, but it seems as though there is a certain amount of work that it would take to get an athlete from "speed" A to "speed" B, and then one could use the rough idea of what it might take to make those gains to determine efforts in the off season.

Really, plese feel free to tell me this is pointless and just S/B/R more:)  Just trying to wrap my head around how realistic my goals are and what it's gonna take to get me there. (FYI, none of the above are my specific goals).

It's more along the lines of watts/kg is *sorta close* to pace in m/s. Running follows effort much more so than biking does. Really shoulda bought that PT.

That is funny.

Ahem...

For the run, at least, I agree with the testing outlined above.  My preference is do at least one or two of the same races year on year to see what the delta is (a 5k and/or 10k each in spring and fall - add HM's to taste).

As for improvement targets, though, that depends hugely on where the athlete falls on their genetic potential/age curve, IMO.  If you're coming off the couch or a couple years of meh running and then step up the training (ramping to include speed work, tempo runs, pace runs for target races and long runs, plus a couple easy ones each week), you'll see much bigger improvements than going from season 3 to season 4 of solid running.

Probably true in the other 2 sports as well.

Sux to say "it depends," but I think it depends. 

Said another way, wherever you're strong, you'll improve less.  Where you're weak, you'll get more delta in the off season.  How much delta depends on how close you are to your potential (and most of us rarely ever get super close, but even kinda close makes it hard to improve) for that age.

Matt

Thanks for the comments on the cat.  Since he was 21, my wife and basically just got ready every day that this may be the day we have to put him down.  At least we don't have to do that.  

As for the race, Shane basically said most of the same things here.   Ride got squirrely on lap 4, and mentallly that's where I was having the hardest time.  He also asked about the humidity and made me research a couple things, I thought the climate was very similar to here but it's quite a bit drier, and I didn't realize it.   I'd still like to follow up on the hydration and peeing issue more.

And once after wildflower when I threw my shoes in the bag after the race, I filled up a bucket with water and a little detergent and just washed them in there.  SHove newspaper inside to help them dry

Thanks for that link.  Not something I'll try right now, but very interesting approach.

I think there's benefit in race prep to doing all three in a single big day with a shortened run.  But I very much disagree with that article about stretching it across 3 days with a big run.  You and your body are not learning anything by splitting it up like that.  My opinion, but if you split it up like that, it doesn't really matter if it's across 3 days or across a week.  The recovery penalty will come from the 18+ mile run no matter what you do.

Now in fairness, a lot of us already do a big bike Saturday (perhaps with a brick) and a big run Sunday.  That's just how it works when you have a job M-F.  Gordo's 3 day thing really isn't much different.

This leads quite well into something I was trying to wrap my head around earlier.  I remember Shane posting an article before on training impact (using horses as the case study).  If I recall correctly, the basic premise is that you should have hard days and you should have easy days - but mixing hard and easy into the same day, or essentially making your easy day harder, and repeating over and over again is going to lead to trouble.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.

The reason I was thinking about this, is because I'm trying to ramp up my running following the BarryP base plan.  All the running is supposed to be easy at this stage, but the easiest should be the shorter runs done at recovery pace.  In my mind it would seem to make sense to add in bike/swim harder workouts to these days - but that goes against my understanding of the previous article.  So, do you guys separate out harder days/easier days, or do you mix hard and easy together?