Newbz'z summer mentor group is FULL!!!! (Page 79)

assuming the camera is able to shoot something like that (many of the all auto ones are simply not fast enough shooting wise), set the ISO as high as it will allow to give it the best chance. )

some of the all auto ones are simply not fast enough from the time you press the shutter to when it actually shoots for sports stuff.

agreed on all fronts.

first no way in hell i would be able to run a marathon after that stuff.

other thoughts (aside from getting more sleep)

make sure you eat enough during the ride (on rides over 3 hours i shoot for 300 cal an hour at 150ish pounds).

make sure you start slow enough and are not a super hero out there, pacing becomes wildly more important the longer the ride gets.

i get passed on my longer rides by guys WAY slower than me, but in the long run its all part of my plan.

How do you eat 300 calories per hour on the bike?  I mean...that's a lot.  I know I have seen it documented in many race reports, but I have trouble eating more than 100 calories per hour or 1 gel per hour.  Are you eating something small every 10-15 minutes...or do you just woof down a cliff bar every hour?

My nutrition wasn't the greatest...I think over the 5 hours I was out there, I only had about 450 calories.  I tried to eat...maybe I need more liquid calories as I only drink water.  I did go through 5 bottles of water.  I suppose if 3 of them were gatorade, that would have been another 300 calories.

I think I also do a better job of nutrition when riding solo.  When group riding I have to worry about keeping the paceline so it makes fumbling around with my gels a bit troublesome.

Chipping in on the photography question. If the camera can handle it, try a 1/2000 shutter speed for starters and see how that works. ISO probably 800 for sports, no lower than 400. If you go too high on ISO you get grainy photos. Too low, blurry. Set up the camera and test it on some cars or other moving objects. Hope that helps.

Just did a hilly 38 miles ride with some friends. Kinda strange, the route (River Mountain Loop) was listed on a biking website for local rides here and was coded as "moderate". It pretty much kicked my butt, so out of curiosity I did a search for difficult rides and came up with some I've already done in Red Rock that I did not think were as bad. Anyhow, good ride, but I would def call it difficult (at least for me).

normal long ride nutrition is 2 gels per hour + a bottle of strongly mixed HEED spaced out over the first 2 or so.

long race nutrition on the bike is 6 gels and approx 300 cal of HEED over the 2:15-2:25 of a half ironman bike. i prefer gels to anything else as 600 cal worth of gel is only 6oz total, so i can taylor the liquid as needed vs having it all in liquid form and then needing to drink all of it.

i used to be in the 100-200 range per hour but tried this, felt much better during and after, and never went back.

assuming the camera is all auto (vs point and shoot with some control), the issues may not be the shutter/ISO at all, but rather lag time.

one of the big diff between an SLR and point and shoot, and even PRO vs consumer SLR is that on the SLR the time from the shutter being pressed till the photo is taken (lag time), is almost nothing. in point and shotos it can be a LOT slower, sometimes over 2 sec. in this time the lens can still be trying to focus on something else, part of why these are not great for sports.

they often use the same/very similar chips, so quality can be the same, they are jsut often not fast enough.

two things to think about here.

if you are eating enough throughout the day cal on shorter workouts are not needed as much (as an example of the otherside of that i'll take gels on almost all my rides, because i often have another workout coming up right after and i dont want to start that one in a hole).

now assuming you are eating enough during the day, my general rule of thumb (and more so if you need to lose weight) is nothing cal wise on bike workouts at/under 2 hours unless you are KILLING it the whole time (and even then 100-200 is plenty).

runs its a bit personal but 1:15-1:30 is the point where i *might* start thinking about taking something in.


honestly though on bikes under 2 hours, you dont need anything, and up to 3 hours, 100 an hour or so is plenty.

your body has enough stored to work hard for 2 hours ish without any outside help.

after that you start needing more, and for the 3:30+ stuff it becomes much more important.

As an example at a steady cruising pace i'm going to burn approx 500-550 cal an hour, at 4 hours thats 2000 +/- cals. at that point if i am not taking stuff in, i'm going to be limping home and recovery is going to take a LOT longer.

2 hours, its 1k cal, your body has that stored so no real issues a good meal wont solve.

so in summery, general rule (for the bike) is up to 2 hours, nothing unless you missed a meal.
2-3 hours, maybe 100-300 total for the ride
3+ i start looking at 200-300 per hour.

If you are planning on taking something in the under 3 hour range, just take it when you need it, knowing it will take 15-20 min to do much
3+ start up within the first 20 min and space it out as you go.

make sense?

Thanks. Sounds like I've been doing the right thing (my rides now are between 2-3 hours).

ETA: My husband thinks it's really funny that I take the gels sometimes. The other day we were doing a lot of cleaning/yard work around the house and I said that I was tired and we should save some of the work for another day. He said jokingly"Ok, but are you sure you don't wanna just take a gel and power through." Haha, no thanks.

Edited by jpbis26 2010-08-08 2:53 PM

Watched IM 2009 Championship today with the kids. They were really into it. Wrote about it in blog if anyone interested.

Edited by jpbis26 2010-08-08 7:40 PM

I DVR'd and watched the 2009 Kona replay as well.  I DVR'd the orignal airing, but forgot to change the save setting to "save until I erase", so I lost it after 14 days.  I was pretty upset when I saw it deleted...being that I only got to watch it about 17 times in those 14 days, so I was quite pleased to watch it again.

I have the Ironman recorded too but the fam is not interested..........whiners!  I will force them to watch it like they force me to watch "America's Next Top Model."   Ok, they don't force me, I rather call it mental endurance training.  Any guy  who can tolerate that show for more than 30 seconds IS an Ironman!  OMG!  How I hate that type of TV.  ("Un-reality TV")

I just finished my 2 mile start up, tempo, kind of, run.  This will be my base for speed training that i hope to use as a springboard to some real quality speed work in the next 2 months or so.  The distance will build to about 4 miles and I hope to keep the pace close to 7:10-ish, with a few faster ones for good measure.  I will also do other speed work but I do have a love/hate relationship with tempo runs.  I love the benefits but hate the work.

I also plan on upping my long bike to 50 miles this weekend.  We'll see how that pans out though, I have a 12 mile run scheduled for this Friday.  I will want to see how the legs feel Saturday morning before I start making promises.





Edited by DirkP 2010-08-09 8:14 PM

LOL...I love it Dirk! That's what I told myself when I was alone with the 3 kids during a 4.5 hour flight. It was "mental endurance training". Believe me, getting through parts of that flight without totally losing it was my Ironman.

Doing my 1st 10K this Sat. Should be fun. Just planning on pacing myself and trying to run as much of it as I can. My longer runs are around 5.5-6 miles now, but I still need to take a few walking breaks. Figure whatever time I finish in will be a benchmark & my time to beat next race. 

If you were able to maintain sanity while having 3 kids on a cross country flight you have become the new standard for Ironman.

As far as the 10k,  I think you can run the whole thing.  If you can keep the same training pace during the race I am sure the adrenaline from the race will be able to carry you through the end.  You could try to run a bit slower than your training pace to make sure you run the whole distance too.  Either way you'll do great.

Hey Everyone - back from Colorado - had a great trip w/ absolutely no training! Ughh....

Jackie - great job with the bike and run totals - you have now surpassed my distances on both! J - sounds like your 90 mile bike ride, if not painful, was rewarding. Newbz, thanks for the nutrition advise - I am in the same boat trying to lose just a few more pounds. However, beer is my biggest hurtle.

It was awesome to watch and cheer for the people who rode the Copper Triangle this weekend.  Steve (hubby) rode it in 6 hours. I think that ended up being just under 15 mph. Definately, makes me want to join him (but maybe not for this race - he said he saw a lot of people crying/cursing!).

Rafting yesterday was awesome as well. Kiddos got to experience a little class 3 for the first time - and my daughter fell in love with rowing.  She definately has my competiveness as she just had a fit any time anyone passed us!

Training starts back up tomorrow.  Will have to stick with the trainer for the rest of the week as the rec. center is not having child care and Steve is out of town. Only 12 more days til school starts and then it will be soooo much easier!

Robin- Glad to see you back again! Sounds like your vacation was fun.

Jamie and I went running this morning. We had planned on 6 miles, but ended up having to cut it short at the last minute due to time constraints (she found out last minute she had to be home by 6:30am). So we did 5 miles on a new route I created around my neighborhood (drove it in the car yesterday to get accurate mileage).

Anyhow, during the run, this dog busts out its yard and starts running after us barking like crazy. I stopped running and yelled at it to go home. I grabbed my water bottle & got ready to spray it in the face, but the yelling seemed to scare it and it backed off & ran back in the yard. Luckily not a vicious dog, just overly excited. Nice route aside from that one street. Looks like we'll be avoiding that street from now on

Bought a new pair of running shoes today. Went to an actual running store & had them analyze my gait (or whatever they do) and get a shoe that was good for me.

Edited by jpbis26 2010-08-10 8:52 PM

Wow - dogs scare me.  It sounds from everything I have read here at BT you did the right thing by stopping and yelling at it/spraying water on it - which scares me even more than trying to outrun it! 

What shoes did you end up getting? When I was fitted the LRS recommended NIKE's b/c of my narrow heels and high arches. LOVE 'EM!!!!

Just had an awesome interval session on the bike today.  It's the third time I've tried this interval workout with my power meter which is basically 6 intervals of 6 minutes hard and 5 minutes recovery.  Here's my progress since getting my power meter.  I think it's a combination of getting stronger and increasing my pain tolerance.

                         June 29th          July 20th                 August 10th
Goal wattage   251 w              260 w                     270 w
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interval 1          246 w               252 w                      262 w
Interval 2          253 w               262 w                      270 w
Interval 3          254 w               257 w                      282 w
Interval 4          256 w               261 w                      275 w
Interval 5          265 w               265 w                      281 w
Interval 6          254 w               262 w                      295 w 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Average            254.67 w        259.83 w                277.5 w


The last effort of 295 watts was basically an all out.  I was hurting bad...but it seemed the more I hurt, the deeper I dug down and actually increased my average wattage the last 300 yards instead of fading.

Now if I could only increase that average by about 30 and sustain it for 10 times as long, then I could be in David's ball park

Sorry I've been MIA lately.  We've been crazy busy.  Racing/looking for a house to buy/family visiting/work....pretty much everything.  Looks like everyone is keeping very busy with training/family etc.

I have been talking to a couple coaches in the area.  On a personal level, there are two people I really like.  One lady, who charges 125 a month and a guy who charges 350 a month.  What I'm trying to figure out is this:  Do I really need someone to tell me what to eat, how to eat, what kind of self massage to do, set up race nutrition (calories, salt intake, what kind of sugar to use), be available every day if stuff is going wrong.....or....can I do just as well with someone that will set up a training plan and check out my numbers once a week and make adjustments and be available for email and a single phone call a week is needed? 

The guy who charges 350 has 17 years of coaching experience, has the highest level of USAT training AND USA cycling training you can get and is supposedly an absolute expert at training with power.  The lady who charges 125 has been coaching for 4 years and has only been TRAINING with power for a little less than a year now.

Edited by jgerbodegrant 2010-08-11 6:33 AM

Robin- yeah, I was really glad I had read that thread about being chased by dogs I got a pair of Brooks Ghost 3 (I've never heard of this brand before, but they were the most comfortable)

Jonathan- Hard decision. Obviously, I've never had a coach (aside from swimming) so I can't offer advice, but I guess it comes down to how much time and money you want to put into the sport and how much feedback you feel you need. I'll be interested to see what Newbz & others have to say about this.

Either way that's awesome. I'd love to have a coach. But, I'm lucky to have some friends who help me out with the bike.

Edited by jpbis26 2010-08-11 9:35 AM

Sorry....correction.  The guy is not 350 a month, he is 250 a month.

Man it is hot here!  I got a swim in earlier tonight and a run right after it.  When I got out of the water and tool off for the run it was 87 with a heat index of 98.  I was sweating profusely at about a half mile.  I was trying to keep my pace down a little bit due to the heat but I think the cool water of the pool dropped my core temp some and I was able to run faster for the first couple of miles and then I started feeling the heat.

I finished the run but I was much slower than the first mile.  I wasn't trying to go fast, as a matter of fact I kept trying to slow down early but that proved to be be hard for me to do.  I am not sure why it was hard to back the pace down but I suppose it could be the cool water.  Whatever,  I finished 5 miles in 43:10 after a fairly easy 2250 yard swim.

12 mile run slated for Friday with a 50 mile ride on Saturday.  What's everyone else have on the training agenda?

For several reasons I could not afford to pay a coach.   I have 2 daughters in a parochial high school that is costing a lot of money but I will see those benefits later.  Another thing, I guess I would rather spend the money on tri gear since its not likely I'll be a podium athlete, on a regular basis anyway.

Good luck though.  If I did have the money I would have to try to look closely at my goals and make decision based on those goals.  The obvious choice for me (with lots of cash) would be the $250 coach because it sounds like the biggest bang mainly based on experience.  What are your goals Jonathon?

Going for a 9ish mile run soon. 

Also have a 100 mile ride planned for Saturday.  In order to eat 300 calories per hour as David suggested, I planned a couple stops through the McDonald's drive through along my route.  JK.