Ontherun and gearing up-CLOSED (Page 8)

Hi

I hope you have a spot for me.

NAME: la_scrapbookeuse / Nancy

STORY: I'm a cancer survivor!  At school, I was a good swimmer and a formal Life Guard.  10 years ago, at 25 years old, I was hit by a cancer...  Yes, I was pretty young and had it twice before I could get rid of it...  Long story short, I now have 2 kids (3.5 and 1), 60 pounds overweight and had sit on the couch for the last 8 years...  

FAMILY STATUS: Married for 12 years with two children (3.5 and 1)  And sorry if my spelling and grammar sometimes sound funny, I'm French Canadian... 

THIS YEAR'S RACES: I delived my big 8.5 lbs boy!!!

2013 RACES:  I register to volunteer at a 5km running race at the end of March just to get back into the "athletic community".  I registered for a 2km run in Ottawa at the end of May.  In my area, they do an "initiation to triathlon race" (350m swim, 10 km bike, 2.5 km).  I would like to do one at the end of August. 

WEIGHTLOSS: I will drop from 184 lbs 150 lbs by the end of summer.  I go to a weightloss group every wednesday and have already lost 7 pounds...

Emma, get well soon.

Nancy, welcome to the group

Welcome to the group, Nancy!!

Question for Joe/anyone: How does spinning translate to biking? In terms of mileage, fitness, etc. Like if I do 10 miles on the stationary bike, can I expect relatively the same times for biking (taking into account stops for lights, hills, etc)? And does spinning create a sufficient base for your muscles to easily adapt?

All of my "bike" workouts have been indoors, so I just want to be prepared. Do you have any suggestions for getting ready for outdoor biking?

Ok, I will take a stab at this the best I can. I know that when a person puts there road bike on a training stand that you accomplish more indoors than out on a flat road. A bike on a trainer dose not allow for coasting, stopping etc. It also dose not factor hills or wind. With those being said, changing to harder gears can replicate the harder training. When it comes to logging miles on a bike on the trainer, I try to use a bike computer and put the sensor on the rear wheel to keep things as consistent as I can.

As for exercise bikes in a gym, the same principal holds true. 20 minutes on an indoor bike is more like 30 outside. The problem with stationary bikes is trying to quantify distance. I personally do not trust the numbers given on many of the indoor gym equipment. I have found them to vary wildly and be quite inaccurate.

Either way, I would use time spent in the saddle as being a constant gauge of fitness. If a workout calls for 30 minutes, do it for the same amount of time inside or out. Doing the same amount inside will only make you a stronger rider outside.

Hope this helps.

Ah, thanks, Joe and Sandy! This helps me feel better about bike fitness for sure. Like Joe, I heard that the distance doesn't always come out right, but I'll focus on time spent on the bike; that sounds good.

Sandy - you must have some awesome rides! I visited the San Francisco/Berkeley area last summer with some friends, and on the way to go hiking, we saw tons of cyclists going up these crazy hills. I was awed! And the scenery and weather were beautiful I realize you're in southern California, but it still must be pretty cool.

Another (kind of random) question: does "riding in aero" refer to aerobars, or is that an arm position that you use? The indoor bikes have an inner position that we never touch in spinning class, but I could experiment with it when I'm doing workouts on my own.

Ridding in aero is an aero dynamic position you put your body into. This can depend on the type of bike. For triathlon, this is normally on the aero bars of a triathlon bike, or a clip on set of bars for a road bike. I first started using aero bars about 25 years ago, just to have a different position to sit in on rides over 2 hours. Here is the rub, nothing is for free.

Going into the aero position lessens the amount of surface area your body is exposed to by wind resistance. This is a good thing as it lessens the amount of effect wind has on your speed. There are a bunch of down sides that can be minimized. First is riding in aero on the road can be scary. I had a friend once call it the "Scare o Bars". With your hands in close together, you have less control on the bars than you would have with your hands on the outside of the bars by the brake levers. Also, when you are low on the aero bars, your center of gravity is moved forward. This puts more weight on the front wheel, and thus means the handling of the bike becomes more twitchy. This is something that takes practice, particularly on a non windy day with lots of room to swerve while learning the new position.

The second issue is about how your mussels are engaged. Sadly, when you sit upright, you are capable of generating more power using your glute mussels. The more you bend forward, the more you use smaller mussels. Using these different mussel groups also require training in the aero position. On the up side, it is nice to be able to change the positions you are sitting in to rest tired mussel groups on longer rides.

Also, the crouching position puts pressure on your diaphragm and it is more difficult to take in air. The short version of this is it takes a lot of trial and error to find the best position to get your bike set up in. This time can be shortened by a good bike fit at a good bike shop that understands triathletes. This is important as some bike shops do not understand triathletes. They might know off road or time trial set ups, but do not understand how the bike position not only effects your performance on the bike, but how fresh your legs are for the run.

With all that said, do not let me scare you away from aero bars, I love mine and would not ride without them

Thanks for the awesome explanation!! I understand much better now.

How's everyone else doing? Haven't heard from people in awhile! Hope you're all well.

????I agree! Joe's explanation was right on. I haven't used aero bars for years because I got too fat and couldn't breath while trying to use them. Hopefully, within the next few months I can get back to using them.

I see you have a race this weekend. Good luck with it! From looking at your logs I'll bet you'll do well, have fun and let us know how it goes.

Sandy

Thanks, Sandy! Finished my first race successfully. It was a ton of fun, and I didn't even feel very sore afterwards (which means training is doing something good!). I feel re-energized to keep training and changing some things too.

Laurie, welcome back!! Thanks for the inspire

It has been a little quite in here as of late. things are starting to return to normal around my house, and I want to try to make good on the commitment that I have made to you. I am sure there are a few questions that could be asked, and I love to answer them

Joe,

Hope all is well.  Finally joined BT and am eager to start training for my first tri.  I guess my first goal is just to get back and active at the gym, too many distractions over the past couple months have gotten me off track, but started back at it this morning with a 300m swim.  Look forward to getting to know everyone.

Cheers

Since I haven't done a race yet, tell me some of the things you learned that you would change the the next one.

Hey Joe,

What's the deal with compression gear? Would use of this type of thing really help a beginner or is it something for the mileage monsters?

Sandy

Welcome to the group. If you look at the first page of this thread, there is a questioner you can steal from me so you can share some info about yourself.

Joe

Sandy, that is a good question. Please start with this article I wrote a few years back

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=603

The biggest thing I have found that effects race day performance is the training you do. If you purchase a Porsche with a VW Beetle engine, you will never maximize the performance. This is the same with racing. Training is like starting with the VW engine and performing upgrades to get the Porsche engine. Unfortunately, no matter how we try we can never just buy a new engine.  You can upgrade your gear as deep as your pockets allow, but even Lance could not buy enough speed without PEDs and hard work

Nice job knocking out the good questions. This is a hard question for me to answer, but I will try. The short answer is I believe that good compression gear will help if used at the right time and for the right reasons.

Compression gear was and may still be very trendy. The idea is two fold. When built into your workout or racing gear it is supposed to help reduce fatigue. I have a pair of $180 bike shorts I invested in when I got back into ridding in 2004. I love them and take good care of them. I only use them on rides over 1.5 hours. they have lost some of the elasticity, reducing the compression, but still work for me.

The other use is to aid recovery. I personally do not have any of this gear. A big part of this is I do not tend to train hard enough to spend the money. So what dose this all mean? Well I am the frugal gear geek. At the end of the day, you can race in a swimsuit,  ride a borrowed bike, wear a helmet, and if all else fails run barefoot. This is extreme, but the point is all money spent on this very expensive sport after this extra. You are buying: comfort, speed, and safety. The hard part is figuring out what you "need" vs want.

Hi Joe! Sandy and I talked a bit about speed/interval training. Thoughts on this?

My take is - I'm doing a half marathon in may, so most of my runs are slower paced right now. If I take one shorter run a week and up the speed (within reason), I can still get the mileage in and will be in a better place for the faster pace used for a sprint in june/july.

For swimming, I noticed during the indoor tri that I pushed myself way harder and consequently felt tired really quickly. Is this something that can also be improved by doing intervals or is it just a fitness or pacing issue?

Speed/interval training is a good idea. A core part of training is to mix things up, not just go longer or harder. You need to do both over time. This is part of the reason we use periodization as a part of our training plans. Here is a link to a training calculator I just found on line.

http://www.runnersworld.com/tools/training-paces-calculator

This should help you gauge how fast and or how hard to run at a given distance. If you do not want to be a slave to the watch, you could do a version of Fartlik training. This is a way to mix up the training while running distances. Some people will spend an entire workout doing wind sprints, or what ever. An easy way to do this is to warm up for about 5 minutes of a 5k run. Then, sprint every other telephone pole until you only have about 5 minutes of cool down left. Work the speed up slowly, as you are probably not used to going all out at any distance. This is surprisingly effective.

Another way to add speed is to go out on  run at just under you normal pace. Each time you get to a hill, go a little faster than pace while running up it. This can be fun, if you do not burn yourself out in the process.

as for the swimming question, you can not race harder than you train. You need to be careful in endurance events to make sure there is something left in the tank at the end. On the only marathon I have done, I learned this the hard way. I was running at my training pace for this race at about 10:50 per mile. It was very comfortable for about 6 miles. I had bumped into someone running the same pace, so we enjoyed each others company. I stopped at a rest area for about 2 minutes, no big deal. The problem was, I could still see the person I had been running with, and spent the next 4 miles chasing her down at 8:30 pace. No problem as I was running 5ks in the high 7s at the time. At mile 23, I hit the wall hard. Not quite sure how I stayed on my feet. I kept expecting to get pulled from the course as I was almost falling over the guardrail.

In the end, the additional effort early, and a less than perfect meal strategy came back to haunt me. I finished, but it was not pretty.  I went so far as to try and hid from the official cameras because I knew I looked that bad.

Lesson learned.

Hey everybody,

Sorry I have been MIA, everyone here has been sick for the last week and we were all out of commission.  That means no working out for me.       But I will be back at it tomorrow!!

Will try to catch up with everything I missed after dinner tonight!