JAPEWANG's GROUP - CLOSED (Page 8)

OLY went well.  Thanks for the advice on the ear plugs, it was a totally different experience with them.  I'll put up a race report eventually.  I'm still not as smooth as I'd like to be on the OW but I got through the swim.  My zipper caught on my tri suit and I couldn't get out, but a stripper helped me, thank goodness!  The rest of the race went well.  I ended with a 2:53 which put me MOP for my AG.  I'll take it.  Great first race and a very good measure on what I should prioritize this season to get better.

Also, HITS is putting on great races.  They were good last year and they're really good this year.  If you're considering one, I'd recommend it.

Hey all, Just been lurking lately, since I don't have much to report other than the usual slog of training. Sounds like everyone is progressing nicely. The Triathlon Camp sounds like an especially fun way to kick training into gear.

I've been a little behind on my cycling, just due to some family engagements, but otherwise keeping up pretty well with my plan. Did my longest swim ever yesterday (3000m) and felt pretty good. I think my favorite thing recently about swim workouts is that after my first couple of sets I have this nagging feeling like I'll never be able to finish these long/hard workouts, but by focusing on the current or next set I'm usually done before I have enough time to rationalize cutting the workout short.

I'll be traveling again for Easter, but hoping to get in most of my workouts. Have a good week everyone!

"Spring" training camp report.

I gave the programme to the camp I was going to a few posts ago. Due to the weather it had to be changed but it was still a great weekend. I arrived too early and quite nervous because I did not know anybody that would be there. I should not have worried coz I was given a warm welcome  and quickly felt part of the group.

-2C snow and wind chill of -10C meant no road cycling but Friday afternoon found us on mountain  bikes flying up and down the snowy trails. I'd never done MTB before and I loved it. I'll be back!

http://www.glentressforest.com/home.html

Friday evening saw a vist to a local Indian restaurant followed by refreshments in a local pub. Let's just say nuitritional advice was not given!

Saturday started with a pre breakfast run followed buy sprints in the snow and functional assessment. Apparently I run like I'm four foot three! Next was the gym for core stability work then after lunch what should have been a long road ride became a turbo trainer session. This was when I learned an important lesson for the future - when attending cycling events always remember to take your front wheel with you. Doh!  It's was just that I had to plan to take so much stuff to allow for any condtions I forgot the most obvious thing. Man did I feel a fool! Last event of Saturday was an hour in the pool doing various drills. I felt sorry for the coach treading water in the pool pretending to be the bouy we had to swim round.

Sunday started with the pre breakfast run including time trials this time. I have no concept of my running speed whatsoever. I really need to practice this. After breafast it was back to the forrest for brick sessions. That was three laps of a 1K MTB trail followed by a hilly 1K run. Tough one. After lunch we had circuit training and an indoor triathlon.

"Indoor" triathlon? I hear you ask. Just a bit of relay fun. The swim was goggles on lying on the floor blowing up a balloon. Then to transition with the balloon between your legs. Goggles off, Helmet on clipped securely ( normal Transition rules ) then on to the bike which was actually ten squats - with the ballon between your legs, the helmet then unclipped and onto the run which was juggling the balloon ten times then a sprint back to the start were we passed over the "timing chip" - baggy clowns pants that we wore the whole time!

To sum up it was a good fun weekend despite the horrendous weather. I loved every minute but think I need to join a club after Easter to push me on to the next stage.

I had probably the roughest weekend of training yet. It was a mental struggle on both my Saturday ride and Sunday ride/run. It was awful.

On Saturday I proacticed OWS with a wetsuit (first time!). We did soem sighting and swam to buoys a couple times. The first 2-3 little swims I felt like I couldn't breathe and had a really tough time catching my breath. After a few I got a little more comfortable and then felt pretty good. I really like how my legs feel like I have a pull-bouy between them but I am still able to kick! Then came the bike transition. 51 miles. It was 9 miles to a hilly loop, 2 loops, then back to the parking lot. I tried out some new nutrition that was recommended by a local run store. I had a really tough time convincing myself to do the second loop. I felt sick to my stomach and just felt awful. Then after the second loop about 5 miles left UPHILL to get to the parking lot, my chain slipped, crossed over and got locked in the derailer. It took me quite a while to get that situation rectified. All in all, it was a tough ride both physically and mentally.

But this was nothing compared to yesterday. I decided to try out a new tri bike that someone is selling. Still not sure on it, I will post separately on that in a bit. So I went for a hilly 10 miler followed by a straight up/straight down 10 miler. I had to stop 3 times to convince myself to keep going up the mountain. I still turned around just before the top. I knew I had a run following it. So the brick run was AWFUL. It was hot, I didn't have enough liquids with me, but the nutrition (I think) was ok. I made it to the turn around at 5.5 and walked a tiny bit. But by mile 7 it was all walk/run. I couldn't even convince myself to run at all by mile 9/9.5. I had to walk the entire last 2 miles back to my car. I was in tears by mile 10. Just lost it. I can't believe how awful that run was.

It was a horribly depressing and mentally tough weekend. So much so that I couldn't even get myself out of bed this morning to go swim. Please tell me that others have horrible training weekends when you question yourself, your abilities, your sanity for signing up for races. UGH. It was tough and now I FEAR my next run workout. I feel broken right now. My mental state is not that great and I am questioning getting through the 13.1 miles.

This is supposed to be my longest week in terms of hours training (only 6 weeks out!). I am really not sure if I am going to make it. Especially since I took this morning off already. I am going to have to do some rearranging and see if I can get the hours in (or close to) so I can hopefully gain some confidence back.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and felt great about their work. Congrats on the HITS Oly! sounds fun!

Don't beat yourself up.  Actually with the things you listed, I'm not surprised at all that you had a difficult weekend.  New nutrition, new equipment, all at a time where your training is peaking and your body has been broken down over the course of your plan.  No reason to get discouraged.

You're this far into your plan I would not change your fueling if your old fueling was working for you.  No reason at all to do this. Calories are calories.

Many that go from roadie to tri bike say that it takes 4 months to a year for your body to get fully accustomed to riding the tri bike full time.  If you're thinking of buying the tri bike for SG, I wouldn't.  Ride what you have done in training.  It's gotten you this far.

Take a rest day to just eat well, relax, sleep.  You're hitting your peak and these are supposed to be the toughest days of your training physically and mentally.  Don't throw yourself any curveballs with anything new.  You'll need familiarity and structure and toughness to get through to your taper.  What you're experiencing is more normal than abnormal!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/mar/25/tabata-harder-faster-fitter-quicker

An interesting article on Tabata training. Train for an Ironman in four minutes a day?! I doubt that, but does anyone do this on a regular basis? I gave it a go on the turbo trainer yesterday and certainly felt it. Do you really think it can help distance endurance if done regularly

I love tabata training. But you have to accept what it's good for and its limitations. I didn't read the article, but I assume it talks about improving your anaerobic threshold or NO2 absorption levels. It will do that. I think it also helps mentally to push yourself as hard as you can for short periods. But it won't condition your body to move for 15 hours (or even 2). Plus you shouldn't look at a Tabata workout as a 4 minute workout, as you need to be fully warmed up or you're asking for a muscle strain. I did lots of tabatas last off season (usually one a week), where I'd do something like a 4 mile warmup, one tabata session, and a 2 mile cool down. I got a lot faster (doing that and lots of other speed workouts), but I would never train for a long distance event without running plenty of long distance.

I had a really crazy, terrible experience this weekend on the bike. I went out for a group ride on Friday. I didn't really know anyone on the ride, although I'd ridden with a couple of them before. The ride was great...a nice hilly 70kms at a brisk pace. Towards the end everyone started picking up the pace and I got dropped. I kicked it into gear to catch up, and when I came over a hill I saw the group had all stopped. I pulled over to the side of the road and one of the riders was unconscious and bloody, with another rider tending to him. Nobody knew exactly what happened, but it sounded like he had a stroke or heart attack. The guy in front of him said he glanced back and saw him just veer off the road. The guy tending to him turned out to be a doctor (thankfully), and kept his airway open until the ambulance came, but he didn't know what to expect... the guy was breathing and had a pulse when the ambulance came, but he never regained consciousness.

I don't even have any of these guys' phone numbers, so I have no idea what happened to him at the hospital. I can't get the image of him on the side of the road out of my head, and I haven't taken my bike out on the road since. I have made a promise to myself to never leave the house without my emergency contact info on me (he didn't have anything, and it took a while to track down his family), and to take other safety measures more seriously.

Sorry to be a downer, but this was a really crazy experience and I felt like I needed to share with some fellow cyclists. Has anyone else dealt with anything similar?

Wow. That is awful. I've never had something like that happen on a ride.  Seen some decent crashes, but nothing like that.  I hope that he ended up ok.  

Sounds like you're pretty shaken as well.  I hope that you can move forward with a sense of normalcy soon.

I am so sorry to hear about your ride. It must be frustrating to not be able to get any info on the person!

I am in need of some advice. This past week has been a recovery week. Which is good, because I came down with a serious stomach bug. But in addition, because of Easter and family in town, I missed my long ride last weekend, a 2.5 hr ride. I am not too worried about missing that, because some of the rides I have done lately have been pretty long, so I wasn't too worried about missing that one. So here is my question, I am going to do an Olympic on Apr 14, and that is the Sunday of my week 4 training. I am trying to figure out how to rearrange my training schedule to "fit it in". So the plan is supposed to be:

M= swim 60 min

T=Brick, 60 bike, 30 run

W= 90 min tempo run

TH=30  min swim speed day

F=off

Sat=Swim-Bike brick, swim 40, bike 80 min

Sun = Bike to run transition practice. 8 x (4min run, 10 min bike, 4 min run).

So the race is on Sunday, so how do you think I should go about this? What should I do on Saturday? My goal is to just feel good during the race, use it as transition practice, open water swim practice, getting off the wetsuit practice, and to work out the morning of race day kinks. I also have an opportunity to run with a friend for 90 minutes this Sat (which is supposed to be still in my recovery week, but I pretty much pre-extended the recovery week due to Easter and family).  Can you help me move the workouts around to fit the Oly in and still get in the overall goals of this week?

Thanks!

Since you're using the Oly as training and not purposefully tapering into it to RACE with a goal, I don't think you should change your training for that week.  Just train as you normally would and swap the race in for whatever the sunday workout would be.  

If you want your rest day to fall on Saturday so you have an off day prior to the race, I would shift your saturday workout to friday if you can.

I think I should point out I was being sarcastic when I suggested training for an Ironman in four minutes a day!I just wondered about the actual benefits towards endurance events. I agree as well about the time it takes. With warm up and cool down my last 4 minute tabata session on the trurbo trainer took half an hour.

Thanks for the feedback.

Hi everyone!

Lucky I decided to start posting more, else you'd never hear from me again :P. Getting myself more and more together, as a matter of fact yesterday it was like something snapped back into place; I haven't felt this good in MONTHS. I'm talking perhaps B+, not A, so I still have a little to go to feel 'great' but energy wise and mentally I felt really good.

I did an indoor swim of 1' and 50"; I had my Garmin with me but unfortunately it was set for outdoor swim and didn't register any distance. In the time part of our logs here at BT I put in slow times to moderate times and that came out to 2.5 to 2.75 miles, which are personal bests in terms of distance swam non stop. I got out of the pool feeling very good relatively to just finishing that, got myself dressed and began my cycling exercises. I did 5 sets of 30 minutes on the recumbent and based on the mileage indicator went 41 miles overall; in terms of time and distance that was one of my top bike sessions as well so good day training for me.

I feel really good physically and mentally suddenly! I don't know if it's Spring and I'm over the winter blues, or I'm over my overtraining (time to overtrain again!), or my coffee levels have risen to therapeutic levels in my body but I feel 'normal'. Hooray for normal! That's a good thing too because I turned 50 on 12 April and that in itself is, well let me just say 50 years old is something I associated with my dad and not myself! Hope everyone is having a good year!

Hi all...hope everyone is ramping up the training as the season starts. I've definitely been increasing volume over the past few weeks, and feeling pretty good. Did my first bric yesterday too, and felt strong on the run (albeit after a fairly short, 1 hour bike).

My biggest challenge now is that we'll be relocating across the world in a couple of weeks, which I'm sure is going to mean several missed training days. Also, the shipping company packed up my road bike and trainer yesterday, so I'll be training on a mountain bike for the next two weeks. They promised me my roadie will be there when we arrive, so that's good, but I've got a few long rides planned which are going to feel very slow on my Rockhopper. Do you think it's better to ride the mountain bike on flatish pavement so I can simulate the constant pedaling of a race, or do I just take advantage and hit the trails, and just keep my riding times consistent with my plans (which will mean ~30km rides instead of ~80km rides)?

Happy training!

Dan

Ran a 5K today to get a baseline to train from. Came in at 24:37 (give or take a couple seconds). Goal time was 8 min/mile, so I hit that.

Was in pain (winded) during the race, because I went out too fast. The race started on an uphill, so I couldn't gauge my speed well. Race also ends on an uphill, and I really died at the end. That was mental, probably could have finished stronger.

Still, I made my goal (actually a PR, beating a time I ran 15-20 years ago - I haven't run many 5Ks). (I'm 52 y.o. male.)

I'm running sprint tris this year. I'm training about five hours a week for swim/bike/run in total, and given work/family I doubt I'll be able to put in more.

Any thoughts on what my next running goal should be? Should I try to run a longer race or seek a faster 5K? I was thinking shooting for a 23:10 5K by the end of the year - too much, too soon?

It has been a while since I have checked in. Oonly 10 days til race day! Wow, that time went fast!

I did an Olympic as a race-trial-run 2 weekends ago. It was fantastic. I PRed by 25 minutes! And this bike course was 3 miles longer! I felt like a rock star passing people in the swim and on the bike, just to get passed by them on the run. But no matter, because my avg. times were MUCH faster than the first Oly I did. This was only my second race, so I was pretty happy about it. Of course, I realize that I cannot kill the swim and bike on the HIM like I did at the Oly. I will really have to keep the heart rate in check to make sure I can make it through the run.

I can't believe how fast it has come up! I am in taper now, but I really had a hard time making the last 2 hard weeks of training. It just seemed hard to motivate myself to get out of bed that early, to make it those longer distances, etc. I was ready for the race, physically and mentally, 4 weeks ago. This last month of training/taper has really put a damper on my mental (and maybe the physical--I don't know!) readiness. I know that I just have to get out of this mental funk and KNOW that I will be able to do it. It is going to be TOUGH. Toughest course (both bike and run) I have ever done. Keep positive, fight the demons....keep going one foot in front of the other. Hopefully the next time I post...I will be a HIM

Well done lalusp! You sound like you are doing great; remember it's HIM, it's supposed to be tough

Congrats on the PR! As for the current struggles, just remember the definition of perserverance: It's the hard work you do after you're exhausted from all the hard work you've done.