Fred D Mentor Group - Part II (Page 83)

Neil, with Fred's blessing, I'll offer a few suggestions.  Position on the bike is very individual, and for most of us involves some sort of three-way compromise between being able to hold the position (for lack of a better term, let's all that 'comfort', but comfort is a bit of a misnomer because it's not like sitting in an easy chair...), being able to produce power effectively (call that 'power'), and getting as aero as possible ('aero').  That's one reason that position is ever-evolving: our ability to hold a given position will change over time (hopefully in a helpful direction, but not always), and we can also adapt to produce power effectively in new positions, though doing so can take time.

(Side note.  A fourth consideration that is often raised is 'being able to run' after holding the position.  I personally believe that this consideration is far over-emphasized, and to the extent that it isn't, is already covered by 'power'.  I've ridden in a variety of positions, from very upright on my road bike, to in the drops on my road bike, to both lax and crazy-aero positions on my tri bike.  They definitely feel different, but I've never noticed any appreciable difference in my ability to get up and run afterwards.  I strongly suspect that when people blame 'position' for their inability to run, something else is at work.)

Anyway, that's all by way of proviso.  I can't really speak to the issues of comfort and power.  You will need to experiment yourself to see what is feasible, and what you think you can adapt to over time.  It can be useful to do some roll-down tests combined with some power tests to try to find a reasonable point of compromise, though IMO both tests are easily screwed up, and are often done in a way that turns ou to be irrelevant to actual racing, so be careful!

As for your actual position, I'd say (as some others have already) that you've got a lot of room for getting your head (and torso  to some extent) out of the wind.  At this stage of the game, it really wouldn't require anything radical in the way of 'turtling' and such.  You can just rotate your entire body clockwise relative to the bike.  Doing so will entail lowering the front end, which will have knock-on effects on the position of your seat and the bars (mostly the pads).  The angles of your body look pretty good.  Try to keep that picture but just rotate everything counter-clockwise to get your head lower.

You seat is probably too high.  As I said, the angles look good (assuming that you naturally pedal a bit toes-down), but the crank is not at its lowest point in the cycle.  Putting it there is likely to stretch you out a bit, which will cause loss of power.  Also, the pads are a bit far back, and once you are rotated, they are likely to be way far back because your torso will move forward somewhat.  You want to try to get them a little forward of your elbows, at least as a first approximation (then play with it from there).

If you are having trouble lowering the front end, you might consider this:  http://www.tririg.com/store.php?c=clamps.  They are pricy, but I got a pair used for considerably less (a guy was selling his SC and sold these separately).  I love them, and they enabled me to lower my front end a good deal.  (Double-check that they fit your bike.  We don't have exactly the same model.)

I think that you can achieve a much more aero position with zero sacrifice to comfort or power, because the changes I mentioned above do nothing to make the position more difficult to hold or to hinder your ability to produce power.  Indeed, moving the pads back is likely to increase comfort, and lowering the seat (and/or moving it for or aft) is likely to improve your ability to produce power.

Beyond that, you certainly could make additional progress by lowering your head relative to your body.  You aren't really even in the realm of needing to 'turtle', yet.  Just try to lower it a bit.  One immediate goal could be to try to get the tail of that helmet closer to your back.  This change definitely would have consequences for comfort.  I'd suggest approaching it in degrees.   You can do this entirely independent of the other things that I mentioned above.  Whether you want to turtle radically is really an individual choice based on how interested you are in enduring a good bit of pain in the neck.  I tend to do it pretty radically for shorter races, but not longer ones.

Heya Freddites, just checking in ...

Been busy, my dear beloved piglet Jim is visiting from LA and will be here until Christmas, so I am actually getting out and about more. He comes along on runs, which is really nice, although it's a bit disheartening that he's so tall, he just walks along at what is my "run" pace. Ha ha!

My booby/bikini-shape rash is finally calming down a bit (more than a week later); it's still itchy from the scabs healing up but not too badly.

For some reason I have been feeling ridiculously apathetic lately. Everything's fine; I just don't care about anything and don't want to do anything, but I do it anyway. Just life; it has its waves. Actually put in a full IM training week last week, so I'm back up to par on that level.

x2 yip yip yoo-ray to Mini-Me Marshall

I didn't use it but I recall that site was co-owned by Dave Luscan.  He used to post on BT but I haven't seen him lately, like many others.  This link has his info.  He's also a superb cyclist

http://www.findingfreestyle.com/?q=blog_breakingthrough2010

You're pretty low. I'm not sure I would change anything, maybe try to get the shoulders/upper arms a little narrower but you seem like your a big guy ? If so, you are like me and it's hard to reduce that upper body area

Those were exactly my thoughts.  The only thing I'd work on is getting the tail of the helmet flatter against the back, although with the Rudy it wil probably never be completely down there (which is not a bad thing with that helmet).

I think that  leg hair must be costing him 10 watts on the bike and 3s/100 on the swim? He needs a bic more than firecrests

Yeah, I've got swimmer's shoulders.  I think going a touch narrower is my only option.  I will likely give it a try and see how it feels over the winter.

That settles it, off it comes!  

Well, maybe not until next year......

Fred, I'll be interested in hearing your input on the FF program.  I think the bolded part is going to be the biggest determining factor for progress.  I haven't done any of the new "adult onset swimmer" programs but I think the majority of people feel the FF is a better way to get fast over Total Immersion.  (I hope AdventureBear isn't going to find me in here and scold me?)  From what I've heard, TI is a good way for a non-swimmer to learn balance and stroke mechanics but (most) don't get fast.  The FF program takes you past adequate to an ability to gain speed.  That's what I gleaned from all the ST discussions I've followed on the subject.  Luckily, I have a great Masters coach, so I don't have to worry. :-)

Running is  s...l...o...w...l...y  starting to come back.  Got in a 6.5 mile run last night that felt okay. 

So if you had any doubts about it...biking is not a substitute for running.  Even if you ride the crap out of your bike, if you stop running for 3 months, your running is going to suck.  /rant 

I started a thread about it in TT, but we can discuss here as well.

New PM to hit the market revealed at interbike

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/stages-cycling-stageone-power-meter-interbike-2012-35270/

Thoughts?

I would not be a first adopter, but if this works and is reliable...it will change the whole power game.  To me, it combines the best of all worlds.  You could use this on any bike assuming you run the same crank arm lengths.  Not to mention it's half the price (supposedly) of the other major PMs.

Any bets on when it will come out or if Garmin (other big company) will buy them out?

I read some of the initial discussion on ST.  It certainly seems interesting.  It almost seems like they are targeting the market that wants a cheap (relatively speaking) PM and are ok with it being "good enough" rather than high precision?  Meaning it may not give exactly the same numbers as the current PMs but it will produce consistent ones.  I admit I only briefly read anything so I may have misinterpreted that completely.

Edit:  Someone from the company has chimed in on the ST discussion.  Claiming it is very accurate and they will have data on their website soon.

I imagine many of the same comments were made about Quarq versus SRM when Quarq was the new kid on the block.

The new entry will provide some needed competition and push prices downward across the board.  I bet it will be extremely accurate.  SRM has been enjoying a monopoly on the crank based market right now, since they bought Quarq.  Their prices don't reflect the reality of the technology.

Several months ago, I did about the first seven weeks.  I was pretty consistent with it, and made more improvement then than I have in other (alas, rare) blocks of consistent swimming.  I was the fastest I've ever been in the water at that point (then I fell off the wagon...)  Of course that could be coincidence, but I do think that some of the drills were 'clicking' for me (and others weren't -- I could do them, but I was not getting how they relate to actual swimming).   Rob and Dave are pretty helpful on their forum.  They respond quickly to questions, encourage posting video, etc.  They're very generous with their time, given the low price of the program.

On the down side, I think that they take their methodology too far.  The basic idea, as you know, is to do the drills without thinking in terms of 'flaws' in one's stroke and taking measures to 'correct' those flaws.  Instead, doing drills plus lots of swimming is supposed to lead one 'naturally' to 'find' a good freestyle stroke.  I believe in that methodology a lot more for running than I do for swimming, though I think there's something to it for swimming.  As I say, however, I think that they take it too far.  (Example:  I was getting shoulder pain and tjfry (of this site) suggested that my angle of entry plus my (lack of) rotation was causing impingement.  Bingo.  Problem solved.  I don't think that FF would have been nearly as effective in that case.)

If nothing else, the program got me focused on regular, quality, swimming, and for that reason among others, I'm going back to it (I'll restart from week 1) over the next few months to try to up my game before some spring HIMs.

I would suggest that if a person (not you) is a pure beginner, or has major flaws in his or her stroke, FF is not the place to start.  I have a semi-regular swim coach who got me to the point of having a half-decent stroke, and only then do I think I was ready to get some benefit out of FF.

I believe SRAM bought Quarq...not SRM.

You're right I fail at reading comprehension.

Fred, I agree with a lot of your comments about power.  Frankly, I would feel pretty confident about racing Oly and longer without power and simply using HR.  I feel this way because I have learned what it feels like to push X watts, and at the Oly distance or longer, you are largely capped off by your HR anyway.

Also agree with using power in training for shorter intervals (1-5 minutes).  That's my bread and butter during training and where I would miss it the most.

I have a friend who just bought an SRM (new, but second hand).  Got a great deal on it, but I still think he over estimates how much a power meter will actually do for him.  You still need to put in the hard work...if you weren't willing to do it before (as he would get dropped by me and other riders who chose to ride balls to the wall), a power meter isn't going to magically make you able to do it.