GrooveTime!group - CLOSED!!! (Page 84)

SteveB,

I do have one major problem with the wetsuit.  I've practiced putting it on and taking it off and I've gotten much better at it EXCEPT I can't get it off over my feet.  Maybe because I have big feet (?) or maybe because it's small (?).  I put a plastic bag over my foot when I put it on and that works great - but I have a heck of a time getting it off.  I can get it down around my ankles pretty easily - then I'm stuck.  I've tried stepping on the wetsuit and trying to pull my foot out but it just doesn't work.  I really need to resolve this problem because if I don't, it negates my time saved in the water.  Maybe I shouldn't have the legs pulled up so high.  I have the bottom of the leg portion about 4" above my ankle.

I also had a small problem with the cord.  I left it just hanging and it wrapped around my arm and caused some stroke problems.  But I should be able to resolve that by fastening the cord.

I didn't really have a problem with people staring at me when I tried it at the pool.  I picked the least busy time for the lap pool.  There were 2 other people there but one was dog-paddling and the other was just exercising so I actually felt kind of cool.  I had the life guard zip me up - the wetsuit instructions said it's better to have someone else zip you up if possible.

So Steve - how far do you live from the city?  We live in a small town and have to travel 30 miles to a somewhat bigger town for restaurants and a little culture (although not much).

Denise

Things are so far OK, even with the aftershocks, thanks for asking.  My buddy Nick is back in the States (today!), so overall, things turned out much better than they could have.  Thanks for asking.

Cheers,
Mandy

Glad to see you are back, sorry the past couple of days were tough ones for you and your family.

Ha, you know, you are right! My right side is up higher....there goes that theory!  That is funny.  Where I ran my 13 I was able to run on the "wrong" side of the road because it was all on back roads near my parents - and I had to force myself over there just like you said, it felt wrong, and I just naturally kept drifting back. 

Re: Calf - Stretching 4x/day (the 4 stretches the PT showed me) has helped a lot.  I see PT again tomorrow to check improvement, and work on IT band.    Apparently I am all scrunched up on my left side, but not so much on my right....weird. The good news is, I think it is workable without having to disrupt training and will help avoid future issues.

Re: 13 miler.  I ran at a slower pace than I would have liked, but there was a monster of a hill from mile 6-7.5 that kicked my butt, and some friendly huskies came out of nowhere and I just had to pet them because they were cute.  And then I had to send them home, wherever that was (lots of farmhouses around).  Plus I consciously started out slowly, still babying the calf a little.  But I really want to get back to the speed I was at pre-injury without causing another injury.

Oh yeah, I need to finish work now!

Cheers,
Mandy

I am an AM girl, although when I work at home, I try to do my runs during my lunch break...especially in the winter to take advantage of the warmth, if it is there.  In the summer, I try to get my run in at the crack of dawn because the heat kills me, and then I ride after work...Long runs/rides/swims are for weekends...at least for me.

TRACEY,

When I was a working outside the home I would always do my swims before work.   Fortunately we have a pool that is open for lane swims at 5:30 a.m. and I would be there by 5:45-6:00 a.m.   In the winter months I would also cycle in the mornings at the gym or on the trainer at home but come nice weather runs and cycling were always after work.   Had to use lunches to run errands that I would normally do after work.    It took alot of organizational skills to make it happen but I enjoyed it because I never lost focus on why I was doing tris - for FUN and FITNESS. 

Now that I am retired, I really don't find it that much easier trying to fit the training in.   I do have more flexibility but spend more time now doing all the things I had no time for when I worked outside the home.   They are really going to have to come up with a better word for when you stopped getting paid for working.         I still like to do the swims early a.m. and can now do the runs and bikes during the day as well.     And especially important for me, is that I am no longer sleep deprived.

Best of luck with your scheduling.  

Oh, that sounds so awesome!

Tracey

I generally get up around 6 am, get ready for work, get my 11 year old up and ready for school, and leave the house about 7:15 am ... get home around 4:45 pm and try to cook some dinner. My 11 year old doesn't like to stay by himself, so I usually have to wait until my husband gets home around 6:45 pm or if one of my older kids is around, I might be able to get a run in earlier. A lot of times I go ahead and eat, so I'm not trying to work out on a full stomach. Once things settle down, I take off for the gym, or set up my trainer in front of the TV ... usually not until after 8:00 pm (I try to go ahead and get ready to go, so I don't rethink about how tired I am!). If we've got baseball, or something else going on, I just double up on a workout over the weekend, like I did this week. It would be really tough with a younger one I would think. What time does he get to bed?  ... can you do your workouts then? Now that my kids are older, I just decided it was time to put myself first every once in awhile ... and my family has slowly grown accustomed to that, and now just ask when I'm going and when I'll be back. I wish I could get my DH to go to the gym with me, but not very successful at this point.

Lisa

Edited by midlifeinsanity 2010-05-24 9:42 PM

Edited by midlifeinsanity 2010-05-24 9:43 PM

DENISE -

Are you lubricating your calves/ankles/heels? Either BodyGlide or PAM? Lots? (And remember -- NO Vaseline, which eats neoprene. Actually, any petroleum-based lubricant is bad for neoprene.)

The good thing about your problem (which, by the way, is shared by countless wetsuit-wearers) is that it is easy to practice at. All you really need to do is get the wetsuit on no further than your kness, and then work at forcing it down. My preferred technique is to force both hands down until my fingers are about at my ankles - and then continuing to force them further down while at the same time fulcruming my forearms outward a bit so the overall opening gets larger. Once I have one foot free I can either repeat the process with the other foot, or stand up and stand on the neoprene wad around the still-encased foot and yank that foot free.

Beyond this, I vary as to my stance. I'd say it's 50/50 -- half the time kneeling with the leg I am not working on, and half the time in a bent-over position. I'm not sure why I decide one way one time and the other way the other time; maybe it varies according to which suit I am wearing. (Honestly, I cannot picture this right now!)

One final bit of advice -- if none of the above workwell enough, try a double-layer approach -- BodyGlide first, and then PAM on top of that.

And thinking one step further, spray PAM on the OUTSIDE of the suit from the knees down. This will make it easier for the suit to slide over itself, which is what it has to do during the final phase of forcing it past your feet.

(And with PAM, go for the "original" flavor; I'm sure crawfish must find the flavored varieties too yummy to resist. Clack, clack! )

Shaun,

That website about bike maintenance is pretty cool. Thanks for posting it

Kasia

STEVEB,

I have a question with regards to the runs suggested in the Fitzerald Olympic-distance plans. I'm a very slow runner who likes things written out specifically, hence liking the Fitz workouts. BUT, he doesn't really break down his runs (at least in the beginning) into walk/run things, which is what I was planning on doing.

Instead, I was thinking of following a 13-week Couch to 10k plan that I can't find the proper link to, so here's someone's who's written it out. (http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage_public_journal_individual.asp?blog_id=1462924). Essentially it outlines walk/run stuffs and finishes off with a 10k run at the end.

I was thinking of doing the runs per the C210K especially during the build periods of the Fitz plan, and then adding the intervals and hills Fitz suggests to the run portions of the C210K plan. Most of the times/distances overlap pretty nicely so I wouldn't be missing out on anything time-wise. It'd essentially be the Fitz plan amended to follow a Galloway approach (Look at me, namedropping like a pro ...hopefully correctly, haha!)

Does that even make sense? And would it be ok? Or should I try to follow something more along the lines of what Fitz suggests?

I know you said all this is an art, so I'm making my own thing to suit my running needs. Hopefully it's correct

Thanks,
Kasia

Tracey,

I also work from home and so can throw in a workout here and there. When I do go into the office/am super busy with work, I tend to go in the mornings, otherwise I won't peel myself off the couch after getting home. I'm also single and childless so I don't have the same responsibilities as most of the bunch, making it much easier to find time to train.

Even so, some days are busier than others workout-wise due to rugby practices and soccer games, so those days I tend to workout in the mornings so I don't have to worry about finding the motivation to do tri stuff back-to-back with the sports stuff.

Kasia

PAM? Like the cooking spray?

TRACEY,

Here is a link that talks about Flexor Hallucis longus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexor_hallucis_longus_muscle Hopefully, you can make sense of it.    If I find any others that do a good job of explaining or providing diagrams, I will let you know.  

Yup! PAM the cooking spray, any flavor.  But really, I have seen folks use it a lot.  I use body glide. 

Also, a trick to get the suit off your ankles that I use (along with body glide around my ankles) is to push it down past your knees, and then take the left foot, and step on the right leg of the wetsuit, as close as you can to the entrapped right leg.  Pull your right leg straight up, with some force.  My leg usually pops out of the suit, sometimes I have to do it twice.  Then repeat with other leg....Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brHcsqKM_mo

Cheers,
Mandy

THAT is so COOL!!! Thanks for posting.  I love how you can dissect the calf!

Cheers,
Mandy

MANDY -

Just the person I wanted to see here! I'm doing this quickly, as Lynn is back today, and home today, and will be on the computer a lot. But.....

Thinking back to camber thoughts, it makes LOTS of sense that it's your left leg/hip that are tight if you run facing traffic -- the leg that is lowest receives the brunt of the camber-effects. And if you naturally under-pronate, that will exacerbate the problem. (Do I remember you saying that you wear neutral shoes?)

Back to square 1

Chiro did not help, pain has moved down from waist to hip area.  Just walked 2 miles yesterday on treadmill and pain is worse than before.  I don't really think it is the shoes since i noticed a slight pain right after I woke up.

Any ideas? 

Hey all, and welcome back STEVE B!

Interesting day or so.  Got in late on Sunday, so yesterday I did a trainer ride after work so I could sleep in a bit.  I can't recall when it happened, but my left foot is extremely tender and I'm limping like crazy.  Basically, any pressure on the big toe (flexing from walking/running) is very painful around the big padded area of the foot.  It's not sore to the touch, but to walk or run is very uncomfortable.  Problem is, I can't for the life of me remember what I did to it, or when exactly it started to hurt.  Maybe it was a gradual thing and I'm just noticing it.  Hopefully it goes away.

Anyway, unable to run this AM, I slept in again (I love me the sleep) and will swim after work today - likely doing a longer 1.5 hour session.

Yesterday, I did have a good trainer session.  I did the Spinnervals DVD on Threshold training.  Basic 20-minutes of warming up followed by a 20-minute threshold time trail and then a cool down.  Man, that SUCKED!  Luckily, I was home alone when I did it, because I'm not ashamed to say I was loudly whimpering for the last 5 minutes trying to maintain the cadence/speed.  I don't think I've ever been as uncomfortable as that, ever.  So, when they say, "leave it all on the bike", I certainly did that.  Average HR: 167, max HR:  177.  I need to do some searching on the web to find a calculator to feed that data into to get my HR zones for the bike based on the test. 

Other than that, it's pool, ice the foot and hope that I can at least ride the trainer until the pain goes away in the paws. 

Hey you got me!  It totally makes sense now.  Crazy how little things cause so many problems.

Back to PT again today, she said that flexibility was much improved and she gave me some new stuff to do.  Calf is still a little achy after a run, but much improved over a few weeks ago.

Mandy

Dwayne - bummer about your back. So sorry to hear you are still having trouble.  Can you get a PT appointment?  A friend of mine had back problems and PT really helped.

Steve A - Ahhh the torture-fests with Coach Troy.  My favorite part of his videos is when he says 3....2....11111111 - great riding!

Cheers,
Mandy