16 months, still suck! (Page 9)

gsmacleod - 2013-04-29 6:18 PM

GatorDeb - 2013-04-29 5:26 PM Thanks  I decided to do yesterday's ride in "zone 5" and averaged 15 MPH over 75 miles in the same terrain I usually do 12-13 MPH on just by now allowing myself to go under zone 5.  I think z6 is my z4 and z5 is my high z2 low z3.  That will get me through CDA.  I'm setting up a session with someone to look at my stroke to see if they can tell me what to change with it.

Please tell me that was not your coach's idea to do a long ride, at a higher intensity than you've ever done for the distance, the day before you're going to do a new LTHR test to fix your zones for IMCDA. Shane

Sure.  Why not?  Maybe 5 hours in zone 9 right before a LT test.  That sounds like a good plan to me. 

The 75 miles was at 153 and for the HIM was 152.  Yeah that was likely mostly upper zone 2.  I wasn't falling over tired but I was a little pooped, like I had just put in a good effort.  I guess people here have never encountered the quotation marks, so I guess I'll explain their use:

Rode in z5:  Rode in z5.

Rode in "z5":  Rode in an unknown zone that my watch has set up as zone 5 and it's the only label that I have to call it now so I'll call it that even though I know it's not really zone 5.

There, quotation marks explained.

I did a "z4" 4:45 trainer ride once.

I actually negative split the ride ha  I did 14.66 for the first half or so and 15.56 for the second.  I settled into a "working hard but can hold this for a while" pace.

Something that you have to work at as an athlete is believing you can do something, I'm sure I'm physically able of more exertion than what I usually put forward, and that's part of the training, learning to really gauge that.

I'm not even going to look at zones tomorrow.  I know now what kind of effort I can hold for five hours.  Now I have to do ten times that effort for half an hour.  I have a flat road to do the test tomorrow.  Warm up for ten minutes and just push as hard as I possibly can for 30 (which I wasn't doing on Sunday, or I wouldn't have lasted 75 miles).

What was amazing is that I saw myself spinning at 90 on hills and I worked hard to maintain that.  Granted, easiest gear, but I usually go up those hills at 70.  I was thinking to myself, see, you can do it!  It IS possible for you to spin 90 on hills!

I know, every word is going is going to be broken down and analyzed and if I do something it's going to be criticized and if I do the exact opposite it's going to be criticized also.  So I'll just settle for doing what's best for the training.

The elevation gain of the terrain where I did the 75 is comparable to CDA.  I don't know if I can hold 15 for 112 miles, but I'm 90% sure I would have been over 14 after having done that ride, and before that ride, I was 5% sure I could.

Deb, I just read your 1st post and I have to say...YOU ROCK!!!  Damn you've come a long way!  Keep up the great work.  

Not to mention, if the half she just did was rage in the sage (probably?) that and pumpkinman are two prerry darn hard HIMs.  Harder than most around the country.  Lake Mead is not easy riding or running

I like this.  You are to be admired for what you have achieved but more so for daring to post this in the first place!

Stories like this are why I love beginnertriathlete.com so much.  Rock n' roll.

Solid effort today Deb and I love that you improved not only your speed but your outlook on what you are capable of!

So now to the coach's out there, I'm wondering if in Deb's case or other athletes new to endurance training, who really don't understand how to push themselves HARD yet, and likely will not get an accurate result from a LT test.... would it be better to train from RPE so the athlete can learn how different efforts should feel? Then work their way up to a LT test and setting some HR zones?

Just curious. And for those who may be reading and are not sure about zones, RPE here is a chart I found on BT to describe the different efforts:

RPE/HR Zone Chart

Z1 - Zone 1 or Recovery
Z2 - Zone 2 or Extensive endurance
Z3 - Zone 3 or Intensive endurance/muscular endurance
Z4 - Zone 4 or Sub-threshold
Z5a - Zone 5a or Threshold
Z5b- Zone 5b or Super-threshold
Z5c- Zone 5b or VO2 Max
 

Training by RPE first is usually better for new athletes.  However, RPE charts can vary as there is no defined or official RPE chart that everyone goes by.  Here's another example of an RPE chart.  Notice how there is one scale that goes from 1-20, and one that goes from 1-10.  But even the one that's 1-10 isn't quite the same as pictured above. 

So when you say RPE 6...that could mean slightly different things to different people.  But as long as the athlete and the coach/training plan are on the same page, it is definately a good way to train.

(exercise-rpe-chart.jpg)

Rock on, Deb!  I think you may have experienced a paradigm shift, and achieved a new level of confidence!  Stick with it!

Yes, that was the point of a few of my earlier posts.  Basically, that if the data shows that the previous zones were completely off then estimating zones based on her two HIM performances would be better.  Not ideal, but still better.

I normally start out new athletes training by RPE for atleast 1-2 months with the focuses being consistency in training sessions week-to-week and learning how different efforts feel.  After that, I'll have them do an LT test to determine zones.  I always make sure that their RPE is in line with the HR data from the LT test.  I know it was a good test when I get comments like "You're an evil man, Don Larkin" or "that really sucked" (both actual comments I've seen in athletes' training logs).

I've attached a chart cross referencing zones and RPE charts that I give to all new clients.

I think it may be more of a mind thing than a body thing.  Apparently I can go 75 miles at 15 MPH.  I had never gone TEN miles at 15 MPH on that terrain.  So maybe the body is there after all and the mind just has to catch up.  I may just be an athlete!!  I think I was more amazed at spinning at 90 up those hills, something I thought "impossible."  

Yep, it was RAGE.  Same terrain as PM.  And since we had that wind, probably a harder course.  The run was harder and I had a better average at a lightly lower average HR.

I kind of want to do the LT test tomorrow because I want to go to that dark place.  I'm starting to be fascinated by all this pushing yourself thing and yeah I want to do the test for the zones but I think I want to do the test more to practice pushing myself, i.e. do it for the test in and of itself.

Good point on the test HR should be higher than the HR for my 2nd HIM and the 75 miler.  I will have two fields, then, time and HR, and make sure that HR stays at 153 or above the whole time.  If I can do 153 for 5 hours I can do 153+ for 30 minutes.

There have been some great comments and info here, and also some downright bullying.  When you start bringing in other threads and talking about "belly laughs" and, when all is said and done, making fun of people, sorry, you're not being helpful, no matter how many times you say you are, and a lot of people on this thread don't embody the helping spirit they say they do (and then again many do).  I guess since I'm not the person to "fight back" (mostly because I don't want to spend the energy on silly back and forth in a bulletin board and if others don't want to be adults about things doesn't mean I shouldn't), people take that as "permission" to go on a free-for-all so I think that's what makes some of my threads different, maybe other people would have just come in and came back with a comment that very clearly said "stop" or maybe they just give the impression that they would.

I'm excited about yesterday's ride because it kind of opened this door of, hey, maybe I'm capable of more.  After 16 months of training maybe I HAVE reached a certain physicality that I can tap into and work from there.  Also let's say I work out a lot at, let's just say, 130 average heart rate, and someone else doesn't work out as much.  If we both do a work out at 150 average heart rate one day, it's not going to be as taxing for me, because months and months at 130 may have built me up that 150 is not that big of a deal for my system.

You know, I tell people I feel like Rudy without the cheering at the end lol

I do have a kind of harder road not having done anything until 31 and not doing anything endurance-wise until 33, so there are some growing pains.

I've always known I have the heart and the mind and I like suffering because I know I can outlast most people when it comes to how much suffering we can endure in a race (I did my first marathon in 9 hours 15 minutes without any training and having not ran more than 5 miles twice beforehand).  I've always had the sense that once I build my body enough and get the last part of the equation in I may be a contender after all.  The more the body grows the more the mind grows and then the mind pushes the body and the body pushes the mind and they both go back and forth forward.

So I guess the moral of the story is, that there is something that sucks, and that's having to "pay your dues" which is what I'm having to do right now.  Condense a lifetime of work into a few years.

Thanks   I think a big part is that I want it NOW lol  Someone did mention something that made me think.  I'm doing HIMs and once you get into an HIM it's not as much as you get people who are good and fast (you do, but that's just part of it) but you get people committed enough to even put in the hours to train for a HIM (and want to), which is why if I were to do a 5K I'd probably be towards FOP.  If I were to do March or Dimes or Susan G. Komen I'd most likely be top 10 (I was top 10 at March of Dimes on February of last year, at the beginning of my training).  But as my RoadID says, LONGER, FASTER, HARDER   I'll go back and race shorter for speed, but for now I want to focus a couple of years on HIMs and IMs.

I have a question, going to do my test after work in about 9 hours.  I went to the calculator here and kept playing around with LT numbers until I found one that put 152-153 into the "Intensive Endurance" zone, which is what I think the 75 miler and HIM were.  Should I play with those numbers until they are in the "Extensive Endurance" field instead?  Here are both versions.  I'm trying to figure out how hard to push myself.  I don't trust RPE, but I trust my raw heart rate.  What should I shoot for my HR to be?  If you tell me, keep your HR between here and here, then I have something to work on.  Or, don't let your heart rate drop below this.  Like I did the 75 miler not letting myself drop below "z5" and making it go back up there if it even dipped into 4.9.

No you can't use that one!  I ran my first marathon at 43 and my first HIM at 47....before the age of 41 my biggest endeavour was a step class.

Deb, listen to Shane here.  He's giving excellent advice.

I'm still very curious about what your coach is saying, though.  Hopefully, you're having a nearly identical conversation with her?

Get over that fear. Go out, do some sort of (shorter) race where you absolutely blow up, fall over puking, and DNF. Seriously.

Some people are slow. Like really slow. Like genetically, no matter what they do (even if they have a great coach, and they listen to their coach, and all that happy crappy), they'll still be slow. And some people, most people, IMO, are slower than  they could be because they simply don't know how to suffer (or don't want to).

Putting in massive amounts of volume and saying "Oh but I've worked so hard" doesn't mean you've ACTUALLY worked hard. It just means you may have spent a crapton of time sitting around while moving.

lots of advice on this thread, some good, some farcical, some whatever. The only thing I have to add is go learn to suffer. For real. Go out, blow up, and fail.