James G Group - CLOSED (Page 9)

Molly - Before my IM program started I took a complete week off just spent time with my family and never thought about triathlon once. Given you have just had a vacation maybe an option fo you maybe to train your usual volume Mon - Thur and then take Fri-Sunday off spoil your family then hit the new program hard and fresh?

For all of you here is something to think about. Last year I took a mid season break of a week, my coach at the time made me, it  was after my first A race in June Milford Olympic. Very good mentally and physically. I am doing the same this year. My IM program is 27 weeks long instead of 26 weeks after Rhode Island 70.3 in July I plan to have a complete week off at the beach with my family...and then start hard again afterward with the final push through to IM....

Accept or reject!!! 

Oh yeah - This is so true, as you know I grew up in NZ so for me I grew up swiming and surfing in very rough conditions so love swimming in the open water and in Summer I always do my Friday swim at the beach.

Molly - The key as I may have mentioned in your first couple of races  is to not go too hard in the swim if you can't maintain form you are going to fast. One of my worst races last year was due to seeding myself at the front of the swim wave in only my second race. I went too hard and ended up paying for it on the swim and the 1st lap of the bike. Check out my race reports under SOBE Mossman Sprint.

So practice/practice 8-)

Hello all - Working on teh nutrition stuff at the moment and will hopefully have something later in the week.

Let me just reiterate how impressed I am with youy training. Consistency and more Consistency is the key , you guy's must be so sick of me harping on about it...

Molly - Good luck for your first week of your program.

Mitch - Good luck for you first race this weekend. We expect a detailed race report.

Aarron - Good stuff on the swimming man you progress is great.

Me - Another week of IM training down only 21 weeks of torture to go 8-) 

Yahooooo, that is awesome Mitch, make sure you get a race report up. So when are you gonna do number 2? I think you should look to do another one in Mid June. That will give you two training cycles to up your milage and for one a little longer in distance.

Great stuff man!!!!

Great job Aaron and you are right you can't control who shows up but you can control your time so don't get disheartened. The other thing you need to remember about Duathons is you have some very good runners and bikers who turn up that can't swim for shi*.

I am working on teh nutritions stuff.

I don’t want to go into too much detail here but a brief overview on what I do.

Often called the fourth discipline in triathlon. Eating the right food is important to 1/ Fuel your workouts and 2/ Aide in recovery to enable you to recover to hit your next session. AS ALLWAYS these opinions are mine and work for me it is important to remember I am not a registered Dietician. I will reference a book by Chris Carmichael “Eat Right to Train Right” he is the former coach of Lance Armstrong and I have been in principal following his ideas this year.

Chris believes in the concept of periodization for your eating plans similar to your training cycle. i.e. as your training increases and the intensity increases you should up or down your caloric intake to match these cycles. In laymen’s terms in the off-season eat less and the on-season particularly the Specialization phase eat more.  This will ensure you don’t; have issues where in the off-season you put on lots of weight and towards the end of the season you are losing too much weight. As an Example. I am 185lbs just to maintain my weight on the assumption I do no exercise I need to eat about 2800 calories a day. In the off season I was doing on average maybe 7 hours a week training so I would eat around 3200 Calories a Day. I am in the foundation/preparation stage of IM training now and am taking in 3500 – 3700 Calories a day to fuel 13 hours week training. The next step up for me is at week 15 of my program my training averages 16 – 18 hours a week with some more intensity where I hit the specialization stage and need to take in 4300 Calories a day. I have been following this method since the end of last season my race weight at the end of last season was 183lbs and I am now at 185lbs. This is great means unlike my competition I do not have to worry about losing the 10lbs I put on in the off-season.

OK so we know how many calories we need to eat but how we split this up? This I believe is the most contentious issues, and I have seen some interesting discussions on BT bulletin boards on BT. I work on 20% Protein, 20% Fats and 60% Carbs. Chris Carmichael actually recommends a lot less on the Protein consumption for my weight he recommends approx 12 – 15% with the difference being increases in the Carbs/Fats i.e. 15% P, 63% Carbs and 22% Fat.

So why this split? Carbs are fast burning fuel used to fuel your muscles concentrate on clean burning carbs etc, Fruit, Brown rice Bagels etc. It is especially important after hard exercise to get a mix of 4/1 Carbs to Proteins. The carbs replace glycogen stores and the protein repairs muscles. Most of you guy’s are going to ask why is the Protein requirement so low. The recommended daily allowance for protein is 0.35g per pound of body weight. For endurance athletes’ they recommend 0.5 to 0.6grams per lb. That is the maximum the body can absorb the rest is stored as fat. Protein consumption should ideally be low in unsaturated fats i.e. Chicken/Fish, eggs etc. Keep the red meat to a minimum especially the big fat steaks on the BBQ, only caveat I will put here is for women try and supplement with Iron pills etc.

Fats are also important this is what we use to fuel our muscles in those long aerobic sessions. Carbs form a limited supply of energy 1 – 1.5 hours usually. You can replenish some of these calories with refueling during training but not all of them so the body breaks down fat to provide energy for the body, the breakdown is however slower that the breaking down of Carbs to energy. Try to eat sensible Fat foods i.e. low in poly- unsaturated fats i.e. Cheese/Milk, red Meat etc and concentrate on mono-saturated fats such as nuts, fish and chicken etc.

As you know I lost 32lbs last year how did I do it? I calculated my basal metabolism i.e. what I need to function without exercising. Added to this my daily exercise and then deducted 500 calories a day. 3500 Calories is 1lb so every week I lost a pound. Doctors recommend you don’t lose more than 1lb – 1.5lbs a week.

I tried to stick to the 20/60/20 diet i.e. low in fat and high in fibre protein, Molly suggest as a woman you need to be higher than this on the fat say 25%. Water consumption is very important here. One thing I noticed was I hit a plateau after 3-4 months and my weight stabilized. I joined a website called www.fitday.com. It is a food logging free service I used this every day for a week and realized some of the foods I thought were low in calories and fat were actually high, once I starting using this site the next 15lbs fell of quickly. Good thing about fit day is it has your basal needs for your weight/job type and also has exercises etc so you can log your run time etc and it will tell you how many calories you need for the day. It is a little bit of a pain to start with as you have to find your foods in the database but after a while you build some favorites it becomes easier. I highly recommend.

First of all for me drinking alcohol is one of the worst things I can do for training and recovery it is a pollutant. I no longer drink in my three weeks on cycle and am considering giving it up for good. Training Calories supplementation shouldn’t be used for anything under 1.15hours (exception I will make here is on very hot days get some Gatorade in or the equivalent). In my opinion just extra calories you don’t need. For long rides and runs would suggest 200 – 300 cals an hour of fluid nutrition depending on your weight (I use Infint as I can custom order it to my unique circumstances. Very important to train with what you are going to use on race days.

Hope this has helped.