kaburns1214 Mentor Group 2013 (Year 3!) - CLOSED (Page 90)

X2!!

How is that beautiful newborn

This almost sounds like using breath to manipulate HR variability.

Chris -- curious if you know anything about this?

Bike - Run this morning.

I hate daylight savings time (and it feels like to was really early this year).  Its now back to being dark here until 7:10 a.m., which is sad.

I kind of stumbled across this when I stopped running with music.  I needed some sort of rhythm.  Has kept me from spiking my HR.  Much more even changes in my HR.

I can't speak to it from an exercise perspective but the principle could be the same - when breathing and heart rate are in sync, your entire body is in sync, which would be good when exercising. The converse applies to swimming, when one holds their breath underwater and does not exhale bad things happen.

LOL!  OK, ok...nothing bad happened, but I get your point!

Nice job!  Congratulations!!!!  

Question for the group because I'm curious after seeing some of the answers in the main forum:

What is your favorite pre-race dinner (night before race)?  

My favorite is rice and chicken or tuna steak.  I used to eat egg noodles sometimes, but obviously I can't eat that anymore.  I can do a small portion of leafy greens, but I really have to limit the veggies.  

Back in the day (last season) when I wasn't following a "training program" it used to be chicken parm with pasta, but not so sure anymore - that may have to change to something less heavy.  Tuna steak & rice sounds like a strong candidate. 

Eat something that won't sit heavy in your stomach.  For key races you should start upping your carbs early in the week so that you're pretty topped off by the end of the week anyway.  The one night, carb loading, starch fest is really a thing of the past.  I'm tempted to go sushi (rolls and sashimi) because it has a good amount of carbs and it clears out of my system pretty quickly.  I tend to call sushi my favorite expensive, yet non filling meal I love.

I find its best to limit fiber intake for the 2 days before the race.

I think of the day before race day as "opposite" day -- when you eat things you normally wouldn't (such as white pasta, white bread, etc.) because the are low in fiber and easily digestible.

I love sashimi, but no matter how much water I drink with it, I end up dehydrated the next day.  That's a no go for me prior to a race.  I think you have to experiment to see what works.  I ate sweet potatoes the night before a race once, and I was so bloated during the race I looked as if I were carrying a fetus around.  LOL  Never again.  

I thought it sounded a little more glamourous than food baby.

Makes sense, but a good choice for the night before a race.

Raw fish is a strange city the night before a race seems risky to me.

Need some feedback from you guys.  I'm writing an article on the incompatibility of Crossfit and Triathlon.  Below is the first go.  Need feedback:

So in the spirit of my previous article on strength training I thought I’d write an article on what may be the fastest growing ideology within strength training, Crossfit. 

Per the Crossfit website “CrossFit begins with a belief in fitness. The aim of CrossFit is to forge
a broad, general and inclusive fitness. We have sought to build a program that will best prepare trainees for any physical contingency — not only for the unknown, but for the unknowable. After looking at all sport and physical tasks collectively, we asked what physical skills and adaptations would most universally lend themselves to performance advantage. Capacity culled from the intersection of all sports demands would quite logically lend itself well to all sport. In sum, our specialty is not specializing.”

So we’re talking a jack of all trades, but a master of none.  Before you think I’m coming off as a bit of a jerk regarding the discipline, I actually like it.  I have used many of the principles and WODs (workouts of the day) in the past when I was just trying to gain fitness and lose weight.  I think Crossfit is AWESOME for the general populous in that it enables one to make tangible gains in
fitness in a relatively competitive group setting.  I however don’t think Crossfit is awesome for
excelling in triathlon.

Why you may ask?  Let me tell you.  Crossfit is a highly anaerobic/power driven endeavor that all but drains your glycogen stores, and if done at the prescribed intensity requires a good bit of recovery to be back at 100%.  Triathlon works on a totally separate energy system, but too can leave you  glycogen depleted state.  So if a triathlete is working at the prescribed intensity on their s/b/r and walks in to Crossfit in less than ideal shape you’re looking at doing Olympic style lifts while depleted.  This drastically increases the chance of injury and really just sets your recovery back.  Let me use this example: A client goes to Crossfit on a Tuesday and just kills a workout consisting of cleans, burpees, etc. and on Thursday can’t hit their splits on their mile repeats.  Why is this?  As a coach I’d tell you that you pushed your body too hard on Tuesday and aren’t recovered enough to perform
at your best on Thursday.  The two endeavors performed at the required intensity to succeed just don’t mesh. 

Then there is the issue of sport specificity.  You get better and more efficient at swimming, biking, and running by swimming, biking, and running.  As simplistic as it sounds it’s just the scientific
truth.  If you’re goal is to get better at Cindy, or Fran, etc. than you work your tail off at that.   There is really little crossover.  Triathlon isn’t an anaerobic activity like football where short bursts of power are going to be supremely advantageous.  We’re talking about an activity that uses Type I muscle and where you just don’t operate that often over your threshold.

Now am I saying there are no advantages to Crossfit for a triathlete?  No.  I do think that you need to dial back the frequency with which you attend to 2-3 times max a week, and keep that fluid if
you find recovery an issue.  Also you may need to keep the intensity in check at the box if you want to make the most of your triathlon sessions.  Also, much as I wrote in the piece on strength training and triathlon you can address several things with Crossfit.  One is muscle imbalances.  The danger of any sport that has repetitive movements is muscle imbalances.  Crossfit does a good job of addressing this.   As with most weight training programs it helps with ligament and joint health as well which when you pound on them as much as one does training to for the run portion of a triathlon is definitely a positive.  Crossfit is also excellent in keeping your body composition in check.  Along
with body composition comes the fact that it helps us retain muscle mass.  Those of us over the age of 35 know how hard it is to hang on to what we have left.

So all in all what triathletes have to understand is that Crossfit doesn’t directly correlate to speed in an endurance setting.  That you can’t replace s/b/r sessions with Crossfit workouts.  That
you as an athlete need to make the choice up front which endeavor is going to be the top priority because it can’t be both.  You will have to dial the intensity well back on one to excel at the other.  That strenght in our three disciplines comes from sessions designed to add strength at that discipline.  Most importantly you need to know that you get faster at swimming, biking, and running by doing just that.

I think it's a well written article, well done. I've never actually done a cross fit class for the reasons you've laid out. When I was into heavy lifting I gave up playing basketball because going up and down the court crushed my next workout with heavy squats. When I started doing triathlons I killed most of my weight training for the same reason. I figure I'll eventually try a cross fit in the off season it just hasn't come up yet.