Penn State's mentor group - CLOSED! (Page 97)

Appreciate the thoughts, all.

Sara - it is Coeur d'Alene, ID... not canada.  I'd love to do Canada but try to scope out races with a higher possibility to be cool/dry if at all possible (didn't I get lucky at LP this year!!!).

Fred - no worries, my goal will not be to get a last spot or two or a rolldown... my goal is to cause someone else to be posting on SlowTwitch about how much more competitive the age group gets every year

Of course, I won't train towards a specific pace... I'll simply train my heart out and then race at my maximum pace given my fitness on race day.  Picking a goal pace and then training towards it is the old Josh way of training, and always resulted in injury.  So I guess my goal isn't YET a KQ... right now it is to train so that I have a chance to make KQ a reasonable goal by May.

And to all - yes I promise to swim MUCH more this time.  I don't regret the lack of swim training this time around, because I spent that time when I wasn't swimming making big strides on the bike/run... but I see that to really get to the pointy end of the AG field will require me to be consistent across all 3 disciplines.

I need to work on swimming as well.  My inner ear isn't swollen anymore and I had my first swim in a week.  I can knock off 30 minutes easy from my last IM swim.   I thought I swam alot going up to IMSG; but I was unimpressed looking back at my logs.  I want to hit what I feel is the golden mark of 10k a week.

I won some infinit at our tri club meeting last night; one of the owners of the drink came out and schooled us on nutrition.  I felt like I was back in college, as it was alot to ingest.  Very interesting stuff.  I guess the one thing I gleaned from it is that a fluid diet in race is best, since solids require more energy and fluids to digest.   For example, a GU alone needs 12-16 ounces of water to digest properly.


Edited by furiousferret 2010-08-10 10:02 AM

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Inifit uses 2 carbohydrate sources, so you can ingest more calories at a time.  For example, Gatorade has 1 source (Glucose?) which the body can take in, say, 170 calories per hour.  Since carbs each have a single point of entry, only so much can go in at a time.  However, if you add another carb, it goes in its own point of entry, which means you can ingest 250 cals per hour by using 2 sources.

In addition, Infinit mixes in more protein / sodium for longer stuff, and more sugars for shorter stuff.

The numbers may be off, but that's a laymans explanation of it.

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I am by far in that group as well.  It's just soooo easy to say: "The extra time spent training doesn't result in THAT big of a difference in my swim split".  But, that's such a tunnel vision outlook, because I think we all know that the ENERGY used ultimately effects our running ability at the end and therefore it actually DOES have a major impact in our overall performance.

That reminds me, I'm going to email my friend that used to be a swim coach and take him up on his offer to watch me swim and point me in a more efficient direction. 

So I've been itching to run and cycle all this week and I'm trying to quell the urge.  In sport there's this universal tenet that hard work and training overcomes all, and if you're not putting in 110% then you are a slacker.  When you are injured that urge (and I'll admit some peer pressure) is a negative.  3 times I've came back early and its hurt me. 

To be completely honest my leg feels fine 95% of the time but I want to be super conservative so I don't miss any races in 2011. 

I remember in the Marines during PT we used have 3 guys who were always hurt (especially on Boxing Tuesdays) and some you knew they weren't hurt, others were hurt but you really didn't think they had the drive.  Lately I've been questioning if I'm that guy.  I know its silly but I've never really been hurt this long before and its frustrating on many different levels.  Not resting enough is what got me here.

Some here in this group have been in this spot and fought out of it, and that does help. 

It's always rough trying to lay low for a while, but I see you've at least been hitting the pool for some swimming and you were doing some running in the pool for a bit.  Looks like you haven't run in the pool for a while though, perhaps getting back to that will help quench your desires for a bit more until you're sure you're 100% again.

Here's something I didn't notice until a few minutes ago when I saw that Kathleen pointed it out in the Colorado forum....




I now know why I didn't meet my goal... it was apparently a 13.1mile SWIM! :-D  I guess I was more dehydrated/delusional coming out of T2 than I thought.

How do they get that wrong? They had to have had hundrds of people look at the design before it got signed off on. Just poor oversight.

Edited by phxphotog 2010-08-11 12:33 AM

I pulled a muscle in my upper back this morning when I picked up my camera. That was the last thing I needed this week. I was already a bit behind from taking my rest day the first day of the week but then this happened. I did 30 min on the stationary bike and it seemed fine. I don't think I could have run or swam though. Hopefully tomorrow I'll wake up and it will be all fixed. Sleep fixes everything.

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Your thoughts were/are much appreciated, Fred.

I hear you on the coach thing.  The struggle is to maximize gains during limited training time, and I feel a constant tension over extra work at one discipline taking away from potential gains in another discipline... and then slip into the camp that minimizes the importance of the swim based on the amount of work required to make small gains (plus the wasted time of driving to/from the pool vs. walking out my front door for a ride/run).

I've been studying my logs and trying to chart my progress from the past year to answer this question - based on my available training time, would putting in the swim training to be on the bike 10 minutes sooner (to me this means ~8 minute faster swim + ~2 minute faster transition due to less crowds and being more efficient regardless) have resulted in a bike+run time that was more than 10 minutes slower due to less training in those disciplines?

I'm starting to think a HRM that I can wear while swimming might be a good investment to help me assess just how hard I'm working in the swim.  If my 71 minute swim was just an easy warmup for the day, that worries me far less than (sorry to use endurance nation language) if I burned too many matches and was actually already in the hole when I got on the bike.

When it comes down to it, I think it will be a matter of how important the goal is to me, and whether I'm willing to do the work.  I can think of MANY times this year where the line between "listening to your body" and "I just don't feel like it" was grey when it came to the pool.  Realistically, considering how low the injury potential is in the pool, almost every one of those skipped pool sessions should have been done.

Hope you guys don't mind me thinking out loud in this thread.

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I had an ear infection for a few days, so I do want to get back to water jogging, even though its even more mind numbing than doing laps.

That's it for me.  I'm good for the first 20 laps but after that I start looking for reasons to get out.  I have a swimp3 and it helps some.

I'm joining a Masters group either this or next week; the hard part for me is that its a 25 minute drive and the sessions are at 5 am to 6:30, with an afternoon on Saturday. I'm planning on doing at least one morning a week, but I'm not a morning person!  

My pulled muscle in my back is all better today thankfully and I'll be back at catching up on my weekly training. Our pool at our gym is being remodeled so I'm going to cut that out until it gets finished. There is another gym that I can use but it's  about 12 miles away. I'll just add my swim hours into run and bike until then. I'd say that I'm better at swimming than some but I also get bored after about 30-40 minutes. My swim time is almost always 2 min per 100 yds and hasn't changed much in about 4 months. I know if I worked on it I could get it down but I also think that reducing my overall time by working on the bike and run will help a ton more than a little bit faster swim. As long as I don't get out of the water wiped out I guess the lack of swim shouldn't hurt.

I think I have made my decision to wait on a 1/2 IM until next year and see what's available. I'll either do Oceanside, Vineman or SOMA and that will be my big race next year. I was thinking about IMAZ 2011 but I think I'll wait one more year. I will see some of you out for IMAZ 2010 though because I'll be volunteering.

same here

I think i am in the minority here...but i really love the long continuous swims (80 min and up). It is one of my favority weekly workouts

Im very happy to hear that