Beer Drinkers Appreciation Society (BDAS) 2023 Mentor Group - ALWAYS OPEN (Page 15)

Agreed! Luckily for 75s we really only needed to count to 12 and we use the lane line to count (after each 2 we would move one of the lane line...pegs? Not sure what to call them, but you know what I mean. I've known people to bring dice too. Usually 2 of them: one counts the intervals and one counts every time the first die gets to 6.
I like the idea of starting over though. More incentive to pay attention! When I'm by myself I'm way less likely to keep track, with I was doing intervals with someone so I would just say the number after each.

I'm not sure 'racing' is right. Still very much completing the event as opposed to competing in it.

I'll be interested to see how it goes too

No, I've had a look back at how I trained for the previous 2 Ironmans, and I feel that I have a lot of low hanging fruit that I can improve on. Weight is obviously one of them. Consistency - especially swimming throughout the 12 months prior as opposed to trying to cram training in the last couple of months. Intensity, although I believe in polarized (80/20) training I spend too much time at the bottom of Z2 and don't push hard enough often enough. For example I was far to happy to change a workout with 4x10min Z3 intervals to 3x5min Z3 intervals etc.

For now, my plan is to get myself ready to follow a decent 70.3 plan. Aiming to be up around 8ish hours a week for most of the next 20 weeks. Not too many 'long' workouts yet though, long workouts = needing to take on nutrition during the workout, and really wanting to eat after. Kind of sabotages any weight loss plans I have.

33'interval run here this morning with 4x1' in Z5...was supposed to be 6x1', but at the end of the fourth interval my right hamstring said "ahem...please pay attention to me or I'm going to make you regret your life choices" and it was more persistent at the beginning of the fifth interval. I decided not to test it and just ran out the workout in Z2. Afterwards, I did a modified strength training workout removing anything that focused on the hamstrings.

Later today, 90' interval bike ride. There was an option to do this as a brick, but I didn't think I could do the bike intervals without then compromising the run intervals. Recovery would have been an issue too, as Saturday is long bike day (with its own intervals).

As my workouts never last that long that I have to take nutrition during, I am not sure but surely you will use the energy that you intake during the workout (and more) so you should be able to eat after, no?

It will be interesting to follow your journey here, looking forward to that!

Sorry your back is playing up Andrew, but at least you can get som S and B in, that’s the beauty of our sport!

Watch that hamstring Gretchen, we don’t want an injury now! (Or ever for that matter)

Hills intervals with my club yesterday, lunch strength today and hockey tonight (first quarter final of the SHL playoffs), if it’s a tight game, I’ll log it as a workout!
Giving blood today, the last few times it took me a while to recover so the plan is to eat more today (any excuse really) and take it easy tomorrow.










Edited by Rollergirl 2023-03-16 9:30 AM

Hope the hamstring is nothing serious.

I agree with not doing back to back intervals as a brick workout. A brick run is a specific workout in itself. Trying to do a run workout with quality intervals in it on jelly legs off the bike sounds like bad news. I'd happily brick a Z2 jog. But tempo/interval work deserve to be the focus of its own session.

In theory I think you're right. Longer workouts should be able to maintain a calorie deficit. In practice however I haven't found it works like that.

During longer workouts I'm looking to take on board 2-300cal/hour, yes I burn more than that while I'm riding but it's the post workout/recovery part that does the damage I think. After 4+ hours on the bike the body needs fuel to recover and repair itself. I think it's very easy to go over what's needed and erase the calorie deficit I'm trying to maintain. And if you get it wrong the other way and maintain too high a calorie deficit then the body doesn't recover, fitness doesn't build well and over time you dig your self a big hole.

Of course everybody is different but my experience, after being on the weight loss/gain yo-yo for over a decade is that you can lose weight on no-moderate amounts of exercise. But once I get into the higher volume stuff at the pointy end of Ironman training weight loss slows right down.

30’ Z1 run followed by 22ooyds in the pool. I was, apparently, the breakfast entertainment this morning. All the tables on the pool deck were full of hotel guests eating breakfast…and a shout out to the guy who chose the seat closest to the pool and then spent the rest of his breakfast complaining he got splashed.

Did you splash him a little more than was necessary? I would have, as soon as he started complaining.

Felt like shite all day today, a combination of giving blood and hockey stress and noise I guess.(God I am getting old)
So rest day today, even left work early to take a nap.
Hopefully I am fit for fight tomorrow, long ride on the menu
Have a nice weekend all!

I mean…I might have started doing flip turns on that end. *might*

I should mention my flip turns are terrible!!

Thought so! LOL

2:30 trainer ride on the balcony. The temps are coolish and there is just enough breeze (in addition to the aridity) that even after 2:30 on the bike, I’m not sweating it is wild…as if that whole evaporative cooling system actually works!

90 minutes Zwift ride, a Z2 workout called mishmash, loved it. Feeling much better today.

Now, hockey on tv and non alcoholic beer. Quarter final 2 Go Växjö Lakers!

Back to boring morning training sessions without much of an audience. Thankfully...

1:20 Z2 run that was really more like a Z1 run after I looked at the data when I got home. Oh well...no such thing as too easy this early in the season, but there is certainly a too hard. Hamstring is feeling better, so don't want to jump back in too soon. Followed that up immediately with 2500yds in the pool with a bunch of descending sets. Felt good.

Tomorrow is a rest day!! It is actually closer to two days of rest if you count it by hours. I finished up my swim at about 7:30 and won't start Tuesday's workout until about 5:30, so 46 hours or so of rest. I need it. It has been a long haul since my last rest day (12 days ago), and that wasn't even scheduled. Tomorrow starts the next block of training, which the schedule calls "transition"--heavier training to come. Looks like from here on out it is basically one rest day every four weeks, with it coming at the beginning of a cut back week. Intense.

I spent a bit of time this morning looking at nutrition. It is time to start paying a bit better attention to what is going into my gob. Realized over the weekend that I've kind of fallen into a pattern of 3-5 lattes a day (made a home, for the most part). Guess what...that's 400-500 calories a day, just in milk. Sure, milk has protein and other good stuff, but I doubt anyone needs to drink 500 calories worth of it a day! So, in an effort to rein in some poor eating habits that have developed (like drinking coffee instead of eating food), I've recommitted to tracking my intake to hopefully work on shedding a few more pounds before race day. I don't have a scale here right now (ordered on on Amazon, but it showed up in about 1000 pieces), so I'll be going by belt fit and other more body focused metrics, but ideally by race day I'll be down another 15lbs. Feeling a bit fluffy around the middle the last couple of days.

Or a good time to try and teach yourself butterfly? haha

@ Nathalie, Glad that you're feeling better. nice job on the zwift ride. 90 minutes is a solid session of indoor riding. Did your hockey team make it past the quarter finals?

@ Gretchen. Nice and consistent as usual. And good on you for deciding to have a nutrition focus. Identifying 4-500 Cal/day of coffee is a good start, but I'm not sure you need to totally cut it out. So long as you take those calories from somewhere else as opposed to them being additional you should still be able to be on the track for weight loss. If having a liquid caffeine breakfast keeps you happy, and you can still stay under the calorie goal then go for it.

(this comes from a man who has a very real caffeine addiction)

I'm happy with my training week;
1 swim, Only 500m, but this was more about reacquainting myself with the water after 6 weeks of closed pools. And yes, my shoulders let me know it had been too long between swims.
3 bikes, All zwift. 2 easy, 1 with 3 x 5min@95% FTP. Made a puddle of sweat on that one so I assume it was effective.
3 runs. 1 easy, 1 long and 1 with 4x3min Z3/5km pace. and 1 long/slow on the weekend.
All up about 6hr 10 minutes for the week. Which is a bit of a step up, last few weeks have been 4hr, 4hr, 5hr, and now 6 hour. My plan is to hold at about this level for a couple of weeks and let the body adapt before building up again towards that 8hour/week mark.

Weight, midweek I hit some good numbers, unfortunately by monday morning weigh in I'm back at the top of the up/down cycle and about 1/2 lb up on last week. But although monday-monday was up the trend is down, so happy I'm still making progress.

Hope everyone had a good weekend

My hockey team have not made it past the 1/4 finals yet; it’s played in best of 7 games and it’s one all after Saturday defeat (following Thursday win). 3rd game at home tonight, I’ll be there. Had to rearrange my training schedule as normally I ride on Monday evenings. Will ride tomorrow morning instead (yes, I will get up early, I won’t let Lazy Nat decide)

15k run yesterday, new PR (like every week since we reached 12.5). Felt great

Solid week Andrew!

Do you weigh yourself several times a week? I have stopped doing that, the up and downs are too unsettling. Now it’s once a month, it suits me much better.

Have a great week all!

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! My butterfly is AWFUL!!! I wish I'd thought of that while I was in the pool!!

Rest day for me--I woke up with a raging migraine. I was really happy to not have to run intervals, or something else. Fortunately, a little caffeine helped it go away (like Andrew, I also have a major caffeine habit!).

what better time to try?!

Hope your migraine had faded a bit more. I get these too and I find that swiming almost makes it disappear (only to come back the second I get out of the water). Slow running also helps

When I'm actually trying to make improvements yes I do. I'm a numbers geek, and an Engineer, and we were taught 'what can be measured can be improved' So you've got to have the data to make the gains

I get what you're saying about the natural fluctuations freaking us out if the number goes up for a day or 2, but by the same token if I only weighed once a week and last week weighed in a little light, this week a little high it can also give misleading information and cause a freakout. I like to get lots of data points, stick them on a graph (My Fitness Pal does this for you) and keep on eye on the overall trend, over months not days. There's arguments for frequent and infrequent weigh ins, but the way my mind works I like to see the numbers.

FWIW, 1.75lbs down on yesterday. So just as I didn't get all freaked out over Mondays highish number, not getting carried away with todays lower one.

Started the week with an hour on zwift, 3 x 5 minutes of 30sec on/off VO2 max intervals. surprisingly the heart rate didn't get that high, but my legs sure let me know it was high effort by the end of the 3rd set.

45 minute easy/Z2 jog on the treadmill tonight, watching the 2nd half of the weekends Formula 1 race. Hope everyone else's weeks are starting well.

Hi all - hope everyone’s doing well! The last several weeks have been hell with entity level returns and now I’ve switched gears for corporate and individual returns. 4 more weeks of tax season 2023 left!

I had been slacking for the last 2 weeks, but the temperatures are turning a bit here in New England. After a massive snow storm last week, we’re in the 50s today through the end of the week with a chance to hit 60 on Thursday! In a show of gratitude to Mother Nature, I banged out a 1,350M swim with an opening 1KM that felt really good. And now, I just came back from my first outdoor run of 2023 and am running sub-10s, a place I haven’t been in in years.

My wife is running Boston on 17APR and then it’s my turn to really focus.

I will make a better effort to stop by more regularly. Until then, cheers!!

Good to hear from you Jay!

Scales and weighing...the eternal question for those of use seeking to shed a few pounds. I go back and forth. Sometimes I weigh every day and try (TRY) to focus on the trends over a week or more. Sometimes I go for months without weighing--out of necessity a bit, as I don't often have access to a scale in Egypt. For me, weighing every day helps me stay a bit on track and see how things fluctuate with time, diet, training, general stress, etc. Like Andrew, I'm a data nut, so for me, more information is better. I just bought a scale for here in Egypt--one of those fancy biometric scales. It is full of interesting data, although I'm not sure I believe at all that my skeleton weighs 8.8lbs. I've handled a lot of skeletons in my life, and they weigh more than that. General rule is about 20% of body weight is skeleton, so either I have a SERIOUS case of osteoporosis, or the scale is weighing something I don't consider the skeletal mass (entirely possible!). I was chuffed to see the 118lbs of lean muscle mass, which is about 30lbs more than expected for someone of my height/age/weight/ancestry/etc. Maybe I won't like that extra 30lbs when I'm riding up hills next summer, but it does help me quantify to measure strength improvements.

This morning I did a 45' interval run, with 4x2.5' in Z4/5. Confused by my data afterwards though, because my HR wouldn't climb out of upper Z3, but my pace was beyond way faster than the boundary of Z5. I suppose 2.5' maybe isn't long enough for HR to climb up to Z5? Or my wrist-based optical HRM wasn't reading properly. I have noted that sometimes when it is particularly dark out, it doesn't want to work well, which blows my mind, because it provides its own light. Anyway, that run is done and it felt good in general.

Later, 60' Z2 ride of boredom!