Early season HIM support/training group? (Page 7)

Awesome accomplishment Jenny!

Travel North on Memorial day weekend to spend the week between Wa and ID as i too have my fisrt HIM in Boise, ID - perhaps I'll even see you there.  For the record, i have added you to my freinds and may even send an annoying inspire at times!

All races that you move from "registered" to "done" are good races - besides bub 9 mins is very fast to this slow guy!  Congrats again.

What a positive spin on a crowded track!  Most people would have turned that into a rant...way to look at the bright side of life...and kids are great, aren't they?

Oo, I want to answer this!

I am a no-gadget girl; my coach is good with that.  He has taught me to listen to my body for pacing, etc., rather than rely on HRM or other stuff. That will serve me well in racing and I avoid the looking-at-watch photos!    As a plug for him, visit coachedrundotcom and try one of the samples -- helps teach pacing.  I was a beta tester and really have found the HM program useful for finding a good pace.  On the bike training, he distinguishes "kinda hard" from "very hard" intervals, in those words, and that helps, too. 

I have found the "don't need to stop and pee" point on my long rides (although I do know how to pee on the bike if necessary...), although I tend to underhydrate a bit.  I should point out that when not on the bike I have to pee pretty much every hour and wake up multiple times a night -- asked my (ironman) doctor about it, did some tests, and found I have slightly high sugar and slightly high electrolytes already, so quit using Gatorade etc. and made some other nutritional changes and seem to be doing much better on the long rides (although at my speed, no chance I can ride AND run w/o having to pee). 

Hope that helps!

My training is going pretty well.  I have had a few odd weeks in Feb because I had mixed in a few foot races, and this weekend I have a metric century ride (but I am riding the 20 miles to the race and back home to make it an American 100 miles!) on saturday so even when I hit my time for the week I know I have shortened the swim workouts.

For Gadgets I have a sensor for the ipod, but I typically only use the ipod for the tunes and often forget to hook in the reciever.  I have the trek cadence and speed computer on my tri bike (is a tri-bike a gadget?) and I have a couple of wetsuits that I use in OWS's and a pull-bouy that I ussually use in the lap pool.  My watch has a heart rate sensor and i have a heart rate monitor, but like you I do not use it.  Precieved effort (me puffing up the hill) is as much alarm as I can ussually handle.

June 1st is my HIM and I am pretty sure that I can complete it with the training I have already put in - however, to make sure I do not kill or injure myself, I certainly need to ramp up my swimming.

I'm a gadget guy...let's see...for the swim, 100-lap Timex chronograph...bike, cycle computer and will start using an HR monitor...run, HR monitor for training, Garmin GPS for racing (pacing)...

Plan on doing a marathon in May with just an HR monitor, as a 'training' run for my half iron...I will be running for over 4 hours, so it'll be a good time to monitor HR and nutrition in prep for my predicted 6 hour 40 minute HIM in June ...

What did you use to predict your time/set a goal time for you HIM?  Are you taking a percent of an Olympic extrapolated for the new distance, Marathon times and adding time to swim, or training times for all three events and adding a buffer?  I ask as I should set a goal and train towards it, but I am lost as to how to accomplish that without doing a HIM first (by then it is too late )

Well, since it's my first HIM, I don't have lofty goals, but I used this site to estimate finish time.

The major factor in lowering the predict time hinges around training volume (they average your best 2 weeks of training in the last EDIT: 6 weeks).  I'm nowhere near the volume I need to be at right now (shooting for 10 hours a week). 

But a lot of folks are telling me the predicted time is much longer than what they think I can do it in.

At my last Olympic (which was actually my FIRST Olympic):
2:34s on the swim (yeah, I'm slow)
19 mph on the bike
8:46s on the run

From my most recent training www.triathloncalculator.com predicts:
1:56s on the swim
15 mph on the bike!  (so that leads to a question for you experienced HIMers out there...do you really need to hold back that much on the bike?)
10s on the run...that comes out to a 6:41 HIM (includes transitions)

Take it for what it's worth.  I'll be adjusting my predict as I get further into the season...

EDIT: I used this to predict my Olympic finish time and ended up beating the predicted time by 2 minutes...

I think I like that site, but it does think that I will finish in about 7 hours (6:58:12).  However, I guesstimated on some of the entries based upon last years races and not this years training (hard to believe but I do think I have improved over last year a little).

Thanks for the tip on the site.  As to your other question ( and I have zero HIM experience) I read a nice article on BT reposted in the forums about getting to the line that recommends a slower bike split to save the legs to finish the run strong rather than "walking" it or jogging and being passed by everyone.  There is a sweet spot that you have to find in doing your bricks where you know how hard to hammer the bike leg and still have the legs to run your interval pace well on the run with little or nothing left at the end (but not bonk before the finish line).  For me I have noted that 17/18 mph is good on a flat ride to still do a 10K strong.  I figure that I can build on that to 13.1 miles.  However, I can go faster on the bike and be significantly slower on the run, or slower on the bike and have xtra energy after running (not more speed just the knowledge that I could have given more!).

Hope you enjoy the experiment to find your sweet spot - if not, just look at the new excuse you have to do more bricks!