What off-season? Early season racers Mentor Group - OPEN! (Page 9)

Got a 300 & 400 IM into tonights swim.

I would love to do the IM, unfortunately any attempt on my part to start the IM off ends in slow decent to the bottom of the pool with flailing arms and wild leg kicks (otherwise known as my attempt at butterfly) seriously, my 10 year old has completed the 50m fly by the time I'm 12.5m in! 

I guess there's a coordination thing I'm just not getting   although it does amuse those around when I try....public service and all that.

I like the idea of changing the session up though, what was your overall session layout?  I'm purposely running and riding until the end of March, then the swim training kicks back in, when it does, I really need ideas to keep me motivated.  It's odd, I can run for hours, or ride on a trainer without suffering the boredom that hits me an hour in to a swim workout. 

ETA: Should I say swimming bores me with Elaine as the Mentor....I run the risk of getting booted!!!) 

Probably be prepared for more swimming lessons then.

Many of the sets I do (that aren't in Masters) are in Workouts In A Binder. Gives a nice list of things to do (and it's waterproof). This one had a good sized warm-up, and then a cycle through working on two strokes paired together, some free, and then IM. Each time through the IM became longer, so that 400 was done at 3500 into the set. I detail everything in my logs. Hadn't actually done a 300 or 400 before, but had a good feeling I could as fly had been coming along much better. some 75's the other day didn't wipe me out. Once through that I'm good. That stroke especially is highly dependent on developing the rhythm. And by that I mean the entire body rhythm where the arms compliment that as opposed to them being the main driving force. The arms can add a lot of speed, but really not going to go very far without the body motions as it's incredibly draining to just muscle your way through.

I'll try to keep you in the group despite what you said about swimming

Workouts in a Binder are good ideas - so are the workouts here: http://magnoliamasters.com/swim-efficiency/

Generally, my workouts are warm up, main set, drill set, CD. The main set right now mirrors the Olympic distance somewhat - which is good. Though, if you're training for an IM, your main set doesn't need to be 4200 yards EVERY swim - but it is good to have some of those once you've built to it.

My legs are toast!  Started a threshold WO on the trainer last night at 9:15.  Woke up early this morning to take my daughter to track practice and then ran the dog 4.6 miles. I should have stood in the back yard pool for a bit which is currently 59F to help with the muscle and joints.  My left knee is bothering me again (on going meniscus issue).

Can someone kick me in the as$ to get me to the pool!  It's so hard to want to swim when its so chilly outside, and the pool is indoors!

Buddy system. Both of us will swim on Monday. I need a little push, too.

I've been looking to get SheilaT's workout book as well.

I think a main set of 1500m or so tends to be good too. Though it's more because of that distance working out to be a good amount of time for someone to be working hard as opposed to it exactly matching a race distance. Masters tends to be in the 1800-2400 main set range depending on what is being done. Generally goes over half an hour and can be up towards 40 minutes of it. 1500m main set would be more in the mid 20 minutes for the faster guys there. Maybe lower. Just brought that up to point out about working on various aspects of physiology as opposed to matching the race exactly. A lot of harder bike & run workouts have the main part in a similar 20-40 min range.

This is true, too. There's certainly a balance between time you can actually swim hard & well, and getting more yards in. Building to a 4200 main set should, in my opinion, be a goal of each IM athlete, not the norm. Doing one 2-4 times during an IM build can help make race day seem that much easier!

For Sprint-Half IM, I recommend hitting those full-race-length sets more often. 

To clarify, at 1500 yard main set doesn't have to look like 5x300 or 15x100, here's an example from a recent swim workout:

3x300 on 4:30, descend 
3x200 on 3:10, hard, easy, hard 
3x100 on 1:50, descend 

They key to mixing it up in the main set, though, is to NOT REST MUCH between different parts of the main set. For these, we did not add any rest in between the sets at all. 

Mind if I join your thread?

Name: Helmo Alkou / Monty

Location: Fort Worth, Texas

Family Status: Married for 20 years with a son in college and a daughter in high school.

Current Training: Intermediate 1/2 Ironman

2013: My first marathon in Feb, 3:58; New PR in a 5K, 21:57; My first 100K bike ride in July, 3:50; Took the summer off to start son in college and take a break before winter training.

2014: 70.3 Ironman Galveston, Texas, April 6th; Either Ironman Austin 70.3, Oct or Oilman Texas 70.3, Nov.

Work: I'm a control room operator at a local power plant.  We work 12 hr shifts, seven on and seven off.  Yes, I work every other week!  Unfortunately this is a bad year because all the local races I'm looking at fall on weekends I'm at work.

Personal: I have three main hobbies which my wife says are completely contradictory of each other.  Triathlon, home craft brewer, and playing World of Warcraft.  My opinion is they support each other very well!

Background: I was a competitive swimmer, off and on, from the age of 10 to 35.  Put on 40 lbs sitting at a drafting table then started running in my early 40's.  Someone mentioned triathlon at a local race and I was hooked on the idea alone.  Bought a bike the next spring and did my first 70.3 triathlon seven months later.  I've have several Sprints and Olympics under my belt but only one 70.3, for now.

I'm currently healing from kicking the ladder in the pool with the bottom of my foot while doing breast stroke.  Ran on it four days later and it felt okay but I woke up with a big knot and a black/blue line running down the bottom of my OTHER foot.  Kept riding and swimming with lots of ice in between, which is FUN of the bottom of your foot!!  I'm walking a lot but trying to keep it easy.  Doctors appointment Monday just to make sure nothing broke.  Really want/need to get back schedule!!

Welcome, Monty!

Heal up

That's an interesting schedule - how do you manage training during your 7 on?

The custom plan builder here is pretty cool. If you're interested, I can build one for you so you can take a peek at what it'd look like. If you like it, you can upgrade!

The BEST way to pick a standard plan is to make sure (a) it leads to your goals, and (b) it fits your ability.

So, A can be easy - you want to do your first sprint. I'd look towards plans build for beginners

for B - check out the first week of the plan. It should look manageable, possibly even a little easy. 

The nice part about wanting to swim more, is that swimming isn't high impact, and you can usually add an additional swim to a ready-built plan without messing up things too much. 

Did you make it to the pool??

Keep rocking it!

Sent you a PM.

Have you looked into Olympic Distance plans? I know you're doing a sprint, but for some athletes, choosing an Oly plan for a Sprint fulfills their desired mileage - and it'll prepare you just as well, if not better.

Originally posted by ccjr I disappeared for one week due to illness (forced taper!), got a cold and pretty much didn't exercise at all. I'm feeling much better and will start training again on Tuesday. I'm 6 days away from the Miami Marathon - doing the half - and I want to PR by at least 4 minutes my HM PR is 2:04, and I want to break 2 hours, which is a 9:10 pace. I did some decent recent training, had some good tempo sessions and was feeling confident about next Sunday's race. In a tempo session, I did 4 miles at 8:50 and felt good about it, it wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard as well. With those facts in mind, how would you guys approach training this week? I want to swim Wed/Fri and was thinking that I should run on Tue and go on an easy bike ride on Thu. Any recommendations?

If that's what you want to do this week, go for it! I see nothing wrong with it.

Keep the efforts easy across the board, but with a few 15-30 second pick-ups on your bike and run.

When I wanted to break the 2:00 barrier, here was the thing I did that kept me on track during the race. If you've got a GPS watch that has a "virtual partner" or pacing feature - set the distance to 13.6, and the time to 2:00:00. This should account for not running tangents and the margin of error in the GPS. You'll be able to see if you're at, ahead of, or behind your goal, and that should be all of the info you need.

The start will likely be slow because that's a HUGE race, so any race plan may not be able to start until mile 2 or so.

Originally posted by ccjr I'm 6 days away from the Miami Marathon - doing the half - and I want to PR by at least 4 minutes my HM PR is 2:04, and I want to break 2 hours, which is a 9:10 pace.

Great goal!  You got this!

@ Elaine - It's not easy staying on schedule working 12 hr days.  My endurance days are on my first days off and my last days off.  This leaves my shorter workouts for my working days.  It plays out okay most of the time.

- My doctor referred me to a podiatrist for my foot.  He said due to how hard the knot is they'll have to remove it surgically.  Got an appointment for Feb. 10th with hopes of moving it up.  Mean while, swim, swim, swim!

Originally posted by ccjr

Originally posted by ratherbeswimming

When I wanted to break the 2:00 barrier, here was the thing I did that kept me on track during the race. If you've got a GPS watch that has a "virtual partner" or pacing feature - set the distance to 13.6, and the time to 2:00:00. This should account for not running tangents and the margin of error in the GPS. You'll be able to see if you're at, ahead of, or behind your goal, and that should be all of the info you need.

The start will likely be slow because that's a HUGE race, so any race plan may not be able to start until mile 2 or so.

That's a great tip, I have a Garmin watch with a virtual partner, I haven't had issues with the GPS in a really long time. However, in today's 4 miles run, my pace was all over the place, and when I got home I noticed that the GPS data was really off, http://connect.garmin.com/activity/437059210,it shows me running over water . I really don't want this to happen race day.

Clearing all of the data stored on your watch can sometimes help this issue.