Ridgelake's Group - Filled up with Fantastic Folks! (Page 16)

Wow, what an awesome experience. I was a little slower on the run that I had hoped, but it took me almost 2 miles to get my land legs back. I filed a race report with the initial results, but there are alot of missing times so an update will be forth coming.

Thanks to all ya'll!!!

Scooter 

You did GREAT!!!!!   I was checking in to your blog throughout the day yesterday to see how it went!  I'm so psyched for you!!!!!  FANTASTIC!

Fantastic Teresa! Congrats on improving your time and pace. It is an awesome feeling to cross the finish line with a big smile and the knowledge that you did my best!

Scott

Good stuff, Scott.  You're right, seeing the course ahead of time is nice.  Even if you cant ride it, its nice to drive it to get a feel for what you're in for.

I see that I'm getting another convert to the easy pace for most/all of training. 

Good questions!  I'm glad you have some.  I hope others do as well.   Its how we all learn.

1) Hitting the wall is when the body has burned up all its stored carbohydrates and the body is forced to use fat as its sole energy source.   If you've eaten properly, you'll have about 2000 calories of stored carbs.  Intense exercise burns probably 800 per hour.  So you should have enough energy for at least a couple hours. 

So I'm guessing you didn't hit the wall in the truest sense.  But what I suspect happened, and its happened to me, is that you're still in the process of improving your endurance.  It takes the body a long time to develop good muscle endurance.  I'm guessing you're still in the process of improving your muscle endurance.  Keep working.  It will come in time.

2) Negative splitting is good.  I frequently do that in most of my races.  I think its Joe Friel, a top tri coach, who says that ideally we'd negative split with 51% in the first half and 49% of time for the second.   But given the normal variance in race courses, thats almost impossible to really figure out.

3) Rubber legs are something that can be practiced.  The body will adjust with regular practice.  But even if you don't, studies have shown that by 1/4 of a mile, your run is back to normal.

Good questions!

Happy Good Friday to you as well. 

Negative split.  It means going faster in the last half of a race than the first half.

There's a good article here on BT that talks about it some.  http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=1434

Joe Friel, on his blog, talks some about negative splitting and pacing as well.  Here's a link to his blog.  His Feb 12, 2008 post talks about negative splitting.

http://www2.trainingbible.com/joesblog/blog.html

Hope these help answer the question(s)!

I have a Bike Tour (8 mi) with the wifey on the 5th and a Half-Mary on the 6th.

I have a major new computer system going in at work on the 1st, so can I count that since my shift will be totally out of whack until the 4th?

Scott M.