Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
Fatman to Ironman
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
Morning all, I'm just back from walking the hound and I'm frozen and not looking forward to going out on my bike later
(it may well end up being another bung it on the turbo session instead)
Rather nippy here, but instead of driving the 25 mile round trip to the chemist to pick up my prescription, I'm going to bike it.
Some good swimming going on folks
brave Nursey!
25 miles is good ... just as your toes start to go numb its time to come back again !
I dont have another long one planned until middle of next week so hopefully spring will have arrived by then
Interesting chat this morning in the pool with a lady who only swims with a pull bouy. She argued that since she competes in wet suited open water events, the bouy mimics the body position she normally gets with the suit on. She also mentioned a kick, for her at least, wasn't something she really bothered with.
An interesting viewpoint and one I've seen on at least one other thread here. For me this type of approach is counter intuative. I would rather work on the mechanics of the whole stroke and achieve a suitable position in the water with or without a suit. Goodness knows what would happen to this lady should the water be deemed to warm for suits?
That said, each to thier own.
Donkey ... Seren is exactly the same, not for the want of nagging thats for sure !!
I'm with Seren - a lot easier. The following (badly written) article did it for me .. pull bouys
It's trying to snow
Rafiki - thaanks for the link. I'm still to be convinced although I follow the logic
The "what if" issue of not being able to use a suit come race day is too much of a deal breaker for me.
All this swimming talk..... I'm reading Chrissie Wellington's book. She said she does a 10km session - 100 x 100m intervals - WTF??
I have just seen a tweet by Jodie Swallow who has done 10 x 600 and I thought that was extreme enough
I guess thats why they are at the top of their game and we are nowhere near them
Is the training thread for this year then?
If so I have just written my training plan and like all good training plans it starts with a rest day, just as well, knackered I am after all that writing
ive done a couple of 10k's open water
but the longest ive done in a pool is 7.5k (as WU, 7x1k, WD)
But then i'm a fan of long swims rather than short intervals
Gift from my OH. A new book by the Finks. Some weekend reading
Welcome aboard SA !
interesting about the pull buoy - I am loads faster with one, but that just points out to me how bad my leg position and kick are. Being a bit of a perfectionist I would like to swim well with and without a wetsuit so I will persevere, but might have one swim ever so often just with a pull-buoy for fun!
that book looks good ID - might treat myself!
Only in my dreams Sossige ....
no broomstick .. before you say it
Going to concentrate on this billateral breathng for now. Apparently this will really help with my rotation & keeping me more symetrical. Once ive nailed that, can look at using the spare limbs more
Speaking of kick....
I've been getting lessons over the past couple of months. I've never had any official swim training but grew up around the Great Lakes (in the USA) so never had an issue with being in danger of drowning or whatever. I was advised by other Ironpeople to "save your legs" and minimize the kick as you'll want your legs on the bike and in the run. My coach brought up a very interstesting point. In the couple weeks leading up to IMKY, my home event, the pros will often stop by our swim center to train. She says you never see them just dragging their legs along. They all have a good kick.
So if the pros think it's important to kick, why not the rest of us? Not that you want to have a 100 mph kick for 90 minutes but you do want to help propel yourself along and keep a good flat body position. As I was once told: head down, ass up. It's much harder to swim if you're dragging your legs.
I would concentrate on the bilateral breathing as you sya, once you have that metronomic pace going you will find that the kicking kind of follows suit, that coupled wiith the fact that your legs have a hell of a lot of work to do afterwards as Yank as alluded to above as well !
I find my legs do their own wee kick without me thinking about it, probably more for position rather than propulsion tho'.
Just back from biking, Garmin says: 24.35miles in 1hr 47min. Average speed 13.6mph, cadence 79. Happy enough with that.
I love malt loaf! Now need a Speedfil so I can drink without crashing.
IY, I find it impossible to not kick to be honest, if only to keep my legs from sinking. But I try not to kick too hard, just long slow kicks.
back from a chilly hour on on the bike with mr Frag , struggled on the hills today, legs said 'no'
(everything aches so i think I overdid it with the kettlebells yesterday!)
Swimming ; well I find I can work harder when using a pull-buoy, but when I try to go faster/work harder without one, then my form goes wrong, I lose rhythm and i struggle more
Well in an attempt to 'fix' this dam calf strain I've had for a couple of weeks, my physio resorted to acupuncture yesterday. I've never had it before, and was a little sceptical to say the least. But, amazingly, it seems to have worked. Basically the muscle has been tight and in spasm for 2 weeks and no amount of massage would relax it for more than 5 mins. But stick half a dozen pins in for 15 mins and there's a huge improvement. No idea how it works, but ...... ??
If you need any more pins stuck in you Raf I volunteer my service, I have a box of drawing pins around here somewhere
I've had accupuncture before now and strangely that worked then as well !
I have run for an hour and I think my nose might fall off, beeejeesus its cold out there
I've had acupuncture on my back and that worked; I can understand how it works on muscles/nerves, etc , but as to how it's supposed to 'cure' Glandular fever and similar conditions I don;t know
That's very kind of you! But you'll need bigger pins me thinks - I'm sure the guy was using 6 inch nails yesterday!!