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Posts Tagged ‘triathlon training’

How I Ended up Back in the Pool

Posted in Marathon, Swimming, Triathlon, tagged , , , , , on February 6, 2013| 3 Comments »

During the last two and a half months of “off-season” I’ve been following a loose plan of running three days per week and cross-training at least two other days. During triathlon season, my cross-training would consist of a mix of swimming and cycling. Ever since the Nautica Malibu olympic distance triathlon though, I’ve wanted a break from swimming. Maybe it was all the work I did on open water swimming, but I simply burned out on spending time in the water. What is an off-season for if not to recharge and ready oneself to get back to training as usual?

Me entertaining myself with the old cell-phone-photo-in-the-mirror trick, showing you how my Nautica Malibu tri cap happens to match my favorite TYR reversible swimsuit.

Me entertaining myself with the old cell-phone-photo-in-the-mirror trick, showing you how my Nautica Malibu tri cap happens to match my favorite TYR reversible swimsuit.

Somehow, fate conspired to get me back into the water. Last week I helped my fifth grader get ready for her “Famous American” oral report on Clara Barton (founder of the American Red Cross). My daughter and I shopped at the thrift store for a long skirt in keeping with the Civil War era clothing. She tried on several skirts with a white blouse we also found on the rack. I asked her if we should buy the white shirt too, but she insisted she had a blouse at home already. “Does it still fit you? Do you know where it is?” Yes, yes. In reality? No, no. That’s how, the day before the report was due, I found myself back at the thrift store, plunking down $3 for that darn white blouse.

What does all that have to do with swimming? Well, the outdoor pool is just down the road from the thrift store. If I was going to drive to that part of town, I might as well stop in at the pool. Fate had spoken: Angela, GET IN THE WATER. So I did. And it felt great! Outdoor swimming in the winter in California can be a fun treat (really!) The weather was sunny and in the 70s, but cool enough that the pool water felt warmer than the air so it was easy to jump in the pool. I made up my own swim set for a simple 40-minute workout:

Angela’s Don’t Get Bored in the Pool, Completely Random Swim Set

200 yards freestyle
200 yards breaststroke
200 yards backstroke
200 yards freestyle kick with kickboard
repeat above
plus 1 lap your choice to make it a full swim mile (33 laps).

I swam at a leisurely pace with no rest intervals in between. I suppose I should start throwing some speed work in to my swim workouts sometime soon. I don’t have a triathlon on my calendar right now but I do like to stay in shape in the pool. I plan to start picking from some of these 50 Swim Workouts. That requires printing out the workout and putting the paper in a Ziploc bag so it doesn’t get wet poolside, but I trust that someday I will be organized enough to plan ahead and do just that!

Do you cross-train with swimming or train for triathlons? What’s your favorite workout in the pool?

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January Miles and February Goals

Posted in Family life, Kids, Marathon, Miles Log, Running, Triathlon, tagged , , , , , on February 4, 2013| 7 Comments »

January represented the last month in the off-season for me. I took it relatively easy as I tried to heal from shin splints and an adductor magnus groin strain injury.

January Miles

Note that my triathlon training positively requires me to write up the miles in swim-bike-run order, followed by other miscellaneous workouts.

Swim: 1 mile in 40 minutes in 1 workout

Bike: 98.12 miles in 7.5 hours in 8 workouts

Run: 82.55 miles in 14 hours in 14 workouts

Weight training: 2.67 hours in 11 workouts <— That is a new personal record of strength training workouts in a month

Snow Skiing: 4.5 hours in 1 workout

House cleaning: 11 hours in 2 workouts <—- Not just your average light housework

Yardwork: 40 minutes in 1 workout <—- turning the compost and shoveling in the garden

If you count the one yardwork and two big housework days, that constitutes 28 workout days out of 31.

Random January Photo

My husband celebrated his 42nd birthday in January and I threw him a surprise party at our house. If you’re a loyal reader of this ol’ blog you know my philosophy on birthday cakes: grab any nearby children to help you decorate your homemade cake so that no matter how it turns out, it is “cute” and “fun” and, at a minimum, what could kindly be called “remarkable.”

Are you shocked that it only took me 30 minutes to shape, frost and decorate this cake? No? Come on, you know you want to hire me for all your future cake-baking needs.

Are you shocked that it only took me 30 minutes to shape, frost and decorate this cake? No? Come on, you know you want to hire me for all your future cake-baking needs.

Random fun fact of the day: the hole in a guitar is called a “sound hole.” If you want to be accurate in your cake decoration, the sound hole should be placed in the upper portion of the sound board. If you want children to help you make a sound hole out of yellow Smarties 15 minutes before the guest of honor is expected to arrive, then you let them put it wherever it fits on the cake. And then you order your guests to help cut yellow guitar “strings” out of licorice. Again, do not feel the need to be accurate in the number of strings that belong on a guitar (typically, six).

February Goals

Eat less cake.
Run the Brea 8K and earn a PR at that distance.
Start training for the Mountains 2 Beach Marathon.
Do not injure myself (a perennial goal).

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My Workouts on the Run Less, Run Faster Marathon Training Plan

Posted in Biking, Marathon, Running, Strength training, Swimming, Triathlon, Weight training, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 31, 2012| 6 Comments »

I confess I have the dread disease that requires me to log every mile of every swim, bike and run, and every minute of exercise. If I don’t document it in at least three places, it didn’t happen, much like if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it. I track my runs and bike rides with a Garmin and/or with MapMyRUN, then record them on MapMyRUN, on my computer spreadsheet, and on my paper marathon training schedule. That’s normal, right? 😉 Just nod and back away slowly, and maybe you won’t catch this dread disease.

The fact is I find the data fascinating and it all helps me keep on track for my triathlon and marathon training. I’ve got an Olympic distance triathlon coming up in two weeks (!!) and the marathon in 10 weeks (!!!) I’ve been following the Run Less, Run Faster beginner’s marathon training plan. It calls for three runs per week (speed work, tempo, and long run) plus at least two cross-training workouts. For cross-training of course I do swimming and biking, a natural fit for the triathlon training. I also throw in some strength training. All that means that I exercise an average of six days per week for an average of six to six-and-a-half hours total. (Now I know that sounds like a lot to someone training for her first 5K, and like nothing to someone training for an Ironman. I don’t compare myself to anyone else (although if you want to leave a comment to tell me how much you’re training for your 70.3 or 140.6, I’d be curious to know the answer!))

For me the week generally looks like this:

Sunday: 60-minute bike ride or 30-minute ocean swim
Monday: rest day, possible 30-minute strength training
Tuesday: 60-minute speed workout, generally 6 miles including warm-up and cool-down
Wednesday: 30-minute swim or 40-minute bike ride, plus 20-30 minutes strength training
Thursday: 60-minute tempo run, generally 6-7 miles (this will be going up as the plan proceeds)
Friday: 30-minute bike ride plus 30 minutes of strength training; optional rest day or only strength training
Saturday: 120-minute long run (soon to be more as I head into new territory with 14+ mile runs!)

It ends up being three runs, two bike rides, one or two swims, and an average of two strength training sessions. By the numbers for August:

Swim miles (a swim mile being 1500 km): 5.25
Bike miles: 101.3 (full disclosure: I count 30 minutes on the spin bike as 10 miles)
Run miles: 100.59 (woo hoo, broke my first 100!)
Number of strength training workouts: 8, for a total of 3 hours 25 minutes

My handy computer spreadsheet shows me a pie chart that compares the ratio of swim to bike to run to weights, all based on minutes. It consistently stays at about 58 percent running, 18 percent biking, 14 percent swimming and 10 percent strength training.

Do you log all of your workouts? In more than one place?! Please confess that I’m not the only one.

What are you training for if anything and what does your mileage and workout time look like recently?

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Open Water Swimming Tips for Beginners

Posted in Swimming, Triathlon, tagged , , , , , , on August 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I may have been joking when I said that I did speedwork with sprinter Usain Bolt, but I am serious when I say that I trained with swimmer Janet Evans. I was 12 or 13 at the time, and we trained on the same aquatic sports team. We competed against each other, and I use “competed” in the loosest sense possible, given that we were distance swimmers and in our distance races she beat me by minutes, not seconds. Hey, not that many people can say they came in second against Janet Evans! Of course she went on to become a 5-time Olympic medalist, and I went on to quit competitive swimming due to repeated sinus infections. I’m not jealous. I’m not bitter. Who’s the triathlete now, though? 😉

All that to explain that I am a competent swimmer. The swim segment ought to be the strongest part of my triathlon race, or at least my favorite part. Nope on both counts! Sunday’s swim at Zuma Beach proved I have plenty to work on. With that in mind, I reviewed several sources for open water swimming tips. These stood out as the most important for beginner triathletes like me.

1. Evaluate whether or not you will need a wetsuit. There are two reasons to wear a wetsuit: protection against the cold, and buoyancy. I find that wetsuits feel constraining and I haven’t noticed the buoyancy advantage, but I still wear one to protect against the chilly waters of the Pacific Ocean. I would have gone with sleeveless if the cold temperatures for local races didn’t require a full wetsuit. If you’re a beginner and you’re not quite ready to buy a suit, you can rent one. Personally I just dove right in, so to speak, and bought my own suit. I don’t know anything about WetsuitRental.com but I appreciate its Triathlon Event Water Temperatures Index for All States. It lists the past water temperatures for many popular events in the U.S. and recommends the appropriate type of wetsuit (and booties and a neoprene cap if it comes to that!) Keep in mind that some races do not allow a wetsuit, and that it’s also possible to overheat if you wear one when the water is warm.

2. Wear your goggles under your swim cap. Putting your swim cap on over your goggles will help prevent them from being knocked off by waves or other competitors. I noticed that many of the 2012 Olympic swimmers did this even though they didn’t have to contend with other swimmers around them.

3. Conquer your fear. Getting out in the open water for several trial swims is not about “practice makes perfect” so much as it’s about learning to be comfortable in the open water. You can practice form in the pool, but you need to get out in the river, lake or ocean to learn how to sight and swim without a black line to follow, how to deal with waves and wind, and just plain how to get over the fear factor.

Pacific Ocean at Zuma Beach

The shore start for the Nautica Malibu Triathlon at Zuma Beach

4. Practice your start. Will you have a beach start, a diving start, or an in-water start? Each of them requires a different technique and strategy. I love an in-water start like the one at SheROX San Diego. The shore start at the freshwater reservoir for HITS Palm Springs presented a challenge, and that’s nothing compared to the shore start for Nautica Malibu. I’ve got to work on running into the water, diving under the waves to swim out to the first buoy, and body-surfing back in to shore!

5. Expect to adjust your breathing. No matter the conditions in the water, at the beginning of a race the adrenaline requires me to breathe more often than I normally would. That’s something for me to work on, but in the meantime it simply helps to know that I can breathe from either my left or right side and can alternate sides when necessary. Not only is that helpful at the start, it’s helpful when you’ve got a competitor splashing close on your right or someone swimming over you on your left!

6. Train with some backstroke and breaststroke in addition to freestyle. I can swim a mile of freestyle in the pool no problem, but sometimes race day conditions make it necessary for me to change things up. A stroke or two of breaststroke can help you with sighting and help you catch your breath. I don’t recommend much of that though, because it slows you down tremendously! If you really need to catch your breath but want to keep moving forward, flip to your back for a while. With practice, I find that I’m nearly as fast on my back, and while I wouldn’t race the whole way like that, it’s helpful to catch my breath or to recover after accidentally getting a mouthful of water.

7. Practice sighting. With no black line at the bottom of the ocean, you’ve got to pick out a building or a feature on land to guide you. You can follow the buoys too, but there are multiple buoys and they make slightly moving targets. I understood the basic advice to “practice sighting” but it took me a long time to get down the technique that works for me. The key is the timing — where in your stroke you lift your head, and when in comparison to when you breathe. I pull hard with my right arm to lift my head enough for my goggles to peek above the water line, sight, then quickly turn my head left to breathe.

8. Cut yourself a break. Do not fight too hard to replicate that perfect form you have in the pool (ha ha — I wish I had perfect form). Enjoy the moment. You are out there doing something many others are afraid to do.

For more tips, check out these Expert Open Water Swimming Tips for Ocean Swims.

Do have any open water swimming tips? Do you love the swim portion of a triathlon or is it your nemesis?

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