Rookie's diary part two

tunney

Right enough about my kids, and slagging me. As much as I love talking about them and everyone loves slagging me............

Ran yesterday, 10km, felt good. TMWTT last night. Vastus lateralis tight again on both sides. Seemingly I am putting on decent amounts of leg muscle but will need to watch. Was talking then about running technique and how a strong hamstring was essential. Seemingly when trained mine are strong and its obvious in how I run. He wants to get out for a run with me soon to address technique. Did this a few times with him before and it makes a huge difference to me.

0500 start this morning. 45 minutes fúcking about in the shed trying to find things and pair things and then an hour on the IM Canada course. Video from the race as well and its shot from mid pack persepective. All road bikes, no one on aerobars, everyone too fat, stuff hanging the bikes, all wearing the race tri-suits. Made me think of Dublin 70.30 and most of the posters on *that* thread. Off the turbo at 0655 and was seated by the kids beds as they woke up at 0700. Freaked them out. "How do you like it?" I thought.

10km with pieces at lunch. Legs heavy on this.
Lovely day out there.

Oryx

Your posts make me think of the likes of ultraman, who seems to refer to everything below his hip joints as 'me legs', while you know the latin name for everything from your vastus lateralis to your vas deferens. I wonder if you didnt know what they were, would they hurt half as much?

tunney

Oryx wrote: »

Your posts make me think of the likes of ultraman, who seems to refer to everything below his hip joints as 'me legs', while you know the latin name for everything from your vastus lateralis to your vas deferens. I wonder if you didnt know what they were, would they hurt half as much?

Okay so I don't use the latin name. How do I then describe the bit of my leg thats over at the side, right next to the ITB, that the pain feels like ITBs but isn't?

I am not athletic, I am not naturally sporty, I was one of those kids that hid in the bushes when made to 4x400m around the school and jumped out at a time to finish not sh1t but not unbelievable. I find exercise and training hard and its not something that comes natural to me.

Reading endless amount of books, papers, articles. Remembering facts, figures and names of things. These are things I am good at and come easy to me.

I often taken fancies to learning new and strange things - proper handwriting, the art of tying knots, shaving with, and maintaining, a straight razor, learning Ukrainian..... Latin names for muscles was one thing for a while.

Hey I'm a nerd. I am what I am.

Oryx

I suppose, yeah, Im poking fun at your nerdiness, but I also think I might have a point to make as well. Sometimes you can think too much. Is that a twinge? Are my latin sounding things hurting right now? thoughts like that could well be making you too analytical and tense. Seriously! Or maybe your vastus lateralis are fcuked. I dont know.

I just know in my experience as a non analytical, non number crunching luddite without a word of latin, running relaxed is the best cure for niggles. If I think about something hurting, it invariably hurts worse.

tunney

Home last night, sent to the attic for diggers, played, bounced on the bed, read stories and then was told "now go race".

Tears when I explained it was bedtime and no running outside.

Anyways I had intended on a return top swim, bike, run this week. However I think that it might be too soon at home. The odd turbo and full on running will work but swimming would be a step too much. Will leave a bit more I think!

tunney

So postie brought me a present from AKW (okay not a present as I paid for it but it feels like one). My 920xt arrived!!!!

All I can say is WOW WOW WOW.
From the quality of the display to the intuitive nature of the menu systems, to the connectivity. This is next gen sh1t.

Detoured on way to work to the "KILL ZONE", the place where I can kill a Garmin (or Polar) in < 5 minutes.

Here I killed:

• 10 Garmin 910xts of my own
• 1 Garmin 910xt that someone smug lent me "because mine is fine"
• 1 Garmin swim
• 1 Polar RS800

My present 910xt passed the KILL ZONE test.

I have to admit I was nervous about the 920xt. But it passed. Too soon to be 100% confident as a few more test scenarios but the initial tests suggest that garmin got their act together

tunney

Another run last night when I got home, kids waiting jumping up and down in the hall waiting to go. I had gotten a present of a Silva Cross Trail from one of my athletes (a touching gesture), I had been playing with it recently and the kids of course wanted headlamps too. I fished out some old cheapo headlamps and the kids ran up and down the run with the headlights on. They had great craic running and seeing their breath in the dark.

MojoMaker

Good news on the 920, hopefully that's finally an issue-free tool for you.

mloc123

MojoMaker wrote: »

Good news on the 920, hopefully that's finally an issue-free tool for you.

Give him time... :pac:

sconhome

MojoMaker wrote: »

Good news on the 920, hopefully that's finally an issue-free tool for you.

He bought from the right place this time

tunney

Week 49

A very festive week at home and an utterly insane week in work. Not the good insane either. Next few months are going to be terrible.

In order to help cope I cleaned my Sun-Fri diet up and exercised regularly. Swimming and biking still out mostly but ran.

Swim dist: 0km
Bike dist (ex commute): 30 km
Bike time: 1:05
Run dist: 70.76km
Run time: 5:49

tunney

On/Off session on tired legs

Ouchie session
Max HR 192bpm
Max Cadence 219spm

Pretty amazing the way GCT for me drops from 260 to 210 on the faster stuff and VO 7.5 to 5.1. Cadence around 210spm for it too.

Ouchie session. But enjoyable. Looking forward to the other painful combinations.

mossym

tunney wrote: »

Looking forward to the other painful combinations.

1*40 is a particular personal favourite.

tunney

mossym wrote: »

1*40 is a particular personal favourite.

nah should top out with a 1*34 this year I think.

pgibbo

tunney wrote: »

nah should top out with a 1*34 this year I think.

Put that in your pipe, eh??? :pac:

mossym

pgibbo wrote: »

Put that in your pipe, eh??? :pac:

the price of being slow, you suffer for an extra 6 minutes

mloc123

tunney wrote: »

Pretty amazing the way GCT for me drops from 260 to 210 on the faster stuff and VO 7.5 to 5.1. Cadence around 210spm for it too.

Funnily for me.. my GCT drops to 170 from 200-210 but my VO increase to 12 from about 9.. only averaging 180ish cadence.

tunney

In the past week I have gotten four weight related comments:

Mother in law - "You have lost weight"
Colleague, after I complained about the heat in the office - "You only feel the cold now because you lost weight"
Clubmate - "you've lost weight"
Wife - "your arse has gotten smaller"

Its not "Are you sick?" but its getting there!

Bambaata

Good to hear, i noticed it over in the other thread. Going in the right direction!

hf4z6sqo7vjngi

Looks like I need a new nickname for you.

sconhome

Ares Unsightly Sprawl wrote: »

Looks like I need a new nickname for you.

Have to start calling him 'Notummy' now.

mossym

AKW wrote: »

Have to start calling him 'Notummy' now.

or given the way he's going now "runney"

sconhome

mossym wrote: »

or given the way he's going now "runney"

No that was me

mossym

AKW wrote: »

No that was me

completely different take on the word

tunney

Being honest with myself if I swim twice a month and bike twice a month from here on it will be an achievement.

So not that dissimilar to last year, and the last three years. Except this year I am not doing longer than sprint distance. And I'll have an advantage over 90% of the field as (a) I won't be doing Dublin 70.30 (b) I can swim without a rubber ring. Oh and I might be vaguely fit from running


Run distance : 70.09km
Run time : 5:43

tunney

Recently my runs have fallen into two categories
1) shíte
or
2) very good

What I realised today was that the shíte runs were not actually shíte but runs of a similar standard to the last few years.
The very good ones have seen me engaging glutes, hamstrings and hip flexors as they should be and HR dropping while pace increases.

The 920xt does a great job of tracking records and metrics and lets you know them right after sessions. Today saw a raft of new PBS and a new vo2max.

All going in the right direction

tunney

I had planned on a morning turbo but fell back asleep. Still woke up before the kids were meant to get up at 0700.

Last year I was given a Santa costume onsie as a present - with hood and beard. It is warm and I was cold so I put it on. Then I got the idea of standing in their doorway and shouting "HO HO HO".

Wanna get kids out of bed? I can testify that this works.
Aoibhe was pi$$ed off that it was "only Daddy"
Eoin was happy to pretend it really was Santa and hung out of me for the morning. Whenever I broke character and pulled the hood down or used a normal voice I was told "No daddy, do HO HO".

tunney

Whenever I go running with the kids Eoin will shout "racing is easy!!" at the top of his voice as he belts down the road. Inevitable Aoibhe wins as she is older (however he as figured out that if he gets level with her he can drop the shoulder and put her into a wall/tree - something she is not adverse to doing either).

Anyways. Today was the first day in a long time that I felt myself start to "flow" and the idea that running could be easy once again started to rumble around in the back of my head.

tunney

I also now have the fitness to turn the legover to perhaps cause some real suffering to myself. Recently my "fast sections" were at 3:50km pace. Then down to 3:20, now 2:2x Okay I cannot sustain that pace for long. But thats sorta the point of suffering.

BennyMul

Hey hope you don't mind me asking
you mentioned "engaging glutes, hamstrings and hip flexors" do you have any documentation or suggestions on how this is done correctly ?

cheers.