A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

mossym

Thursday -Easy Spin

Not a lot to say about this, easy spin on turbo. Didn't get to it until late, so an hour was as much as i could get in. Soon as i hopped on both cadence and hr sensors packed in. Ah well, it was only an easy spin. spun away for an hour, 25km read on the meter when done.

Friday -Early morning swim
Another mix of pull buoy/swim sets. nothing outstanding about this swim except for the absolute git in a blue cap who decided the lane was his, and if he came behind someone slower just swam around them, even if it meant swimming into/over/through those coming against him. absolute PrI&k. Once he cleared off, the pool was a much nicer place to be.

on the swim side, this swim felt good stroke wise, but energy levels seemed off again. got through it.

2400m, 55 min


Friday Evening Run
Negative Split run. 20 easy, 15 steady, 5 mod, 5 easy. Very happy with this run, but my old demon of running it a bit faster than
prescribed came back. Felt strong all the way around though
easy @5:10
steady@4:40
mod@4:15

that mod pace is probably my fast pace rather than mod, but still, felt good all the way around, especially as i was holding back as i had a vo2 test on saturday that i only remembered on thursday!!

9.2km, 45min

mossym

Saturday: VO2 test

It had completely slipped my mind that i was booked in for a vo2 retest Saturday, until i got an email from the shop.

my first VO2 was done in October, wWhen the last one was done i was still training for a lanzarote tri, so i hadn't stopped for the winter yet. the biggest outcome from that was a vo2 max of 32, which was very very low. the guy running the tests said he'd never seen a number that low in 1500 tests, and it could point at underlying health issues, possibly thyroid, which was worrying, as my dad suffers seriously with that. Expected my thresholds to be down, becuase due to the niggles ive had, not a lot of threshold work done, volume,but not intensity
so, the good news is looks like i must have been sick, or something wrong with the test last time, cause this time i got a vo2 of 58.3, which ranks superior on the levels in the results. happy with that as i thought it was always going to limit me.
The other big changes are:
my threshold is now 162, down from 172. that explains why i was finding it difficult to do threshold tests, i was still aiming for 172.
max HR was down from 192 to 182. seems odd to me to drop that much in that length of time, but they were results. so same gap between threshold and max

threshold power was 290, @the 162hr. this was the same number as the October test, but that was 290 at 172 so that's an improvement
max power hit was 441w. i couldn't hold the 410watt level for the required time, wasn't far off it though. also, did this test on the tri bike, last test was road bike

weight was down 2kg from october, which was my lowest weight of the last 15 years. i'd been at the october weight up until about a month ago, so the 2kg down is the last month


all in all, happy with the results, especially the vo2 max results, the weight, and the power @ lower HR. all pointing in the right direction


Saturday evening run

My plan had a long cycle on Saturday, but the test meant i wasn't going to get to it. So i moved sundays long run to saturday evening. If you've never done a vo2 test, it's all out till you can't push any more. suffice to say your legs are toast after it. So my legs were feeling the effects starting a 75 min run. time to SIU. headed off to the local sports park and the 1k running loop. nice easy pace, knew it would have to be easy given how the legs felt. was glad of the run/walk strategy been using on long runs. Despite the tired legs this went pretty well. my wife was picking me up at the end of the run, but she was a bit late so kept the run going and ran to meet her, adding another 5 mins and an extra km on to the end. happy with that

1:20, 15km.

http://www.strava.com/activities/122954537

shotgunmcos

mossym wrote: »

.....nothing outstanding about this swim except for the absolute git in a blue cap who decided the lane was his, and if he came behind someone slower just swam around them, even if it meant swimming into/over/through those coming against him. absolute PrI&k. Once he cleared off, the pool was a much nicer place to be..

Was there a faster lane for the git to swim in? Was there room for him to overtake?

You should join in the group session this week, it will bring you along quickly

mossym

Sunday Cycle

with the long run switched to saturday, planned a spin on sunday morning. was meeting the usual crew at 9am, so alarm went off(my three year old) at 6.50:). anyway, round 8 i swung the legs out of the bed to get going, and they groaned in protest. not sore, just dead, tough day yesterday, thought they deserved a rest.Shut up legs. anyway, turns out was only 2 of us on the spin, so we did an easy spin which is a group favorite, and we call the clubhouse run as we do it so often and it has a bench we stop at for a break which we call our clubhouse. anyway. nice easy pace, less than 25 for the first half which has a couple of easy climbs, then a faster pace for the second half. legs came around nicely, and it was a smashing spin on a beautiful morning

http://www.strava.com/activities/123230257

2:50, 72km

mossym

shotgunmcos wrote: »

Was there a faster lane for the git to swim in? Was there room for him to overtake?

You should join in the group session this week, it will bring you along quickly

he could have jumped into the lane with the sharks from LTC, but i don't think he's fast enough for that lane. He wasn't moving much faster than me, which is why i kept meeting him swimming right into me in the middle of the pool

i don't mind people passing out, and will move over for them if they are trying to do it in a way that doesn't affect others, but this guy was just going to barrel through everyone.

i'd hit the group lane if i thought i was 10% of their pace, and an effort would keep me with them. However that lane does 400's at a pace i can't do a 50 at, there is no point

mossym

so, last two weeks have been big volume wise for me.

last week was 3km swum, 238 cycled, 25.8 run, 12:16 total(not counting a couple of hours of rolling/core work)
this week was 5.1km swum, 153 cycled, 39km run. 11:26 total

They are my two biggest weeks ever. really pleased with that. However, because of the knee niggle that was going on, they had quite rightly been volume focused with not a lot of intensity. Next weeks plan changes that. time to hurt again

Trig1

mossym wrote: »

s
last week was 3km swum, 238 cycled, 25.8 run, 12:16 total(not counting a couple of hours of rolling/core work)
this week was 5.1km swum, 153 cycled, 39km run. 11:26 total

is it swum or swam :D:D:D

Pmaldini

Hi Mossym,

Where did you get the vo2 test done?

mossym

Trig1 wrote: »

is it swum or swam :D:D:D

probably swam. knowing me i have it wrong.

mossym

Pmaldini wrote: »

Hi Mossym,

Where did you get the vo2 test done?

local tri shop in Killaloe, Planet Tri, brings in someone to run tests every 4 to 5 months. It's very popular.First one in october had enough of us to fill 1 days testing. this time around it was two full days

mossym

Monday Run
30mins easy recovery in absolute deluge of rain, followed by a good hour of core work and foam rolling. 5.5km

Tuesday Bike
back to some threshold efforts on the bike. Knee was pain free for several weeks, so glad to be back to some real efforts. 10 minutes easy, then 5 30 second builds with equal recovery, then 5*4 mins over threshold, 1 easy. stupid HR monitor has been giving real issues. and they hit again, got the first interval in with some decent readings, before it went crazy, so based the others on keeping the effort constant, which seemed to work as the last couple of efforts were tough. very glad to get through this one with no ill effects on the knee. Also, done on tri bike and definitely getting used to it, intervals all done in the aero position and felt good

45 mins, 20km or so.

Wednesday AM Swim

this one stood out on the plan from the minute i got the weeks work. 400m TT time again. last time i did one was in my local 17m (7:13)pool,this would be in the 50m so figured it would be slower. Given the craziness in the pool and how busy it has been in the last few weeks, decided to get to the pool later as it's mainly empty when i'm leaving.

Warm up was done with a couple more in the lane, but when i got to the main 400 the fast lane was empty so i jumped into that and had it to myself. thought i set off nice and steady and held the pace throughout, but results afterwards showed the first was way faster than the rest so need to watch that, but in fairness the rest were pretty consistent, so happy with that. last 100 was lung sucking tough. touched the wall in 7:31, 18 seconds down on the 17m pool, but given i get 24 push offs there rather than 8 here it's an improvement. 100m tt came in on 1:46

reasonably happy with that, but i think there is more room for improvement. logistics have meant the last few months have only been 2 swims a week, but going to change that around and get an extra swim a week in, which will become an OW swim as soon as the water heats up.

1900m , 0:43:00


Wednesday Lunchtime Run
easy run, 45 mins with 5* 30 second builds. realised the threshold session the previous night had been tough when i set out for the run. legs felt tired. kept the pace nice and steady, did the builds nice and early, and by the time i hit 30 minutes the legs had come around and the last couple of km felt really stong. Lovely day for a run.

9.2km, 46min.

mossym

Thursday Evening Bike, or lack there of
supposed to be an easy turbo tonight, but today is my little one's birthday. suffice to say that after a house full of four year olds a serious clean up effort is underway, and we've just polished off pizza as a very late dinner. don't like missing sessions but it's happened tonight

mossym

Friday Morning Swim

Bit later getting to the pool this morning. I know it's meant to be the slow lane, meaning all are welcome, but by god if i'm passing you twice in one of your lengths maybe you should be in the open unlaned area. LTC putting the sharks int eh fast lane creates way too big a gap between the slow lane and the fast lane, with no happy medium. it's a disaster.

anyway, after wednesdays tt efforts, this was a longer slow set 2500 all in, with some 300's in the middle alternating pull and swim. felt really good in the water this morning, best swim for a while, stroke felt strong, ad that elusive feeling of gliding rather than mashing was there. if only it would happen more often. will see otnight how the times matached up to the fast efforts on wednesday

2500m in ~50mins

mossym

Friday Lunchtime Run

Speed session. started easy, then built, and then alternating 5k/10k pace with recovery periods.

Paces came in for the intervals as

5k - 4.09min/km
10k - 4:32
5k - 4:10
10k - 4:27
5k-4:17

last one was a little slower,but it's inflated by an open shoelace, and i ran a lot quicker to make it up so i believe it was similar ifnot better to the other 5ks. happy with that, it was 11k in total but 10k of it was only 20 seconds slower than my 10k pb, and with easy spells in the middle it looks like i should be capable of taking something off my 10k pb. Was a tough session though, was digging deep for the last 5k interval, but i don't mind tough, then i see results.

11.2km, 52:28, 4:41/km pace overall.

mossym

Saturday Spin -Stephen Roche Atlantic Challenge

First event of 2014 wasn't a race, but was an event i really like. Did this last yeas as my first ever sportive, and loved it, despite it being a pretty tough course, which is normally subject to some high winds. Last year was brutal, struggling to hold 20km an hour into savage head winds. This year the weather looked better. the course itself is tough enough, very lumpy, almost no flat spots, with a climb over the cliffs of moher, and another up Corkscrew Hill, but the majority of the rest up and down, a look at the profile in the link below will show what i mean

Was heading down with 3 others, 2 of whom haven't a lot of cycling done, so we were planning on keeping it relatively easy. Famous last words, but not really in a bad way:). Start was supposed to be neutralised, as there were road works about 7k into the ride. So much for that, ride went off with people jostling for position. We were holding a nice steady pace, and then we hit the first climb at the cliffs. Two guys went backwards, but the remaining two of us pushed on. and kept a good pace up the climb, passing loads. we kept a nice high pace, which was taking us past a lot of cyclists, and figured we must be getting close enough to the front, when we hit a steep descent. get to a tight right hander, nice line picked through, when i see some stones on the road right where i am going. Small enough, but still something i'd rather have avoided, but given the speed nothing to do but go over them , and typical bang went the back wheel. pulled over straight away, which was tough given the speed we were pulling and the other cyclists. By the time i got it changed, even our two compadres had passed us. got going, heads down, and started to pick things off again.

Caught up with our mates at the food stop at the 40km mark. bit of a stop, then on through ballyvaughan towards the toughest climb of the day, corkscrew. this was relatively slow as we were breaking the wind for the other two, and by the time we got through ballyvaughan and to the bottom of corkscrew, we had about 20 dragging offour back wheels. didn't long going up corkscrew, the two of us pulled away again, and caught a group further up the hill. coming into the last hairpinthe guys in front of us were struggling big time, so i decided to put in a dig up the rest of the hill and drive on. pushed forit, and was happy with what the body gave, you can see the pace jump in the log below at the 60km mark

got over the top on my own, no-one with a few hundred metres. figured the three guys behind me would regroup at the top, and working together would catch me, so decided for fun to see how long i could stay away. started to time trial my way home, nice steady effort, and was holding high 30/low 40km/hr mark, which, 65km in i was pretty happy with . kept looking back, but no-one was coming. decided at lisdoonvara i was sitting up if they hadn't caught me, which they didn't, so i did. Far side of town one of them caught me, no sign of the others so we spun easy back to the finish. Crossed the line 3:11 after setting out, but take out the puncture and the food stop and i reckon we could have taken 20 to 25 minutes at least out of that

really happy with how strong that trip turned out to be. held pace well over a tough course, with some tough headwinds and really rolling terrain. good sign that cycling training going well.

83km, 3:11

http://www.strava.com/activities/124927275/overview

mossym

Sunday Long Run
Knew legs would be tired after yesterday, and a long run with a bit of a sting in the tail with 20 minutes steady and 5 minutes mod to finish would be a good workout to finish the week

Beautiful morning for it, first time this year risking shorts and short sleeves together and glad i did, was warm out there. Was glad for the dry weather as it meant i could hit the local roads which i usually avoid after a lot of rain as they are narrow and build up a lot of surface water.

Run went well, legs were groaning a bit heading out, but loosened out pretty quickly and could enjoy being out. easy pace was at the 5:15 to 5:20 mark, and got through the first hour of those well. kicked into the steady then, holding 5:00min/km pace, these were tougher, i hadn't really done any negative split work on long runs before, so kicking up the pace felt odd. Into the mod pace @ 4:45 then, hr was well up but held the pace, got through the 5 then back to easy, or as easy as that *^%ing slog up the hill to home can be. Happy with the run overall though

17.7km, 1:32.
http://www.strava.com/activities/125253409


Said last sunday this week would hurt more than teh previous two, even though they had lots of volume, and i was right. Some tough sessions in each discipline. Seriously happy with form at the moment, pace in everything, especially run, is coming along nicely. Bike is getting strong, as is swim. With a good bit of time still to go to first of the target races i'm happy with progress. priority is staying away from injury.

Recovery week coming up. Body is tired so it's well placed. works well for next weekend as well as we have our annual weekend away with the cycling crew, 2 days cycling, up in Mayo this year. Can just go and enjoy it now, get some cycling on new routes in. Looking forward to it

Green&Red

Is there something up with ur HRM Mossy?
Some of your averages there mean that you're dead I think, 33BPM?
107 average up corkscrew?

mossym

Green&Red wrote: »

Is there something up with ur HRM Mossy?
Some of your averages there mean that you're dead I think, 33BPM?
107 average up corkscrew?

yeah it's fecked, been acting up for a while now, and getting worse. it sometimes sorted itself out for periods so was of some use, which is why i kpet wearing it, but last few times it's just been garbage. pretty sure it's thr strap, so new one on the way.

definitely was a lot higher than 107 up corkscrew, especially the top portion when i put the foot down

Solobally8

How long have you had the HR strap mossym? I was having similar problems myself and just bought a new battery. That solved it for me anyway

mossym

Solobally8 wrote: »

How long have you had the HR strap mossym? I was having similar problems myself and just bought a new battery. That solved it for me anyway

Tried a new battery and made no difference. Will try the new strap and hopefully that resolves it

SprinterSacre

mossym wrote: »

Tried a new battery and made no difference. Will try the new strap and hopefully that resolves it

Had similar problem with my hrm. Try putting the new battery in the wrong way first and then the right way. Some reverse polarisation craic, worked for mine.

mossym

SprinterSacre wrote: »

Had similar problem with my hrm. Try putting the new battery in the wrong way first and then the right way. Some reverse polarisation craic, worked for mine.

yeah, it basically drains the remaining charge on the internal capacitance on the unit so that it fully resets. gave that a go as well, didn't work.

it looks like the unit connects just fine, so i'm hoping it's a strap issue

pointer28

mossym wrote: »

yeah, it basically drains the remaining charge on the internal capacitance on the unit so that it fully resets. gave that a go as well, didn't work.

it looks like the unit connects just fine, so i'm hoping it's a strap issue

Are you wetting the contacts?

I've just ordered conductive gel from Amazon but apparently you can make it yourself with aloe vera gel and a pinch of salt. Might be worth a try.

Also, mines acts differently depending on what I'm wearing. Try it topless on the turbo or treadmill and see does it behave any better.

mossym

pointer28 wrote: »

Are you wetting the contacts?

I've just ordered conductive gel from Amazon but apparently you can make it yourself with aloe vera gel and a pinch of salt. Might be worth a try.

Also, mines acts differently depending on what I'm wearing. Try it topless on the turbo or treadmill and see does it behave any better.

yup, have tried wetting as well and no good. even on sessions where i build up a heavy sweat it hasn't come good again. And it's gone from sporadic issues to constant, so it's been used with a lot of different clothing types and they haven't seemed to make any difference.

mossym

SprinterSacre wrote: »

Had similar problem with my hrm. Try putting the new battery in the wrong way first and then the right way. Some reverse polarisation craic, worked for mine.

so, you got me curious after reading this. I had done this after i changed the battery, and still had issues. However, the electronic engineer in me had some thoughts, so i decided to give it another go. Did it before an easy turbo session this evening, and the result was it worked perfectly. not sure for how long it will last, it might have resolved it fully (hopefully), but it does mean the strap i bought wasn't needed. ah well.

SprinterSacre

mossym wrote: »

so, you got me curious after reading this. I had done this after i changed the battery, and still had issues. However, the electronic engineer in me had some thoughts, so i decided to give it another go. Did it before an easy turbo session this evening, and the result was it worked perfectly. not sure for how long it will last, it might have resolved it fully (hopefully), but it does mean the strap i bought wasn't needed. ah well.

Good stuff. Mine was acting up like yours for a while, couldn't figure it out. Did that about 10 weeks ago, been working perfect since with edge and forerunner, hopefully same for you. No harm having a spare..

mossym

it's recovery week, so the workouts take a step down this week. this has had the result that i feel absolutely shattered, like i could sleep for the week. thought this was strange, that it should be the opposite, but discussed with coach and it 's apparently pretty common. i can tell the body is tired though, so this week well placed

Monday - Day off, nothing done other than a good stretch/foam rolling session in the evening

Tuesday - Easy 30 minutes run. thought after the day off i'd be fresh as a daisy for this, but the opposite, felt like a slog to get around,even though the pace was nothing. 6km in 31 min

Wednesday -
AM: Swim. 2200m made up mainly of 50m drills, fist and pull buoy. felt okay in the water, nice steady effort throughout. UL pool might be good for training in the fact that it is 50m, but the lanes are pretty full at 7am, reckon i'll hit it a bit later on a wednesday in future to get a bit more clear water in front of me. will be back in my local pool for the other 2 swim sessions a week from now on

2200m, 52 min

PM
Easy/Steady turbo. 45 mins made up of 20 easy, 20 steady, 5 easy. good news was i managed to get the hr strap working again,with thanks to sprintre sacre above, so this was done to HR. Steady session done while watching chelsea getting whupped. occurred ti me during it that the tri bike will get it's first race in a few weeks at Joey hannon and i've still done little enough miles on it outside. have to work on that next week

mossym

something a bit different tonight, but still sort of related to training, i'm taking a cookery class..:) Already make my own energy bars, but hoping to add to the arsenal of abilities after this:

Pmaldini

mossym wrote: »

something a bit different tonight, but still sort of related to training, i'm taking a cookery class..:) Already make my own energy bars, but hoping to add to the arsenal of abilities after this:

excellent, you are on treat duty for the cycle:D

mossym

Pmaldini wrote: »

excellent, you are on treat duty for the cycle:D

no problem, my chocolate covered fruit bars are very popular even if i can't manage anything from the class:)

run at lunchtime, 6km in 30 mins, HR broken again, unless my HR really did hit 284