Tag: swimbikerun

Beer, Training

Negativity,*!@#!$ Tendinitis and the Trillium Beer Garden.

Kalyn

I like to think of myself as a generally positive person. Not the… in-your-face, everything-happens-for-a-reason type of positive. More the pragmatic… “sh*t happens but it will all work out” type of positive. You know what I’m talking about, right?

So when my Achilles Tendinitis flared up 3-4 weeks ago for the first time in years, I was okay with taking it in stride. As my Coach reminded me, now is the time to rest and heal; focus on my swim; take a needed break from running, etc. I’ve been a good little athlete: avoided running; prioritized stretching and strengthening; convinced my husband to torture me with an achilles “sports massage” almost nightly.

Because of all of this, I was really ready for my test run today (20 minutes, super easy) to go well. But it didn’t. It still hurt… so much that I had to cut it 2 miles in.

Pragmatic, positive Kalyn reminded myself that it’s only been three weeks; that it’s cold  and my achilles is going to be extra stiff in this weather; that injuries (this one in particular) take time to heal and Ironman Lake Placid is still 8 months away.

But then Negative Nancy (that bitch) swept in: “How am I going to ever get to marathon level run-volume if I can’t even run 2 miles?” “Swimming and biking alone is no way to work off these holiday cocktails and cookies.”  “I’m getting so out of shape.” Wah. wah. wah.

Basically Nancy won. She took over my mind like whoa and I spent the rest of the afternoon sulking through social media, being a brat to my husband, contemplating quitting triathlon all together (such a drama queen). When the hubs said he was going to the gym, I begrudgingly agreed to go with him….I literally rolled my eyes pulling on my bathing suit on and grimaced as I got into the pool.

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GoPro birthday present FTW.

But something changed as I started to go through my swim drills. I actually felt really good in the water and couldn’t believe how quickly and easily I was reaching the wall. I checked my Garmin to confirm: yes, this was a good pace!

HOLD UP! Maybe I wasn’t so out of shape! Maybe this whole “focusing on swim technique for the winter” thing was actually working!

I met my husband in the lobby feeling significantly more perked up.

“Should we grab a beer at Trillium?”

Um… yup. With good beer, the answer is always yes. 

So we did. For those not familiar (i.e. non-craft beer peeps): Trillium makes some of best beer. No joke: their double IPAs are ridiculous. Awesomely enough, they just opened a seasonal, beer garden at the old Substation in downtown Roslindale… just a few blocks from our house.

The Garden was filled with fellow yuppies, buzzed off 8.5% beers and holiday cheer: Exactly our kind of scene. 😉

Trillium Garden
Dialed In & Farnsworth St

I had the Dialed In DIPA…So freaking crisp and juicy that I had to get a second. And somewhere on the way to my own beer buzz, I decided I’d stick with triathlon a little while longer.

The moral of the story is that injury still sucks but there’s nothing that a decent swim and even better beer can’t make better.  So I guess I’ll continue to practice patience and positivity to ring in the New Year!

Happy Holidays All!

Cheers,

K

Training

Rest and a run to take me out of my funk

Kalyn

Like so many others after the New Year, I started 2017 with a crazy amount of motivation to train. I had signed up for my first half Iron and started working with a coach for training for the first time.

I trained every day, rarely missing a workout. My “tempo” run pace quickly dropped from around 8:30 min/mile to 7:30 min/mile. I bought a new Trek Speed Concept (not a bad whip for a bad a newbie) and a power meter and watched my watts increase. My first race of the year (despite racing like a complete idiot) I took 3rd overall for women and won my age group at the HITS Hudson Valley Olympic.

That was July.

Then life happened.

Luckily most were good life-things but still life-things that needed to be prioritized, often times over training. (1) I was promoted at work, (2) we adopted a puppy (she’s the best), (3) my only sister got married, etc.

 

Some were bad life-things. I had two bad bike crashes in one month, the second ending with a broken hand just two weeks out from the 70.3 I’d been training for all year.

All that is to say that somewhere along the line, I forgot that I do this shit for fun. Training became a stressor instead of stress reliever: another obligatory responsibility that I’d grown to resent.

So, after my last race I took about 6 weeks off from “training”. I worked out when I felt like it, and I didn’t beat myself up when I didn’t. I gained a few pounds and didn’t sweat it. I mostly just focused on letting myself heal.

This week I started back up again. With a new coach from QT2, who I love, my training theme for the next few months is durability. I’m keeping my training effort very aerobic to work explicitly on building endurance (as a former college sprinter, my slow-twitch fibers are the ones that need the most work).

All of this is to say that I am doing a lot workouts at lower effort.  Lots of Zone 1 runs and rides, lots of swims where I’m not caring about the pace at all and just focusing on technique.

And you know what? It’s been awesome. This weekend I went out for a 90 minute easy trail run and genuinely enjoyed every minute of it. Loving that run took me out of my funk. I’m not sure I can remember the last time I found myself smiling during a “work out”. I’m pumped to do speed work again. Waking up at 5:45 to get on the trainer isn’t my favorite but I’m doing it and do not feel like I’m acquiring massive sleep debt along the way.

Ironman Lake Placid is 9 months away. My prep race for it is Ironman 70.3 Raleigh in June. I have plenty of time to stress about training as race day grows nearer… but it’s too early in the journey to sweat the small stuff. For now, I’m just pumped to be excited to train again.

A bunch of girlfriends out on the trails
Me and Evie

P.S. Easier pace runs means more runs with Evie – so she is very happy too. 🙂

Unsolicited Advice

Year 1 as a Tri-Newbie: Lessons Learned

Kalyn

I did my first triathlon September 2016. It was an Olympic distance in upstate New York in the town I grew up in. Aside from a decent level of general fitness, I was totally unprepared. I mix-matched borrowed apparel and made every newbie mistake under the sun. I looked like a huge nerd but smiled through every minute of that first race. From then on, I was hooked. In my first year of racing, (with help from my coach) I dropped half an hour off my Olympic time from that first race, completed my first 70.3 and even picked up a few podium finishes along the way.

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My first triathlon. Almost everything I’m wearing is borrowed.

I’m still far (far, far, far) from being an expert—But I did learn a bunch this year…mostly through making a ton of mistakes. Here are some lessons learned from one tri-newbie to the next.

 

Training Lessons

    • Buy a heart rate monitor and know your zones. Prior to starting triathlon, my “normal” run pace was at my threshold HR range and I was doing that pace for 95% of my runs! Training with heart rate helped me shave over 5 minutes from my 10K time and avoid injuries from over training. Heart rate monitors are relatively inexpensive (comparatively, for the sport that’s annoyingly expensive) and probably the best bang for your buck in terms of training value.
    • Practice swimming even if you hate it. True, swimming is “the shortest leg of the race” but that’s actually a pretty silly excuse to not try to get better at it. Swim workouts used to make my skin crawl so I procrastinated the crap out of them. When I stopped being a baby and started putting in the time, my form and pace started to improve and the entire experience became less terrible.
    • Learn to love your bike trainer. Yes, riding outside is more way fun but the trainer is so much more efficient if you only have an hour or two to train. You can consistently hit heart rate or power targets without having to worry about traffic, stoplights, weather, etc. It can be a little rough at first but movies, playlists and fun cycling apps make trainer rides way more enjoyable, so does having a good bike fit. Which reminds me…
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I rode “in aero” 90% of this race. Bike fits matter.
  • Get a good bike fit. Especially if you’re on a tri bike! Riding “in aero” has a very different feel than a regular road bike. And no matter what bike you’re on, you’re going to be putting some serious hours on it so you want to be as comfortable as possible. I was lucky enough to get a really great bike fit using the Retül fit technology at Patriot Multisport in upstate New York. In my inexpert opinion, a good bike fit falls into the “not cheap but necessary” category.
  • Bike maintenance matters. Learn how to do the fundamentals: change a tube; clean your chain; etc. For minor adjustments, get an Allen wrench set and watch some YouTube videos. It may be a little intimidating at first, but knowing how to do the basic stuff goes a long way. Also, you should clean your bike and all of its components pretty often. This may seems obvious but I neglected to do so most of the winter on my new fancy tri bike and ended up with a stuck brake on my first outdoor ride of the season. (Did I mentioned I sweat a lot? Like… kind of a freaky amount). Clean that shit off!
  • Don’t forget chamois cream. Enough said. Especially on the long rides.
  • Remember you’re not a pro. This is was tough lesson to learn. There are days I would be super pumped to train but just couldn’t swing it between other responsibilities (work, family, etc.). It’s okay to want to be a badass triathlete that competes to the best of your abilities… and also has a life outside of triathlon.

Race day lessons 

  • Make a pack list and check it twice. Go through each discipline and transition to cross of what you’ll need. Don’t forget the little things like sunscreen and hair ties. *Two* races in a row I forgot my race belt, which wasn’t a huge deal but did cost me an extra minute or two pinning on my bib and added stress I didn’t need.
  • Be prepared for any weather. As the saying goes, “hope for the best but prepare for the worse”. My race at the end of this summer was 47 degree and pouring rain. I froze my spandex-covered ass off on the bike when I opted to wear just my race kit. Better to pack layers and not need them then not have them at all.
  • Know that the swim might be a little crazy. Until you’ve experienced it, there’s no real way to prepare for the chaos of the race swim. Particularly with mass starts, the crazy amount bodies in the water, kicking and splashing around you, can definitely be overwhelming. Unless you’re a super strong swimmer, it’s probably not a terrible idea to stick closer to the back or outside of the pack for your first few races.
  • Swimming straight is better than swimming fast. In my first race of the year I swam a great pace (for me) but swam an extra 500 yards, which tacked an extra 8-10 minutes onto my swim time. Practice sighting and, especially during the chaos of a race, be prepare to sight more frequently if you need to.
  • Practice transition. My T1 in my first race was laughably horrible. I couldn’t get my wetsuit off; I forgot to untie my shoes ahead of time (I use no-tie laces now); I couldn’t find my sunglasses; I left my bike in too high of a gear to get moving. It was just ugly. Practice ahead of time so you can layout your transition area the way you need before the race starts.
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Thumbs up for running….at the start of the run.
  • Pacing is a real thing: Respect it. Two races in a row (nope, didn’t learn the first time) I took off at my normal 10K race pace, not respecting the fact that I’ve ridden my bike 25-56 miles already. The results? A really miserable second-half of the run. Be smarter than me and hopefully you won’t hate yourself with just a few miles to go.
  • Have fun. I know, I know! This is the most cliché… but it’s legitimate advice! As many coaches say, the race is just the celebration of the work you’ve put in until that point. Take it all in. Give high fives when offered. Smile. Drink the beer afterwards. You’ve earned this celebration!

 

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Always have the beer after the race.

In addition to complete my first full Ironman, my main goal for 2018 is to have as much fun in every race as I did in my very first one.  Be serious but not too serious. Drink beer after every race (okay, fine… I should choose a more ambitious goal.)

…to be continued…

For more experienced triathletes, do you remember your rookie season? What classic mistakes from your first season of racing did I miss?