Summer 2014 Triathletes.....in here!

[pootlebug]

I've seen a few comments about people planning triathlons for this summer, and I can't find a general triathlon thread (if there is one, can someone point me in the direction of it, pretty please!).

Thought it might be good to have a thread for general chat/tips/encouragement etc. I'm sure there are some seasoned triathletes as well as others new to it.

I did some sprint distances nearly 10 years ago, pre-kids. I was always limited by my crappy swimming though, so never anything with more than a 400m swim. But then I did an amazing swimming course in October, not planning any more babies, and youngest has started (mostly) sleeping.....so wanted a fitness goal for this year. I've signed up for a 750/20/5 sprint in May, an Olympic distance in June, and the London Triathlon olympic distance in August. Currently have no problem swimming a couple of km, but need a lot more work on the bike and run!

Come on in and introduce yourself, tell us your plans, etc.....

Well done Pootle! A top 10 finish can't be bad

Am massively proud of dh today - his first timed cycle event (and only his third group ride ever) and he did 55 miles at 16.3mph to come 42nd out of 130, and they all looked like serious club cyclists in front of him. People didn't like being overtaken by a fat bloke apparently

Wow, well done Mr Dibbler! If he keeps this up he won't be a fat bloke overtaking them all though....

Well done Pootle, that's a fantastic result, and well done CMOT DH too, fab as he's not been cycling long (iirc).

I've been achy and lazy today, not sure if that's due to the fall or the tri - most probably a combination of the two. Nice slow run tmw evening to get back on it.

hello triathletes!

pootlebug pointed me in your direction. I've signed up for my first ever trim, a Sprint in October - in America so distances are done in miles still so it's 0.4miles ocean swim, 12 miles cycling and 3miles running (roughly 700m/20km/5km I think?)

I'm a distance/endurance road cyclist normally, I do long weekend rides of 50miles upwards usually as training for a yearly 545mile ride from San Francisco to LA but as it takes up a lot of time I'm trying my hand at triathlons instead...seeing as I managed to go from just a commuter cyclist on a hybrid to a half decent endurance cyclist after moving from London to LA!

I reckon I could just about manage the sprint now but I'd be slow and it would be painful and horrible - I'd love to build up to an Olympic next year, a friend of mine is a runner so we're aiming to do a destination tri together.

Had some great advice already from CMOT and pootlebug so looking to start an accelerated C25K program to work out what my pace is (and learnt to love running, currently I find it incredibly boring unless it's trail running), go take some swimming technique classes at my gym (that I never use normally), joined a Meet Up Group for Ocean Swimmers, and have joined a Women's Crit Cycling Team to try to move my cycling from distance to speed...but I have two preschoolers so making time for all this will take some dedication!

Any advice massively appreciate but I'll prob just keep rereading the thread in utter awe and not a little bit of terror

You'll certainly have your choice of beautiful tris being in LA ATB.
Could you borrow/buy on ebay or Craigslist a jogging buggy so you could run with the children?

A question - tell me about wetsuits! I'm about to press enter on the tri at Dorney in late August, and it may still be wetsuit temp I guess. So what should I buy? I'm 5'9 and size 10-12.

actually I hadn't thought about that - DS starts school in a few weeks and DD is all set to start preschool but not til midseptember, I could def try to get a craigslist jogging buggy in the meantime. Ours is a City Mini which would be just about ok if it weren't for the horrendous pavements here.

DS is pretty good on his bike though so I could take him out for a ride and run alongside him on the afternoons he finishes early and DD is still in preschool

A friend told me to go to shops that sell wetsuits, they'll often let you trial them for free or a small fee to decide on size and type before you buy

CMOTD - you'd get away without a wetsuit at Dorney if you wanted to. When I raced there two weeks ago they were optional (I'd say about 2/3 - 3/4 wore them, the rest didn't). A wetsuit will help you swim faster as it makes you more buoyant, but it might be worth sussing out how easy it is for you to get out of it given your mobility issues. Are you allowed someone to help you in transition?

It might also depend on the length of the swim. For 400m I wore a wetsuit but it was a close call - the time gained and the time taken to remove it aren't that far apart. I decided it was worth it as it would help me be towards the front of the swim pack and hopefully out of the flailing arms and legs a bit. For an end-of-August swim my reasons for wearing it would be speed-related rather than coldness-related, iyswim.

Are you near anywhere you can try some on? That said, I didn't.... I got a bargain one from hireawetsuit.co.uk where they sell ex-hire suits (though mine was actually brand new and hadn't been hired out), took a chance on the sizing based on size charts and it fits pretty well. I think if I keep exercising and lose a bit more weight I could potentially go down a size though, so I'll be keeping my eyes out in the end of season sales.

The swim is 750m. Not bothered about speed really (since for obvious reasons my swim is slow), and getting a wetsuit off would be very difficult for me. There is a specific para wave, so I might be allowed help, and there should be fairly small numbers so less flailing.

I can go and try some on, but don't want to spend out if I can get away with it - I want need to buy a road bike as a priority

ATB - if you have cycle paths or wide sidewalks, then running with a cycling/scooting child is quite fun. Mine being older has a tendency to coach though

In that case CMOTD I'd prioritise the road bike! It sounds as though the wetsuit would be a lot of faff and wouldn't save you any time. It might be a necessary purchase at some point if you keep doing tri, as any early-season races would be much colder, but for a late-season race the water should be well into the 20s.

Just check your race is BTF rules rather than wetsuit-obligatory - I think all the Dorney races are, but haven't checked properly. Some races like the London Tri are wetsuit-obligatory for insurance reasons.

What have you got your eye on bike-wise?

I've decided on a cyclocross bike (will put thinner slick tyres on for racing) as the disc brakes and double brake levers will make things a lot easier for me. Probably the Boardman cx team or the Giant revolt 1.

That makes a lot of sense. Which is your injured arm?

Left - so front chain ring doesn't get changed. My local bike shop will connect both brakes to the right levers for me

That sounds like it will work well. I only rarely change the front chain ring - I've never had to move off the big one in a race, even the pretty hilly race I did.

Bikes look good although i confess to knowing pretty much naff all about cyclocross bikes.

5 days to go til my last (?) race of the season. Not feeling properly prepared due to a 5 day camping holiday last week and too much time with DH away where I've really struggled to fit in my normal level of training. Add in some muscle ache from carrying way too much firewood whilst camping and I'm not really feeling race-ready. Oh well, it will be what it will be I guess.

London tri tomorrow. Oh holy crap just discovered there are 436 people in my swim wave.

436? Good luck Pootlebug, not that you need it I'm sure

Insane isn't it? My, I am going to get kicked a lot.

it would be good practice for Ironman 70.3 Staffordshire next June....

Finally got round to going for a run so I suppose training has officially commenced. Only did 2miles as I'm trying to learn what a good starting pace is for me and did the whole lot without stopping, which is a first - normally I go too fast and have to then alternate walking and running.

Aiming to add roughly half a mile every day this week so should be up to 4end of the week and spend next week building to 5 (although every morning will be stretching it as school starts and we need to leave the house at 7:45) then working on get in faster. Vague plan at least

That sounds a good plan, ATB. If you feel like you might need to walk some of it, it's best to do a planned walk earlier rather than end up walking loads at the end, iyswim? So better to run 2 miles, walk 2 mins, run 2 more miles, than to run 3 miles, walk 1 min, run half a mile, walk 1 min etc, run the extra half mile.

They split my swim wave in half in the end due to numbers. I still had a crap swim - I only really have one speed (or two, if you include 'too-fast-so-I-can't-breathe-and-it-all-goes-wrong). Most people go off faster then ease off. So I ended up stuck behind all the people who went off faster than me but then were going slower through the majority of the race. Going around people etc was awkward. Combine that with leaky goggles at the start and I was a good couple of minutes off where I should be for swim time. Reasonable bike and run though, and a top 10% of females finish, which was what I was aiming for.

Day off today, then into my half marathon training plan tomorrow....

CMOTD - did you enter the Dorney Tri?

Don't ramp up the running miles too fast ATB - tempting as your cardiovascular fitness is great, but your legs aren't used to the impact so injury risk is higher if you up it too fast.

Pootle, top 10% finish is still brill, though I'm sure the swim was really annoying.

I haven't pressed enter for Dorney yet as have to pull up my big girl pants and stop worrying about it being open water. Have similarly had a word with myself on the bike front after riding some yesterday (at a bike shop who were somewhat confused at me) and realising that a cx will annoy me as heavy and relatively slow compared to a proper road bike. And I can ride a road bike (nicked DHs on Saturday), and I'll still have the hybrid for trails etc.
DH has offered to get it on the cycle to work scheme, and we've bought tickets for the NEC bike show and signed up for the road bike test track so I can try lots. It also has an accesible cycling area so I can go and moan about the lack of information on getting back to cycling

Have entered Dorney so committed to it!

Yay for entering the Dorney tri, CMOTD! When is it? Is there a lake near you where you can practice open water swimming? It is pretty different to swimming in a pool - the inability to see the bottom and the lack of direction markings are slightly odd to get used to. The mass swim start doesn't help so if you've had chance to at least practice everything but the crowd in advance it can feel much easier.

It sounds as though a Cyclocross bike will forever annoy you for not being a road bike. FWIW I very much cycle right handed - I very very rarely change the left shifter as I find it such a pain going through enough gears to end up where you want to be. So if I do a flat-ish race I stick it on the big one, if I do a hilly countryside ride I stick it on the small one and leave it there. I also rarely use the left brake as I think I've just got into the habit of always using the right one.

23rd August, so not long at all. There is open water available near me, but not sure that I have time to go there, and also no 'turn up and swim'.
Good news is that there is a separate para wave, so won't be many people starting with me.

To say I'm bricking it might be an underestimation though!

If you can't make an open water session practice sighting in the pool. You need to look up every 6-9 strokes or so. I find it easiest to do inbetween breaths, not at the same time as breathing. I look during the 2nd stroke and breathe during the 3rd iyswim. You just need 'crocodile eyes' above the surface of the water. If you stick a bright coloured drink bottle at the end of your lane it will give you something to look for.

If you can face it, swimming with really steamed up goggles gives you more of a sense of not being able to see! Although obviously that means you still can't see when you look up either, whereas it's just in the water that's the issue in open water.

Try not to worry that the bloody buoy never seems to get any closer! My swim on Sunday was a 1-lap 1500m course that was a long rectangle....the long sides seemed to take forever, and I normally swim in a 50m pool.

Got the race details yesterday, so it feels rather real. Interesting to find out theres no upper water temp for wetsuits in paratri, and I can have a 'handler' in transition. Flapping whether to get a wetsuit or not, when dh pointed out we could just go to a tri shop and buy one the week before, practical git that he is.

How is the training going?

it might be worth going to try wetsuits sooner rather than later. partly because it takes a bit of time to get used to swimming in one....the first time I tried I found it really hard work, but after a few times I'd got over the fact it feels slightly harder work on the arms because of the extra fabric because of the buoyancy and speed it gives. but it did take a few swims to get to that point.
also it's not the easiest thing to put on, especially as if it's not put on well and pulled right up properly it is very hard to swim in and you lose a lot of the advantages of wetsuit wearing, so it's probably worth sussing out how easy that is to achieve with your injured arm.