glevinso Member

I realize I recommended aluminum as a fine choice above, but I don't ride aluminum myself. Race bike is 100% carbon front to back including full carbon clincher wheels and cockpit. Road bike is also a full carbon frame. But that can be prohibitively expensive and there isn't a reason to back off of an aluminum frame…

Carbon is wonderful if you are willing to spend the money, but aluminum makes a perfectly fine material for a bike frame.

Depending on how seriously you are training, and what volume you are pushing, you might find you have to do some pretty funny things to maintain your weight. Right now I keep a jar of peanut butter on my night stand and sometimes need to grab some at 2am. I eat everything in sight. I eat pretty much constantly. I eat…

With an in-water wave start you can seed yourself wherever you like. So if you feel you are slower, just wade into the water with the group and line up near the back. Personally I recommend lining up not at the back of the group, but just off to the side. It is a little less crazy off to the side, and you don't end up…

Both bike and run courses look "mostly flat". You will have a couple of mild rises on both courses, but nothing I would consider a real hill. In-water start means everyone crosses a timing mat to indicate you actually did start the race, but then everyone treads water for a few moments and then your time starts when the…

Not sure where you are weight wise and what you are trying to do there, but the book Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald has a lot of good information on this subject. I tend to disagree with his exact diet plans, but his information is good.

I am going to disagree here. Most of the time when someone reccos not jumping straight to a half iron, it is because the person asking the question is coming off the couch. With a full marathon under the OP's belt I would say the half iron is certainly doable. Personally I feel that a full marathon, despite being shorter,…

I've seen this as well. The recommendation, I believe, is that you go out and run a race that will take you "about an hour". If that's 10k, great. If that's 15k, that's also great. An elite few will need to go run a half marathon to get that hour. The point of it being a "race" is that you want it to be a maximum effort…

Now you are speaking my language! Training Peaks will record "rTSS" calculated off your threshold run pace. Assuming that t-pace is accurately set, then you will get similar TSS metrics to your bike. If your bike and run thresholds are correctly set, yes they are additive and cumulative. I also have Training Peaks…

And this. The very same concept applies to cycling (more accurately measured by a power meter vs HR though)

You probably only recently got the watch? It takes time, and some significant efforts, to actually narrow down what your real threshold pace is. Generally you can best measure it with a 10k run done for as best a time as you can manage. Now as to why this is useful, the training software can then compare every run you do…

Well I guess it depends on your definition of "brick". To me that means a "real" run workout of significant distance off the bike. Like 6 miles. It isn't uncommon for me to run off a long bike and go for 25 minutes, covering 3.5-4 miles in that time but I still call that a transition run.

Fixed :) Actually you can extend that to "bricks are never necessary". Quick transition run off a long bike is valuable, but there is no value in doing an actual "brick" workout.

TrainerRoad and the Sufferfest are the absolute best way to make yourself a total beast on the bike. Not a huge cash outlay either for a decent trainer, a speed/cadence sensor to add to your bike, and a subscription to TR and/or the Sufferfest app.

With cycling it is different than running. Most people back off their marathon long run pace a bit to avoid beating themselves up in training. Many people train cycling the other way, doing quite a bit of faster work even with the long rides, especially for the longer distance races. You don't get "beat up" by your bike…

I am impressed they have a full distance option. Not many "small" races do that, especially in conjunction with the other events going on. I can only imagine the handful of people taking the full option are going to have a VERY lonely day.

Regarding nutrition: For shorter races I don't do much in the way of fueling. Sprints are usually just a caffeinated gel before the start and some water on the bike. Olympic I go with just a caffeinated gel before the start, and maybe one gel as I leave T2. But a half-iron is long enough that you need to take actual…

My bike shop bills itself as a cycling and multisport shop. They don't sell running shoes, but they do have tri bikes, wetsuits and tri suits. I am guessing your best bet is to look around at the local bike shops and see if they also have tri gear.

For a while I was tracking calories, not to lose weight, but to understand my metabolic rates better, exercise expenditure (because I don't necessarily believe what my Garmin tells me I burned), and try to figure out how to balance it. MFP was a huge help there. I stopped tracking that long ago but I still pop into the…

Short course tri shouldn't make you *SO* hungry you need to overeat to refuel. Unless you are training to win, in which case the intensity is pretty high. The amount of training you do for short course is right around that "reasonable" level of exercise. I hear about people gaining weight training for full Ironman races…

I don't know anybody that doesn't feel like death in the last 3-4 miles of a marathon no matter how experienced they are. Even in my absolute best marathon ever (3:04:14), I started falling apart due to all kinds of cramps in random places (My calves, sure, but why my neck? WTF?) over those last 4 miles. It never hurts to…

You went sub-4:00 in your first marathon? You will be totally fine at a half-iron race coming in mid-pack or better :)

It depends on the race. Average times are hard to tease out. For a Half Iron race, the typical cutoffs are something like 1:10 for the swim, 5hrs for the bike, and usually something like 4hrs on the run. At some point they close the course and bring you back in a van if you can't make the cutoffs. Assuming a flat-ish…

This is impossible to answer. What are your goals for race day? My idea of a "good time" and anyone else's is going to be drastically different. It is all dependent on what you are aiming for. Do you want to win the race? Win your age group? Come in the top 50% of your age group? Just finish? Just not be last?

For what it's worth I don't really taper much for any big race. I have a full Ironman coming up in 2 weeks and I am not going to start actually anything resembling a taper until half way through next week. In other words, at most I get 9 days of "easy" ahead of a full Ironman. Unlike a marathon where you are running…

winning

Seems somewhat reasonable. Fairly swim heavy, but that isn't a bad thing at all. I see no benefit to those 60 minute "walks" in there however. Not sure what the point of that is. I definitely recommend getting at least one shorter race in like the sprint tri you mentioned. It really helps to learn how to transition in a…

A marathon is a 26.2 mile run. Not sure what you mean by "sprint marathon".

I figured this was going to be about techniques for doing it while running during a race you are trying to win...

20 weeks? To just complete? Sure I think you can pull it off considering you have the fitness base of a full marathon under your belt. Have you swam in open water before? It is not really anything like swimming in a pool going back and forth staring at a black line. Definitely work on the bike though. The road bike is a…