November OS - Post OS Check-in
So, it’s been a month since most of us completed the November OS. If you haven’t raced yet, that time of year will soon be approaching! I want to hear how you all are doing and what you will be doing (because I’m nosy and I miss the frequent posts)! What have you been up to? How has your training been going since then? Do you feel you are in a better place right now than you were at this point last year? What are race/training plans for the rest of the year? Anything else you want to share?
I hope all of you are all recovered, absorbed some new found fitness and are on your way to getting faster and stronger. Best wishes for a safe, successful and fast race season!
I hope all of you are all recovered, absorbed some new found fitness and are on your way to getting faster and stronger. Best wishes for a safe, successful and fast race season!
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As for me, I started swim camp right out of OS, and am now in week 4 of get faster. Right out of OS, I was a little fatigued, and maybe more so than that just working through getting in the groove of training with EN for the first time. Right now though, I am feeling great! I really love being back in the pool and feel like it helps me keep things interesting. I look forward to my workouts, have seen pretty significant gains across all three disciplines and I am really looking forward to racing!
I'm doing a 70.3 in Minnesota in June and then IMWI in the fall. I'm keeping my eye out for some smaller races in May as a good chance to test out all this work I've been doing. I'm also trying to plan a couple weekend trips to go spectate other races - maybe CDA or Texas, for inspiration.
Great thread Doug!! I felt really good after the OS with a half marathon PR and an indoor FTP of 260 vs 2014 indoor 229 FTP at end of OS. I am currently in week 15 of FL 70.3 HIM training. Set another half marathon PR 2 weeks ago, bike FTP is currently at 266 on the trainer. Swim fitness is coming along, although my times are not where they were last year. I did take off from swimming from August to late January with an occasional swim in there, so that is probably where I lost some speed. But I am making up for it elsewhere. I feel I have taken the year 2 EN leap in my training, hopefully this will be reflected in race times.
Don, congrats on the weight loss. Thats great and must feel good on the bike and run.
Good luck to everyone!
I started with week#12 of the ShourtCourse plan after swim camp. Things are going well so far and I transitioned my Saturdays indoor rides to outdoor rides. With that said I noticed two things.
1. My bike cadence is at a all time low (about 80 ish). I feel like my legs are not spinning fast enough. Is that mainly due to the fact that i was riding indoors? I'v never ridden indoors for 3 months at a stretch before.
2. I also having difficulty maintaining my watts like i used to do on the trainer. I've gotten used to the technique of maintaining watts indoors and the same technique is not working outdoors mainly due to rolling terrain etc. I guess i need to practice on that.
With regard to the swim, I didn't feel that I had slowed down much at all considering that I hadn't been in the pool for 4 months. I've been swimming three times a week with Masters instead of the swim workout that is prescribed and that's mainly to keep me motivated and have some company during swimming. I may be putting more yards than what is prescribed in the short course plan but i think it's worth it for me because there is a coach on the deck and i get feedback on my swimming technique from the coach quite often. I have two short course races coming up (April 19 and June 28) and IMLT in September. Depending on how I'm progressing on my swimming, I may stick with Masters until I finish my short course races and then do the long distance sets for IM swim on my own. Still undecided on that.
Right now I feel energized and strong and cant wait to do my first race coz I damn well know it's going to be a PR!
Good luck to all you guys!!!
@Lindsay, glad you've recovered and seen improvement across the board! It's definitely a cool feeling to be at a race seeing some of our teammates racing. IMWI is my favorite race. You will definitely have a ton of support from EN there and have a great experience.
@Jan, Holy!!! 37 watts in 1 year is HUGE! I saw your PR on Strava a couple weeks ago. You are primed for a great year of racing!
@Reid, glad to hear that you are bouncing back after the OS! Ahead of your fitness from last year has to be a big confidence booster. Have faith in the plans and keep following them and you will be well prepared for CHOO and IMMT!
@Amulya, I love that feeling when you know your fitness is stronger and you know you have a PR coming! My RPE on the 1 bike ride a week was higher as well. I think it was a combination of residual fatigue and what you said, the fact we were only riding once a week. At this point I have settled back into what seems to be the appropriate RPE.
I don't pay much attention to cadence indoor or outdoor except I don't want to be in the low 70's and I don't like high 90's for any length of time. I actually notice the opposite when I go outside, my cadence drifts upwards a little bit. People's opinions on cadence are all over the place. My personal opinion is that if you are hitting your power numbers and you aren't at the extreme ends of the high/low cadence spectrum you're probably fine.
And yes, it is a little more challenging to ride steady outside on rolling terrain. The more you do it the better you will become at it. Eventually, you will get to know your zones real well that you will know what Z2, Z3, Z4, etc. feels like and you won't need to look at your computer as much and will adjust more quickly on the fly.
Thanks again Doug for leading us and helping us stay motivated. My NOS went well. I stayed injury free and improved in all 3 sports. Tonight I raised my FTP to 276w. I was 257w in mid-Sept and 263w at the end of Jan. 5K Run test for me tomorrow and Big Protocol on Saturday. Take care and be safe to all.
@Don, Thanks for that link. I think it's an interesting article. Now I don't feel too bad about my cadence.
thanks Doug for starting this. It's great to see everyone's posts and accomplishments.
If your were following along with my posts in NOS you'll remember a lot of it wasn't good. However I did learn a lot this NOS and I'm using that now that I'm in the Get Faster plan. I too just did the recommended workouts during swim camp. My swim test was just a little slower than my fastest last year so that was a good starting point. I did add weights during swim camp and it feels good to be doing that again. Yes, the bikes felt like they were a higher RPE.
I did a FTP test at the beginning of the get faster block since I blew my end of NOS test. I ended up at the same place that I was at the middle of NOS which is about 3% lower than I was at the end of last year's NOS. However, the bike rides the last couple of weeks have been hard but very manageable. If things keep going this way I should be able to get back to the level I was at last year. I mentioned that I learned a lot during the NOS and one thing was to watch recovery well. I am now drinking chocolate milk with BCAA after every intense workout. I've also been paying more attention to the warmups and how my body is reacting. If it's not feeling like it's going to happen I change the workout right then instead of starting the prescribed workout and then regretting it later. This has only happened about once per week in the first three weeks, but it makes the other workouts go even better. I've started tracking my calories as well. I didn't worry about it during the NOS and I gained a couple of pounds. I'm only 7 pounds over my previous best race weight so I'm not too concerned about it. I've set a goal of losing 0.5 pounds a week. If I keep that up I'll have lost 10 pounds by my first A race which is IM Victoria 70.3. that will be 3-4 pounds lower than what I've raced at before.
My wife and I have a week vacation planned for the end of March and we're going to Walla Wallla, WA to ride bikes and relax (it is wine country after all). We'll do a big bike week that week and then we'll both drop into the HIM plan to get ready for Victoria. (She's doing the JOS now.) After Victoria we'll kick back for a week and then drop into the IM plan to get ready for Challenge Penticton. I haven't done that race before so it should be fun. They changed the run course this year and taken out the rolling hills in the middle. It should be a little faster that way.
PS, I'm also working on consistency for this year. So the theme's I'm working on are consistency and recovery. If I nail that the results should follow.
The big thing I have done is to work with a chiropractor on my constantly twitching calf muscles and the migraines I often get after longer bike rides. This has really helped. Getting treatment and massages twice a week. It has been eye opening how tight my muscles are in my IT bands, hamstrings and calves. So I have been doing a lot more and more intense stretching and foam roller. Working with the chiropractor and his assistant has taught be quite a bit on how to tackle these issues. The net is my performance in training on the bike and run seems substantially improved already, though there still is a lot of scar tissue and tightness. I am convinced that if I can get my legs into better condition combined with the EN training I will see some big gains this year in how I enjoy my training and racing and in the results.
In other news, I did not get picked in today's NYC Marathon lottery. That's a bit of a disappointment, but it also gives me the chance to look for other fall races.
I also moved from the NOS to 2 week swim camp, but I actually didn't enjoy it as much as some of you - I feel like almost any time I take my foot off the gas (especially for my bike), I lose fitness. I'll have to keep this in mind next year. Between swim camp, some dicey weather in the northeast and some technical issues I've had with my powermeter/trainer, I don't think I am where I was exiting the OS on my bike or run. I've been trying to move past this stuff and build it back since I don't think it's as bad as I some times let myself believe. I've been struggling with the longer FTP intervals and some of the Z4 run work too in the GF plan (I'm in week 3). On a positive note, after a couple of weeks in the pool, I seem to be making good progress in my swim and I forgot how much the swimming helps my recoveries from tough bike and run sessions.
For some reason, I've struggled this year with body comp more than the last couple of years. In prior years, I've put on some weight after my A race and then taken it off fairly easy during the OS. Last year I raced super lean at 160lbs, and packed on 15 lbs after IMLP. I'm still in the 175lb area and I would normally be about 165-168 at this time of year. I know I'm not doing less work, so I guess diet is the x-factor. Maybe I'll download the app that Don mentioned and that'll help in holding myself more accountable. I don't feel the extra weight indoors on the bike, but certainly do on my run!
For now, After some advice from Coach P, I've broken down the bike intervals in pieces so that I can get it all in at the higher numbers. I've also decided to stretch my weekend runs out a bit going longer than the prescribed 60mins. After doing the long training last year, I've found that it really takes me 5-6 miles for my body to warm up and feel good on my runs. At the end of March, I'll be moving to the HIM plan leading up Quassy and then roll into the IM plan until IMMT.