OK…I’ll admit that I’m not the sharpest tack in the room, but this has me befuddled:
“Swam an hour yesterday, not at “race pace”, just at a comfortable pace-total time=36 minutes.”
How do you swim an hour in 36 minutes?? 
Spot
She may have intended to mean 36 minutes for a 1.2 mile segment of her hour of swim training. But, yes, a bit confusing, at best.
-Robert
Sorry, I did swim an hour, but it took me 36 minutes of that to swim a mile.
The HIM is 1.2 miles. Add about 5 minutes to your swim time, girl.
Let’s not get too wrapped up in such minutiae, just have fun and stay fit. Good luck in your race.
-Robert
Hell, a 5:45 half iron isn’t too bad for your second race. My only advice is to work on your race nutrition plan. that cost me big time in my first half-iron. Good Luck and keep us posted.
Agree with Robert…my first HIM took me 6:16…second one was 6:05. I would be pretty happy with a 5:45. Just go out there and have fun.
Spot
If its a priority and you can afford it you may want to consider hiring a coach. They do the planning/thinking for you. It’s a coached job to get you the most effecient use of your training time. Make your workouts count…kj
My second ever tri was also a 1/2 IM. I was slow:
S: 41:07
T1: 4:36
B: 2:37:40
T2: 2:26
R: 2:46:26
Total: 6:12:15
Yes, you read that run split correctly. A couple of weeks ago I did my first race of the season, HalfMax in St. Louis. Absolutely BRUTAL day…wind, hills, heat. Andrea Fisher called it the hardest 1/2 run course in the country. I finished 30th overall with a time of 4:58:42.
Moral: You’ll get faster if you keep training! Have fun at your race! 5:45 is pretty damn good!
-Colin
Not to bust your ballon…but based on 18mph, 10min/mile, 1.2 mile swim plus a little more for open water, add a little transition and assume you can bike/run at same pace after swim/bike and you are more likely looking at 6:15…if nutrition is overlooked than closer to 7 hrs.
If I were you, I would start to do TT efforts in each of the disciplines at slightly above race pace. The training is great but the race is the prize and unless you start to pull your finger out in training, you will get to the finish line and be one of those people who poor on the excuses to your mates after you finish. If only I had a better bike, I would of finished quicker…yeh, no kidding.
I am not saying kill yourself in training and HIM efforts are only upper aerobic so your not punishing yourself. Just start to combine a few 5 mile efforts with recovery on your 3 hour ride and then run off the bike, not far, just develop your ability to run with loaded legs.
Most of all, HIM is about setting your own pace. You always run past a lot of people who go too hard too early.
Good luck
saw this today, might help a little…
If there’s one trait that distinguishes pros from recreational riders, it’s how they pace their training. Professional riders can go fast because when they train hard (or race), they go like lightning. But when they train slowly, they go very, very slowly.
Conversely, most recreational riders train at a moderate pace – fast enough to feel like they’re accomplishing something but not so hard that they’re suffering unduly. You’ll hear some coaches refer to this pace – about 80% of max heart rate – as “no-woman’s land.” Like the shell-pocked wasteland between dug-in armies during World War I, you don’t want to be there very often.
Why? Because no-woman’s land delivers a double whammy. It compromises recovery and improvement.
At a moderately brisk pace of around 80% of max heart rate, you’re not going slowly enough to recover. You need a pace around 65% of max to pump nutrient-rich blood to your leg muscles without stressing them further.
Unfortunately, when you’re languishing in no-woman’s land, you’re also not going fast enough to improve. That takes an intensity of about 90% of max.
When every ride is done at a medium pace, your results are bound to be mediocre.
I know what I gotta to do get faster, I just don’t know if I wanna do it. Somehow, I have to find a way to enjoy the higher exursion workouts. I need that carrot at the end of the stick. Right now I don’t have enough experience to believe I can get faster. I feel like even if I gut it out, put in the faster pace workouts, my performance won’t improve that much. I should say “what the hell” and go for it, but I haven’t. UGH!
Art, that is just about the best training advise I have seen in a while for people who take their racing seriously, I have been training this way for the last six months, every serious training day was going to hurt for at least an hour. The improvements have been incredible. Dropped 15-20 lbs and 15 minutes off of my GMR PR. I guess the question is how bad do you want it? Interesting enough it took an injury to piss me off enough to work that hard.
Your time may be longer than you think because you are doing 3 events one after the other. Your run may take the longest time. You may even walk a bit. I would suggest some speedwork on the run and training w/ a HR monitor, finding your LT,…
Great post! Now I need to buy an HRM…
Excellent info contained here!!! This is probably the biggest mistake we make in building to longer distances…we become so focused on covering the distance that we lose sight of working our bodies in a way that will let it adapt to the distance…
The “no-woman’s/man’ land” that is mentioned above is a place where mediocrity is cemented. And oftentimes long, brutal, boring races are the result. Coach Troy says that proper training is the result of breaking down our bodies and then latting it heal itself, REPEAT… For something like a 1/2, mix up your rides/runs. Make some short intense efforts and then some long efforts…on the long efforts make sure to keep the exertion/HR down in order to not drift into that area where you are taxing your Aerobic and anaerobic engines. On short workouts, get your anaerobic workout in but on your long workouts focus on staying aerobic…
The second biggest (or maybe tied for first) mistake is nutrition errors! Run out of fuel, electrolytes or water and all you training is going to waste…Practice now what you will use on race day…
My .02
Paul
“Somehow, I have to find a way to enjoy the higher exursion workouts”
Hi TriKitty,
I find it’s really hard to do a lot of this stuff on your own. If you can find a group or even a similar paced training partner to do intervals with, it helps a ton. I find it really really hard to watch my HRM or times or whatever and push myself to go fast enough that it really hurts but, put one of my buddies right on my heels or right in front of me and suddenly, I’m a heck of a lot more motivated . Great fun.
Cheers,
Miranda
I find it’s really hard to do a lot of this stuff on your own. If you can find a group or even a similar paced training partner to do intervals with, it helps a ton. I find it really really hard to watch my HRM or times or whatever and push myself to go fast enough that it really hurts but, put one of my buddies right on my heels or right in front of me and suddenly, I’m a heck of a lot more motivated . Great fun.
Bingo.
I went on a group ride yesterday with some hammer heads I know. Hard, hilly area, lots of turns, sharp climbing switchbacks, etc. I’ve never been so tired after a 2 hour ride in my life. Much easier to push hard and fight when you know you’ll have to hear it at the LBS, local Pub or what have you if you aren’t fighting like they are.
**Not sure if it is worth it to give up some of the pleasure I find in training for the pleasure I would find in achieving a faster time. **
5:45 is a pretty good time.
We need to keep this whole tri thing in perpective though. The world is most definitely not going to shift on its axis if you go 6:15 or 5:30. Either way you’ll have done fine. If you go 4:45 there will still be people faster than you. If you go 7:00 there will problably still be people behind you.
The only way to get faster is to work harder but that doesn’t mean you have to feel like you are not accomplishing something if you decide to keep it where you are at. If you like what you are doing, you can raise the bar a little in training if you want to but don’t get too worried about it.
PS – Here’s my tip from my one HIM – it ends with a 1/2 marathon but it is the SECOND half of a marathon, not the first. Respect the run.
I’ve heard this “never spend time in nomans land” thing alot. I’m by no means saying it’s wrong because I simply don’t know enough about physiology to say so, nor have enough expierance to say it does or doesn’t work. That being said “logicly”, or at least my logic, this simply doesn’t make sense.
“no mans land” defined as somewhere around 80’ish percent or wherever you decide to put it, doesn’t appear to be some “magic point”. The body doesn’t simply flip a switch and go from 100% one system to 100% another system. As far as I know other than some very serious sprinting workouts, your always using all of your fuel delivery and waste removal systems, just to varing degrees.
As far as “Not recovering”, to me it simply has nothing to do with percent of effort, but more to do with total volume. A person can certainly recover better by going out and doing a few 50yd 95% sprints than a 6hr 65% ride.
Also this "You need a pace around 65% of max to pump nutrient-rich blood to your leg muscles without stressing them further. " Simply doesn’t make sense to me. Of course I could be missing something but isn’t the blood that pumping in your veins the same at 50% or 100%. It would seem to me that sitting on the couch doing nothing delivers nutrient rich blood as well. Sure there may be a few differences such as Lactate, O2 levels etc etc but these “nutrients” gotta be there all the time or the tissue dies, no? What is added to the blood at 65%?
I also understand the idea that not spending alot of time in “no mans land” may not be the most effecient method of training as you’re not “concentrating” efforts on a particular system as you would be at a higher or lower level. However I simply don’t see this “no mans land” as some “black hole” of training that it’s made out to be.
Lastly “Professional riders can go fast because when they train hard (or race), they go like lightning. But when they train slowly, they go very, very slowly.” I think this is a result of the fact that ALL of their serious workouts are at a level that frankly is beyond most of us. I’ve heard the same from a collegiate swim coach. Hard days are all out or close to it, easy days easy. But he does not reccomend this type of workout for the novice swimmer, only those that have moved their “low end” up high enough that it is near their high end. For most of us this is not the case. Easy days are easy not because they are workouts but becasue they are purely recovery.
Again I’m “seeking to understand” as this “no mans land” doesn’t make any sense to me for the average person. Pro’s yes, however the rest of us would benefit if we simply increased the volume, even if it was a bit more in “no mans land”…in my uneducated humble opinion. Training all the time at any one level will result in not improving at others. I’m not saying training all the time in “no mans land” is a good thing, just saying that some time in “no mans land” wouldn’t seem to be all that bad.
~Matt