Calling all triathletes - current and former

Aztimm- Great article! That Guy - Wow! I'd hate to be a male racing you in a triathlon! With that great base, I bet you are an animal! Am I correct in thinking that you have done half-ironman and ironman distances? Any plans to do an ironman in the near future? Any folks out there use an online coach or a website to get training plans? If so, would love to get some suggestions. Any folks out there have any suggestions on HR monitors - brands, usage, etc.? P.S. That Guy - Am I allowed to do one-arm fly on those fly sets? Thanks Elise! Yes, I've done two half irons and two irons. I don't have anything planned for next year however. I don't do one-arm fly unless I'm doing stroke drills; those aren't stroke drill sets :)

Swimmers are not allowed to wear HR monitors. That is fully crossing over to the stupid tri gear side of life. Yeah, wearing a HR monitor in the pool is automatic fail. Somebody at my gym wears one though I haven't seen him there in a while. It's great - over and over again, he stops every 25-50 yards to slide the monitor up from his navel to his chest. :rofl:

Elisa, I often like doing fly in workouts -- if I happen to be training with people significantly slower than me, changing "free" to "fly" is the simplest way to make an easy interval/workout much more challenging. However, be a little wary of the effect on your shoulders. Some people's shoulders can't handle lots of butterfly volume. I would ease into it. Rather than one-arm fly, I would suggest alternating fly/free by 25s, or something similar. Chris

Elisa, I often like doing fly in workouts -- if I happen to be training with people significantly slower than me, changing "free" to "fly" is the simplest way to make an easy interval/workout much more challenging. However, be a little wary of the effect on your shoulders. Some people's shoulders can't handle lots of butterfly volume. I would ease into it. Rather than one-arm fly, I would suggest alternating fly/free by 25s, or something similar. Chris Thanks, Chris. I will try your suggestion. I am not quite the animal That Guy is!

There's a fantastic story in the latest issue of, "Popular Science," about Andy Potts, and his training for the olympics: www.popsci.com/.../making-olympian I thought it interesting how he and his coach are so fixated on training at a high heart rate and energy usage.

I have never been able to keep a HR monitor on while swimming (not to mention pushing off the wall). I've only tried it with Polar monitors, all failed miserably. Women can use the suit to keep it in place; for the men here who use them, what monitor do you use? My dad keeps his on some how and only wears bottoms when swimming. He has a Polar - 2 in fact. I'm so thankful he wears his.

Swimmers are not allowed to wear HR monitors. That is fully crossing over to the stupid tri gear side of life. I disagree - HR training can be very valuable to swimmers. They would be valuable on such things as threshold sets, or descend to x% sets. Heck, how about recovery days - if your HR goes above xxx, you're working too hard.

I disagree - HR training can be very valuable to swimmers. They would be valuable on such things as threshold sets, or descend to x% sets. Heck, how about recovery days - if your HR goes above xxx, you're working too hard. Turn in your USMS card, you are now banned! If you can't find your card, look in Stud's Euro Man Carry All purse. I figure he has a few of those given his recent love of the needlepoint.

Turn in your USMS card, you are now banned! Um --- some of us wouldn't be able to train for USMS competition if we did not monitor our HR while training. When your heart rate is too high, you can hear the watch beep at you, even underwater. I have used a Timex/Ironman and it worked pretty well until some water got into it somehow after 8 months of no problems. It is kind of cool to see what your average HR is over the entire workout and to see how many calories you have burned. When you see a total of 1000 calories burned, you feel o.k. about having dessert after dinner that night.

Um --- some of us wouldn't be able to train for USMS competition if we did not monitor our HR while training. Huh? That's nonsensical. It's not like you can't swim without one. A good friend told me he carries his HR monitor with him at all times, his index finger, the ability to count to six and then multiply by 10. Much cheaper. Enough of this tri junk, let's get back to swimming.