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What did I forget?

3 posts last week on tri gear and stuff. Seemed like a lot, but I have had some feedback that I definitely had some misses. So, here they are.

Friend “Stene” had some thoughts to share for swim related stuff:

  • Wet suit lube. Helpful for getting wetsuits on and avoiding rub related issues
  • Flip flops for pool side and locker rooms. And/or athlete’s foot cream…
  • Contact lens wearers are going to go through more disposables due to swimming
  • Pool access fees for those who travel and workout.

His wife brought up that the list is actually endless. LOL!

Kelli F. mentioned sunglasses. Can’t recall if I mentioned those or not, but my prescription Oakleys were definitely an expense (and I still struggle to read my watch when riding). She also mentioned buying socks to match shoes but that’s just crazy talk. Then she mentioned massages which was a huge miss on my part.

Did I forget to include headphones? I picked up some bone conduction headphones this year for runs and strength training and they are incredible. I know I forgot to include streaming video service(s) to have something to watch when doing the long indoor bike rides.

Leslie B. added swim analysis, bike fit, nutritionist, physical therapist. I am sure glad insurance helps with the PT! She also brought up recovery stuff like the hypervolt (omg I love this thing), foam rollers (ugh), squeezy boots (I have no experience here). Oh, and strength training equipment. Would you believe I bought a jump rope this weekend?

Coach Jenn brought up travel related expenses and bike luggage and baggage fees. I definitely missed those. In my limited experience I have been driving everywhere 😉

Mrs. AdultOnset is too busy laughing at me trying to make this list to offer more.

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Tri Gear – the Rest of it

Continued from Tri Gear Continued — Running and Biking.

Other Stuff

But wait, there’s more! And I bet I’m forgetting stuff too!

  • HRM – There are many options for tracking heart rate during workouts. The one built into my Garmin watch hasn’t been all that impressive in accuracy so I wear a chest strap style unit when running or riding or doing strength training. I had one for swimming but it tended to slide down my chest every time I kicked off the wall so that got retired.
  • *Watch – you aren’t a triathlete without a tri watch to measure all the things. I already had a nice Garmin Fenix3 watch that I really liked but I upgraded to a Fenix5x Plus this season. It is a bit bigger so easier for my eyes when on the bike AND, more importantly, has the ability to call for help if I abruptly stop moving (like, oh… say a bike crash). That was an important feature to me.
  • *TrainingPeaks.com subscription – coach does everything in TP.com and while I could remain at the free level I opted to pay a bit to get all the pretty lines and graphs. Do I know what they all mean? Not yet, but I’m getting there…
  • *Strava subscription – I have been using Strava for about 8 years now both free and paid. I opted for paid this year to get better power and HR data from my workouts. Not mandatory, but being a numbers geek it seemed like a good idea at the time.
  • Tri kits – What to wear when racing? I don’t really have a plan for this yet. I have a pair of tri shorts and shirt that I picked up on Amazon last year and used a few times. I will have some experimenting to do to see if this gear will work for longer courses. And then there’s the whole one-piece vs. two-piece debate that I just don’t want to think about yet.
  • *Gym bag – I upgraded to a larger backpack style gym bag that can hold the gear for 2 or 3 disciplines at a time.
  • *Race Fees – holy cow.
  • *Coaching fees – I definitely am seeing the value, but I won’t deny the costs gave me pause at first.
  • *Gym membership – maybe not mandatory for everyone, but this time of year I need my gym for treadmills and pool at a minimum. I can do some treadmill and weight routines at my apartment’s gym, but we definitely have more/better gear at the Life Time I go to (well, and the pool).
  • Nutrition – I’m months away from any events but I am already experimenting with gels and gummies and such to figure out what might work best on these long bike rides and runs. Definitely don’t want to try and figure it out on race day!
  • Chamois butter – I don’t really use this much outdoors, but when doing 3+ hours on a stationary bike I gotta say this is a life/butt saver.

What have I forgotten? 

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Tri Gear Continued – Running & Biking

Continued from Tri Gear. Egads. Stuff for Bike and Run.

Running

  • *Running shoes – plan on going through a few pair a year as volume increases. And don’t be cheap.
  • *Running hat – sweat management
  • Running shorts – I guess not critical, but sure a lot more comfortable than running in gym shorts.
  • (eventually) Hydration – some sort of bottles and/or belt system to carry water as training run distance increases

Biking

  • Road bike – training and races with serious climbing. Last year I used my beloved old Pinarello with reasonable success for training and racing.
  • *Tri bike – At my level this is pretty optional, but I stumbled into a sale and got all excited…
  • *[Tri] bike fit – You aren’t going to be happy — or fast — on your bike without a good fit
  • *Tri bike hydration – for now I just added a couple inexpensive carbon water bottle holders. Eventually I may incorporate something more aero/tri-focused
  • *Power meter – I bought a set of Garmin power pedals (the cheaper version with a meter just on one side) for use when training outside
  • *Smart Trainer – I went with a Garmin Tacx Flow smart trainer. Smart trainers are great for training with power inside.
  • *Axle Adapter – Have to spend extra money to get a bike with disc brakes mounted to a trainer.
  • *Trainer tire – Don’t want to burn down my outdoor tires on the trainer so swapped the rear tire to a purpose built trainer tire (very hard yet “grippy” to work better with the trainer’s rotating surface)
  • *Software subscription – Got the smart trainer, now you need something to push it. I purchased a Zwift subscription since it integrates so easily with TrainingPeaks.com for my coach’s bike workouts.
  • Helmet – mandatory and necessary. The cool kids are rocking various level of aero styles. I’m not quite there yet but maybe next year?
  • Bike shoes, clips, bike shorts, chamois cream, etc.

To Be Continued

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Tri Gear. Egads.

Money Bag

This is the series of posts in which I confess how naïve I was about the amount of equipment one might want (need?) to become a triathlete. And, related, how much you can spend doing this. Swim, bike, run, right? So I just need a bike, some shoes, and a swimsuit? Simple!

Ha.

I started this year with an agreed upon budget. Boy, that went fast.

The trick with this is that I love tools, toys, and gadgets so I’ve had some challenges reigning in my expenses — as Mrs. AdultOnset will no doubt agree.

To keep this brief and readable, I’ll break it up into a series of posts over the next few days.

Swimming

First you need a swimsuit. And not your comfy and baggy ol’ beach shorts style. Oh, and the smaller and tighter the suit is the more you’re paying for the privilege of that exposure it will give you [to the world]. yeesh…

What else? In no particular order (and a ‘*’ indicates I purchased this year):

  • Kick fins – useful for kick drills and some swim drills
  • Kick board – kick drills again. I always just borrow one from the pool where I swim
  • *Hand paddles – useful for pull drills to work on form
  • Goggles – Right now I have one brand/model I like that fits my big face and doesn’t leak. I need to find another that offers some tint for outdoor morning swimming though.
  • Buoy – something to clench between your legs when doing pull drills to help keep the legs afloat
  • Gear bag – necessary to carry all this stuff around
  • Wet suit – cold open water swimming is cold. So cold. My wetsuit is sleeveless to better accommodate my shoulders and ape-length arms. No rub rashes ever, but it does leave my arms exposed to that cold water.

    Late last season I picked up a pair of neoprene sleeves that I will experiment with this year. Trick is I don’t have the arms of the traditional 140 lb triathlete so the sleeves are a bit challenging to get on and off in any sort of timely fashion.

To Be Continued.

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Time Management

Time Management

I think my biggest challenge in hiring a coach and diving head first into training has been time management. There are a lot of workouts and typically more than one a day. And sometimes you really shouldn’t just stack ’em all up and do them back to back.

I am a bit blessed with my job — I work a lot of hours, but not necessarily all during traditional times and I generally have a lot of flexibility. Granted, sometimes that means I am doing server or network ops tasks at 9 or 10 at night… but there’s great balance on the whole.

My wife also has a demanding professional job. And together have fairly busy social schedules (sometimes) and we are building a house this year. Our kids aren’t home, but we usually have something going on with them as well. And that little granddaughter…! All that leads up to me having to be very diligent to ensure I’m not stressed out (or grumbling) about the workouts.

Thankfully, after a few weeks into this, we got organized. Mrs. AdultOnsetAthlete and I now have a shared Google calendar. On that calendar goes all of our things that we should both be aware of. Each of our workout schedules, social stuff, family stuff, work trips, you name it. I then pull that calendar into my work calendar to see my whole life at a glance.

This is priceless when planning out each week’s worth of workouts!

I generally sit down each Sunday and plan out the upcoming week in the calendar. Having our mutual stuff all in one place helps ensure that I can still be sensitive to family events. Also helps ensure that we can work to combine our trips to the gym which is always a bonus 🙂 Without this level of planning each week I suspect I would not be doing nearly as well at getting in all the workouts and would probably be a lot more frantic too.

Also priceless is the ability to link a calendar feed from TrainingPeaks.com into my Google calendar. When doing my weekly planning I can just look at the Google calendar and see what is planned for the week all in one spot. As you do the workouts and log them to Training Peaks, it updates the calendar entries to reflect when you actually did the workout.

The image there is just a little snapshot of today and tomorrow. The stuff in blue at the top is what was pulled in from TrainingPeaks.com so I know to block time out for those throughout the day. Today, as an example, has several activities so I will do one before work, one over lunch, and the rest after work.

Some weeks change from day to day based on rehab and health so I have to remember to keep on top of things but generally I do a quick check at the end of the day to ensure I’m properly planning for tomorrow and that minimizes surprises.