Floppo & Tri-Man, could you talk to me a bit about pre-thinking a 1/2 IM in terms of how to attack each discipline? While things could change with training, going in I know that running is my strongest part & th bike will be my weakest. I am very happy with my swim improvements of late. My thoughts right now are:
SWIM: Hang back and attack the course on the inside swimming buoy to buoy and finding folks to draft and remember to kick it out in the last 100 meters to ready the legs for the ride.
BIKE: Get from point A to point B riding comfortable and ensuring I get the right hydration & food. Every tri ride I've done, I have gotten off the bike thinking I could have given more. I am going to train for the bike using the HRM to determine if I can push a bit harder. I really think the bike is going to be about focus. Focus on staying aero and minimizing my movement to save energy for the run.
RUN: I've run over a dozen 1/2 marathons on all kinds of courses and in all kinds of conditions. My goal will be to get to the run with my wits about me so I can check in with my body a see what I have left. The Garmin will be key here as I do not want to burn up early. I think I'll sat a pace alarm around 9:00 MM (or lower if training shows I can) just to keep from going to quick. Doing the Oly in September I looked down at the Garmin and saw a 6:50 pace when I thought I was crawling.
OVERALL: I screwed up my lone marathon experience having too many goals (time, pace, etc). Instead, for the 1/2 IM in July I have a single goal, FINISH.
I'll have plenty of additional questions as I progress and appreciate all the info so far!
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Update: I am healing according to plan. Yesterday was day 6 on zero exercise and the calf feels much better (although I am achy all over from not doing anything). Today, I put heat on the calf for a 1/2 hour and then did some gentle stretching followed by 3 sets of 20 calf lifts for each calf where you drop the calf off of a stair. I then stretched again. I had no pain in the calf and only some focal soreness where the muscles meet the tibia. I am icing it as I type this and will be massaging with the stick after the ice. Right now, everything is going according to what I've read on the healing process for a grade 1 strain. I'll heat, stretch and do the drops again each day for the next week (adding reps) and will be back in the pool on Monday & Wednesday. If all goes well this week, I'll start walking on the treadmill and slowly riding on the trainer next weekend.
Man... I'm spending a lot of time in here lately.
... mebbe it's time to get back off the butt and do a race or something. I've found it SO hard to carve out any time for regular workouts with a lot of work and the kid... I know it's possible- just haven't made it work yet.
Swim... can't really tell you how to deal with it. For me as a slow swimmer, it's just about getting to T1 and keeping my form (tri-swim form- ie: kicking is a flick- as if you're flicking a flip-flop off your foot- so that your legs are fresh for the rest) so that I'm fresh for the bike. I know I'll get run over by the wave(s) behind me and hopefully I'll find some other slow pokes to draft off of. I knew I was going to always come in around 45 minutes, so it was just about preserving the legs.
IMO, swimming tight to the buoys usually means taking a beating, but whatever- part of the fun. Oh... fwiw- I've heard back and forth about the kicking at the end thing- one coach preached using a breast-stroke kick towards the end to loosen the legs up. I would usually avoid all of this and just get my legs warm on the bike, since it's the longest of the stages anyways. You've also got a run of varying lengths from the water's edge to T1 so that'll give you a little bit of a chance to loosen up too. One thing I was taught that I always tried to do- swim yourself until you're dragging sand/dirt with your stroke; it's tough on the legs to run out of the water, so minimize by swimming as close to shoreline as possible.
Bike... once you get into your longer bricks, you'll have a better idea of how hard to attack the bike. Try to get yourself bike training solo AND with others who are ideally much faster than you. Do your TTs to figure out how hard you can push, and ride a pack to get your average speed up (even you have to draft the whole time).
The HR thing- IIRC, I paid a lot of time working with the HR monitor and at a certain point realized I had it by feel and stopped looking- but there are obvious benefits to training with it and most of the guys in here seem like theyre on top of that attack.
One thing that I found always helped for the race was to learn the course as much as possible, so that you know inside and out where to attack and where to feed. totally agree about keeping your aero as much as possible (so training with it is key), but I'm not really sure what form you're going to practice on the bike that's going to help or hurt on the run... it's all going to hurt. If anything, the nutrition on the bike is going to inform your run as much as anything else. Only time I ever felt anything weird from the bike was the one time I used a disc wheel- I didn't seat it right on the bike so it was rubbing the whole damn race. My first few miles running were brutal from having to have pushed the bike that much harder. So- IMO- get your form going on the bike so you can go as fast as possible as efficiently as possible for the bike- HTFU. IMO the pain later is more about how you deal with the first part of the run than any part of the bike. fwiw- I could never get myself below 2:40, but knew I wasn't going to go much more than 2:45 either.
and stay to the right. and tell people you're on their left as you blow by them. and thank the volunteers.
Run... short strides, high turnover. Best way to get the bike out of your legs and let 'er rip.
I practiced this to the point where that's how I run now (if I actually ran now)... almost like a stumble. Like with the swim, it's a different technique than a normal runner would have, but geared more for the specifics of the sport. I was able to drop all of my own running PRs during tris- part due to the way the bike loosened up my legs and part due to that short stride.
Definitely a great idea to monitor your pace the first few miles. Because the bike loosens me up well (other than that Disc misadventure), I'd typically come off the bike doing 6-6:30s the first few miles and feeling
great- then around mile 7 or 8, I'd get punished for a few miles before speeding back up to the finish. I NEVER learned my lesson about this.
despite knowing that I was typically going to come in around 1:40 (my 1/2 PR was part of a bike/run/bike workout where an official 1/2 marathon race was the run segment- but I didn't hammer the bike on the way out) and not the 1:30 or so that my start off speed would indicate.
ok... the kid wants me to play with him, so I'm off.
I'll be back...
a bit more the last few evenings (which is going to have to stop).
I'll add that I think you can "study" to be a better swimmer more than any of the other three disciplines. I am self taught and found I improved rapidly when I studied YouTube videos and other swimmers at the pool that I perceived as knowing what they are doing. Plus, the pool allows you to check in with you technique every 25 yards. Don't be afraid to ask for someone to watch you swim and offer up some corrections. The endurance will come well before the speed will, IMO. I think it took having an improvement in my endurance level to give me the confidence that I could swim faster (if this makes sense).
Alert!! PSL, you might want to give this a look. Anyone else ever heard of 
I agree.
(gruecd is pretty slow)
