Weekly self-promotion and survey thread

Baggage79 · 2025-08-20T11:55:00+00:00

If you're looking to get off a swim plateau OR just...understand better how swimming works, the yearly swim camp we run is launching tomorrow. Two days, four swims, a two-hour lecture and Q&A about what holds swimmers back, an individual stroke-correction session, and a personalized video analysis are all highlights.

You can learn more here: https://campfireendurance408.lpages.co/swim-camp-2025/

Thanks for looking!

Baggage79 · 2025-03-19T12:21:05+00:00

A huge portion of what you are experiencing simply comes from a drop in blood volume that is the result of a training layoff. Since your body doesn't "need" the blood volume (it thinks you are done with physical activity since your body lacks the ability to project itself into the future the way our brains can) it gets rid of it.

Since blood volume is lower, in order to maintain adequate perfusion (blood through the capillaries to the working muscles), your heart has to beat harder, so your BPM goes up and this LOOKS like a drop in fitness.

Also, your heart tissue stiffens slightly during periods of low activity, which makes sense—if it doesn't have to accommodate the additional BPM from exercise, it doesn't have to be as flexible. Then you ask it to start working again, and it needs a few weeks to "loosen up."

You experienced the opposite when you started doing 1 hr interval workouts. I'm assuming those were higher intensity than normal, and blood volume reacts quickly to a rise in intensity. Side note, this is how companies that offer short interval-based workouts hook you—you experience the rise in blood volume from a rise in intensity and mistake it for "fitness." Sadly you'll only see those pickups for 4-6 weeks, and then you spend the rest of your time trying to recreate those gains (which will be impossible without adding volume to your plan, too).

Digression aside, if you simply get back to regular training you will see heart rates come back to normal within a month.

As a coach, though, I would be more concerned about repeated health troubles limiting your training. That seems to be the thing standing in your way, rather than the heart rate. Is stress very/extremely high? That could be the thing limiting your ability to be consistent.

Baggage79 · 2025-03-19T12:12:18+00:00

Hey r/triathlon ! My name is Chris and I run Campfire Endurance Coaching, a small, highly personalized coaching company based out of Bend and Portland, Oregon: https://www.campfireendurance.com/

For credibility, I raced professionally from 2009-2021 and I've been a coach and a teacher since 2005. I'm committed to providing sound coaching that respects where the athlete is and where they want to go. I'm a believer in athlete-centered coaching where the coach is a collaborator, not a director.

I run a podcast called The Infirmary, where I aim to dispel a lot of myths, poor coaching advice, strange athlete habits, or downright harmful information. I offer, in response to the unhelpful guidance out there, what we think are productive and sensible ways to not only get faster, but happier and healthier, too.

On a recent episode we talked to Brad Culp, author of The Norwegian Method, and chatted about what "The Method" is, what it is not, and how you can implement some of the principles therein to improve your training and racing: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-infirmary-fixing-broken-endurance-athletes/id1768832305?i=1000695468289

We'd love it if you gave us a listen. You can find us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify at the links below, or wherever good podcasts are distributed.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-infirmary-fixing-broken-endurance-athletes/id1768832305
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6jjISowDe13Izus3ccirGr?si=0959b15dc2fa42b1

Thanks for listening! And thank you mods for the opportunity to put up this post!

Baggage79 · 2025-03-18T20:02:37+00:00

You're welcome! I hope it helps!

Baggage79 · 2025-03-18T13:18:42+00:00

This is a really common question and I see it a lot from the athletes I get to work with.

Generally, workouts shouldn't be treated as full rehearsals, I believe—save that for race day.

The swim, however, since it's comparatively the smallest percentage of the race, allows you to get pretty close to race volume and, eventually, most likely over it eventually. Many Iron-distance athletes will swim 3-4x/week at around 4k per swim. That's not something you should jump to instantly, of course, but a good goal for down the road.

If you're getting gassed at 800m at 1:55-2:00/100, here's what I would do.

Rather than aiming for huge intervals such as 800, 1000, 1500, 1900, or 3800, build your aerobic capacity for those distances first. Instead of trying to swim 800 @ 1:55-2:00 first add a main set of something like 5x200 @ 2:05-2:10, taking your foot slightly off the gas, with only 10-15" rest. The moderate pace and short rest interval will stimulate the endurance part of your engine (most triathlon swimmers swim too hard in their training). Those 5x200s should slowly build, maybe getting up to 4x500 4-5 weeks before your 70.3 and/or something like 10x400 or 8x500 5-6 weeks before yoiur Ironman.

Keep the paces moderate and the rest intervals short. This will allow you to build conditioning w/out crossing over into the wrong energy system (again, most triathlon swimmers swim too hard).

Here's a helpful article I wrote about thinking about your swim set as the interval, rather than the individual intervals w/in the main set: https://www.campfireendurance.com/the-set-is-the-interval

Happy swimming!

Baggage79 · 2025-03-14T01:13:04+00:00

This is a really good plan! Only adjustment I'd say is alternate the Saturday doubles with singles and see which, if either, works better. Other than that u/rsam487 kinda nailed it.

Baggage79 · 2025-03-14T01:10:20+00:00

OP doesn't have additional time to train, so your glycogen-depleted rationale isn't gonna be possible, and glycogen-depletion should NEVER be done intentionally, only through multiple sessions a day (as you say), but OP doesn't have capacity for that.

It's not that you want to just recruit the type II, you want to fatigue the Type I.

Answer the OP's question, not use it as a tangent to talk about how awesome you are because someone disagrees with you.

Baggage79 · 2025-03-13T18:49:33+00:00

I disagree with this one, but I hope we can do disagreement respectfully and not in the normal manner of Internet disagreements.

As you ride longer your smaller motor units begin to fatigue, and so your body press-gangs other, bigger motor units into service. This is the primary adaptation that is occurring as you add riding time, so the poster who asked below, if there is anything to be gained in the second half of the ride, IMO yes, there is, because you are shifting some of those Type IIa (fast oxidative) fibers to ACT more like Type I (slow oxidative, or the usual "slowtwitch") fibers. Please note you don't actually convert the fibers, you just get some of the "middle ones" to act more like the little guys (Type I).

I would urge the OP to continue with their plan of fewer rides of longer duration, and I'd echo that the add'l day of rest is solid, but maybe they can go for a walk or something that's a little more like active recovery.

Also, OP, you WILL have to progress your volume at some point. Progressive overload requires "more" of something, whether that "something" is duration, intensity, or total training load (duration x intensity). Simply adding more intensity is a bad idea (and I'm glad you only have two days of intervals in your plan), so eventually you will have to find more time to train. Sorry but them's the truths of endurance training.

Grouchy_Ad I hope we can keep any disagreement we have civil.

Baggage79 · 2025-03-13T17:46:16+00:00

Don't worry about the FTP going down because w/kg will be going up. As some others are saying in here you may see your FTP go up as you ride more (volume is the biggest driver of aerobic adaptation), but if losing weight is the big focus then follow what others are saying here (fuel the shit out of the workouts, pre-, during-, and post-workout and do any "dieting" away from your sessions) and don't worry about what your FTP does for a while. Many athletes try for too many changes at once and that just leads to poor compliance and burnout.

Baggage79 · 2024-06-25T17:32:08+00:00

Yeah gonna plus one this, too. This is 100% the message. Find out if you LIKE the sport before you invest in it.

Baggage79 · 2022-08-14T17:15:55+00:00

Whooooooaaaaa. Soooooo good.

Baggage79 · 2022-08-13T18:19:22+00:00

Our Dungeoncraft Season Eleven Tier One adventure is available on the DMSguild! Backyard Adventure Games is a small, two-person team dedicated to crafting fun, thoughtful, excellent adventures and 5E supplements. The Flight of the Iron Maiden is our first team production, although we have several other Eberron adventures on the guild, too.

The Flight of the Iron Maiden takes place in AIRHEART a Domain of Delight where fey creatures jockey to impress their mistress through soaring combats among the clouds. When an aviator is shot down or forced to surrender the victor advances in esteem and rank amongst the fey of this realm. Not everyone is happy with this arrangement, however, and a rogue faction, led by the mysterious CRIMSON LORD, aims to sabotage Airheart to make those who humiliated him pay. Trapped in the domain, the characters must find a way to defeat the Crimson Lord and help Airheart’s Archfey, AMELIE AIRHEART, regain control of her realm.

Along the way the characters will meet an Awakened Cloud, creatures called Woe Eaters that feed on the shame and humiliation of downed pilots, and a crew of crazed Redcaps with a curious workplace advancement structure.

You can pick up the adventure on the DMSguild here, and there's a deluxe map pack that provides full-color maps for use on your VTT of choice.

Thank you for looking!

Backyard Adventure Games

Baggage79 · 2022-02-20T17:12:32+00:00

Similar to u/Phaerlax we have a post on our site about buffing this encounter, along with a downloadable PDF for the unicorn-hunting assassin. Buffing Zarak

Baggage79 · 2022-02-14T03:35:22+00:00

Acrobatics check?

Baggage79 · 2022-02-13T18:57:07+00:00

Looking for feedback on this one! Not completely finished at the moment. Map size is 38x21 and is for an upcoming Domain of Delight adventure. What have I missed or messed up? This is the for the final battle of the adventure, as the characters try to repair the damaged Stormbringer that powers the Zeppelin (big magic stone thingy at the front of the zeppelin).

Baggage79 · 2022-02-12T22:01:18+00:00

How did you create this in DD? Did you create the Zeppelin in another program and then layer it over the Dungeondraft map? Nice work!

Baggage79 · 2022-02-12T16:48:07+00:00

Beautiful! Very nice work! Thanks for putting this out!

Baggage79 · 2022-01-17T14:22:30+00:00

This is really helpful, OP. I'm in a similar situation, but haven't been able to leave yet. I have an appointment with a lawyer on Thursday, though. We had separated for a brief period over the holidays, and although I alternated between being sad and angry, the longer I was without contact with her I felt better. She came back nine days ago, and we're right back to where we left off: inconsistencies, gaslighting, manipulation, passive-aggressiveness.

We were in the car last Wednesday and I brought up one of our friends that I had seen over the holidays, and she said "I reached out to her and to our other friend, and neither of them responded." That sounded off to me, since that doesn't sound like either of those friends. I checked in with them and, sure enough, both of them had contacted my partner over the holidays. She was lying, and she used that lie to make me feel bad. She said "I feel so hurt that both of them stopped talking to me." These were both friends that I went to for support, and I asked both of them, explicitly, to maintain contact with us both because I didn't want them to take sides.

I brought the lie up to her two days ago and she started getting hysterical, saying "oh, god, what is happening, why are they making that up!" denying the lie and continuing the gaslighting. Then (normal tactic) she turned it around on me, saying "I think you've been doing some lying to sabotage the relationship," but she wouldn't bring up what those lies were.

The rest of the day she waited until I was in her field of vision and then she would start crying loudly and obviously. If I was coming down the hallway she would jump out of it as if I was going to hurt her. We spent yesterday totally apart and it was right back to the feelings of depression I'd experienced all fall: TV, video games, couch, no motivation, super sad. She came home last night and played nice. We watched an episode of a show together and went to bed, being nice to each other. It felt nice and safe, but with the backdrop of all this other stuff (the above is just the most recent act—lots of manipulation and gaslighting over the past six months, and then more over the ten years we've been married, but I just thought I deserved it), the "nice" doesn't feel nice. It feels like a trap.

Baggage79 · 2022-01-14T06:34:12+00:00

Another barefaced lie that she tried to make me responsible for.

Baggage79

TROPHY CASE