Soup to Nuts - Letsrun Train Me

Practical Answer

RE: Soup to Nuts - Letsrun Train Me 3/3/2011 7:37PM - in reply to

Impossible Dream wrote:

[quote]Practical Answer wrote:
1) Skip the Las Vegas marathon. You've run only one race all year and "injuries have prevented any other races this year." It's November 10th. You have more important adjustments to make than increasing your yearly racing total from 3.1 miles to 29.3 miles all on one day.

2) Get in three months of injury free training by February 10 and see where you are by that point. You'll need to alter your training away from what caused the injuries. The weight you had from 220 down to 190 probably contributed to some of those injures before. Still, at 190, or even 175, you have to be careful running. 40 miles per week at 5'11" 190 is very risky.

3) Lose two pounds a week for three months and be 164. Be very, very one day at a time with training and injury avoidance. Stop the workout if injury begins to flare up. Pick the right surfaces. Take a day or two off till the first early flare up subsides.

4) Then, lighter, with your injuries three more months in your rear view mirror, go to step two in your training, which is gradually increasing mileage, perhaps by two miles per week. In three more months, if injury free, that would have you up to 66 miles per week and in a very, very different place than you are now.

5) It's not your age, its that the combination of you and what you are inclined to do in training is not leading you toward a modest success, let alone a huge success like going 14:59 or better.

6) You have talent, so does a very good violinist. He will protect his hands so he can practice every day. He will not become a boxer or wrestler, or assembly line worker and miss practice or have worse practices because his hands are injured. For you, running is where you have your talent, your dreams, and your injuries. You have to manage your talent a lot better than your December 5 plan indicates.

Good luck.

Just thought I'd revisit one of the initial posts in this thread which I thought was great. It hasn't exactly played out like this, but close enough. Thanks again for that post, Practical Answer, things are going well.

[/quote]

Mr. Impossible Dream,
I don't follow up post much, and haven't since my six point page one post. Thanks for the compliment about it.

You've run and lost weight diligently, and for that, I salute you. To be honest, I did not read all of the 500 and something posts, but I read perhaps a third of them here and there. Since you are not one of these paper goal guys who doesn't actually put in the work, I'll say a few more things, as they may be helpful.

7) You've been relatively fortunate in your ability to absorb miles at somewhat high weights. Don't push your luck on that. You could be in a very good spot three additional months from now by backing off on your training 25% and increasing your attack on your weight by 50%. It's better than the proverbial killing two birds with one stone. It's three: the lower weight is good for general health, higher weight makes injury more likely and you go faster over distance when lighter.

8) Get better at babying your various injuries when you are not running, so you can run with less discomfort and less frequent down time. Special exercises/heat/ice/elevation, etc. are not fun, but you can combine many of them with existing tasks (read to your kids with an ice pack/heating pad on) (do special exercises in front of the tv during a program you were already planning to watch)etc.

9) Read some of the Ed Whitlock posts on this message board. He still has no peer in early to mid 70s distance running. He, as you, has talent, but it's his approach that set him apart. For example, in his drive to his records, he would increase his daily runs one minute per day, each week. He ran two to three hours per day. Now, that duration isn't practical for most people, but it is a key element of what separates the best ever older runner from all others, including many younger. He ran a 2:54:48 marathon at age 73.

10) You are a good example for many people, who because they have other things to do every week, act as if the 168 hour week has no time for their 10-15-20 hours of running related activity. Your best achievement is using the hours that most people waste, for your benefit and enjoyment.

11) Know the mythical story of Daedalus and Icarus. It's about a man and his son, who learned to fly with feather wings held together with wax. Everything was great until the son, with his joy of being able to fly, flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax and he fell to his death in the ocean. The family grieved. It much appreciated that he figured out how to fly, but had its sadness from what happened when he overdid it. Your situation is not about life and death, but rather running toward or away from injury. Find a way to keep your equivalent of flying and stay away from your equivalent of the sun.

Congratulations.

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