50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

amkelley,

Don't let that doctor get to you! I agree with Igy. My therapist has me doing similar Bosu work. I stand on one leg and touch the 1,2,,3,4,5,6 hours on a clock face with the other. Then switch to the other leg and point to 7,8,9,10,11,12. You can add a theraband to make it tougher.

I also bounce on a mini trampoline on one leg without support. I'm up to 6X1:00 on each leg and it's tough. Then he has me balance on one foot on a foam pad and bounce/catch weighted exercise balls against the mini trampoline that is rested against a wall. It's core work but it also strengthens my ankles and works on balance. I used to have trouble balancing on one leg but now I'm much more steady. It just takes practice.

What other strength work are you doing? Do you work on hip strength? Do you work on moving laterally? I found that these were areas of weakness for me. I feel like I'm spending almost as much time doing exercises now as I am running just to maintain my strength.

Also, I have not had good luck with orthopaedics doctors - I found they only wanted to do joint replacements on me. You need to find a physical therapist who works with high level runners/athletes not just joggers. I have found good results with ART, dry needling, and Graston. Do you have therapists in your area with expertise in these techniques? Physical therapy isn't cheap but it sure beats surgery. Good luck!

Week 274: 8 hours 32 minutes in 7 runs

Mon - 1 hr hilly

Tue - 1 hr 15 min with 4x hill @5K effort

Wed - 1 hr easy

Thu - 1 hr hilly

Fri - 1 hr with 20 min tempo

Sat - 1 hr hilly

Sun - 2 hr 17 min solo long run, very hilly. We're not in Ohio anymore Toto.

Travel on Saturday but I still got in all the week's runs. Next week is a fallback, followed by another bump up in volume.

On vacation at parents place in Michigan Dunes area.

Weather was both awesome to sit at the beach as well as run in the mornings.

Monday - travel, beach, lazy

Tuesday - 5.2 w 12 yo daughter. Her pace. 10:00 down to 11:00

Wednesday - 5 w D. Her pace

Thursday - 7 w wife. Her pace. 8:05 with closing 2 miles in 7:30.

Friday - 8 w wife. Again her pace. Same 8:05 with hot closing miles.

Saturday - 4 w daughter in the dunes trails where I ran high school weekend workouts. Fun.

Sunday - 8 very easy. My pace. 9:10.

Me 37 miles.

Daughter 14

Wife 52.

Hey All:

Good week of running for me.

M 3 easy 8:30 pace

T 6 x 800m @ 6:45-6:50 pace. 3 mins in between. An attempt at Yasso 800s. Planning 8x in two weeks and 10x in four weeks, seeing if they indicate c. 1:38 half marathon fitness. Anybody have experience with this workout?

W 3 easy. Sore

R rest

F 5 miles easy 8:50 pace

S 10 miles easy-medium 8:23 pace. 7:53 9th mile. Felt awesome

S 3 easy 8:50 pace

30 miles. Excellent week. This coming week will be low key since I'm driving to Ottawa and back and won't have much time to run. Will aim for a long Sunday run and some five milers then try to pick it up again the week of the 12th with another 8x 800m workout the 13th.

Happy running everyone.

Andy

amkelly, I have an older (late 70s)non-athletic friend who started having some fairly serious balance problems. As a result he ended up seeing a specialist who explained to him that balance is a fairly complex mix of visual cues, inner ear sensory response and muscle feedback, and that if any one of these factors deteriorates it can substantially affect balance. He ended up getting some initial physical therapy with some biofeedback apparatus designed to help elderly people improve their balance, and then some exercises to do at home.

Since this discussion a couple of years ago, I realized that I needed to actively do some work to maintain my balance since I am 66 and still like to try and run trails with my sons and their wives when we can on weekends. There are a variety of exercise recommendations (e.g.

http://running.competitor.com/2014/08/injury-prevention/single-leg-drills-for-balanced-running_60455

) for balance improvement. I settled on mainly trying to do 2 sets of 15 one-legged squats without weights as part of my post-run stretching most days that I run. A little bit of active work on maintaining and improving balance goes a long ways. I definitely would try an exercise routine for 6-8 weeks before considering anything more drastic.

Also, in my late 40s I had chronic achilles problems for about 5 years. I tried easing up on my running and taking a month off here and there to resolve the problem, but it would come back every time I increased the intensity and volume of my running. Finally, when I was 55 I got a calcaneal stress fracture after a half-marathon. I couldn't run a step for 4 months. When I finally started back running my achilles felt fine. I rebuilt my mileage back to the 45-55mpw range over a year while religiously doing eccentric heel drops after almost every run. The achilles problems healed up when I stopped running for a long enough stretch for the inflammation to fully resolve and the achilles problems have not returned in my ensuing 11 years of running with consistently staying with doing the eccentric heel drop exercises several times a week.

We will lose strength, balance and other abilities as we age if we don't take affirmative steps to preserve those abilities and skills, but a little research and the same commitment that makes you a successful runner can and should be applied to maintaining balance and overall strength as we get older.

Reboot runner wrote:

On vacation at parents place in Michigan Dunes area.

Weather was both awesome to sit at the beach as well as run in the mornings.

Monday - travel, beach, lazy

Tuesday - 5.2 w 12 yo daughter. Her pace. 10:00 down to 11:00

Wednesday - 5 w D. Her pace

Thursday - 7 w wife. Her pace. 8:05 with closing 2 miles in 7:30.

Friday - 8 w wife. Again her pace. Same 8:05 with hot closing miles.

Saturday - 4 w daughter in the dunes trails where I ran high school weekend workouts. Fun.

Sunday - 8 very easy. My pace. 9:10.

Me 37 miles.

Daughter 14

Wife 52.

Staying at your parents' place at 50 years plus - with a 12 year old daughter ?

How young do you think you are ?

SCgal wrote:

Co58, so sorry to hear about your injury! You were in such great shape before your accident - what a bummer. I wish you the best in your recovery and can sympathize with you for your weeks on the bike. Keep us updated on your progress!

Hey did you move to CO? If so how is it going?

I tried the Yasso 800s in three different buildups, and never made it to 10. I think the most I ever did was 8. I always got injured, and concluded I was just too fragile. But recently I was reading this article by McMillan, he suggests 6x800 is about right. So maybe it wasn't me, maybe it was the workout.

https://run.mcmillanrunning.com/just-because-you-can-doesnt-mean-you-should/

amkelly, my wife, age 59, has been doing theraband exercises for the last couple years, and has me, age 65, started on them. She kicks my butt, and it tells me that my fine motor muscles are weak in the hips, etc. No wonder I have become more cautious going up and down curbs when running. Our large muscles get worked with running, but not the smaller ones. Doing the various warm-up drills that you see high school/college runners do prior to intervals can also help, but balance is what often is the determining factor in falls for the "elderly/frail elderly" (usually over age 70 and older, by definition, but can be earlier if falling is an issue), so is good to include that as part of a "work-out" routine, just as it is to do upper body work 2-3 times weekly.

Thanks, Alan. That's a great help. Next week I might try 6-8 at the most and again the last time before the half. I have a fragile left hamstring so I do need to find some sort of speedwork that's not supposed to be super fast. Half mile at 8k goal pace is probably pushing it for me, especially at that volume.

It is hard to find a good ortho quack who understands athletes. Ask around your local sports organizations, not just runners but soccer players, motocross racers etc. Do facebook searches for local groups of various sports and throw the question out. I'm lucky that I found a great group of orthos early on in my motocross racing career and they have basically rebuilt me from the ground up. I had Achilles tendonosis surgery last year after dealing with it for 3 years. If that's your issue, I can give you my experience.

My training this week:

Sun: 12 miles easy 9:15 pace 150 bpm

Mon off

Tues 6 miles 3 x 1 mile 7:15 pace 170 bpm

Wed 11 miles mountain bike 3000 ft elevation

Thurs 6 miles easy 9:15 pace 150 bpm

Friday 5 miles @ hopeful marathon pace 8:00 pace 166 bpm

Saturday 11 miles 9:20 pace 148 bpm last 2 miles at 8:10 163 bpm

I'm starting my official marathon program. I'm going to mix a bit of Jeff Gaudette and Hal Higdon. We shall see. Looking for a 3:30:00 end of November for my BQ!

Happy Labor Day, thanks to our working fore fathers who made this country great!

No move to CO for me. I wouldn't know what to do with low humidity...I'd probably look like a raisin. I just remember you felt good about your Bolder Boulder race and how your training was coming.

Thanks to all of you (Igy, Alan, SCgal, old guy II, Mike, paul061) for your suggestions. Some of the balance exercises you mention seem utterly impossible—how could I consider doing one-legged squats on a stability ball when it takes a lot of concentration to simply stand upright on one foot? And as for bouncing on one leg on a mini-trampoline—you’ve gotta be kidding! But I will try some of the “easier” looking balance exercises and try to work my way up. Besides aerobic stuff (running, cycling, a bit of rowing) I do resistance training in the gym 4-5 days a week, mostly upper body and core. It has probably kept me from getting as weak as I would have gotten without it, but it doesn’t do anything for balance and I obviously need to work on that.

I have been doing eccentric heel drops (unweighted) for my Achilles based on the studies that seem to show it helps, but the whole idea makes me very nervous. They say it’s supposed to hurt, and I know that for rehabbing certain types of injuries you do need to make it hurt, but I’m still afraid I’m doing additional damage rather than helping it. It’s my understanding that muscles stretch, but tendons don’t. How do I know that I’m stretching the muscle and not the already injured tendon, and making it worse? The eccentric heel drops on my uninjured side don’t hurt, they just feel “stretchy”.

I live in a poor rural area that is famous for having very poor health care (few providers per capita and few competent specialists). However, I live within a 2-3 hour drive of several very good university medical centers where I’m pretty sure I could get good care. The problem is that my current health insurance (which I chose when I still considered myself a healthy young person who needed only coverage for emergencies) won’t let me see any of these providers. I do have access to a (more expensive) health plan that has a much broader network of providers including those university medical centers, and I intend to switch plans at open enrollment this fall. Until the new year, though, I guess I’m in a holding pattern.

old guy II wrote:

We will lose strength, balance and other abilities as we age if we don't take affirmative steps to preserve those abilities and skills, but a little research and the same commitment that makes you a successful runner can and should be applied to maintaining balance and overall strength as we get older.

+1. I don't think I can possibly emphasize this enough.

Here is what I do.

1. Stand on a boss ball with one foot, and touch the ball with the opposite side hand.

2. Repeat #1 with the same side hand.

3. Stand on a boss with one foot, and rotate a medicine ball around my waist.

4. Stand on a boss with the flat side up, and touch the boss with a medicine ball. (There is a video of Mo & Galen doing this on flotrack. It took me about a year to master this.)

5. Stand on one foot (on the floor) and swing the other leg forward, backward, and sideways. (I do this with ankle weights or a resistance band. But you can do this without any prop.)

Aside from those, I do a lot of strength exercises on a single leg. (Squat, deadlift, high bench step up, glute bridge on a Swiss ball, etc.)

There are easier versions of each exercise. #1-4 can be done on a floor instead of a boss ball. Or you can just stand on a boss with one foot and hold the position. (This was the first "balance exercise" I did many years ago.)

My week.

M: swimming 1000m.

T: 4 miles / 7 miles.

W: 10 miles. (4th-5th miles @ 7:55-7:41, 6th-9th miles @ 7:30)

R: 4 miles / 7 miles.

F: 8 miles.

SA: 7 miles.

SU: 16.7 miles.

The gym closed at noon today, so I have already done my swimming session in the morning. 13 days to my next race (half).

Flatulent AARP wrote:

Reboot runner wrote:

On vacation at parents place in Michigan Dunes area.

Weather was both awesome to sit at the beach as well as run in the mornings.

Monday - travel, beach, lazy

Tuesday - 5.2 w 12 yo daughter. Her pace. 10:00 down to 11:00

Wednesday - 5 w D. Her pace

Thursday - 7 w wife. Her pace. 8:05 with closing 2 miles in 7:30.

Friday - 8 w wife. Again her pace. Same 8:05 with hot closing miles.

Saturday - 4 w daughter in the dunes trails where I ran high school weekend workouts. Fun.

Sunday - 8 very easy. My pace. 9:10.

Me 37 miles.

Daughter 14

Wife 52.

Staying at your parents' place at 50 years plus - with a 12 year old daughter ?

How young do you think you are ?

Well, my parents had me at 20 and 19, so I went the other way and had kids at 36 and 39. They are 71 and 72 and healthy.

Playing on two hockey leagues and able to run 40 or more miles weekly, the only thing that says I'm not young is the soreness never seems to go away and of course the modest speed I had has long since left the station.

If you are implying I should get my own vacation places, well, one can't do much better than Lake Michigan beaches as well as Siesta Keys in Sarasota - I can't beat the price, and the grand parents get to see their grand children, so it's a big win all around.

They worked for me. (58 now; this was 2 or 3 years ago.) I had a pretty bad pain in my left achilles. I did 3 x 15 eccentric heel drops, with one every 5 on the R side. For the first month, there was no effect. Please pay attention to that. Nothing for the first month. But I did them every day. Then, slowly, the problem started to recede. I'd jog a few miles slowly and walk it in when I felt the problem.

After 6 weeks, I began to do what the protocols say to do, which is to work the stretch even harder. Instead of wearing a weighted backpack, I simply dropped and then pushed down even harder by using the good (Right) foot hooked under the concrete lip that I was doing my workout on.

Within three months, the problem was gone. And it stayed gone for a long time. Recently it slowly began to reappear, but I've been hitting the eccentric heel drops again and it's quickly staying in check.

amkelley,

You can use the time before you change insurance plans to work on your Achilles and your balance. I didn't start my balance exercises by bouncing one-legged on a trampoline, it has taken months for me to be able to do my exercises so be patient. Here are some basic balance exercises that you can start off with

http://www.active.com/fitness/articles/7-exercises-to-improve-balance

. These are the same exercises my physical therapist gave to me. If you can't stand on one leg, hold on to a chair or a door frame until you get better.

I'm currently doing heel drops for my Achilles and have found that it helps. The drop part doesn't hurt me but I can't push up on my toes without pain so my therapist said to only go to raise to a flat position. I'm also sleeping in a Strassburg sock and have switched to a more flexible shoe for running. To increase the flexibility, the shoe guru at my running store also slit the soles across the shoe in several places. It has made a big difference in the strain on my tendon when I run.

You said you're doing core work. Does that include lots of hip strengthening? My biggest weakness were my hips which made balancing on one leg difficult. So I do clam shells and side steps with a theraband to maintain my hip strength.

Good luck on your exercises and let us know how you're doing!

SCgal, thanks for the tips. I bought a Strassburg sock and tried wearing it at night with no real tension but set such that it would prevent me from pointing my toes really downward. But even with such a mild setting, it makes my big toe very sore. I tried wearing another, soft sock inside the Strassburg sock but it doesn't help. I always wake up after an hour or two with my big toe killing me and I have to take the sock off. Have you had that problem?

Try an over-the-counter orthotic inside the Strassburg sock. Larger might be better.