50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

RE: 50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum 8/5/2012 10:12AM - in reply to lucKY2b

Thanks Alan B and racerdb for getting things going this week, sounds like you guys have both had pretty decent weeks. I'll go ahead and throw in my usual demarcation, but the week's reports have already begun with the last few. So don't miss those.

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Week 61
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Hello, my fellow 50+ runnners! Just finished watching the OG Women's Marathon, which was a pretty tight race all the way to the finish, Shalane just couldn't hang in the end, looks like Kara finished strong, but lost contact in the middle. But what about the men's 10,000-m! Wow, that was amazing to watch! It's hard to express how much this means to us American distance runners, who have lived through the running boom of the '70's, who saw Prefontaine falter down the finish stretch, who saw the dirth of talent take to running in the '90's, and now to have an American finish in the medals; first time since Billy Mills won the gold in '64. Just a wonderful thing to witness. But to the American press, not hardly a blip on the radar screen.....very disappointed in our local newspaper this morning; buried in the daily Olympic recap on page 6 of the sports section, after discussions of many other venues, and then a 6 paragraph recap of the women's 100m, and a few more paragraphs talking about the upcoming men's 100m, then a couple paragraphs about Ennis' win, then finally this: "Then it was Mo Farah -- born in Somalia, training in Portland Ore., competing for Britain -- who brought down the house, sprinting to the finish in the 10,000 meters for a win over his American training partner, Galen Rupp, in 27 minutes, 30.42 seconds." That was it. No follower outside of the hard-core devotees to the sport could recognize the significance of what had happened. I just feel that corporate sports wonks have no clue that there is a resurgence in American distance running going on, they only care about the big money sports. If it weren't for the fact the Tyson Gay is actually from Lexington, I'm not sure American Track and Field would get any mention in our local paper outside of the Olympics. I'll send my usual rant to the paper about their ignorance and neglect; not sure it'll do any good, though.

OK, on to my running week. Managed about 42 miles on 6 days. The log reads as such:
Sun: 8 easy
Mon: 4.2 w/6 laps on the 1/2-mile trail loop, alternating hard/easy laps. The hard laps were 3:07, 3:00, 3:00.
Tue: 5.2 easy
Wed: 4.5 w/5x1-lap, with 1-lap recov. (this was on the funky 4 laps = 1500m...with a small hill...track), the 1-lap times were 78,76,75,74,73 seconds. Add about 5s for 400m compaison. It was 90+ and very humid--heat index was around 100!
Thu: 0 (was administering finals all day)
Fri: 4 moderate (6:50) pace.
Sat: 16 miles, with first 8 @6:47 pace, last 8 much slower. First long run in a long time.

Notes: Aside from Saturday, all the runs were in the afternoon heat. I sought refuge on the 1/2-mile trail on Monday and tried to do some uptempo stuff. Wednesday evening's track workout was almost scuttled by the heat and humidity....just couldn't get it going; we did as many 375m loops with good recovery as we could handle before bagging it. Thursday, I was just too tired by the end of the day to run. Friday, was short because I knew Saturday would be long. Our club president emailed Friday morning asking if any "fast" runners would be able to come to their Saturday morning run. I usually don't go, because there is never anyone that I can run with (they're great people and I love their company, but they're all 4+ hour marathoners). But he had gotten an email from Kevin Castille asking if they minded if he joined them; he was going to run 21@6:45 pace followed by 5@5:10 pace, anyone who cared to join was welcome (I think this would have been a much better assignment for racerdb). Well, haha, nobody was going to run that. I volunteered that I could probably "hang" for 8-10 at the 6:45 pace on this extremely hilly course, but he would be on his own after that. In the end, Kevin chose not to come because he didn't really know the route and he had concerns about possible traffic. But I was already pumped to run a hard tempo, so I kept my promise to myself and ran a comfortably hard 8 miles (part of it was during an extremely heavy downpour), afterwhich, all drenched, I waited for a good while until my buddies made it to the turnaround (note: most of them started from about the 5-mile mark). I then ran a few miles with them, before finishing off the last 5 by myself, but still much slower than my outgoing pace. For perspective, I was 54:15 minutes going out, and 1:04:57 coming back, with 6 of those extra 11 minutes coming on the 3-mile section with my buddies. Funny note: all the runners were talking about how hot and humid it was, and I was thinking how nice and cool it felt (funny how running in the afternoon all summer changes your perspective.) I'll have to email Kevin and offer to run with him anytime he wants a partner on an easy (for him) run, of course I'll be looking to tempo, haha.

Looking forward to the rest of the week's Olympic track and field events. Should be exciting. Hope you all are doing well and, as usual, I look forward to hearing about it.

Cheerio!

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