It's vanity Sprint.Geezer, pure and simple. I thought a life changing experience would automatically alter a lot of things about me but some habits/insecurities linger!
It's vanity Sprint.Geezer, pure and simple. I thought a life changing experience would automatically alter a lot of things about me but some habits/insecurities linger!
38 easy to moderate miles this week. At 62 I am still recovering from XC Nationals two weeks ago, although about mid-week my knees finally stopped feeling stiff and achy, but I still feel like I have no uphill strength in my hamstrings. This coming week I hope to stay at 40 miles with one V02 max workout and then do a taper week after that before our local XC championship race.
40 miles this week, easy weekdays with the 2 8-mile tempos on the weekend. This weekend the first tempo was the same pace as last weekend's, but much harder to pull off. My quads felt really sore afterwards, so I wasn't expecting much on Sunday's tempo. The effort was there on Sunday, but the pace was much slower. Like Alan, I'm not planning on any races so I have time to build up the pace.
We are in the path of Sandy, but have prepared as best we can. Conditions could be interesting for running on Monday and Tuesday. It seems like most everything is shut down tomorrow, so it might actually be pretty safe to be out on the roads tomorrow. We'll see.
It's fun to run when everyone else is inside. But I recommend caution running in a hurricane....
Washington Post says 85 mph for Sandy. I once did an "easy" 6-miler in 50-mph winds, it was great fun for 3/4 of the loop, when I made the turn for home and came out of the tree cover I was facing directly into the wind. I tried to battle through it and within a few strides I strained my right hip flexor. Not so much fun after that.
Force goes up as the square of the wind velocity. Say you run at 8 mph, a 50 mph headwind creates more than 50x (!) the air resistance you would feel on a calm day. An 85 mph headwind has about 2x the resistance of 50 mph, taking into account your running speed of 8 mph.
I did learn something useful from the experience. Now when I run a windy race (one every February), I purposely slow way down facing the wind and make it up as much as I can when the wind is in my favor. It goes without saying we draft whenever possible in a race, but you won't have many chances for that in a hurricane.
Great thread and posts one of the best on letsrun. Is there similar for 40+ tried search but nothing like this came up. My legs are so crocked think 60+ probaby more applicable to me anyway
Keep up the good work here
I agree with UK Athletics Coach. I "qualified" to participate in this thread in August of this year and I have been following since turning 50.
A ruptured achilles tendon 3 operations and complications have kept me running for almost two years now - I am hoping to start running again next week - if successful I plan to contribute to the forum from time to time. If not I guess I will read on with some envy and a lot of admiration :-). good stuff guys and gals.
DrT wrote:I agree with UK Athletics Coach. I "qualified" to participate in this thread in August of this year and I have been following since turning 50.
A ruptured achilles tendon 3 operations and complications have kept me running for almost two years now - I am hoping to start running again next week - if successful I plan to contribute to the forum from time to time. If not I guess I will read on with some envy and a lot of admiration :-). good stuff guys and gals.
Thanks for the props DrT and ukathleticscoach.
Ooooh! DrT, I sure hope that you will be able to recover...and sooner, rather than later! I'd be interested to know how the ruptured achilles occurred, what the rehab has entailed, and what kinds of complications have resulted. As we age, all these things matter more and more; the body doesn't quite respond to treatment the way it did in our younger days: recovery takes longer, treatments can spawn other issues, sometimes things never quite heal properly, etc, etc.
ukathleticscoach, the main 40+ thread is the "Masters Weekend Runs and Races". It's a fairly similar idea, but they start a new thread each week as we had done in years past. But no one said you can't contribute if you feel you've got something of note to share, as one who is interested in racing and training past the half-century mark.
wxboy, I hope you and all other east-coasters are safe! Wow, what a night. Haven't heard from rtype, either.
Speaking of which, best of wishes to Spikez on her move to the east coast! Maybe not the best time weather-wise to move to New England, but Boston sure is a great, vibrant city with everything to offer.
Ken, well, you sure can put on those hat and gloves today. What a difference a week makes...a 45 (or more) degree drop in the high temps.
Warmest regards, all!
We were quite lucky with Sandy in our part of the DC area. Many of the trees around us had all their leaves off, and I suppose the weaker ones fell down during the derecho event. As a result, our power, which almost always goes out, flickered and dimmed a lot but never failed completely. Seven million without power in the NE, and ours stays on. Pretty crazy!
I ran at about 6AM yesterday and today, which conincided with rainy but not too windy periods. So I got wet, but I've been doing that for decades.
Hope others that are not so fortunate get back to normal quickly.
Lucky2b,
Thanks for the welcome and the good wishes. Quick background - I was a dedicated but slow (32min 10k, 2.30 marathon) club runner as a younger man who simply loved the sport. My best mates were elite runners and I had a wonderful opportunity to train with them. I had two patella tendon surgeries in the late 90s and did run again apart from some off jogging until 2004. I moved countries for work and 5 years ago I started some more serious training with the club at my workplace and very much enjoyed. Managed to get myself back into 35min 10k shape and sub 2.45 marathon shape by age 47. Im an Aussie and believe in and utilize the "Aussie Complex System" (the subject of another LR Thread at the moment) and my plans to be locally competitive in the 50 year catagory were on track until I offered to pace an elite female friend (a sub 32min 10k runner) of mine through a track session. I knew it was the wrong thing to do at the time - but as an old dog I seem unable to learn new tricks. A set of 400s and 200s faster than I had run in years, in spikes... need I write more?
The rupture has healed well. In fact the tendon is better than new. I am having problems at the insertion these days. A small fragment of floating bone and some significant vascularization in the bursa. A series of sclerozing intentions last week and I hope to begin jogging again next week.
Fingers crossed.
wxboy wrote:
We were quite lucky with Sandy in our part of the DC area. Many of the trees around us had all their leaves off, and I suppose the weaker ones fell down during the derecho event. As a result, our power, which almost always goes out, flickered and dimmed a lot but never failed completely. Seven million without power in the NE, and ours stays on. Pretty crazy!
I ran at about 6AM yesterday and today, which conincided with rainy but not too windy periods. So I got wet, but I've been doing that for decades.
Hope others that are not so fortunate get back to normal quickly.
We were lucky in the Roanoke, Va area as well. Never lost power, never got the snow that is falling 1000 feet up to the west of us. I'm guessing that derecho in June helped us too as about 20% of our entire power grid had to be replaced during that awful time.
I've not chimed in on training as I'm just in easy relaxed mode and, frankly, that's pretty boring to report.
Been off the grid for a while, for a number of reasons, but still have checked into this thread--a place of reason and relative sanity, rare for LRC--from time to time since mid-summer.
Foot has healed incrementally and I can run some but nowhere near ready to go. Meanwhile, cross training about 5-6 hr a week with the occassional test jog. It's going to take some more time. But I'll be able to up the training volume with the xc skiing.
Most exciting news is that the boys (two on the team) won the state championship and then they did some big invitationals and held there own at those as well. Thrilling.
Keep up the good work all, and keep safe especially those on the East Coast region this week.
AK-54 wrote:Foot has healed incrementally and I can run some but nowhere near ready to go. Meanwhile, cross training about 5-6 hr a week with the occassional test jog. It's going to take some more time. But I'll be able to up the training volume with the xc skiing.
I was looking back through the thread, and the foot issue seems to go all the way back to mid-July or so as you were building up for the HM race. This has been a long slow recovery. Did you ever pinpoint what the issue was?
[quote]AK-54 wrote:Most exciting news is that the boys (two on the team) won the state championship and then they did some big invitationals and held there own at those as well. Thrilling. {/quote]That is great news! Props to your boys!
DrT, thanks for giving us a little back story. Sounds like you have some stories to tell. I'd venture that a lot of us suffer some problems at the insertions to some degree or another....the source of many niggles, I suspect.
Rtype, thanks for chiming in. I think reporting the mundane is as important as reporting the adventurous weeks. It's all part of what we do. In a somewhat related vein, I've been rethinking training a lot lately. We talked about using progression runs more, and as you saw from my last post, I even did my interval training progressively this past week.
But I've also been thinking about how I structure my months. My old method has been to progressively add mileage and intensity for three or four weeks, then back off for a week before advancing for the next round. This was how I learned it back in the '70's, mostly from the training theory I learned from my speed-skating training camps I'd attended. But at our age, I'm wondering whether this is just too long a period of ramp-up before a recovery week. Maybe a better model is to alternate hard weeks and easy weeks....or perhaps alternating one week of lower-volume, higher-speed with higher-volume, lower-speed.
Any thoughts/studies/experience on such training modalities?
lucKY2b wrote:
I was looking back through the thread, and the foot issue seems to go all the way back to mid-July or so as you were building up for the HM race. This has been a long slow recovery. Did you ever pinpoint what the issue was?
No I have not gone in, it will probably take an MRI. Feels and acts like PF, but still think it's ligament damage from foot twists last fall and again in the spring.
The first time it bounced back fairly quickly and I was running trails and XC just a few weeks later. But it never went a away 100%. This year after twisting it again, it was more of a slow slide that got worse from May through July and then must have torn it or something in the HM because it was really bad after that. Only in the past week or 10 days has the inflammation gone down.
Will ski through the winter and re-assess in the spring.
Meanwhile, lucKY2b and other regulars, thanks for keeping this island of sanity from being flooded by the sea of inequity and nonsense that surrounds it!
I think the 3 weeks “on” and one week “off” modus operandi of training is accepted as gospel for most. Defining “on” and “off” is so subjective it leaves a wide gulf of interpretation. Most people here have many years of training experience and really, to them….us.., there is nothing new under the sun. However, speaking personally here, I've found my biggest blind-spot in training is my lack of patience. Not enough time given to build strength, stability and base, and not enough time given to carefully sharpen for key races. I think 2 peaks, perhaps, mini-peaks, per year is the max. If I had to pick some who show patience I’d pick Racerdb and Ed Whitlock. Nope, I cannot run those miles, but I can learn and take a longer view. Right now, I’m taking a long rest and just doing long term maintenance work. My goal is to slowly round into shape by the time I turn 55. As a sign on the road used to say when I was a boy: “Honestly now, what’s your hurry…”
A few days ago there was a short dicussion on the use of the treadmills. Ken indicated that he had real physical reasons to stay inside somedays and work on the treadmill. I for one, find the treadmill a most valuable tool in my training and was interested in others thoughts. The number one thing I find it provides is consistency. Whether I am trying to run easy or a tempo run or intervals I get what I plan. It will keep me from getting too caught up in the run and running too fast on recovery days. I can set the pace for tempo runs or intervals and I am consistent. My long runs are out of doors because sometimes the treadmill can just be too boring, but I do find it beneficial in slowing me down when needed and helping me pace my intervals.
On another subject, since this is the 50+ board and many of us exceed that age and have been running for quite a while, I was wondering if I am unique with the following problem? For a while I would put on my running shoes and it felt like my socks were bundling up near the metatarsal pad. I finally came to realize it is not my socks, but I think the pad of my feet under the metarsals has simply flattened and spread out. Has anyone else experienced this or am I just crazy think this is what has happened?
I agree about the use of a TM. Year to date date, I've run about 24% of my 2215 miles on the TM...mostly Tempos and moderate length progressions. I've had my own TM for about 3 years now and I've found that, at 3% elevation, my perceived effort, times, and HR are pretty much equal to what I find outside on the roads or track. I do calibrate the thing at least once a month, and lube the belt nearly as often.I also like to use the TM as a form of cross training...like perhaps an 40 minutes to an hour walking at 4-5 mph at 10-12% elevation.
As mentioned I use the treadmill sometimes, but for me there are three negatives. (1) I don't have to concentrate as hard to maintain pace, so I don't get practice at that. On long runs and long tempos it gets harder to concentrate as the glycogen depletes, so I need the practice. (2) I don't get the small strengthening and motor skill that I would from variable footing outside. (3) I don't get the psychological toughness that comes with running outside "no matter the weather".
I don't think you are crazy. Just tonight I put my hands under an air dryer and was shocked to see my skin blowing all over the place. When I was younger it was firmly attached. I sometimes get the "bundling up" feeling too, I have put it down to socks but will have to pay closer attention.
lucKY2b wrote:Any thoughts/studies/experience on such training modalities
Rtype wrote:
If I had to pick some who show patience I’d pick Racerdb and Ed Whitlock. Nope, I cannot run those miles, but I can learn and take a longer view.
I probably shouldn't be posting with 5 pints in on a Wednesday night and all...Saw my name mentioned and thought I'd respond.
Running is hard. Easy days are hard, hard days are hard...it's all hard. You call it patience, I call it survival...Fortunately, for whatever reason, it seems like my body is always able to show up on workout and race days. A few years ago I was able to do the Tues/Thur/Sat hard day thing. It's now down to Wed/Sat, barely. Five days a week I don't wear a watch but I am going slow as hell. I have no idea how I can nail the workouts and races...Lot's of Aleve, a few energy drinks...Ask my training partner. He's probably getting tired of me saying after every workout...'how did I do that?'....
Dave
racerdb wrote:
Five days a week I don't wear a watch but I am going slow as hell.
I don't think you know what the word slow means.
racerdb wrote:
Five days a week I don't wear a watch but I am going slow as hell.
Alan Bennet wrote:
I don't think you know what the word slow means.
Ok, that made me laugh...But, I get that a lot from my training partner.
So...let's put a number to it. What is easy? I almost always go by effort, and don't care about time or pace. But the times I have wore a watch, some runs are around 7:00/pace, others closer to 7:45. But truthfully, I really don't care what the pace is on easy days...as long as I recover for the next workout.
Anyone else?
Dave