Road Racing and Training Thread Week Ending 23 Oct 2016

Monday:off (tennis and rest)

Tuesday:tennis tournament, then 2.5, strides

Wednesday: 1.25 w/u, 2.5 c/d

Conference meet: 7K (23:50-1st)

Took the lead around 2k and pulled away before letting up a bit over the last kilometre, 35 second win. Golf course mostly flat with a few hills, varied surfaces

Thursday: 35-40 mins recovery

Friday: 0.75 w/u, c/d

5x650 (2:04,2:04,2:03,2:05,2:02)

Was still feeling tired from the race and it was extremely windy on the open track/grass field that this loop covered. Still felt good to work hard and get in a good effort in tough conditions that we haven't really seen yet

Saturday: 9 long w/some hills and varied surfaces (7:25)-extremely windy, fall has arrived

Sunday: 4 easy, strides

Total:32

Good week happy with the race, although the most important one so far comes this week with regionals-very excited for that. Starting to bring down mileage, to be ready for this week and next week if I advance.

M - 5

Tu - 5

W - Off

Th - 6.5

F - 6

Sa - 8 (Wanted to do 10 but felt awful)

Su - 7.5, a few hills, strides on the track and 1.5 miles @ MP

Total: 38

Just been trying to get back post-Chicago marathon. Week after the marathon I got a cold and last weekend started jogging again. Since then I've been having a hard time getting my legs back under me. Today's run was the closest I've felt to normal in the two weeks since the marathon. Ran a few hills and strides mostly to feel a little bit of pop in the legs. Tried to do a little bit of tempo pace, but couldn't get much faster than MP without struggling. I'm hoping to sharpen back up in time for a Thanksgiving day 5k but I'm not sure if that's in the books. It's hard to imagine running faster than 6min/mile and sub 5:20 seems impossible. I'm open to any advice on how to get back into training after a marathon. I haven't done anything faster than HM pace since early July...

Hope everyone out there is doing well. This has been a perfect fall in Chicago thus far weather wise.

Good, solid week down me as I slowly move down the comeback trail:

Monday: 15 minutes elliptical; 6 miles easy (7:15)

Tuesday: 6 miles easy (7:50)

Wednesday - Tempo workout, 7.25 miles total

1 mile up

Cruise intervals at 5:52 average pace with 1:00 rest - 1400m; 1400m; 1200m; 1200m; 1200m;

2 mile cool down

Thursday: Elliptical 45 minutes

Friday: 6 miles easy (7:30)

Saturday: 40 minutes stationary bike

Sunday: 10 mile long run at easy distance pace (7:05)

35+ miles total, plus 140 minutes of elliptical and bike time to offset low mileage

Generally feeling pretty good, even with my foot still not being quite right. Happy to be back out there banging away at it, and enjoying trying to lock in tempo pace while simultaneously watching it slowly drop as I start regaining fitness through the simple act of consistent running.

J. Daniel’s Running Formula 3rd Ed.

5-10k plan Phase II Wk6

Goal Race: New Year's Hometown 8k

Sunday: L (12) (90 mins)

Monday: E (5.4) (45 mins)

Tuesday: Q1 (8.6) (65 mins)

Wednesday: E (6.5) (53 mins)

Thursday: E (6.5) (54 mins)

Friday: Q2 (8.6) (66 mins)

Saturday: E (5.4) (45 mins)

Total: 53.0 miles

L : 6 out easy & 6 back steady @6:47

Q1: 16 minutes w/u & c/d with 10 x (80s @ 5:20 + 140s jog)

Q2: 16 minutes w/u & c/d with 3 x 3 min on + 4 x 2 min on. The ons were between 5:45 - 6:00 pace and the recovery was 2 minutes jog.

Next week I will start Daniel’s phase III. I plan on avoiding the back - back quality days in favor of a schedule with a similar layout of my recent weeks. Along with phase III come I paced runs. I’ll move those onto the track and keep the T paced runs on the road.

@team1

I did the xc - track combo in High school. I’d consider myself pretty mediocre with 4:59, 10:58, and 18:13 for the 1600m, 3200m, and xc 5k. Considering my coach had us run four days most weeks with a “long run” of 45 minutes, I’d say i didn’t really start getting into running until my senior year where I ran outside of scheduled practices and built up to 55 mpw with doubles during last year’s winter.

Male 40 yo

Goal race is 3:15 marathon in 4 weeks

S-6 w/5x600 at 5:45 pace

M-13

T-6

W-rest

Th-11, W/9 mile TT at 6:45 pace

F-17

Sat-rest

Total-52

Did 600s at all out pace vs 5k, and did the 9 mile time trial at sort of a first half tempo of 6:50, second half more of a race pace at 6:30, felt pretty good. Coming back for 17 the next day made for 28 miles in 24 hours so pretty tough but good!

Good luck to everyone out there!

Jumping in on this thread.

HS senior. PRs (4:48 1600) (10:19 3200) (17:21 5k)

M- Easy weights

T- Off

W- Easy weights

T- Easy 25 minutes (don't know the distance)

F- Easy 5 miles

S- Easy 4.6 miles

S- 4 miles with 1 mile quickish (5:42)

Total: 17 or so

Just easing back into training, nothing really special, feeling good though.

Pewow, looks like your miles are creeping back up. Hope that means the foot is on the mend.

CanadianRunnin, nice work on the race! And 7k seems like a cool distance. I've never done that.

palele, super good timing on that cold. Good luck coming back. I've never done it myself, but from talking to friends, it just seems to be one of those things that takes the time it takes. Today's run is surely a good sign.

smoove, good news on the foot. I think I remember you saying this in another thread, but do you prefer to do most of your tempo stuff as cruise intervals?

cogs, love your long run progressions. Nice stuff. We also had almost identical HS experiences. My PRs were 2:09, 5:03, 11:16, and 17:35 for 3 mile. My coach also thought 45 minutes was a "long" run.

Niceguy, looks like a super solid with with a 13 miler, a fast 11 followed by that big 17. Things are looking good.

RuppNado, looks like you just finished your XC season, what are your plans for winter?

Team1, is this the weekend of the big race? Hope you're having fun out there.

I took a lot of downtime this week. Last weekends 10k got my left achilles flared up and my right PF unhappy. So it was lots of stretching and self massage, but things are moving in the right direction now.

M, weights

T, off

W, off

Th, off

F, 4.4 super easy

S, 6 mostly on dirt

Su, 10.3 at a moderate aerobic effort

20.7 total

For the next many weeks I think I'm just going to slowly ease the miles back up and keep things steady. I don't have anything specific to train for in the near future.

I definitely prefer cruise intervals, but I know that is because they make something that is normally hard for me easier. As a result, I tend to stick with straight 20 minute tempo runs as often as possible. I would say about 80% or 90% of my non-marathon tempo efforts are straight tempo runs. During marathon training, that changes a little because of the way Jack Daniel sets up his stuff. I went cruise intervals this time just to ease back into things a little.

Thanks, Smoove. I always appreciate your comments on here. Tempos are a relatively new thing for me. My HS coach never had us do them, and some of my training in college was super unstructured. Now 10+ years later I'm doing tempos and I think they are my favorite workout. I have not tried the cruise interval style yet, but maybe this late fall/winter I'll work some in.

When you do, be prepared for them to feel almost too easy. That's normal. The key with them is that the little breaks (1:00 for every 5:00 at tempo pace) allow you to get in greater volume. So instead of 3-3.5 miles at 6:00 pace, you can get in 4-5 1600m cruise intervals at 6:00 pace with 1:00 rest. The first three will feel really under control. The 4th will be moderately challenging. The lay will be fairly hard. I advocate strongly for them physiologically. It is just that you lose out on some of the psychological benefit of the prolonged pin of a straight tempo run when you do them.

M: 2 w/u, then 5.3 miles with middle 2 miles at tempo effort. We did the warmup because we were supposed to a workout, but my coach moved it to Tuesday because of how windy it was outside. Probably the worst I've felt on a run in a while; I was already struggling at easy run pace for the first part and then the tempo felt almost like an all-out effort even though I was going 6:20 pace at best.

T: 3 x 1600m in 5:20 alternating between 45 and 35-second 200s with around 7-8 minutes rest. 2 w/u and c/d. A lot tougher than I thought it would be, especially since the faster 200s ended up being into the wind.

W: 5

Th: 5 + 4 x 200m in grass

F: 5.5

Sat: Regional Meet (3 miles): 20th place in 16:38. First two miles were decent; got out into a good position and started moving up during the second mile. Stayed in either 12th or 13th place until around 600m to go, but then I got passed by a pack of guys and had nothing left to go with them. All of them ended up beating me by 10-15 seconds and more people flew past me until I came across the finish in 20th place. I still have no idea why I faded so much in the last 1k. I'm hoping to avoid struggling like this and have a stronger race at Sectionals next week.

Sun: 5

Total: 41

Short week for me.

M- 5 easy

T- 3 easy

W-off

T- 9 moderate

F-off

S- 48 w/ 11k climbing Rim2Rim2Rim

S-off

Total - 65

I'll try and comment more later when I have some time.

Yeah, 30k race last week. So much fun.

M - 6.6 SS (7:12)

T - 4 EZ (8:23)

W - 7.1 Fartlek (2@3 on/2 off, 2@2/2, 4@1/1) - some speed (~6:00, 5:45, 4:50 paces)

T - 6 easy (and 3 easy was an accidental double), calf tight from the fartlek

F - 3.2 easy (8:07)

S - 20 miles (race)

S - 3.1 easy (8:46)

The race: It was a small field, 28 male finishers. The course was a giant lollipop with the first 5 miles sharing the same track as the last 5 miles. The whole race was run on dirt road (2 miles), mowed field (2 miles), and single track (the other 16 miles). I had trained thinking that 6:45 was a reasonable road marathon pace for me (although I secretly acknowledged I was probably not that fast). After the horn went off to announce the start, one guy ran right out ahead, quickly gaining 50 yards on the pack. The guy next to me said, "There goes John" (name changed to protect the innocent) to which I said, "Oh crap, there goes the win." John is someone who regularly wins 50Ks and sets course records around here. I had never met him personally. I settled in around 4th place and focused on my breathing (3 steps for an inhale, 3 steps for an exhale) and found myself catching up to 2nd place, then chatting with him (the guy was running barefoot!!) was too easy so I moved on ahead into 2nd alone. First mile, through the mowed fields, was 6:45 (54 ft net elev gain). Second mile, through mowed fields, 6:51 (40 ft). I started to think about backing it off a little because my breathing jumped to 3+2 and slowed to 7:14, plus the trail started to climb into the canyon just a nudge (107 feet). Suddenly, an unmarked fork in the trail. The trail had been following the creek, so I took the one that paralleled the creek but a couple hundred yards later started feeling like a mistake was made. I didn't see any more pink flags and then found myself in an organized campground. The 3rd place runner had been catching me and he was right with me at that point. I looked at him, shrugged, and then decided to cut up to what was obviously a road beside the campground. I knew from maps that the campground was past the visitor's center and the course went through the visitor's center, so we ran back down the road. My fears were confirmed when a car pulled up and I asked them where the VC was. Mile 4: 8:05 (114 ft). As we descended on the VC (and first aid station) from the wrong direction I could see people on the course who had been behind us. Damn! I was giving up places. I didn't know how much time I'd lost. Nobody could tell me what place we were in. I was in a slight sort of panic. Kind of frustrating, but I should have just relaxed. Nothing I could do about it but run, so I did. I settled in behind Kris, who had been with me on our "detour" and we pretty quickly started climbing the canyon on technical single track Mile 5: 8:28 (212 ft). The trail steepened and became pretty rocky but it was in fabulous shape. I think it was a CCC project from the depression. Serious masonry work to stand the test of time. Kris and I passed two runners, including Barefoot Jake as the trail climbed out of the bottom of the canyon. Mile 6 10:11 (424 ft). We passed an important trail junction manned by a Search&Rescue volunteer who told us we were 2nd and 3rd. I felt strong enough to push by Kris but I hadn't liked the feeling on mile 3 when I could hear him gaining on me, so I kept him in front of me. We chatted on occasion, but it was a tough climb and I let him gain on the steeps and I'd catch him on the brief flats. Mile 7 12:11 (549 ft). The 8th mile included the final climb up to a broad plateau littered with cool rock formations (hoodoos) and I caught up to Kris who had started walking near the top. We chatted, then I passed him and invited him to stalk me for awhile. Within seconds he was gone, so I pressed my advantage through the hoodoos. Mile 8: 12:44 (289 ft). Coming through a small loop of bouldering and rock hopping through the hoodoos onto a long slow climb with long, expansive views of the trail ahead and behind I pushed to make sure I was seen running strong. Mile 9: 10:19 (196 ft). Then a long downhill before the second (shorter) climb I pushed to make sure Kris was gone for good. Mile 10: 6:34 (-449 ft). Finishing up the downhill and climbing the next little canyon to the second aid station wondering how far ahead John was... Mile 11: 9:45 (86ft). I filled up my bottle at the aid station and careened down the next 3 miles, which were pretty technical: Miles 12-14: 9:14, 8:24, 8:43, and I was back down on the flatter canyon bottom (Mile 15: 6:43, -424 ft), and running by the 3rd aid station (Mile 16: 6:50, -205 ft) and onto the flats at the end. At this point I started feeling pretty crummy and became somewhat worried that someone might catch me if I slowed. I reasonably thought that very few people would have been able to catch me after the last 7 miles... I'm a very good downhill runner, as I noted previously, and I had not taken it easy. Mile 17 was tough but I was still moving well (7:05, -97 ft). Mile 18 was tougher (7:23, -58 ft), and I started to actually fear losing my 2nd place position. I was running in the open now, so if I walked, whoever was behind me could see me and sense me failing. It would motivate them. I would be caught. It would devastate me when they passed. No, I thought. I can't stop. Can't be seen walking. I trudged on and took a brief walk when I hit some trees. I could see the finish line. I started running again. Mile 19: 8:02 (-68 ft). I could see my family cheering at the finish. I could hear voices... Picked it up just the slightest towards the finish (7:25 pace for last 0.3) and waited dumfounded for 14 minutes before the next runner showed up. My pal Kris would finish 45 minutes behind me in 6th (behind Barefoot Jake and two others). In the end, I finished 2nd overall. 2:43:38 for what my GPS told me was 19.3 miles for a 30K, an 8:43/mi pace. John finished 20 minutes ahead of me.

Happy with being so close to John. I'm not sure what's next.

CanadianRunnin - good job on the race and great repeat work Friday. Looks like you nailed it. Good luck next week!

pewow - when do you tackle your 25.x 200?

paleale - I vote for hills and fartleks because you can focus on effort and efficiency without really thinking about your pace. Maybe it would be good to let that speed come naturally without being worried about what the exact speed actually is. Also pliometrics.

smoove - looking good and glad you are happy with the progress.

cogs - Thanks for the post about HS. I forget if you mentioned your age now. What is your goal time for the 8k?

NiceGuy - Looking fast. How was the long run?

RuppNado - Do you do any winter sports?

consistency - Thanks for asking about the race. I posted a TMI recap above :-). As for PF and tendonitis, I know the feelings! Those are my exact ailments when I start "getting something"... I ended up half-running through the last Achilles bout a couple months ago but picked up a lot of stretching and calf raise exercises in the process. I feel like that helped me a lot. The PF for me has mostly disappeared with a change from heel- to mid/fore-foot striking, but when I do get a twinge I increase my cadence and it goes away. Rest, of course, always helps.

IllinoisRunner - Sounds like a tough race. Any of the people in the pack people you knew? I wouldn't want to change your strategy--if you had a bad day then you just faded. On the other hand, if you were running outside yourself, then you might be better suited to run with the guys you finished near, and then pass them in the 3rd mile. How did the previous race go for you?

working harder - I imagine you had an epic time. Sounds like the weather was gorgeous, if not warm down there. How was it? I look forward to hearing about R2R2Rs any time!

working harder wrote:

Short week for me.

M- 5 easy

T- 3 easy

W-off

T- 9 moderate

F-off

S- 48 w/ 11k climbing Rim2Rim2Rim

S-off

Total - 65

I'll try and comment more later when I have some time.

Ha ha. Just a short week. I'd love to hear more about your R2R2R. I did it quite a few years ago and have always wanted to go back and do it again.

Nice racing team1. Sounds like a tough day with the detour and the feeling of being chased.

I'm curious, did your overall race effort feel somewhat close to the effort of those longer MP sessions? Or do you think it was a little too much reach? At some point in the future I'll be doing some trail races, but a lot of my training will still be on the road, so that's why I'm curious about that kind of stuff.

And thanks for the PF tips. The time off was good. I still feel some stuff there, but I'm working my feet/calves harder and am getting further ahead of it. This morning things loosened up faster than they have in weeks. Next step will be no morning tightness, hopefully.

Consistency- I'm just going to build up a big base for track and run a few road races (5k-10mi) and maybe a short indoor season.

team1- My only sports are track and xc

Paleale- I really messed myself up trying to put together speed quickly after Boston this spring (about 2-3 weeks after). I think a marathon with a bigger positive split has the potential to really lengthen the recovery time needed. I would consider going easy for as long as necessary and not do anything too fast. Maybe some Marathon pace or some tempos could be cool once you are feeling better.

NiceGuy- looks like you are in shape and things are coming together

Smoove- good week, glad to see you building it back and looking forward to following the progression