Road Racing and Training-week ending 11/12

Bdubs - Those are 2 really really solid workouts man!

Smoove - Looking like you're putting some really solid work in for that half.

Ontario - I like your plan for getting back into things. Looks like you've made some really solid progress from the first phase.

RRR - PR's are great, winning is even better. Congrats!

Runn3rgirl - Love the Tuesday workout since I ran the same one, really nice 5k too. Are you focusing on anything other than Houston right now? I know you mentioned a couple other races, but you got the entry by winning that half, right?

Laughlin - Nice volume on your week there, looks like you've got good strength for that 10k. Good luck!

OR - What a race man. Congrats. Super impressed by the way you ran it too, negative splitting like that takes a lot of patience and then a lot of guts.

Coach - Solid week, especially the 23k at MP. Based on this and your prior weeks you seem to be shaping up for a big race.

Disappointing week for me, ran through the beginnings of some sickness Tuesday, took Wednesday off, thought I was okay Thursday, and then got hit pretty hard again Friday. Ended up taking yesterday and today off. Feeling like I've kicked it now, just dealing with the lingering symptoms so hopefully this coming week will be back to normal. Thanksgiving is coming up fast all of a sudden.

M - 10 .2 in 62:00, cut down run finishing with 90,60,30 pickups on 1:1 rest for the last 2.5 miles.

T - 2 up, 1,2,3,4,5,5,4,3,2,1,1,2,3,4,5 fartlek, 1 off btw. reps. 2 down. Avg. 5:40 for the fartlek. Did not plan for this one well...thought it was going to be a warmer evening and only packed a t-shirt and shorts. Looked up at 4 and it was snowing...Found a hoodie in my trunk and made it work, but it was pretty miserable. Got the effort in and that's what matters, but paid for it the rest of the week.

W - Off

T - 7 miles, 4x200, 3x200, 2x200. 3 minute jog btw. sets, rest of 45, 60, 75 respectively. Kept the 200's relaxed and smooth just working into some quicker splits. Cool down to 10 total.

Set 1: 30.99, 32.26, 31.99, 31.49

Set 2: 31.14, 29.88, 29.24 (60 Rest)

Set 3: 28.37, 27.64

F - 5 super slow, sick miles.

S - Off

S - Off

Total: 40 miles

bdubs- 10x600m workout is amazing, average split is close to my 600m pr lol

smoove- damn man, that tempo workout shows you could crack 16 comfortably, hopefully you get a good chance to do it again soon given you're targeting a half marathon

ontario runner: solid mileage!, I hear you on the cold rain; drives me crazy but as long as I can run I won't complain!

RRR- congrats on your half win! The volume is paying off, hope you hit your 5k/half goals soon, you definitely have them within you.

runnergirl: wow, amazing time on the 5k (it pretty much was a 5k haha), and monstrous long run the day after. What's your 5k pr if I may ask?

laughlin: like the 300m workout; wish I could do that many in the 60s range let alone be comfortable enough to toss a 56 in there after haha

OR- you monster, congrats on the marathon pr! Knew low 2:50's were in the cards given your strong mileage. Sub 2:50 is just a matter of time for you!

pappy: admirably rapid improvement. Saw that you ran a 29:30 10k years ago or something; absolutely ridiculous man haha!

coach roc: solid week man, that headwind is being a pain in the ass isn't it haha!

stat- very sorry to hear about the sickness, I'm sure it's just a minor setback! Amazing that the fartlek and 200's workout are still mindblowing even on a sick week lol

Had a decent week, first week with 2 quality workouts now

M- rest

T- 40 minutes easy, 6x100m strides

W- 30 minutes easy

Th- 5x7 second hill sprint

F- 30 minutes easy

S- 6x800m with 2 minutes rest in between. (3:15, 3:11, 3:10, 3:08, 3:07, 3:07). Solid workout, was quite hard on all reps but I felt in control through every rep except the last 400m of the last 800m repetition where I was breathing very hard but surprisingly felt very little lactic acid.

Su- 30 minutes easy, 6x100m strides.

Have tempo intervals of 3x1 mile with some mile-paced reps after planned for tomorrow!

I was actually hoping to get some input from you guys on whether it's a good idea to do a mile's worth of repetitions (be they either 200m, 300m, 400m, 600m, or a mix of them) after a tempo run? Greatly appreciate any help!

Just want to say it's fun following everyone's work here and the positivity and dialogue is motivating.

Missed posting for a few weeks, but the five weeks before this were 103,107,104, 76 (on four days), 93. Accidentally got a little more focused this week and ended up compiling my biggest week ever:

Sunday: AM 14.5 in 1:45, first hour very slow with a friend, finished up on track with 5:58-5:55 before cooling down a mile PM 3ish miles up then right into 5x1600 w 400m jog, 5:40, 5:28, 5:29, 5:48, 5:38, 2miles down for 10.5 total

Monday: AM 7+ with a 5:56 in the middle, 5x hill sprint after PM 13 at good pace progressing

Tuesday: PM 11+, ran an hour progressing before hitting the track for 5:40, 10min down PM(later) treadmill 9.5 at good pace progressing

Wednesday: PM 4.5 up, 5x 1k on 2:30 jog rest in 3:28,3:16,3:13,3:15,3:11, 4ish down for 12 total PM(later) 6 on treadmill

Thursday: PM 13+, 70min accelerating until a track mile in 5:27 (felt pretty great), 15min down PM(later) 8.5 on treadmill quick

Friday: PM 13 with a good effort first hour getting 6:03-5:43 on the track and then another half hour more relaxed PM(later) 8 at good pace

Saturday: PM 10 easy PM(later) 5 easy

Total: 140+ miles. (Pretty excited about this one!)

Hitting 20 almost every day definitely wipes me out more than previous weeks around 100-115, but all in all I felt pretty good. Hopefully i can get one more week around 130+ and then I'll probably back off to 100's or so; ultimately i need to be more disciplined and back off on the high volume at moderate miles and focus on hitting some high volume workouts, but I'm just feeling it out until then. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be glad to hear them.

Smoove - nice volume and congrats on the pacing, haha

Ontario Runner - Still some nice weather around here, but I kind of look forward to those cold and freezing days

OR - as mentioned in the other thread, congrats. Seems like you had an outstanding day

Pappy - you have made some solid progress since joining this thread. Keep it up

Martalus - just keep it easy for a little more time

Dietbacon - hope the ankle problem is gone for good.

My week:

M - 12k super easy

T - 15k @4:15

W - 18k w/ 4x2k (7:28/21/16/17), 3' rest. Felt relaxed and in control.

Th - off (travel w/ work)

F - 16k

S - off (family)

S - 17k w/ XC-session, 4x1k + 4x400

T - 78k

Usually I am shooting for 6 days of running, but due to work and family only managed 5 this week. Still had some nice workouts. Wednesday felt smooth all the way, could have gone way faster. Saturday was fun, ran on a 1k loop with 2 steep little hills and semi-nice footing. First XC-race on Nov. 24 (my first xc race ever!!!)

hantph96 wrote:

First XC-race on Nov. 24 (my first xc race ever!!!)

Hey hantph96, I noticed this comment about your first XC race, and the fact that you post your training in km. Are you in Canada? I've done some XC races; I went beck to school later in life in '08 and joined the XC team for the experience (I was the old man on the team by quite a few years!). It was a blast, and I ended up being flown to Camrose, Alberta for Nationals. Some great memories.

Hi All,

This is a really nice thread. I would like to join in. I have reached the very respectable age of 27 years. I have a 11 month old son and I am doing my residency in a hospital at the moment. In february I will start my fellowship in psychiatry. In between all this I like to run :)

My ultimate goal in the (hopefully) near future is a sub 15 minute 5k. I started running after 8 years of non-running in november 2016. I really went for it in june 2017. In July i ran a 5k timetrial by myself in 17:30.

My week:

M 8k easy

T 9k easy

W off

T 10k with 13x 1minute @ 3:00min/km pace, 1 minute jog rest (I Always run my intervals time based on the road)

F 9k easy

S 13k with 4x 7 minutes @3:35min/km pace, with 2 min jog

S 21k progressive last 7k @4:00 min/km pace

Total: 71km

If you don't want to hear it from me, at least listen to the esteemed Prof. Noakes:

“It is clear that the blood lactate concentrations do not show a clearly defined, abrupt threshold response during exercise of progressively increasing intensity. Rather, blood lactate concentrations begin to rise as soon as progressive exercise commences. However, at low intensities, the rate of the increase is so low that it is barely noticeable. Only when the exercise becomes more intense does the rise become apparent, which perhaps explains the erroneous impression that blood lactate concentrations increase abruptly when the lactate threshold is reached.”

“For these reasons, the term anaerobic threshold, lactate threshold, and lactate turnpoint are no longer justifiable”(4)

So, you see, there is not a lactate threshold. Lactate increases exponentially with increases in exercise intensity and exhibits no evidence of a “threshold”.

Noakes I believe lost a lot of cred when he started pimping the Keto/Banting diet as healthy and better for runners. That's ludicrous. (no offense Coach Jeff)

Psychiatrist - you could do a long case study just with us knuckleheads on this thread! Welcome.

140 miles that's is a loooot. I just hope to get a 4-6 weeks of 90-100 this winter.

Pasting over from the other thread. I am in my second post marathon week.

Monday: 30 minutes elliptical

Tuesday: 4. 5 miles

Thursday: 4.5 miles

Friday: 6.5 miles

Saturday: 3 miles

Sunday : 10 miles on trails, 1,200 ft+ vertical.

28.5 miles plus 30 min cross training

I am not yet feeling 100 percent- I have some stiffness/light pain below the outside of my right knee . I think its the IT band which I have never had problems with before. This week might have some more elliptical/cross training depending how it feels after today which is an off day. I still plan to do the 10 mile trail race in 2 weeks. Honestly, I wish it were a regular road race, but it is the only race that happens to be available within 30 minutes of DC that Sunday. I fly in from Kosovo the day before and my brother, who is a better runner than me, is taking the train down from NJ . The next Saturday, there are some 5 Ks in DC-I will probably jump in one before flying back out in the evening!

By the way, great races by RRR and OR! All your hard work paid off!

Good exciting weeks everyone. I had a decent week as well

Mon:5

Tues:6

Wed:9 w/ 20 min tempo

Thur:7

Fri:8 w/4mile progression

Sun:14 w/last 5 slightly faster

Total:49

My easy pace has gotten a little faster as I don't look at my watch for them and go strictly by feel. Hope it doesn't have a negative effect. 5 mile race this Saturday so this week will be less intense. No goal just looking to enjoy it but try and crush it at the same time. Hope you all have a good week.

This provides an opportunity for those of us on the string to talk semantics, which is worthwhile.

First, let's clear something up about "lactic acid" which is a term that most of us use when talking about waste products associated with burning lactate for energy. Neither the presence of lactate nor lactic acid (which aren't the same thing but are used interchangeably by most of us, with the difference being loss of an ion from lactate) is actually problematic. It is the presence and accumulation of hydrogen ions that result from burning lactate for energy that results in our muscles sending a brain a message to slow down. As a technical matter, when we talk about the presence of lactic acid being a problem, we are wrong. On the other hand, it's quite a bit like "I could care less" in that it is so commonplace as to have evolved into a term of art that has a known and specific meaning.

As to the production of "lactic acid" - as with all energy sources, there is no on or off switch and we don't move abruptly from one energy source to another. There is a continuum and we use ATP, lactic acid, glycogen along that continuum. At some point along the continuum, if you're going fast enough and relying upon lactate heavily enough, the body's ability to clear "lactic acid" (really the hydrogen ions aaaociated with he use of lactate in energy production) cannot keep up with its production and it accumulates in significant enough amounts to impact performance.

Hitting that point is what most of us refer to as our lactate threshold. But because it is on a continuum, you can accomplish the same goal in different ways. You can go twenty minutes at "threshold pace" - which is what Daniels describes as 60 minute race pace. Or you can go longer at a slightly slower pace, in which case the lactic acid builds up more slowly, but has more time to accumulate. Both have the same effect - getting your body to adapt to the presence of, and to clear at pace, lactic acid.

Thought that since we have so many newer posters on the thread, some clarification of terminology was worthwhile.

This is my first time posting in this thread since I've been doing XC training which is obviously not road training and racing. A little about me: 17-year-old, male, HS junior, just finished XC season with a 17:30 5k best.

Goal race: Turkey Trot (Gobble Gobble) the day after Thanksgiving... Goal time: sub 17:45

Here's what my week looked like (feel free to laugh!):

Monday: off

Tuesday: 3.3 easy miles on hills (7:25 pace)

Wednesday: 5 miles easy (8:30 pace)

Thursday: 2 mile warmup/ cooldown with 4 mile tempo in 25:54. Splits: 6:28, 6:37, 6:25, 6:22. (again, feel free to laugh)

Friday: off

Saturday: 4 miles on hills (7:09 pace)

Sunday: 13.1 miles. Jumped into a half marathon for the heck of it... planned on going 4-6 miles for an easy run but felt good and decided to go the whole distance and use it as a semi-uptempo long run. 1:33:09 (7:09 pace)... with a 5:53 last mile.

Total: 32 miles

Next week will look fairly similar with a shorter long run on the weekend, then take a few easy days before the 5k.

Point is...there is no sweet spot or tipping point. As you said correctly, it's a continuum. Too much emphasis on 1-hour race pace in training is counterproductive as it actually lowers your aerobic capacity over time. A much smarter way to "push up" that threshold is to go at a high-end aerobic effort for long durations. Mix in the occassional "LT pace" workout but not to the degree that Smoove and other Daniels fanatics do so in training.

Good running all, but OBVIOUSLY the big props got to OR with a wonderfully paced effort and RRR for the win. Nothing like a win.

I had a very low week - combo of getting my leg tattooed on Tuesday and feeling really under the weather in general.

M - 10 easy

T - Off

W - Off

T - 6 easy

F - Off

Sa - 5.2m (ish) XC race. Tough course with 3 big hills per lap (9 total) and a brilliant quality field. Weirdly disappointed by my run, although only by 45-70 seconds really. Just a really sore body on the start line and had no strength. Proceeded to get absolutely hammered and drag myself home after no food at 3am.

Su - Very much off

Very odd pain in the lower legs, and with London XC champs on Saturday I'm hoping it disappears after a strong training week.

This is a serious question and something I am struggling with a bit right now myself, but I figure this thread will avoid a lot of the trolling and actually get some quality answers.

Everybody on this thread is training pretty seriously. Many are running sub BQ times and even OTQ times in some cases. In the scheme of things though, we all are some version of "middle of the pack."

My questions is this? What keeps you going and pushing the limits of your own personal training knowing you're not going to be world or even national class? This is not at all a criticism, as I am racing a marathon in the coming weeks and but in 12 + hours of training per week for as many weeks as I can remember. As I enter my taper though, I am just questioning why? I think it is probably normal to think about things like this during taper time, but curious for the responses from some folks who are seriously getting after it.

I think we can take ORs race as an example of why most of us are doing this.

OR raced NYC last year and thought he was in sub 3:00 shape. A series of events resulted in him not getting that time. He went and doubled back and ran Richmond just a few weeks later, and had another situation that also derailed his sub 3:00 effort.

The fact that he was shooting for sub 3:00 is essentially irrelevant. The key is that he had a goal that he had identified, it was a reasonable goal, but something that would take some true effort to achieve. He fell short in achieving that goal.

But he continued to pursue that goal, experimenting with different approaches to try to achieve. He put in lots of hours and lots of sweat in order to achieve it. There had to be times when he had doubts or at least questions: would some other set of circumstances pop up to prevent him from reaching that goal again? Was there something inherent about him that results in these weird things happening - is there some form of self-sabotage going on? Will he dig down when things get tough?

Then he got out there and answered those questions and achieved that goal. Regardless of what the time goal is, we are all going through that same experience, whether it is a 3:00 marathoner, or someone who has a shot at the Olympic Team (I suspect that Jared Ward had his own moments of doubt or uncertainty during training).

That's why when he said that it was one of the great days of his life, it didn't even strike me as strange. Because it wasn't about 2:5x for the marathon. It was about setting a goal and testing yourself, seeing what you are made of and then finding out that you like the answers that come about.

I think that this is inherent in human nature, whether the goals and self-testing are associated with running, or anything else.

Not to go all Edmund Hillary, but we do it in part because "it is there." And it being there beckons us to test ourselves.

Brilliant post. The only true motivation is the one that comes from deep within.

I am happy with my effort on Saturday not because I ran a great time (I did'nt) and not that I won a race, happy with it because I proved to myself that I could control my impulses and be smart and do what I need to do.

dgla - dang, that is some serious mileage. Some good faster stuff in there too. It is my dream to get that high.

Misser of Jamin - you will get there!!! Good week, keep plugging away at it.

Statfanatic - glad you are feeling better, and good job listening to your body. Nice 300s/200s workout also.

Welcome to the new posters!!!

Also, does anyone know what happened to Darko? Haven't heard from him in a while...