Road Racing and Training-week ending 11/12

too hot wrote:

RRR or anyone trying to run fast on the 25th...

6 x 800 at theoretical 5K pace is foolish at this point

Adaptations don't occur in the manner being described. At this point, you're better off doing some neuromuscular work and maintaining strength on your daily runs.

I don't think the 6x800's will hurt him. It may take more out of him, but I don't think the 25th is his goal race. I like your idea about doing neuromuscular work. 5-8x300's a several days before a big 5k always leaves some pop in my step. What type of neuromuscular work did you have in mind for RRR to be on fire the 25th?

too hot, what is your opinion on tapering for a goal race (say, 5K)?

Hi

Got a little experiment of my own. Will try to see if I can run sub 18/5k 37:30/10k 1:25/half on 4 runs a week. If i can run sub 1:25 in the half, that will earn me a top 20 in the age group 45-49 in national championship. I will be really happy if I can achieve that on 4 runs a week. Didn't run at all for 4 weeks in summer due to a vacation in Sri Lanka, so startet with bad shape in august.

Last week I ran a half marathon in 1:30:45, so the training has worked ok.

Training since august has looked like this

Monday : long reps on road, LT

Tuesday: rest

Wednesday : rest

Thursday : short intervals, vo2 max

Friday: 12 km easy run with 6xstrides and 5xshort hill sprint

Saturday : 18 km, first 13 easy, 5 km around or a little slower than LT pace

Around 50 km a week.

Me: Male. 45 been running for 5 years, the last 2 years in a club

Happy training :-)

Runn3rgirl wrote:

too hot wrote:

RRR or anyone trying to run fast on the 25th...

6 x 800 at theoretical 5K pace is foolish at this point

Adaptations don't occur in the manner being described. At this point, you're better off doing some neuromuscular work and maintaining strength on your daily runs.

I don't think the 6x800's will hurt him. It may take more out of him, but I don't think the 25th is his goal race. I like your idea about doing neuromuscular work. 5-8x300's a several days before a big 5k always leaves some pop in my step. What type of neuromuscular work did you have in mind for RRR to be on fire the 25th?

This all applies to me, too, since I'm doing a 5-miler on Thanksgiving (Nov. 23). I figure I'll do some sort of workout on this Thursday, which is a week out, and then a light fartlek on Monday to keep the legs moving.

But I'm struggling to decide what to do this Thursday -- 5x800 at goal pace? That'd be 5x800 at 2:45-2:47. And then, what, 3 minutes jogging rest? This is what I'm leaning towards...

Seems like a lot of rest. Smoove is right and I will do 6x800 at 2:44 w 90-120s rest. Might be Thursday as I rode my bike 30 miles this morning.

Runn3rgirl - yeah def not a goal race just gonna see if I can pop a time before I go into base mode. Just didn't do enough fast paces stuff to break 17 this fall and I am okay with that. I realllllly hate running 5ks but it sure does make a half marathon feel more fun.

For what its worth, I like to do 6x600m just before a 5K. It's about 2 minutes per repeat so it doesn't kill you and it's long enough that you can lock into the pace.

Jeremy R wrote:

too hot, what is your opinion on tapering for a goal race (say, 5K)?

My advice is not to get too caught up in a taper. As far as workouts go, now is not the time to be working on your aerobic power. That places too great a strain on your central nervous system. Do short, anaerobic sprints to fine tune your neuromuscular system and and most importantly don't let up on the up-tempo sessions where you are pushing but feeling "pleasantly tired" at the end.

Can you give a sample week (or two weeks) leading up to the race?

You know I'm a Magness guy, so essentially he places the final specific workout 2 weeks before the peak race, with a slight mileage taper and shorter duration (but same effort/paces) workouts.

When you say aerobic, do you mean easy running or closer to marathon paced work?

I really like fartlek's the week of a hard race w/ 1 min jog rest. It gets my legs turning over without overdoing it because the rest is so short. :) Maybe do 2x200's , long fartlek, 2x200's. So if you're racing Saturday do the workout on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

Jeremy- I think you would like this article.

http://www.scienceofrunning.com/2010/03/key-to-running-fast-on-race-day-muscle.html

One of my all time favorite training articles.

haha yup, I've probably read almost everything in his website ;-) I just wanted to hear too hot's ideas. I'm always open to learn all ideas BTW I listen to the Running Rogue Podcast (based out of Austin, I believe) and your name came up a few times in some of the races in the past year. :)

Runn3rgirl wrote:

I really like fartlek's the week of a hard race w/ 1 min jog rest. It gets my legs turning over without overdoing it because the rest is so short. :) Maybe do 2x200's , long fartlek, 2x200's. So if you're racing Saturday do the workout on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

Jeremy- I think you would like this article.

http://www.scienceofrunning.com/2010/03/key-to-running-fast-on-race-day-muscle.html

One of my all time favorite training articles.

Wth happened to me. I rode my bike 34 miles total today and didn't run. I was going to when got home but I was passing the pub and ....

Just to let you know. I discovered Strava. I feel like a little kid plotting conquests.

I thought I'd share my opinion on tapering. I only think a taper is good for an end of season race. Even then I have seen more people run bad races from tapering than run really great races. Most tapers that I have seen done correctly have been planned months in advance. Even with the planning and the training a coach or an athlete needs to have the experience to make adjustments to the taper to insure the athlete is race ready. Making the correct adjustments is hard to do for a perfect race. Getting every system rested and to peak performance is an art. Even if everything is perfect the athlete needs to be coached on running the race. Many inexperienced athletes can not handle themselves when they are that tuned up and ready to go.

For most people that do not have one specific goal or race in mind, a slight down week or week and a half is probably better for a big race than a true taper. With just a down week an athlete can freshen up for a race and then jump back into training. A true taper almost requires a week or so off afterwards to reset.

When I was racing I was normally running on a 7 day cycle planned out around 10k's I was going to race. A week before a down week I'd change my Thursday progression run to an easy run with a couple less miles. The down week would be, Sunday 30 easy instead of a 90 minute medium/hard run. Monday I'd do a semi light track workout 5-6 800s close to 10k race pace. Tuesday would be 7-10 easy/medium pace, Wed 200s at race pace 100 jog, Thur 5 easy, Fri 3 easy+ 3-5 400s at race pace with full rest+ 1-2 mile cool down. Saturday a good warm up and a half mile progression then race. Sunday would be 2x30 easy then back into the training cycle. I'm not sure how good it'd be for others but I was almost always very fresh and recovered for races.

I think Runn3rgirl would enjoy your approach to tapering - she loves a little work right up until about the start of the race, although she'd need some quicker stuff thrown in there.

I do like my 8 x 400 the Tuesday before a Saturday race, or sets of 3 x 200 with a bit of threshold or race pace work sandwiched in between.

Agree that for non-goal races a taper isn't really all that important. For my marathons, I've actually started going with a bigger taper. For Chicago a couple of years ago, I was right against the limit of overtraining and was starting to redline, so I had no choice but to start dialing it back about 3 weeks out instead of 2. I had a great race, so I was going to go with that approach for Boston this year, but I ended up working a little more this time around because I just felt like I wanted more work and the three week taper was too much. I still backed down from what I did for my first marathon, but not as much as I did for Chicago.

A guy I'm coaching has CIM in three weeks, he's rolling pretty well right now (closed his half marathon in 14:53 a couple of weekends ago), so I'm keeping him on a somewhat more aggressive schedule - mostly to keep him from spending too much time in his head.

Lots of us are pretty easy to find on Strava. Always interesting to see what people are doing.

Thanks Pappy, that helps.

What about "in-season" races? I want to do well, but obviously it wouldn't be my goal race. Do I just keep mileage the same and rearrange my week so that a similar adaptation happens during the race?

They released the race pictures.. It is official I take the worst race photos of all time.

J - They will not be using my photos to promo and sell races like yours!

Jeremy, I would do that in season. Some background, at the time I was racing maybe once sometimes twice a month. My normal mileage then was somewhere between 70-80 miles a week and the down weeks would be about 50ish. I didn't really race anything that I would just train through. The few times I did I just would switch my days before to get any easy day in, race, then switch to get a couple easy days after a race. I'd keep the mileage about the same.

I read the article by Steve Magness last night after posting. I think I was doing what he describes. With the down weeks for me it was more to get rested and then get a feeling in my legs. I am definitely a slow twitch guy so the 800's, 200's and 400's would be for tuning and not for any true fitness improvement. I'd do enough to get moving but not enough to have to noticeably recover from. If that makes sense?

LINKS!!!

Unfortunately no one is as photogenic as me :) HAHAHAHA

Ah, I see. I'm only running about 50-55 now, and I think I thrive off faster work in the FT-ST muscle continuum, so apparently I'm supposed to do better off of "drastic" mileage drops (20%+), I've never had that "pop" people are talking about. I seem to do better the day after a really slow recovery day 9:00/mi (Monday) and then my workout (Tuesday) tend to be much faster. From my understanding, that makes sense as my FT muscles are super exhausted at the end of the week so a super slow/short day prevents their recruitment and therefore I am stronger the following day. IDK. This is all so tricky to me.

Don't hate me RRR!

https://imgur.com/a/epaSG