Train Me

My condolences on your mother's passing. It can be a very stressful and emotional time. Use your runs to recharge and heal. Think of them as "me" time to get out of the house and escape from other worries. Don't worry about distance or pace. Find a park, enjoy nature; even running in the wind and rain can be cleansing. Even though you may not feel motivated, once you go out, you will be glad you did.

nimblenw wrote:

Even though you may not feel motivated, once you go out, you will be glad you did.

This is great advice. Running will help you. Just get out the door and start. Sometimes, I'll have to walk/run for the first mile, but then I'll have a good workout.

You might check the Running Motivation Facebook group. It's amazing how people have transformed themselves through running but quite a different crowd from this forum.

Thanks everyone. I joined that group. This crowd is harsh but I find the truth refreshing. I don't have a whole lot of time to screw around and run junk.

Monday-5.5 miles @10:20

Tuesday-3 miles @ 9:30

Wednesday- Indoor bike 2 hr

Thursday- run walk 4.38 miles

Friday- 1 hr indoor cycling

Saturday-4.5 miles of intervals at xc meet. Lol. I watched as much as I could of 13 races! This whole course is hills.

Current weight-151.4

I don't see any really hard workouts. Are wed/thurs/friday easy days or hard days? That is, are you breathing hard or out of breath at any point in these workouts? You need some high intensity interval training of some kind once a week. On a bike, that would be 8x30 seconds of really hard, all-out pedaling. Your training should ideally be hard day, easy day, hard day, easy day, and so on. A hard day is a long run, a tempo run, or an inteval workout.

SlowAFRunnrMom wrote:

Monday-5.5 miles @10:20

Tuesday-3 miles @ 9:30

Wednesday- Indoor bike 2 hr

Thursday- run walk 4.38 miles

Friday- 1 hr indoor cycling

Saturday-4.5 miles of intervals at xc meet. Lol. I watched as much as I could of 13 races! This whole course is hills.

Current weight-151.4

Updating my comment... You should be alternating hard and easy days to optimize your training. Hard is long, tempo or intervals. Easy is short, recovery, or crosstraining. Your week looks like this, I think. Monday-5.5 miles @10:20 Hard based on distance Tuesday-3 miles @ 9:30 Hard based on previous 5k time. Wednesday- Indoor bike 2 hr Crosstraining. Easy Thursday- run walk 4.38 miles Easy Friday- 1 hr indoor cycling Crosstraining. Easy. Saturday-4.5 miles of intervals at xc meet. Easy. This is more of a recovery day. Sunday? Unknown. If no run, then easy. You could be hitting the bike really hard, but we can't tell without more info. If your two hour ride was hard, then you have three hard days in a row. That's not smart training. Even if it was easy, you still have two hard days in a row.

fisky wrote:

I don't see any really hard workouts. Are wed/thurs/friday easy days or hard days? That is, are you breathing hard or out of breath at any point in these workouts?

You need some high intensity interval training of some kind once a week. On a bike, that would be 8x30 seconds of really hard, all-out pedaling.

Your training should ideally be hard day, easy day, hard day, easy day, and so on. A hard day is a long run, a tempo run, or an inteval workout.

SlowAFRunnrMom wrote:

Monday-5.5 miles @10:20

Tuesday-3 miles @ 9:30

Wednesday- Indoor bike 2 hr

Thursday- run walk 4.38 miles

Friday- 1 hr indoor cycling

Saturday-4.5 miles of intervals at xc meet. Lol. I watched as much as I could of 13 races! This whole course is hills.

Current weight-151.4

Saturday was the hardest day running wise.

Before my mom passed away I was doing one day a week of intervals. Right now, I'm mostly struggling to get out the door but I'll try and get some in this week.

Although, I'm not really "out of breath" even when I do intervals. I just seem to be running as hard as I can for X distance without straining or being out of breath.

I have a new problem though. I keep getting dizzy. I'm wondering if it's because I'm not eating carbs, or too little calories? I had to lower my calories from 1500 to 1250 to get the scale to move again.

SlowAFRunnrMom wrote:

Saturday was the hardest day running wise.

Before my mom passed away I was doing one day a week of intervals. Right now, I'm mostly struggling to get out the door but I'll try and get some in this week.

Although, I'm not really "out of breath" even when I do intervals. I just seem to be running as hard as I can for X distance without straining or being out of breath.

I have a new problem though. I keep getting dizzy. I'm wondering if it's because I'm not eating carbs, or too little calories? I had to lower my calories from 1500 to 1250 to get the scale to move again.

Dizzy when? All the time? During your run? After?

My best guess is you're getting hypoglycemic (low blood sugar). It's common when dieting.

You should be breathing hard when you finish intervals. A test is to see if you can talk in complete sentences while running intervals. If you can, you are running too slow. You should only be able to get out short, 2-3 word sentences when running intervals, especially towards the end of the interval.

By the way, a good high-intensity crosstraining for you would be weightlifting. For example, you might do 3 sets of 12 reps with a weight you could life maybe 15 times at maximum effort. Then, drop the weight lower and do a burner set of 30 reps. You need to push your effort level up to increase your metabolism. When you starve yourself, your metaboliism reacts by slowing down a little. To counteract that, one approach is to do high intensity interval training.

You can't just play in the weight room. I see lots of people who mostly walk around. You have to hit it hard and then, during recovery before the next hard set, you can do a complimentary exercise, like core work or balancing. Example, in between sets of hard bench presses, I do some core stuff (planks, bicycling, V ups, etc) and some one-leg balance exercises.

After runs.

I guess I did 2 hard runs in a row this week too then. I'll have to make myself a schedule.

I am low carbing so I take in 0 sugar...

I have been following this thread for a while and have been inspired to improve my mile time as well. I'm a 50ish female hobby jogger (7:30 mile) but wondering if it's possible to train for a marathon and work on speed at the same time.

SlowAFRunnrMom wrote:

I am low carbing so I take in 0 sugar...

That is extremely dangerous. Don't be carb-phobic. Eat your whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

SlowAFRunnrMom wrote:

I am low carbing so I take in 0 sugar...

Low carb diets are fine. If you are extremely low carbs (less than 50g/day), it could be a factor in your dizziness. You understand that you need to adapt your body to an extremely low carb diet, right?

If you don't understand that, I recommend that you buy and read The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance by Volek and Phinney.

I'll train your puuntang if that's what it takes..

SlowAFRunnrMom wrote:

I jog a lot but my kid and I made a bet so I need help winning. She bet me I couldn't run a sub 6:30 mile before she graduated HS. If I do then she's going to run her 1st year of college for me. If I lose I have to pay her car payments her first year. Fair warning, I'm old, overweight, and slow. I have 1 year 9 months to win.

I started a new diet 2 weeks ago and have lost 12 lbs. Current weight is 159.

I do about 20 miles a week at 9:30 to 10 min/mile pace. Is this doable? I don't mind paying her car payments but I don't really want to lose anyway.

Fastest mile this year was 8:25.

Need any other info?

I was carbing up on Saturdays and by the time Monday rolled around I seemed to have plenty of energy for the long run. Then I didn't hit my weight goal the last few Saturdays and I decided to go 2 weeks before a carb up day and that IS about the time the dizziness started. I'm going to play with the carbs and try and find the right mix with the running. I shouldn't have said 0 carbs. I DO EAT plenty of veggies (green ones mostly) but no sugar, snacks, and very little fruits. And avocados whatever fruit category they fall into. But definitely 0 unnecessary carbs.

Monday-4.25 miles @ 11 min/mile

PM-walked/jog 6 miles

Tuesday-1.6 miles @ 8:40 per mile (I was REALLY trying to PR in my 2 mile time but I couldn't hold it) I'm wondering if I could

have held it if I hadn't done it the day after the long run?

walk/jogged 2.4 more miles

Wednesday-indoor bike for 2 hours

Thursday- copied the kids' tempo run on outside lanes(I'm sure my daughter hates me LOL)

5 mins@ 7:37 pace (5 mins rest) the kids jogged the rest... I walked it every time

4 mins@ 7:34 pace (4 mins rest)

3 mins@ 7:41 pace (3 mins rest)

2 mins@ 7:41 pace (2 mins rest)

1 mins@ 7:09 pace (1 min rest)

30 secs@ 5:33 pace

Friday-3.26 miles @ 12 min/mile

Saturday-total 3.09 miles of walk/jog at xc meet (lots of short sprints)

CW-150.2

Mile&MarathonMom wrote:

I have been following this thread for a while and have been inspired to improve my mile time as well. I'm a 50ish female hobby jogger (7:30 mile) but wondering if it's possible to train for a marathon and work on speed at the same time.

Hey, feel free to share in here your workouts and whatnot. I'd love to hear how it's going.

My workouts previously were pretty random and more dependent on my work schedule/mood/the weather, but since reading about your bet, I've been trying to be more consistent and work more on speed with group track workouts every Tuesday, a tempo on Thursdays, a 5k ParkRun at 8:00ish mile pace + warm up/cool down most Saturdays, a long run (8-10 miles) Sundays and 3-5 miles easy the other days with one day off. I'll do a time trial this week again to see I've improved from my first attempt back in August.