50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

This week I have been trying to settle back into a consistent training program with my next planned race a 10k on the 4th of July. It feels wonderful to be fully healthy again even though I'm not back in very good running shape yet. After my modest 5k effort at Carlsbad, I got in a steady week of slightly increased mileage. We then left for a wonderful two week trip visiting our son and his family in New Zealand. My son, daughter-in-law and 13yr old grandson all are significantly faster than I am and I ran myself to the limit with them on some beautiful trails every day. I found out that my grandson's club coach is the daughter of Pete Pfitzinger, who married a Kiwi and relocated there. This past week has been all easy recovery runs after I clearly over-trained during my time in NZ.

amkelley, I hope the achilles recovery goes well for you. Twenty years ago when I was having a similar achilles problem I ended up having to take three months off to resolve it.

Good running and fast healing to all!

Easing back into some training again. Was getting shape at the turn of the year. but i tore my bicep and missed sometime due to surgery. Was able to elliptical during that time, which helped a lot. This week was about 30 miles, with a long run of 1 hour. All easy pace.

We moved out our foothills hideout other week, the HOA fees were getting too high and they are climbing so fast that they would exceed our mortgage in a few years. Moving to another local. tba. Will have to create a new username! Krikes, life gets complicated.

Have not raced a whole lot but have a busy month. Last winter placed 2nd in age at US xc masters champs and then in March another 2nd at World Masters in FL. An age group xc championship has proven elusive, but happy with an upgrade to a silver at worlds.

Did win a masters road 10K age group title the other week (38:17, >90% age grade), and followed up with a hilly 12K at a recent big road race (30,000 runners) to win the age group there. It has been a good campaign and it's kind of nice not to have a marathon or long race on the schedule this spring.

Moving's no fun but looking forward to some changes and new digs. Hope everyone here is doing well, staying healthy as possible, and enjoying the journey.

lam not lamb but LR won't let me repost

Greetings!

Good training week for me (was on vacation).

Mon, Tue, Thu and Fri: A.M. 1:05-1:10 mountain running, including 25-30 min @subLT HR
(5-7 bpm below my current LT HR), P.M.: 35-40 min elliptical indoors.

Sat: A.M.: 55 min mountain running including 15 min @subLT HR. P.M. Flight back home

Sun: 1:25 on an elliptical (terrible weather, 45F, cold wind and heavy rain)

Wed. was a day off. Spent it high in the mountains. Perfect skiing between 3900 and 3000 m above sea level (blue sky, white fresh snow). Also watched a famous "Elbrus mountain race". Athletes start at 2350 m (above sea level) and finish at the top of the highest European mountain (5642 m). The winner – Christian Hoffmann of Austria – made it in 3 hr 19 min, amazing!

Happy running to all!

Great racing! and great understatement: "moving's no fun"

Happy Mother's Day to all.

I warmed up for watching the Celtics game yesterday with a parkrun in 20:13, my first real race effort (moderate/controlled for about 500 meters, then decided everything was holding together well enough to go hard) of the calendar year. Felt great to go all out, and I didn't even mind getting caught just before the line for 7th place, all things considered.

have a great week,

Dave

Excellent racing, Coyote! And dhaaga, that's a nice start to the season's racing.

I had a week of seeking a compromise between resting enough to let my Achilles recover while still running maybe enough to hold onto some of my running fitness. I did only three short runs for 10 miles total, and the rest was cycling and swimming. Hoping to up the running a little next week.

In the rest of life, I just finished grading the final assignment for the last university course I will ever teach (unless something goes wrong). My husband and I are both planning to retire starting July 1. We won't be "fully" retired as we both still have students finishing Ph.D. degrees, but we're both done with teaching and doing committee work. Adjusting to this will be weird for a while.

Happy and healthy running to all!

Hi everyone on the list,

Hope you all doing well. Michelle an I are in Cloudcroft NM right now - the same place we lived in 2000-2001 when we were getting ready for those Olympic all those years ago. Michelle is running great and we are here specifically because she is going to go after the world 5 and 10k records (55-59). She is going after them o Portland in June and July then after that hopefully going after the mile record at one or two of the Oregon all comers meets. She is also going for the road mile in Indianapolis which leaves just one record in her range she does not have - the road 5k. Does anyone have any suggestions on a falter record eligible 5k anywhere? I can find lots and lots of 5ks but making sure they are record eligible.... Carlsbad?

Thanks

Mike

Mike,

Carlsbad is record eligible, but next April will be the next opportunity there. They have a road 5k at Huntsman Senior Games in October St. George, Utah, but not sure about measurement status.

Thought of you as I installed two in series water heaters a couple of weeks ago.

Best wishes on Michelle’s pursuit.

Igy

I ran Carlsbad on April 6 (its usually two Sundays before Easter). It has a new course that is out and back along the coast. It drops about 50ft on the way out and is up on the way back. I'm not a fan of uphill finishes for races, but it's a small enough elevation change that it's probably as fast as the old course.

Mike,

You can search the USATF site for certified courses, by state. Then you just need to be sure they've applied for a sanction.

The Pacific Association has two 5K Championships coming up in June and July. Both are the same course in Golden Gate Park. There's some elevation change but not too bad, and being Assoc champs, there's good competition.

https://www.pausatf.org/road-racing/usatf-pacific-2025-road-racing-grand-prix-schedule/

Iggy, Reno,

Thanks so much! that is all I needed to get a start. We are going to be in the northwest for a couple weeks so this works.

Mike

Greetings!

It was a tapering week for me before a HM on Sat. I am low mileage guy, plus more than 50% of my training time (6-6.5 hr/week in total) is cross-training. Thus, HM is absolutely not my distance but sometimes it makes sense to self-challenge.

The last time I ran HM was exactly 2 years ago when I finished at 1:27:20. Assuming that “father time” “claims” about 1% of speed per year at my age (67) I was hoping to break 1:30. But “if you want to make the Lord smile, share your plans with him”. A serious heat wave arrived 3 days ago ruining all the plans. It was +25C (77F) before the start and +28C (82F) after the finish. Moreover, these numbers were in shadow while the race was staged in the city center. Direct sun, hot asphalt and other attributes of the “stone jungle”. Organizers tried their best arranging for water stations and showers every 2-3K but it could not help considerably. Thus, my revised plan was to start at 4:12-4:15/K (about 6:50/mile) and then slow down sharply as soon as I feel inconvenience and the hope for sub 1:30 vanishes. Anyway, the fastest guy in my age group (who ran sub 37/10K and 1:22/HM in the previous season) was not present and I had good chances to win the AG not running all out, and also I signed for a very hard 17K trail in two weeks.

It worked fine for the first 5K (21:09 split) but then, to my great disappointment, this “inconvenience point” occurred around 7K (hoped it would be after 10-11). I switched the gear and passed 10K at 43:15. The third 5K was the slowest segment because it contained a long steep climb, thus it was 1:06:31 only at 15K. Then there was 1:29:12 at 20K and the finish time was 1:34:05. Heat matters!

Perhaps the only good thing I noticed was that my average HR during such a long race (at least for me) was about 93% of my estimated HR max.

Happy running to all!

As a side note to my previous post, I found an interesting calculator that tries to take into account various factors affecting the race results vs. some ideal conditions.

I entered 1:34:05 for HM and 25C and it returned 1:29:10 for a cool weather, so with some scepticism I hope to be able to break 1:30 yet.

Orient, that's a really solid race under those conditions. I detest running in even slightly warm weather and I do my best to plan my races accordingly, although of course the weather can sometimes surprise you.

I'm still struggling to get my Achilles calmed down, and I've run a grand total of 57 miles in the past four and a half weeks, with swimming and cycling as cross training. I did run my local Memorial Day 5K yesterday. Conditions were fine--a bit warm at 63-64F but in a park with lots of grass and trees, and most of the course was shaded. I was a little disappointed to run only 28:57, only about 7 sec/mile faster pace than my half-marathon 7 weeks ago. Evidently I've lost some conditioning during the month of minimal training. But it was good for 1/11 in my age group and 24/224 among all women. Yes, this is a very slow race with lots of walkers and barely-joggers. I even beat all 8 of the men in my age group.

The heel is still a problem, and I may be limited to running on alternate days for the foreseeable future. I'm targeting a 10K three weeks from now as my next race. It's in Fresno so it will be hot, but the race starts at 7 am so it should be tolerable.

Happy Memorial Day weekend to all.

Nothing special to report other than I have gotten in two consistent weeks of good training and hope to keep that going until my 10k on the 4th of July. I'm doing low 40miles/wk plus four 30min stationary bike sessions each week on the following plan -

M- 30min bike, 60min easy run/walk

T- 90min run with 2mi w.u., 6x800 with 2min rest, 2mi w.d.

W- 30min bike, 60min easy run/walk

Th- 90min run at moderate effort

F- 30min bike, 60min easy run/walk

S- 30min bike, 60min trail run at moderate effort

Su- 90min hill run with an 800ft climb at easy/moderate effort (low 10min/mi ave)

Orient, your HM sounds like an excellent effort for your age group under those conditions.

Good running to all!

hope everyone has had/is having a good holiday weekend. I had a fun week of training/racing incl. 2 X 12:00 (3:00 jog) at half-marathon effort tuesday and 5 X 4:00 (2:00 jog) at 5k effort Friday

This morning I raced a 4-mile in 25:41 (36th OA, 1st AG). Fairly fast course with the exception of steep downhill start/uphill finish. 30 sec slower than the last time I did it (3 years ago), which seems predictable. We benefited today from good weather for this time of year (maybe about 55-60 degrees, cloudy, no wind). Felt sluggish early but ended up going well.

have a great week,

Dave

I'll have my 66th birthday on 6.6. and will run 6.6 miles ... after a long hiatus because of spinalcanalstenosis (had surgery) I've started running/walking again and hope to regain my lost fitness. The "speed" I have now was the speed I could run backwards in flipflops 10 years ago ... sigh

It's tough coming back from a long layoff in your 60s. At 61, I was running 23:xx for 5K and 1:50-1:51 for the half-marathon. Then I was laid up with rheumatoid arthritis (maybe--skeptical of the diagnosis) followed by runner's dystonia, and didn't run a step for over 3 years. When I finally started "running" again I couldn't jog more than a block without stopping. Now, at 67, I've dragged myself back to a 28:xx 5K and 2:03 HM, but this may be as good as it gets.

Be patient and don't give up!