Sub-20 5k or bust!

Thanks, but I’m an emptier shell than you are—I’m probably right back at my 28-minute baseline, with a not-100% knee to boot!

Rehabbing has been a great excuse to do all sorts of other things. I have been buying NOS bike components off ebay to rebuild a nice Italian steel road bike I have in my 2-wheel collection, really sexy, almost as nice as my wife’s bike—but not quite as nice, to preserve the peace?. Meantime I have been riding a carbon POS.

Aint no 55 year old Sprintgeezer flying past me anytime soon.

Lol I did some starts early this morning.

I will take you to 20-25m from the blocks any day! Maybe.?

Holy balls, Sprintgeezer. You're 55 with a messed-up knee, have been training for 5k, and think you're in 12.2-12.3 shape for 100m?

I'm a lot more athletic than average for my age, watch what I eat, exercise every day, and am fairly muscled. Early twenties. I'd be miles off that 100m time.

Were you running like 10.25 for 100m at your peak?

Ha,

I just did my ext. tempo work out yesterday. I do them once a week nowadays.

10 x 90m or so up a slight grade in 18 -18-5 sec. Takes me about 7-8 sec. to get back to the line then walk down to where I started and do it again with 1 min rest. Maybe I'll have my son take my rip stick up to where I finish so I can reduce the rest time in half.

I felt sluggish for the first few reps bc I am still recovering from Sunday's Depth Jumps, Speed and squat day.

Tough luck with your kneee. Ouch.

Like you, I train bc I enjoy it and love the feeling of running fast- activating the CNS.

On a typical speed day- I will do breathing exercises, a contrast shower along with the Sprints.

Some will say 'Sac' you're so disciplined, driven or are overcompensating... blah blah blah Misunderstood lol

Anyways, your 5k and 100m made me think to when I had super speed days on the track when I was 19. Some of the best speed days i've ever had was after running 1.5 miles the night before. Not by design. I'll give more detail soon but want to get your thoughts on it.

Hey Sac, I think a 1.5-mile run is worthwhile for anybody, anytime. I think it’s just enough stimulus, and just the right stimulus, to clear out toxins, metabolites, and get a bit of repeated dynamic stretching. Of course I was never sub-10, but knew sub-10 guys who couldn’t run 1.5 miles if their life depended on it. Pure 100m guys, really. OTOH I know a 47-sec 400 guy who would go on 5k runs, he’s my height but probably 20-25 lbs lighter.

The knee is mostly better with no surgery, back to workouts and things like 4x120’s. Haven’t done any “long runs”. Fast twitch feels like it’s still there, I also get off on the CNS activation?. Going fast just feels natural.

Will start controlled acceleration sessions, maybe from blocks, next week. Really, I haven’t felt this close to perfect for a long time, but I haven’t done depth jumps yet.

You going to find any meets this summer? I’m going to target indoors this winter, first meet hopefully in December. At the end of the summer I will sneak into the closed track and do a 400m TT in lane 1.

re: 1.5 mile run at 9:30 p.m. In my mind at the time, it was one Strike against me. The next day I forgot to take my gym bag (shorts and spikes) to school. That was strike two. Coach decided he was going to have all the sprinters (7 of us) race in a 40 yard dash from the blocks. Lanes 2-8 and I got Lane 2, thanks Coach. Luckily, I was wearing heavy sweat pants and flats. After warming up and doing some practice starts I realized how much it sucks to use flats in the blocks where you couldn't modify the angle.

Set...BANG!! I got a Blake type R/T (19.26) bc I was so uncomfortable . Strike 3. I had every excuse to lose and not worry about it anymore. I took off and passed them all up like they were school children. They weren't world beaters by any means. 10.7-10.8 guys. I eased off as soon as I passed up the guys at around 30 yards and they caught me at the line. I didn't care about the time or results in a 40, I just loved competing. As I was walking away to get some water, the guy in Lane 3 who was a very fast starter asked me "why did you let up?" you went right past me and just stopped running. I told him I wasn't expecting to accelerate so fast.

I think you're right about the run being the right stimulus (at the right time)

I was excited to run but felt no pressure at all. Just execute. Anyways, I felt great for 60 M sprints and other speed workouts after running 1.5 miles the night before.

I forgot about it til recently.

Sprinting fast feels Fantastic. My body feels really great after the 1st rep.

I will consider racing if the Meets are there. For sure. I frequent the San Jose, CA area and if there are All Comers Meets in Los Gatos again this year, I just may 'Go for it' Use the races 100-200 for my speed endurance this year.

ONe of the reasons I want to race is bc my kids want to see me race. They like to see me compete and cheer for me. I play other sports in highly comp. leagues and they know when I say something..I back it up. Well, I made the mistake of telling them ' if you put me in a race with the top 5 ppl my age in the U.S.A. ...I will not take last place. I will pick-off some of them.

I've never considered running in a master's race til very recently. The Nationals are right here in my backyard next year. If it happens, Great. I plan on being there. If not, great. I train for myself anyway and also to get a better understanding of my own body so if/when I decide to coach again, I'll be better off. As it is, I challenge 20 somethings to races at times. They think they will destroy me, but, they always end up false starting over and over. Rookies.

Maybe I'll see some of these posters on SM at a Meet who have claimed that they have been working on their speed the last 3 months approx. since the gyms have been shut down. I'd like to race some of them , but they seemed to have disappeared all of a sudden.

HM guy wrote:

Holy balls, Sprintgeezer. You're 55 with a messed-up knee, have been training for 5k, and think you're in 12.2-12.3 shape for 100m?

I'm a lot more athletic than average for my age, watch what I eat, exercise every day, and am fairly muscled. Early twenties. I'd be miles off that 100m time.

Were you running like 10.25 for 100m at your peak?

Just wired differently.

Sac Track wrote:

I've never considered running in a master's race til very recently. The Nationals are right here in my backyard next year. If it happens, Great. I plan on being there. If not, great.

I plan to be in Sacramento next year. I'm no longer a 100/200 guy but more of an 800 guy now. I went to Nationals 10 years ago in Sacramento and ran the 100/200 at age 43. My 12.5/25.5 was pathetic against the SoCal and Texas guys. They were running college times which pretty much put me in my place. Mastersrankings.com will give you a good idea of what folks are running nowadays.

Hey Sac did you do anything indoors last winter or outdoors this summer?

Just thought about this thread after having done a good 10k, just recovered from a calf tear. Went to one meet this summer, tore it while going to the john in spikes after having done too many starts! What a moron. Ran the race anyway, no idea what the time was because the timing malfunctioned, they just gave me my seed time. No real start or accel or anything, just some turnover that I shut down at maybe 70m.

Lots of swimming, weights. and 2 months in the mountains healed it, today was my first time back. Can’t wait to start drills and light plyos this week.

Anything happen sprint-wise in your neck of the woods? I was out of the country.