50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Well now I,m convinced that you are who we were told you are.

This is my first time visiting this thread. I skipped straight to page 16 so probably missed a lot. Maybe, there should be a new thread started every week, or maybe there already is and I don't realize it.

I began running in June of 1982 at age 27 and raced my first race, a 10K in 34:43 the following April. Then, that fall I ran my second race, a hilly marathon (Heart of America near Columbia MO) in 2:43. Then, kept runnning but did not race for a year or so.

Then, I moved to a a more populated area and began running with some other guys who encouraged me to race and train. I raced and trained for 20 years and had pr's of 2:06 800 4:24 mile, 15:37 5K, 32:39 10K, 1:12:33 half marathon, and 2:33:39 marathon. My pr's were all set in the 35-37 age span but I was still running fast times of 2:35 marathon and 16:00 in the 5K well into my 40's. Last marathon was 2:43 at 46.

Then, I moved again to a nonrunning area and actually quit for 9 years but started back up last Feb and have been working up my miles, losing weight, and adding a little speed work to the mix. Last Sunday, at 56 years old, I ran a 19:35 5K roadrace which was quite an experience for me. My last 5k at 47 was 16:50's.I realize those days are over.

My goals are to stay injury free, increase my miles some more, but not past 40-45/week, take one or two complete days off every week, and to get into the 18's for the 5k fairly soon. Those are short term goals. My long term goals are a secret! Ha!

Well, i am not a poser or lurker or whatever they call em, and am the real silverfox that some of you may know. Ran in the Jefferson City/Columbia area during most of my competitive years and coached track and cc for Jefferson City, also.

Hope to pick up a few ideas that can help me to achieve my goals.

Later,

Get a life.? wrote:

Well now I,m convinced that you are who we were told you are.

And who would that be?

Looks like Sunday starts early in some places. Either that or our troll is a compulsive liar.

I'm going back to lurking. Maybe I'll be back. Obviously the air around here still needs some freshening.

I'll get the new week off to an early start since it looks like there is going to be no Sunday run for me today. My long (3+ years/)run of injury-free good luck appears to have ended. For the last couple of weeks I have been nursing a case of retrocalcaneal bursitis, which has not slowed down my training or reduced my mileage. However, yesterday was something of a good news/bad news day for me. I had a fairly hilly 8k XC race. Warm up went fine and I had no pain starting the race. The race went well, and I won my age group and moved into first place for the series for my age group. The heel was a little tender on the warm down. I went home and iced it after the race and in the evening. It wasn't particularly bothersome as I did a few random household cleanup activities. This morning I got up and it feels like my heel is on fire any time I try to flex my ankle. So now it's time for the ice, anti-inflammatories (aleve seems to work well for me) and prayer. If anybody knows any magic for making angry bursa happier I love to hear it. Better luck to the rest of you oldsters this week.

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Week 18

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Old Guy II, thanks for getting the week off. I'll go ahead and put a weekly demarcation in nonetheless. Good job on your XC race, and I hope your inflamed bursa is short-lived; can't say I have any experience in that regard, hopefully someone here can offer some useful suggestions.

I had another decent training week. My daily totals were 5,0,8,7.5,6.5,7.5,8 for a total of 42.5 miles. A little less than last week, as I had said I would, but also topped an hour of running twice during the week. First time of an hour continuous running in awhile....at least since early June, that is. Of the runs, Wednesday and Friday incorporated a bit of speed, as I repeated the .2 on, .2 off that I had done the previous week, then on Friday, I included an accelerated run, where I started at 7:50 for the first mile, and dropped 30-35s per mile for the next three miles, so the last mile was at 5:40; it felt really good to get back to something resembling 5k race pace. It has me thinking that I can go ahead and jump into a fall festival fun-run; I just love the Fall Festival Races: the festive atmosphere, the cool, dry air, the cider and music (Bluegrass around here) at the finish....just a lot of fun.

During the Friday cut-down run, I actually ran the miles in Nike Frees, not a shoe I usually run in, but I was surprised how much I liked them (this was on a track, so there weren't any stones to get caught in the tread). In the process it's got me thinking about shoes again. We had talked about shoes a year ago, but maybe it's time to see what people's racing and training "go-to" shoes are these days.

I have a low-volume foot with a high, collapsing arch and Morton's toe, and was diagnosed many years ago as needing support, so most of my training have been in shoes with some pronation control. I've whittled it down to the point where I run mostly in light-weight trainers like the DS-Trainer or the New Balance 905's. With the bum knee episode, I decided now would be a good time to focus on trying to strengthen my feet, so I bought the Nike Frees mostly to walk in. I can definitely tell that my feet have gotten stronger over the summer, and I'm now finding that I can do many of my runs without the pronation control, but am not too sure how minimal I want to go. However, I will do intervals in my racing flats, which have been Adidas Manas and Saucony Fastwitch up to this point.

Welcome to the threaed frets and Silverfox (and victoria b.c. canada runner and zero gravity that I didn't acknowledge last week), I hope that you can find good fellowship and useful training experiences from this thread.

Hope everyone is having a great week as we pass the autumnal equinox.

Congrats on the xc race and series old guy II. Can’t say I’ve had that particular malady but have had bursitis in other parts. I found ibuprofen at bedtime for weeks, even after it seemed better, helped. I’ve been using that TX for my left knee and it’s working, albeit slowly. After being a streak runner for the first 8 months this year and not seeing improvement in my knee I returned to what worked best for me: 5 days a week, never running on Thur or Fri’s. Saturday’s and Tuesday’s are hard, Sunday’s are slower and longer and Monday’s and Wednesday’s are medium. 30 miles a week is about my max and last week was total of 13 during this recovery period. I cannot run on the flat or pavement so I’m hitting the trails. Tuesday’s was my standard uphill push of only 1.8 miles, but 800 foot elevation gain. The goal is to get my HR above 95% and I accomplished that with a 174 (max is 181). Yesterday’s trail was a variation on the above, with climbing the same hill from a different angle. I am a track guy so trails are alien to me, but necessary if I want to get better. So I’m making slow steady progress on my knee while incrementally increasing the miles and intensity. I think I’ve learned a valuable lesson with this last injury: I aint no Ed Whitlock!

Hello lucKY2b.

Well, a return week of running for me. Longest run yesterday was close to 30 min.

Low mileage, which has been the norm for me for last few years but am finding those new orthotics are really making me slow....most likely due to deconditioning..HR much higher than usual...I was off running for nearly 5 weeks even though I did some maintaining on my bike as well as my 6x a week newspaper deliveries. Of course that's not exactly continuous arobic activity though calories are expended I would think.

To Desert Rat, wasn't being flippant, like lucKY2b posted I was wondering what happened to this thread, couldn't find it yesterday anywhere.

Hopefully the trolls will stay away.

Glad to once again be communicating with the Skuj(er)meister as well as just being back from a 25 min. burn, in lighter shoes. I will as advised be wearing the more protective shoes.

LucKY2b...I've been a Nike Free guy for the past several years. I'm not doing the kind of mileage you are, but I like them a lot. The lower heel really takes the pounding shock away from the knees and hips and puts it back where it belongs. I did go through an adjustment period involving sore Achilles, but it's been with it IMHO.

Retype...I'm curious how you determined your max heart rate. Did you use an age-based formula or were you tested? Thanks for any info.

victoria, b.c., canada, runner wrote:[/

Hopefully the trolls will stay away.

Glad to once again be communicating with the Skuj(er)meister as well as just being back from a 25 min. burn, in lighter shoes. I will as advised be wearing the more protective shoes.

You will notice that mostnif not all of Skujs post are deleted precisely because he is a troll, and he has been banned from posting in this good thread.

Hmm, it's been a while. I dropped my mileage back from a long series of 70 mpw to something like 60 just prior to HTC and still haven't bumped it up again. I was so incredibly tired after the relay that I just couldn't motivate myself. I'm feeling a bit better now and have started doing some drills once a week and a tempo-paced workout in preparation for xc season. Since this weekend was a xc race, I did drills and a session of 4 x 2:15 at "race effort" with about equal recovery. Felt like crap and my legs were tired going into the race.

Last year, my daughter and I ran exactly the same mile split the first mile in our separate races on the same course. This year, she told me her mile split from her first 6k race and ironically, that was exactly what I ran for my first mile. ;-) Even though it was slower than last year (by more than 10 seconds), I was pleased since I haven't run ANY miles at that pace yet. Unfortunately, I found myself in a big "hole" and didn't move up all that much, finishing about 10-12 seconds slower than last year.

About the stretching thing from last week - I do stretch on a sporadic basis (and hardly at all the last 3 weeks since I didn't have time), but I think it helps. I will stretch randomly when I feel something tight because it feels good. Also, on my long runs, I often stop for a minute or two to stretch my calves or hamstrings, especially after a long climb up the hills in the forest. I don't think it hurts my training effort and it feels much better.

I have a bad disc in my back which at times is extremely painful. I started going to a physical therapist and he told me I was very tight and he gave me a regimen of hip flexor and hamstring stretches 3 times per day. Previous to this I didn't stretch with as much regularity. I have to say I believe it helps my back pain. I wish I could be more warmed up when I stretch but it isn't always possible. I think I started getting tighter when started to do more hilly trail running.

Today was exactly 2 months from my surgery for a labral tear in my hip. I didn't expect to start running util 2-3 months post surgery at best, but this week I did 21 miles, including an 8 miler. My hip feels great, although I am running about 2 minutes per mile slower than normal. The muscles around both hips need loosening up as they are tight after 1 year of just sitting around. I went to PT for the first time post surgery on Thursday just to make sure I wasn't being overly ambitious. I had worked with her last winter and she was thrilled with how much better my hip works. She said last year, it was so loose that the femur was just clunking around in the hip socket with no support to hold it in place. I know what that feels like as I ran that way for years. It is good to be on the road to recovery. When you are injured, never give up!

Top Cat wrote:

I think I started getting tighter when started to do more hilly trail running.

Yeah, we never believe that it has anything to do with getting older :>)

Re Nike Free: This is the ONLY shoe I have had problems with in the past few years... and I run in flats most days.

A) achilles problems

B) they pick up every rock you encounter on roads and trails (try running in Flagstaff where there are small cinders everywhere!)

You're probably right. I just always thought getting old was heart disease, high blood pressure,colonoscopys,arthritus, etc. The last thing I considered was tight muscles and tendons, but now they're on my list.

I had an okay maintenance/foot recovery week for training, mostly cross training.

Two bike rides of about an hour each, three days roller skiing (50-60 min each), and one short run on Saturday to test out my foot--feels good, hopefully ready to go this week. Did two weight workouts.

Regionals XC this week. Boys swept top 4 (and all 4 were part of my summer training group) and my son was 3rd. On to State, and then Portland in a few weeks! Younger son was 5th in JV race, and ran a good effort.

Kiryea wrote:I'm curious how you determined your max heart rate. Did you use an age-based formula or were you tested? Thanks for any info.

Kiryea, I think that all one really has to do is run hard until you are running in oxygen debt for a few minutes, then stop and immediately measure your heart rate by whatever means. Obviously, the easiest is to use a heart rate monitor, but you can also use the pulse-clock method, usually counting the number of pulses in 6s or 10s and then multiplying by 10 or 6, respectively to get your bpm. If you record it a few times over the course of several workouts, the average should be within a one or so bpm of your true max heart rate.

The important thing is to know that you really are maxed out. I usually find if I warm-up for a mile, then do an initial hard 800m, rest and repeat, I'll be pretty close to maxed out on the second and subsequent repeats and will get a good reading (for some reason, my body doesn't max out on the first hard effort; I think that's normal.) Another alternative is to run hard up a steep hill that takes a few minutes to climb. After a few repeats, take your pulse at the top when you're thoroughly exhasuted. A third way is to use a treadmill (easiest, but also my least favorite because of my aversion to TM's) and gradually increase the pace and/or incline until you are at a pace you can't sustain for too long (we used this method in Exercise Phys. class back in the day; we also measured VO2max that way.)

These are all methods I was taught from back in the '70's. Any modern twists?

Hi Kiryea, I don’t check back often so sorry I missed your question on heart rate. I wear a Garmin 405 for every run, but for races and hard training I use the heart rate monitor. You can Google max heart rate and find at least 5 different formulas to find maximum heart rate. If I had to guess, I’d say none of them are accurate for many of the folks posting in the 50+ forum. The highest formula I can find for my age, 52, is 176. So I use my real world racing results and, on average, 181 is it. I hit 186 in an (important to me) mile race in August, but that is the exception. Other races I maxed at 180 or 179. I’d like to think that our 50+ group is altering the previously perceived expectations for heart rate maximums for “senior runners”.

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