van aaken

It is interesting that you bring that ukp now, Bob. I change age groups aat the end of this week but my goals have had to be revised temporarily.

I just want to run again and then complete a 5K and then a 10K nice and easy.

On March 4th I felel on my right shoulder and shatterd it into 5 pieces in addition to tearing the ball of the joint from the bone. In a 3 hour operation, the shoulder was reconstructed by adding a plate and 12 screws.

Therapy is now my challenge

Damn, that's terrible news. I see how that would

change your priorities in a big way.

How do you stand the pain?

I have always been told that marathon runners do not have pain. I will admit that it is a little uncomfortable at times but I want the use of my arm back. Plus, I think that I want to jog/walk again.

Uhhh! That's awful news. Best of luck with recovering.

I also had a set back (youth is wasted on the young- another Van Aaken saying). I was doing my strides on a suspended indoor track while watching a ladies tennis match the stopping on a turn caused a slight twing in my calf- multiply that by fourty two and you can see that I was in some discomfort- I finished the workout, but had to resort to a slow walk/run the following week because of the incident. I am now back to workouts- the trails where i run are very nice at this time of the year. Did not get in much on Boston Monday (only 93 minutes of running and 64 minures of walking), but since then I have been over the two hours every day. Still slow and plan to up it to three + hours during the summer. Much of this has been a walk/run type of workout. Did my track time trial in 27:44 (walk 1:00 run 1:00). I was able to average about 5.55 per km. I would guess I was running at 3:40's per km and walking at about 7:25 per km. How are the rest of the crew doing? Anyone go to Boston? Nice day for a race.

I am sorry to learn of your set back Vladimir.

I have been thinking. It is a shame that we work for 40 plus years and then retire finally giving us the time to persue our hobby but we no longer have that capability to do so to thes fullest. As we age, we need the power to recouperate quickly and fully and yet we no longer have that ability either. Now that I think I know how to train I can not find out. What a waste. Life seems to be lived backwards.

At least I find that life does get better and better if one allows it to do so.

ENJOY!

I agree. Now that I know where the pieces to the puzzle go- I cannot locate the puzzle. Even with my running being back on the mend- I know that I will never reach the goals that was attainable for me. I am not a big advocate of age groups (this is for me not everyone). I still remember when races were scored by your place. The first person won, etc. No age groups, no gender, no age graded. I know that those things help to increase our base of runners, but at times it takes away from the peak of runners. I will run for as long as I can. I will run in competition for as long as I can, but I do not get much glory out of looking at age graded and being told that my 5k time would have been faster if I was 35 years younger- I could figure that out all by myself. I enjoy running with others- today we ran/walked for 1:40.56 (about 17k). Within the group was a 35 year old female (3:15 marathoner), a 25 year old male (2:24 marathoner). I must end this rant, but I agree that we are moving back to where we used to be and it is not all good.

Orville: All the best. Get well asap.

Orville, what are you able to do to retain your sanity? I know when I dislocated my arm it took forever to heal and running with it in a sling was a real pain in the neck (the sling pulled). I discovered it was much better to just let the arm hang and insert my hand into my shorts (ted bundy- married with children style). It altered my form, but at least I could run. Any other injuries from the incident? Quick recovery wishes.

I thank everyone for the good wishes.

I tire very quickly and nap a lot. I do not drive or run yet but am very busy with therapy. I spend one hour, three days a week with a Dr of Therapy and do 4 to 5 sessions a day at home also. this is the hardest thing I have ever done. I keep thinking of Ed Whitlock and his favorite advice--have patience.

One of my worries with any injury is what drugs I will receive. Not that I can ever run any time that would merit drug testing, but many times the doctors are only taking care of the actual injury and not looking at how it could have an effect upon other aspects of our lives. Are you able to do anything for your lower body? If not do they have any ideal of when? I know that the normal swimming, biking methods are out, but a stair stepper may be in the future. I hope the rest will help you recover (I am a optimist) and come back stronger than ever.

Very interesting. I never thought about testing but do my best to avoid any medecines. By the way, the doctors say do not fall again and then gave me pain killers that have that they make you dizzy written all over them Strange. I took none. Now and then I take one tylenol so I can do harder therapy. I walk 70 to 90 minutes a day so far.

That is more exercise than at least 90% of the US population.

Good luck in the rehabilitation.

Thank you. Luck willsuplement the very hard work that I am doing. This is my biggest challenge! I started to drive again today.

Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.

I read that somewhere. Definitely applies to training.

I've spent the winter transforming myself from a jogger and a good weather marathon finisher into a marathon runner with a primary goal of racing well in October (and a secondary goal of doing better still in 2008 when I'll be eligible for M50).

My methods have been very roughly those of Dr. van Aaken: I've run slow (trying to stay at an avgHR of 130), I've run (almost) every day, I've done short (<10s) "sprints" and 1-2 short 1-2 minute faster "future race pace" sections at the end.

I'm currently at 11-12 hours per week in singles, but I'm at odds on how to continue. I understand that the "truest" way would be to try to increase the hours by doing doubles, but I don't think other priorities will allow it (and I'm certainly not ready to emulate Meinrad Nägele yet). At some point or maybe soon I believe I should start doing intervals (such as 6-8 times 1000m at MP with 400-600m walk/jog recoveries to begin with?) and shorter 5-15km races.

I'm not asking for a complete and detailed 26-week program, but I'd certainly like to pick your brain and I do need a few pointers on how to build up a progressive plan.

Best wishes for good recovery for you both knights of ill-fortune!

I have followed this thread since its beginning and it has been very informational. I would like to apply Van Aaken's methods to my own training but I don't know where to start. I currently run three days a week: 2 eight mile runs averaging about 7:30/mile, and a long run on the weekend of about 17 miles averaging about 8:15/mile. My recent race times are 18:43 for 5k and 31:01 for 5 miles. most of the racing that I do falls in the 5K to 10 mile range. Any advice regarding pace and volume would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Those times are faster tha mine by a pretty fair margin so my input may not be much help to you. However I think that most of the elite runners that have posted on this thread, and there have been several, will probably tell you to run more mileage.

I just ran the Nashville Marathon in 3:35:06. I think that was about an 8:12 overall pace. I wanted much better, but it was a 6:03 PR for me and it was 65 degrees at the start and we had some frequent head winds a bit past the half way mark for people running at my pace.

In hindsight, the only thing that I might would have changed about my training would be to have done a few more longer Sunday runs. Many on this board were helpful in my training. I did barely manage to BQ with that race.

Best wishes on your rehab Orville and Vladimir.

Thanks to all and HRE in particular.

I know you've posed this to vladmir, but I'll cover until he answers as it's been here a while. I think your best bet is to add days. Ideally, I'd say add three days, do that 8 mile run, or evn drop the pace a bit and maybe cover 7 miles or so in an hour. But I wouldn't get hung up on pace, just enjoy the run. If seven days is too many, go to six, or even five. Once every week or two, run 2-3 miles at a good clip, time it if you're ambitious, and once or twice a week do some fast relaxed strides at 80-100 yeards.