50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Hit both my goals again this week: Remain healthy and run 70 miles (all on the treadmill). The only real workout of the week was a 3 mile prog-tempo in 17:02.9 (5:47.9, 5:41.1, 5:33.9). Everything else steady running averaging 7:20 for the week.

I'm so ready to get back outside to run, hopefully this week. Heard we may even get above freezing on Thursday! But there is so much snow everywhere the footing would be horrible. I can't imagine how long it's going to take to melt the 6' piles of snow along our driveway...

Have a good week everyone,

Dave

Mon. 7.6km kayak on the lake. 108 deg F. Had to hold up on an island for a spell when the wild southerly change blew in, winds up around 100kph nearly blew me off the water. The last 2kms was mostly surf and steer.

Tue. 7km hike on a steep loop on Mt Ida in 1.30. Did some slow jogging in parts. 1h 30m. 220 metres of elevation gain.

Wed. 25.8km mtn bike ride in 1h 25m.

Thu. 5.7km paddling on the lake.

Fri. Easy swim at the lake.

Sat. 9km hike on the McIvor Range, 1h45m with 270m elevation gain, actually jogged 5 x 3mins enroute. Temps had crept back up to 105.

Sun. Holed up at home most of day monitoring fire situations. 108deg, 50kph winds make for bad conditions. We have had more than a dozen days over 105deg in the last month and only a few under 100. Everything is a tinderbox.

Fortunately no fires here. Plenty to the South though.

I headed out on the bike at 6pm when the southerly brought in some cooler conditions. After 9kms I found myself engulfed in thick smoke. I turned and hightailed back to town. The smoke was actually from a fire 70kms to the south. Ended up riding 30 pretty quick kms, about 3kms from home I busted a gear cable so had to dawdle back home on my small chain ring.

Promising signs this week. Managing slow jogging mixed into my hikes with no dramas. Look forward to some very easy running over the next week.

Hopefully this will be our last week of hellish temps. 3 to 5 days per week of plus 40 Celsius every week for more than a month. Even the cool days have been low to mid 30s(90F) and several days each week of big winds.

No Polar Vortex here that is for sure. Our hottest January on record has wandered into February.

Amuch improved 26 mile week for me. My achilles seemed to almost miraculously settle down mid-week and I ran my 4 mile loop moderately hard on Thursday with no problems. I ran my weekend hard 6 mile trail run with my son and d-in-law this morning and the achilles was fine after that as well. I can tell from my post-run stretching that my upper hamstring attachment in the leg with the achilles soreness is still somewhat inflamed. I think that the answer for me is to continue the eccentric calf exercises I started up again along with building up some hamstring strengthening exercises. The older I get, the clearer the need for cross-training strength exercises becomes if I want to avoid overuse injuries from running.

old guy II wrote:

The older I get, the clearer the need for cross-training strength exercises becomes if I want to avoid overuse injuries from running.

Amen old guy II. The sooner we acknowledge this inevitable (for most of us) truth and then figure out the right strength work for our experiment of 1, the sooner we can get back to consistent running.

My whole family has an earache/sore throat thing going. Felt like I weighed 190 lbs. this week, not 150.

MON - ferget it.

TUE - Ran the Carnivero, 8.5 miles from 5000 to 6000 ft. & back, slow and slower.

WED - Four miles really slow

THUR - Nope.

FRI - 10K slow with Richard the ultra marathoner, he'd done a 50K earlier in the week so he was happy to slum with me.

SAT - 7 miles, snappy run all the way, burned the last two miles I felt the benefit of last week's speed workouts on the beach. Honestly I felt like I was reborn.

SUN - Lazy again, no run.

Managed 25.5, not hitting my goal of 30 miles but OK for a mildly sick week.

Best wishes to all my fellow veterans. We are turning the corner towards spring, yes?

Week 141: 6 hours 32 minutes in 6 runs so far. Tue 1 hr treadmill with 20 mins at tempo. Sat 2 hr long run on the snowy bikepath with 1x moderate hill at 3k effort. The other runs were easy. Will run 30 mins Sunday to put me at my goal of 7 hours for the fallback week. Next week bump to 10 hours.

Three treadmill runs this week, three outside. Here are a few things I don't hate: treadmill; cold; snow. Here are a few things I do hate: freezing rain; slip-sliding cars; icy, deep footprint pock-marked, ankle-breaking bikepaths.

I was reading the letsrun thread "The real issue with Rupp". I can save you the effort: ppl like Horst Girth were making sense, their basic equation is (Rupp can really run) = good. Many of the negative comments had me scratching my head. One of the arguments amounted to "a sport is popular when it has a lot of fans (yep), track doesn't have a lot of fans, ergo Rupp is ruining track". Another I would paraphrase as "Rupp is bad for the sport because I don't want to be his chum". I'm so glad we don't get nonsense like that on this M50+ thread. No doubt due to the greater maturity here, and thanks also to lucKY2b for keeping an eye on things. I can say that watching Rupp (and Farah) at the Olympics really inspired me to stop mucking around with the marathon and try to become good at 5K and 10K. (A little more mucking first, though.)

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Week 141

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Greetings, 50+ers! Yet another week of the winter that won't let go. Thankfully, weather is set to break this week. They're even predicting highs in the 60's by next weekend! I'm happy that I got in more exercise this week than last, but it was still below where I wanted.

Ran 3.3 miles last Sunday, did 35 minutes of elliptical on Tuesday and Friday, and rode the recumbent bike for 30 minutes on Monday. During Friday's elliptical, I tried to finish by upping the tempo/resistance to red-line my HR for the closing 4-5 minutes (prior to a short cool-down); maxed out at 174 bpm....felt good (BTW-The arm movement on the elliptical feels extremely unnatural to me, wish there were a way to change it.) Also did two sessions of 3x10 deep squats and 3 sessions of 3x10 each leg glute isolator machine. On the third glute session, I upped the resistance to 40 lbs, and this felt substantially different than the 20 lbs. It caused me to engage much more of my core muscles to counter the necessary force, so that might be a limit to what I can do with this machine. I also tried to do a fair amount of walking, but again, the weather hasn't been the most conducive. All-in-all, I can't really complain, but I confess that I'm not feeling the usual sense of urgency that I do when I have actual training goals. Would like to progress to about 4 hours/week of aerobic work. At that point, I'd feel like I'm at least maintaining (regaining?) some fitness.

Sorry I didn't comment any on last week's posts. Glad to read that most of you are maintaining, even excelling, through this period. I hope those that aren't can get where they want to be. Hang in there! Spring is just around the corner (for us north of the equator, that is)!

Cheers!

Well done to those who raced in Boulder! Fun course to race on as well! I raced the last time these were held there. The stream was fun to jump.

Am out to Day 51 on my streak. Couple days when it was in doubt due to a rough week. Mostly outdoor as it has been in the low 80's here. Hit the track yesterday and banged out my fastest 400 in about 20 months, so quite pleased with my progress and starting to vision some time goals down the road.

Watched the start of the IMS Arizona Marathon this morning, two guys were already about a minute ahead of the field by Mile 1 - where I was standing. About 400 runners total. Nice cool morning for them.

Have a great week!

lucKY2b wrote:

(BTW-The arm movement on the elliptical feels extremely unnatural to me, wish there were a way to change it.)

Cheers!

I hear you on the unnatural arm movement on the elliptical. Every model seems to have a slight variation. So are there any different machines where you workout? I found as my arms got stronger I actually worked the arms harder than my legs and gradually that felt more natural.

Mon = Weights = (25 push-ups/crunches + 20 reps with 15 lb dumbbells on 9 different exercises) X 2

Tue = 3 easy

Wed = Weights

Thr = 3+ miles. 23 inches of snow, ran in a tunnel

Fri = Shoveling

Sat = 3 miles shuttle run, last mile 7:09

Sun = Weights

Tough running this week with a record-breaking 23 inch snowfall Wed-Thr. I ended up running laps back and forth in a tunnel under a shopping mall on Thr. Then on Sat did the same thing back and forth on a narrow strip of plowed road. Pleased to make 7:09 in the last mile in these conditions. By Virginia standards this has been one hell of a winter!

Mon. A quick 30 min. Paddle on the lake.

Tue. 3 km easy jog around the golf course, 17 mins.

Wed. 3 km easy jog, laps of the local cricket ground at 10pm, about 40 very bemused kangaroos as spectators. One of the few places with green grass for them this time of year. 17 mins.

Thu. 25 km mountain bike ride in 75 mins.

Fri. Tougher 28 km mountain bike ride in 90 mins.

Sat. A very sharp 40 min paddle at the lake. 3 km easy jog around the trotting track in 17 mins.

Sun. Hike and run on the McIvor Range. 9.6 kms in 100 mins. Slow jogging for most of the middle 6 kms, rough terrain. 320 metres of elevation gain.

A quiet week activity wise.

I was happy to get a few light jogs into the legs. Sunday was pleasing. I intended to just hike the hills but felt good after a bit and started my slow rough terrain "cantering" and happily continued this for most of the course, easing back to hiking mode down the last tricky descent to home.

Happily the fires in our area have been extinguished after a week of being veiled in smoke. Our roads south were blocked for most of the week, stranding my wife in Melbourne. All my friends in the fire zones escaped unscathed without property loss.

A good week, back into a normal schedule with predictable results.

It was a year ago that I was admitted to start chemo. My blog about my workout that first day in the hospital:

http://workoutcancer.wordpress.com/

I plan on doing another VO2max test on the 1 year transplant date coming up in April.

Lots of good young runners coming up, that HS junior girl from Washington State looks like a great talent too! Wow, not often we get to see talent like this, good stuff!

Have a good week all, and speedy recoveries!

Stairs, stairs, and more stairs. That's why my chiro recommended to strengthen my tweaked hamstring without too much range of motion. So I have been a stair-running machine. I used to do them at least once a week at the local stadium but this winter has been so severe that I've done almost all training inside and had neglected the stairs. I went to our gym and found a 45 stair flight. At first, 10 flights almost did me in. Now I'm up to 20 of them, and they are done at a heart-pounding sprint pace. I rest 2 minutes after every set of 5. After that I do a circuit of free weights, machines, and body weight exercises and then I stretch. The injured hammy is slowly coming around. Plus, I'm still (slowly) losing weight. 5 more lbs. to go!

I'm getting weekly ART on the ham and my chiro told me to start easy striding next weekend. I'm still hoping to make the indoor national meet (mid-March).

Have a great week!

A good week of progress. 39 miles for me this week, but I'm feeling pretty fried by that step up in mileage. The goal for this week is 50+. Luckily I have a light work week so I can wear myself out running.

Another 25 mile week so am recovering well from the virus. Had planned a longer run today but was offered an entry into today's Sweetheart Run 5 km and so my wife and I took it, and won our respective 5 year age groups. Now we have a baseline time to work from.

OK, I am inspired by the streak of 1500Master. Running every day won't happen for me (family obligations), but running consistent six day weeks is something I can aspire to. Good luck maintaining the streak!

Meanwhile, I didn't really shake last weeks bug.

Still managed 24.5 miles, but the long run was terrible slow. Tried to tempo run a couple times, the tank was empty.

So I'll be patient, and ramp it back up when I can.

Hit 70 again last week. Had the luxury of only needing an easy 4 mile run Sunday to hit my miles. For the most part feeling good, injury free, running well and highly motivated!

My week had mostly steady running with two workout days. The log say's I avg'd 7:15/mile for the week. On the advice of some friends, I ran my Wednesday workout as a threshold run, rather than pushing thru a hard tempo. Did the 4 miles in 23:53.1 (6:00.0, 6:00.2, 5:57.8, 5:55.1) and felt real good about it! Then on Saturday, I did a prog 10 miles going from 7:00 down to 6:19. Felt really good after 10 so I decided to do one more. Cruised thru mile 11 right at 6:00. Its Still pretty cold out and the roads are really crappy but I did do three runs outside.

This week I'm just shooting for more of the same. 70/mpw seems to be my magic number so I'll try to hit that again.

Have a good week everyone!

Dave

racerdb wrote:

Did the 4 miles in 23:53.1 (6:00.0, 6:00.2, 5:57.8, 5:55.1) and felt real good about it! Then on Saturday, I did a prog 10 miles going from 7:00 down to 6:19.

Dave

Now that is some awesome running!

Awesome indeed -- gotta ask Dave, how old are you?

Rtype wrote:

Now that is some awesome running!

Thanks...I'm just happy to be running with no issues and getting in some solid, comfortable, mid-base training runs. This will hopefully set me up for a decent year of racing

Steve L wrote:

Awesome indeed -- gotta ask Dave, how old are you?

I'll be 54 in May

Dave