50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

My wife who has a graduate degree in biology and used to do medical research before becoming a full-time mom,, after extensive research and discussions with her OB/GYN, elected to do HRT when menopause hit her at about 55. The HRT significantly helped her with the symptoms. She is a serious masters swimmer and did not see any sudden fall off of her race times at that point, but did experience somewhat of a drop off just before she turned 60. She now is 65 and the last few years has had only the slow minor dropoff of times that one would expect with the accumulating years.

Mike F... pretty sure i saw you on USATV high5ing some 10k athletes. SAC track looks great. Way better than back in 2004.

Anyone close to SW Virginia for a 4th of July 5k? Just got a nice gift fom my in-laws for tkts to Roanoke for some vacation time.

Hope all are enjoying summer running.

KP

Did our club track mile on Thursday--they always schedule it just 5 days after the 10K so I'm never quite recovered. But everyone is in the same situation.

76.5, 2:35, 3:53, 5:10.6

I had a good pack to chase but geeze, with 500 to go they just dropped me. At this stage I have no acceleration. Doing an okay job of maintenance though. So far this year, 2 sec faster in 5K, 45 faster for half marathon, and virtually equal in the 10K and mile.

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Week 160

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A hearty hello to my 50+ compatriots. We've been in a broken record of heat and humidity for the past several weeks. So the running choices are 97% humidity & 72 degrees in the morning, or 55% humidity & 90 degrees in the evening. I've been running mostly in the evening, except Saturday morning with the group. My week was about like last week. 25+ miles on four runs, as such:

Sun: 5, easy

Mon: off

Tue: 5.1 easy-ish

Wed: 5.7 w/3x(3 laps@~8k pace, 30 sec rest, 1 lap@~2k pace, 2 lap jog recovery)

Thu & Fri: off (did get a decent walk in Friday)

Sat: 10 very easy

I'm finding this is a pattern that I'm comfortable with right now, except I'd like to throw in another run Thursday...things have just gotten in the way, however, with a full teaching load this summer, and they threw in some extra work helping with a couple of grad students filming lecture demonstration---it's all eating away at my summer hours. At any rate, I'm just running maintenance at this point: getting a little speed in, getting a little longer run in. Will I race Friday in the Bluegrass 10000? Still not sure. It can't be a *real* race, however, as I'm still way under-trained, but it's always a good time and good to see people. Just finding it hard to be motivated to enter the race when I'm feeling so far from fit. And in regards to Wednesday's workout, I'm calling 8k pace ~6:30/mile & 2k pace ~5:30/mile (a little optimistic, I'd say.)

One of my running buddies (David Nichols-M53) was selected by lottery to run the Western States 100 that started yesterday. At last check he was @mile-80 with only about 10-minutes to spare under the 30-hour cut-off pace; looks like he'll make it to the end, but I sure hope he gets the official finisher designation! Props to ya, Dave!

That's about all I've got this week. Good on y'all for getting out there and racing on the oval: KP, 1500master, Spikez, MikeF, AK-56; great work, all! And nice 5k, 50x! Seems you're getting very summer fit! Good to see everyone hard at it; fingers crossed I'll be out there racing again soon, too. Hope the rest of you are feeling optimistic; be it training, racing, or rehabbing, keep the faith! We're in it for the long haul.

Best Wishes!

Kevin Paulk wrote:

Anyone close to SW Virginia for a 4th of July 5k? Just got a nice gift fom my in-laws for tkts to Roanoke for some vacation time.

KP

Wish I could race Shawsville on the 4th KP, but the knee is not happy.

Up and down week with 6 runs in 7 days. 2 hours and 3 minutes. Continuing to add a minute a day run mostly on rocky trail. On Thursday I ran on pavement as an experiment and the left knee did not like that. Took Friday off and the knee improved. Today pushed it a bit running with #1 son but felt pretty good. Hard to believe he’s 27, whew, HE’s getting old. I’m at 23 minutes a day currently and my first goal is to make 30 minutes a day. Overall just trying to get my legs adapted to running more minutes. That’s been my glaring weak spot for years; no base.

Just got home from our association championship meet. I ran the hurdles and the 100m. The hurdles were great! My season goal was sub 13.5 and I ran 13.45 into a headwind. Time for a new goal! I still have more in me for that race so if I'm lucky I can get it down to the low 13s for the national meet. As for the 100m, unfortunately it started right after the hurdles. I was walking back to the start line and they were telling me to set my blocks. Approx. 5 minutes rest was not enough time after red-lining for 13 seconds and I very little left in my legs. So my 100m time was nothing to brag about.

But the hurdles! Yippee! National meet, here I come.

First 5 miler since last Nov and things didn't go real well. Ran a 33:17 or 6:40 pace, was hoping for a sub 6:30 pace but didn't get it. I guess after running a couple of pretty good 5ks recently my expectations were a little high. Started out what I thought was a good pace 6:26, then the next mile felt about the same but was 6:46, The next 2 went 6:36. 6:34, then another 6:46 last mile even though that one felt about the same. They all felt about the same pace but clearly weren't. Mile markers seemed accurate. As was the course. Had some problems this morning, back, knees, sore throat, but none of those seemed to affect me during the race. More work to do.

Got another 5 miler on the 4th but not expecting anything different than this morning.

42 miles this week

old guy II wrote:

My wife who has a graduate degree in biology and used to do medical research before becoming a full-time mom,, after extensive research and discussions with her OB/GYN, elected to do HRT when menopause hit her at about 55. The HRT significantly helped her with the symptoms. She is a serious masters swimmer and did not see any sudden fall off of her race times at that point, but did experience somewhat of a drop off just before she turned 60. She now is 65 and the last few years has had only the slow minor dropoff of times that one would expect with the accumulating years.

I've heard wonderful things about HRT but I have a family history of breast cancer, so that is off limits for me. Just muscling through it the best I can with no meds. I think the worst of it is behind me.

Running a little, coming down from steroid (prednisone) is causing some pain to flare-up. Hoping to get better answers from docs about what it is or what different meds to switch to since prednisone affects sleep and muscles.

Summer weather not too bad yet, enjoying it.

Have a Happy 4th of July (Yanks)!

Week 160: 3 hours 36 minutes in 5 runs. Saturday long run 1 hr 35 mins, a good effort, out 50 mins back 45 mins, somewhat more than 11 miles but I don't know the exact distance.

Continuing to supplement with the elliptical. Two weeks out from the chair switch, the back is improving slowly, another two weeks to full recovery seems reasonable. I was in the wrong chair for four weeks, after all.

@Rtype - Did you check the mileage on your shoes? I always have knee issues when mine get much over 300.

@jwil - Downhill repeats are scary. Be careful.

Alan Bennet wrote:

@Rtype - Did you check the mileage on your shoes? I always have knee issues when mine get much over 300.

That's happened to me in the past but the shoes only have 120 miles. The root cause this go round was trying to break in a pair of racing flats. About 3 runs in those shoes destabilized the tracking of my knee. Getting it back is taking a while.

Don't understand it, but I feel better in this heat/humidity and my mileage this week at a yearly high of 38.5, with a "long run" of 10.5, longest since this 1/2 marathon mid-May. No track work, but that is ok for now, given that the long-term goal is the Des Moines 1/2 marathon in mid-October.

No vacation plans, sure would love to go to San Fran for USA XC, but the long-term desire is 1) London for World Champs in 2017 and Tokyo for 2020 Olympics, both great cities to see. Not so sure about 2016 in Brazil, not ready to make that investment.

Not running related, our 11 year old HDTV is misbehaving. We looked at Samsung and at Sony 4K flat-screen sets of 55" each, wow, sure are tempting. Made watching a movie on our 36" set appear small, too. Samsung looks "brighter" in the picture, but Sony might have a greater "color contrast". Any thoughts on either?

I increased from 41 miles the prior week to 49 miles this past week. The Tuesday and Saturday hard runs went well, but I was feeling really tired on Sunday. The coming week will be a recovery and adaptation week of easier running and less mileage.

Sorry I'll miss you Rtype. I will do my best but definitely fear the brutality of the humidity for this here Oregonian.

Hi you over 50 runners. Is this a place to discuss issues of starting running over 50 ? or just for you running Masters going strong at our ripe age ?

Hi DANKEN. This is an open forum for anyone interested in what it takes to train and race over the ripe young age of 50. Granted, most of the posters do have a pretty long history with running. However, many of us took a substantial hiatus before returning to running as masters, so we do know what it's like to restart a long-idle engine....if that helps.

Mon. Slow 16 km run on easy trails in 96 mins. Started at a slow shuffle gradually built to a slow jog and gradually to an easy run over the last few kms.

Tue. A slower but harder 16.7 km run in about 105 mins. Some technical trails in the middle section and a few decent uphills.

Wed. A busy day but did get onto the lake for a relaxed 35 min. paddle.

Thu. 17.6 km trail run with about 520 m. of elevation gain on my McIvor Ranges trails. 110 mins. A pretty solid effort on this terrain.

Fri. All work and no play.

Sat. 26 km mountain bike ride on pleasantly rolling forest trails then up into the McIvor Ranges for a solid 16.6 km with 470 m. Of elev. gain in 100 mins. Finished strongly on the last rocky downhill "mile" in around 7.20.

Sun. 5 km warmup then a 3 km relay leg in a plodding 12.50, my son ran our last leg and ran a minute quicker. His only running is the occasional club race on a sunday morning. Jogged an easy 2 km warmdown.

Went out later and shuffled through a very slow 6 kms in the bush.

About 77 kms for the week and actually strung a fairly big 7 days together from thursday to wednesday. The body is holding up quite well to the increase in running load.

Welcome, DANKEN!

The key to going strong is to train consistently for a long time. The key to consistent training is to resolve those issues quickly, before they put a stop to your training. Running is a high injury sport, so there's always lots to discuss. Hmm, are you having any issues?

Rtype wrote:

... trying to break in a pair of racing flats. About 3 runs in those shoes destabilized the tracking of my knee. Getting it back is taking a while.

I think the elliptical is a magic machine for alignment problems between the knee and ankle.