50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

mo'pak wrote:

So maybe starting to get some of my form back.

Looks like you are. Nice one mo’pak.

Mon = 31 min road and trail

Tue = 32 min road and trail (changed cadence)

Wed = 33 min road (cemetery)

Thr = 34 min road (cemetery)

Fri = 11 min road (dead legs)

Sat = 35 min rocky trail

Sun = 36 min road

Total = 212 minutes: 3 hours and 32 min

This was a great week where my left knee finally got well. The retro running had helped some but what fixed it, pure and simple, was shorter steps and faster reps. I increased my cadence to 160 and shortened my stride length. I’ve always over-strided. That was it. I mean, no kidding, I went from an irritation that would not leave me alone on Tuesday to having ZERO discomfort by Saturday. The “ideal” is supposedly 180 but there is no way I can do that running as slowly as I am now. I still feel like Marvin Martian (from Bugs Bunny) spinning my legs, but hell, I don’t care, my knee feels good! The minutes are starting to add up and for the first time in a very long time I cut back on Friday not because something hurt, but because my entire body was just plain tired. That’s the way it’s supposed to be!

47 miles this week with a longest for the year 12 miler yesterday. 6, 2 mile progressive loops at the park. Starting at 8:06 pace for the first 2, progressively faster on each down to 7:22 pace for the last 2. This run wiped me out for some reason. Guess I need more long runs. Have been neglecting them for awhile now. Not long ago I use to breeze through long runs of 14-20 miles.

Lucky, thanks for the tips on the knee. Actually the pain for now is gone. I've had few problems with my knees in the past so I guess at the first feeling of substantial pain I get a little panicky. It was probably all the racing that was exascerbating the problem. Less cushion in the joints as we age.

My main concern now is this irregular heartbeat I've had off and on for almost 10 years now. Doesn't bother me when I run but sometimes when my heart slows down after a hard wo it will flutter for several hours. Sometimes it just happens on it's own. Haven't been too concerned but want to get it checked out to see if something can be done to prevent it from occuring. Got a doc appointment this week and will likely get an echocardiogram. Always something to worry about.

I was talking about cadence on saturday. Mine remains 180 to 190 as it always has been. Obviously my stride has shortened quite a bit since my 20s. I used to only need about 600 per km at 10 km pace, at the moment around 800, oh dear!

Rtype wrote:

I increased my cadence to 160 and shortened my stride length. I’ve always over-strided.

Nice week, Rtype! I tend to over-stride, as well. If you want some additional reference points: my cadence for easy runs is 162-165, harder efforts 168-170. My last 10K race averaged at 170 or 680 steps/km; last year's 10K cadence was 172, so 636 steps/km....quite a difference between the two.

50x, glad your knee problem has subsided and also glad you're getting the arrhythmia checked out! Hope there is an easy fix. There are a few others that have posted here with irregular HR issues. Maybe someone can chime in.

Another very easy week of 21 miles for me. The ham and achilles feel noticeably better this week on the lighter lower intensity work. I am hoping that one more week of this will get me back to normal, and I can then start the build up for XC.

Decent past two weeks, including some modest intervals this week. Legs seem to be coming around and the lung/chest/whatever is at about 95% now.

Blessed with dry coolish weather for this time of year. Treadmill is finally fixed for the hot humid weather probably to come.

Seems like many people on here are on the mend, good stuff.

Looking forward to Grant Fisher competing in upcoming WJrGames.

Have a good week all!

My dizziness seems to have gone away. The last time it happened was at the end of a hard workout and it was my final interval--I think I was just plain whooped. I had another solid week. I will have a couple upcoming hurdle "shake-outs" before I leave for WF Univ on Thursday morning for the masters championships. 100m semis Friday morning, hurdle finals Friday afternoon, 100m finals Sat morning, and then a couple of relays on Sat/Sun. I feel ready!

Some rest and rehab was good for the knee and later in the week I did runs of 5 minutes (just testing it), then 22, 40, and 65. It's not perfect so I'll keep it moderate for another week or two. Cycled about 5 hours for the week for cross training. This kind of mucks up mid-summer running plans but the important thing is to get/stay healthy so cautiously proceeding.

Feeling mostly healed as I post this on Monday morning. Only ran 41 miles last week with a day off.

Did 10x400 on the track Tuesday avg'ing 78.8; won the 5K on Saturday in 17:16 going 525,530,542. Ran by myself...not too happy about being so far away from 17:00. Felt good first 2 or so but was breathing pretty hard the last mile. Got to figure that out...

The plan now is to keep my self healthy and get the miles up. Seeing my Chiro (future son-in-law) 2 times each week now to try to keep things in check. Still have hope of s decent 5K this Fall.

All the Best,

Dave

OK ... no Masters thread so i will jump on this 50+ one that i read each week (i guess at 52+..i qualify).

No race on the near future, 5k in about six weeks so concentrating on miler (quicker) stuff to help get the 5k wheels back. Have spent the Spring and early summer working on base and longer tempo stuff and racing long races (stuff i would never do in the past).

Tues - grass 10min, 5min, 5x 1min

Fri - track 4x 200, 3x 300, 2x 400, 800 (2:12)..felt good for 7:00 am

Sun - two hours trails.

we have alot of heat up here in the PNW, so working on some morning shuffles to make the afternoon shuffles easier.

Happy Summer

Best of luck to Spikez on upcoming masters' championships. Looking forward to her race report.

And thanks for the reminder from a few of you on running backward. Another thing I need to remember to do periodically.

Here's my last week:

Mon: 8 mi group workout with 5 x 800's (@ 3:15) with calisthenics between

Tues: 8 mi easy

Wed: 8 mi group workout with 5 x 800's (@3:15) with calisthenics between

Thurs: a.m. 8 mi easy; p.m. 5 K series race at 21:29

Fri: off

Sat: 10 mi with 2 mi MP

Sun: 6 mi easy

Total for week about 50 mi.

Been working on intensity for the last few weeks, so time to start moving up distance. Official marathon training starts 8/10.

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Week 163

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Greetings 50+ Troopers. Hope this day finds you well. With the cooler weather we’ve had this week, you’d have thought that I would be cranking out the miles, but alas, Thursday and Friday were so chalk full of distractions (and lack of sleep catching up on me), I couldn’t get myself out the door. As such, I only managed a paltry 23+ miles on four runs this week. The log reads as such:

Sun: 5 moderate and steady (about 7:25 average)

Mon: off

Tue: 6.3 moderate, w/3.2@7:05 pace

Wed: 5.8 w/5x(2 laps on, 1 lap off)

Thur & Fri: off 

Sat: 6 w/5K race@19:15 (5:53,6:18,6:24,:40)

Wednesday’s workout went well, despite my being a bit tired for lack of sleep and having a mildly funky stomach (was it something I ate?), I still managed to ramp them down, going 2:57,2:54,2:50,2:46,2:45 (remember, these are 750m given the weird track, so the last two were just under 6 minute pace) the recovery laps were around 2:05-2:07. Given how awful Thursday and Friday were, I had two choices: being rested, I might as well race, or being short on mileage, I could go long. Given the cool, drizzly weather, I figured I might as well race. The race was down on the RJ Corman property on a lovely course I know well. The race was unremarkable: smallish field (maybe 120), a couple of college kids jogged off the front and destroyed the rest of us weekend warriors, one other kid finished 30s ahead of me, and behind me was a couple minute gap to 5th place. I tried to stay with the 3rd place kid for a while, but eventually I lost steam as you can see from my splits; it did feel good to get down into the sub-6 range though, with slow-but-steady progress, we might still get there (knock on wood). The time is to-the-second consistent with my 10K race on the fourth, so I think this is a pretty honest assessment of my fitness these days. Hopefully, this week we’ll get the mileage back up into the 30’s.

Some great results coming out of Winston-Salem:

(

http://www.usatf.tv/gprofile.php?do=view_event&event_id=6668&mgroup_id=45365&year=2014

)

*Congrats to Spikez on the hurdle win, I’m guessing you’d like to have finished even better than your solid 4th in the 100m, but all things considered…

*Also congrats to my buddy, Don Coffman, on his nice 10000m and 5000m double wins; sorry he didn’t have much competition---he was light-years ahead of second place.

*Sabra Harvey absolutely destroyed the W65 1500m (by 16s!) and 800m (by 2s) national records. Wow! And she set an AG record in the 5000m, as well. My pick for MVP of the meet!

*Brad Barton (M48) almost dipped under 4 minutes in the 1500m to go along with his near miss of Northwest Masters’s AG WR mile from the previous week. (Great report on that race here:

http://timesofsandiego.com/sports/2014/07/12/magical-olympian-mile-brad-barton-oldest-to-go-sub-420/

) Speaking of which, NWM, your 2:12 800m time in your workout would have put you right in the mix at Nationals: what are your plans? Any?

*Nolan Shaheed turned 65 during the meet, and almost broke the M65 2k steeple world record on his Bday (crushing the AR by almost a minute, though).

A lot of other highlights I’m sure I’m missing, and hopefully there will be some more today (already underway)---wish I could be there! Kudos to all that made their way down to NC.

We should all vote to put Ken on the cover of Runner’s World! Spread the word!

http://covercontest.runnersworld.com/entry/621/qg5s1j8u99t7bv4ichkfndbl75

OK, that’s about all I got. Would love to hear some reports straight out of Winston-Salem. And good to see so many on the men. Sore-back Dave continues to amaze, even if he is less enthusiastic about his times.

What have you got? Cheers!

lucKY2b wrote:And good to see so many on the men.

Nice 5k lucky, seems like our 5k times are similar. Ran a 19:19 a few weeks back. I'm not comfident enough, for lack of a better word, to charge out at sub-6 pace yet but this fall I may throw caution to the wind for at least one 5k. Like your race I'm usually a fast starter, then pay the price towards the end. Is that how you usually run them or was that just a blip?

On the med side; my knee seems to be fine now. Went for my arrythmia check-up this week. Got an EKG which was fine. I knew it would be because I can tell when my heart starts to flutter and of course it didn't that day. It comes every 2-3 weeks and lasts consistent for up to 24 hours, then goes away until the next time. My doc ordered a echocardiogram (aug 8th) and will see what that shows. He also gave me a heart monitor to wear for 30 days. Hopefully I'll have an episode so they can see it, I'm sure I will. I'm not wearing it all the time. A few hours a day. I'll know when my heart acts up then I'll put it on for a few hours, then send it back. The doc doesn't think it sounds serious and I've never thought it was but would like to know what's going on and if I can do something to correct it.

47ish miles this week. Did another 12+ miler yesterday, a little quicker, a little longer than last weeks and felt better doing it. Along with a mid-week up tempo 7 miler.

That's all for now. Hope everyones doing well.

Ps funny how last week Dave was kind of bumming and wishing he got down to 17 for 5k. What!!!??? The poor guy, I feel his pain. Nope, never will. I can only dream of those times. Matter of fact sub-18 is still a dream for me. And not even sure if I will ever get under 19 again. But I do think that one will happen, maybe this fall, assuming no setbacks. Nice set of wheels there Dave.

50x, I hope they get your arrhythmia figured out....must be both frustrating and a little unnerving.

As for race pace, I always tend to go out too fast, sometimes as bad as yesterday, but usually not. It generally depends on my conditioning; the better conditioning, the more even (and faster) the pace typically is. Last summer I should have been back under 18 before the abdominal tear, so there's probably an element of wishful thinking (delusion) in there, too. :-P

I know, I know---I won't get there any faster by pushing beyond what I'm capable of doing.

Starting to dabble (take chances) again with an occasional quicker mile/800 pace workout. Seem to be getting fit(er).

Tues - trail .. 1,2,3,2,1 min x 2 sets :60 sec rest

Fri - track .. 4x 200 (:30 sec rest), 500,400,300,200,100 (:60 quarter pace), 4x 200 (:30 rest).

Sat - trail two hrs

Cheers

Ynot

I am sitting in the Piedmont Triad airport with a couple of hours to kill before my flight home. Overall, I had a B+ meet. The hurdles were definitely my highlight. I still have some form issues but my turnover between the hurdles is starting to return and it was a solid performance. I was disappointed in my 100m (I was left sitting in the blocks), but I ran a quick anchor leg on a 4x100 relay and I felt real good. I got to see Kevin F burn the house down in his race (I hope he reports in). It was impressive.

After a 2013 that was full of injury and doubt I managed to win both indoor and outdoor national hurdle titles for my age group. I won two gold medals at the outdoor national meet and saw many friends that I haven't seen in ages. Plus my husband and I stopped at a little diner on the way to the airport and we ate possibly the world's best southern friend chicken. Happiness!

Hope everyone runs and races well.

Congrats SpikeZ!

Mon = 37 min road and trail

Tue = 39 min road and trail

Wed = 39 min road and trail (super tired)

Thr = 40 min road and trail (felt great)

Fri = 41 min road and trail (felt great)

Sat = 42 min road and trail (felt great)

Sun = 43 min beach

Total = 281 minutes: 4 hours and 41 min

Greetings from North Myrtle Beach South Carolina. Just got here this evening and just finished up my Sunday run on the beach!

It was a very good week. 7 runs in 7 days. 4 hours and 40 minutes. Up to 43 minutes a day now. On Wed I was worried my minutes were getting ahead of my fitness as I felt horrible. But something changed that day and I felt better each day the rest of the week. I just remembered that running in the sand is pretty taxing. The rest of the week I will definitely be mixing in some road.

I've been wanting to post on here but I've been injured for almost two years. Off and on hamstring and calf issues.

Finally my chiropractor figured out it was my psoas (sp) muscles.

He worked on them, gave me some exercises and I'm pain free!

Amazing overnight cure.

It feels great to be back.