50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

M: rest.

T: 4 miles easy / 7 miles easy.

W: 12 miles progression.

R: 4 miles easy / 7 miles easy.

F: 9 miles progression.

SA: 7 miles easy.

SU: 16.7 miles.

The volume is back to normal, but I held back a bit on intensity. The long run on Sunday was really tough as the temperature reached 70s. I need to get up early for a long run, since 11am-1:30pm is not an ideal time for this kind of weather.

Nice week, RFR.

And now for a bit of mid-week levity in advance of the Indoor Masters Championships.

https://youtu.be/4YNl3Zhiz90

Good Luck!

Thanks for the response.

5-6 days / week with the doubles, 1 or 2 long runs. I'm looking to get a good 3 month base in right now, with short hillwork and track as able .

Just did a Mile Time trial with local running club, 5:31.5 indoor 300m track. Took 3 days prior to rest, only 3 miles total. (helped the feet after 3 days)

Main Focus: get as close to 5:00 mile as i can and break 18:00 5k. I took 17 years off due to a combination of things, and USED to think 5:00 was simple ! Have to accept reality.

Someday I'll just go out for an easy 3 miler in the sunshine, leave the watch at home, enjoy the scenery, and call it a good day.

Nice distance . Could you describe your progression runs, timewise? I haven't tried that training strategy.

Personally, I love 70 degrees and sunshine , with some humidity for training and especially racing 5k or shorter. Seems like the muscles are looser at that temp.

Just a second now !! Are you 50 years old and a few days ? If i did ONE of those workouts I'd be recovering for the next 2 days at 8:45 - 9:00 pace.

I found that out last year after feeling good on a 6 miler at 7:20's pace, What do you do to recover?

Thanks !

MichRunGeezer wrote:

Just a second now !! Are you 50 years old and a few days ? If i did ONE of those workouts I'd be recovering for the next 2 days at 8:45 - 9:00 pace.

I found that out last year after feeling good on a 6 miler at 7:20's pace, What do you do to recover?

Thanks !

I'm about 60 days away from 55... Easy days are easy, well make that slow, and hard days are hard. Recovery runs are usually untimed but I would guess 7:45'ish pace...or whatever. Hard days seem to really kick my butt good which forces the easy days to be easy...or slow... I have a coach now so I just do the workout at the paces he prescribes.

Dave

You're a youngster still ! I'm hiring Neely Spence Gracey as a coach starting in May, for the Crim Mile in August I want to be ready.

Hopefully she doesn't kill me . She just ran a 50:50 15k and a 1:12 half marathon a bit before that. Her husband coaches with her too. He has some excellent coaching background.

Never had a personal coach before, just Bob Parks at EMU back in the 70's, but he basically ran everyone into the ground and didn't give us a rest before racing.

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Week 198

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Salutations, 50+ers! I love it when I have to go back two pages to get to the start of the previous week. Good to see some discussion going on, keep it up! MichRunGeezer, I know what you mean about the 5-minute mile, I proved I could still do one at 50, but a few more setbacks like I've had recently and 6-minute mile might soon be in jeopardy. Such is life!

Well, as we pass the spring equinox, I'm finally happy with the direction of my training. I managed another 34 miles + stairs on 6 days; the log reads as such:

Sun: Off

Mon: 8.0 easy (8:00 pace)

Tue: 4.4 w/2 hard (6:40, 6:23)

Wed: 4.5 easy-to-moderate (7:34 avg pace)

Thur: 3 easy + 5x11 stories of stairs (all ~95s climb, HR ~175-180 @top)

Fri: 8.0 fairly easy (7:44 avg pace)

Sat: 6.2 very easy (8:43 pace….found it mentally hard to run this slow solo)

As I promised Alan B, I tried to keep the pace down this week compared to last week. Only did one really taxing run (Tuesday), and although the stairs did leave me gassed, they don't seem to take an extended toll on the legs. Returning to talk about Tuesday, I was trying for 2.5 miles at 6:30 pace, but I just felt tapped after two, I stopped and rested for a couple minutes, and finished off the remaining 2.5 @ about 7:15 pace….so it was a quick day for me. Wednesday and Friday, I just ran at whatever pace was feeling comfortable that day. Thinking that the pace for Friday’s 8-miler was a little fast (although comfortable), Saturday, I deliberately tried to slow it down….which was a bit hard to do, actually. I'm not used to running that slow for more than a mile warm up or cool down, especially by myself. Mostly psychological, I was actually more fatigued from Saturday's run than Friday's!?!

I think I'll put myself back on the race circuit first week of April, we have a little 5k here that I've run several times and will serve as a good benchmark. Beyond that, not sure what I’ll be racing other than the relay three weeks hence.

OK, that's my report. Hope things are going well in your neck of the woods. And I especially look forward to some reports from Winston-Salem! A friend of mine traveled down to verify that he’s still a sub-5 minute miler, and I've seen the reports on the nonagenarians setting (creating?) world relay records. Good stuff!

All the Best!

He's baaaaaacck!

After months of one step forward two steps back, have final got things headed in a good direction once again just in time for an age 59 track season.

Managed 2 sessions on the track this week along with the year's best 10 miler...the first track session was one mile race pace 200s followed by 5 x 100 at 95% speed...the second track session was 1000 @ 3:57, 800 @ 3:01, 400 @ 85, then 400 @ 75.08 (seasonal best)

Have a one mile in two weeks (first race in 5 months)... 9 track races in 10 weeks beginning late May while peaking for National Senoir Games in MN mid-July.

Anybody else racing on the track?

Finally, FYI, here are results for this weekend's USATF Indoor Nationals:

http://finishtiming.trackscoreboard.com/#/results/meet/2015023

train don't strain,

MF

Well done all y'all boys running those Indoor Nats' 4-lapper, 8-lapper, 15-lapper championship races. I really miss being there on the banks. Maybe next year - even though its back at freakin' Altitude in Breaking Bad country.

I'm lucky enough to be south of Phoenix for spring break and started off with a really good strategic long run this am…. 9+ miles at 7:45 pace on a dirt road then transitioned into 3 more miles at 6:17, 6:20, 6:10 pace. Coaches orders. All in all another good week of building the aerobic tank.

Be healthy > Be fit.

KP

I'm back home in chilly windy Beantown after competing in the masters indoor championships. The facility (JDL Fast Track) is very nice for both athletes and spectators. I had an up and down day, which upon reflection was "down" only because of my own expectations on myself. I need to look at the big picture. A poor start in the 60m final pushed me back to the bronze medal, yet last year I had my tush handed to me as I placed 7th - well out of medal range. A delay in the hurdle races caused me to try to keep my warm up over an extended period of time; coupling that with my previous 60m race led to dead legs at race time and a much slower time than I would have hoped. Yet it was still a gold medal. So if I consider those two "yets" it was a darn good meet. It turned out to be a darned excellent meet as my track club put together a 4x200 relay team and let me run anchor. We broke the AR for our age group. Final tally was 2 golds and a bronze. AND...I chatted with KF (that Irish Rascal) and got to meet SCGal ! Plus I saw old track friends, made some new ones, and got to hang with my team (a very sterling group of individuals). Top that off with a steak and a cocktail Saturday night, and it was a great weekend.

I'm taking a week off from training to give my sore hammies a break, and will be back to some easy training next week. Hope everyone has a good one!

Nice to see people talking about racing on the track. As a middle distance guy at heart, I hope to hit some all comers meets in Santa Rosa CA this summer.

Meanwhile, I tapered with an 18 mile week after hitting 58 years old on Monday.

Today I ran the first Mediio Maraton Interanacional (Half) in Oaxaca, Mexico where I live most of the year. My first ever half, a real stretch for me.

The course had a lot of gradual ups and downs, the average altitude is a bit over 5000 feet, and the sun was out for the 7:30 start. The killer 2K hill comes up with just about 4.5 K to go.

I never found my optimum rhythm today, but my level of base fitness allowed me to grind out a 1:50:08 run.

I tried to save something for the big 2K hill near the end, and got over it OK, but then had no kick (I usually kick well).

The course was good with 5 water stops, but there were NO porta potties for 2000 runners, and the numbers were handed out last night in a horribly unorganized fashion over 3 hours, just a disgrace. Maybe these boneheads will improve next year... the start was an unholy mess too!

I hope to run the San Leandro CA half this summer, flat and at sea level!

Congrats Spikez! Happy Birthday Steve L.

My week:

Mon = 3, easy trail and road: Tue = 5, hard, Greenway 6:25, 6:49, 6:48 w 300 meter walk between (windy): Wed = 3, easy trail/road: Thr = 3, easy trail/road

Fri = 2, easy, road: Sat = 5, hard, windy Track, 1600's, 6:31, 6:26, 6:31 w 400 meter walk between: Sun = 7, hiking/running w 1992 feet of climbing: Total = 28. A good week where I continued to make some progress. I'm really enjoying running these days.

Up and down week for me. Tooks Sun and Mon off after the HM last Sat.

Tuesday Still had some chest congestion and tried to run on the treadmill 3 miles into it, I thought my chest and head were going to explode so I quite.

Wed 8 miles at 150 HR felt great

Thurs started out with the 70 poound dog, she went one way, my leg went the other, bailed after 4 miles due to hip pain

Friday, easy 8 miles felt great

Saturday, my first 20 mile run. 9:15 avg @ 155 BPM felt really good

Sunday razor clam digging with wife to celebrate 29th wedding anniversary, no running :-)

Total 43 miles

Mon. 42 min paddle on the lake in very windy conditions.

A brisk 6 km spin into work from the edge of town.

A very gentle jog back to the car at 10.30 pm, 3.5 km.

Tue. Managed to get a park 1 km from the hospital. Took the bike for a 25 .5 km spin out into the forests around Eaglehawk 75 mins.

Wed. 12.6 km run in 1 h 32 m. Tough terrain, steep +++ and rocky. 440 m of elevation gain. Km 2 took 9.28 and km 8 11.59!

Thu. 50 min paddle on the lake again very windy.

Fri. 22.5 km spin out through the local forests in 80 mins.

Sat. My wife's 50 th birthday bash. Too busy to get out.

Sun. 12 km run, 4 x 1500 metres up a tough climb, some very steep sections on loose rocky trail. 1 h 35 m, 550 metres of total elevation gain. My splits for each 3kms were 24.10, 23.59, 23.34, 23.30.

A good 47 miles this past week with 8x200 at :45 with 200 jog recovery this morning. So, my mile last Sunday I beat Mark Belger, but not Steve Scott, neither of whom I would have been in the same zip code with in their primes. It appears that all the mile prep work I did didn't kick in until Tuesday this week. I had a great week of training will all my mileage almost 1:00/mi faster than recent efforts. I am looking forward to continuing with the speed work and seeing where the training takes me the next couple of months.

Week 198: 3 hours 21 minutes in 3 runs. One difference is my long run was continuous instead of run-walk, albeit at 10:30 pace. Pain-wise I'm just about back to where I was in early February. This time around I'll pass on the TKD. Next week I am going to completely change my running schedule, hope it works.

@Rtype - Any plans to build up your long run, say in the 90 min to 2 hour range?

@paul061 - Nice 20, right in the zone. For the fallback week you might want to slow it down a touch, maybe even as slow as 9:30.

@Steve L. - No kick means you probably did it just right.

@lucKY2b - I agree running "slower than easy" is in some ways more tiring. Of course with training you could adapt, but who would choose that? Being injured so often, I have tried all these paces. 10:00 is do-able, 10:30 is annoying, 11:30 is very taxing, 12:00 is just impossible given that when healthy I can walk at 13:00. Run-walk is better than all these, say 8:30 on 15:00 off. But this week I switched back to continuous 10:30 because run-walk with the 10s I was spending too much time running sub-8:00, which my calf is not ready for. Our running group has huge numbers in the 12:00 pace group. Sometimes I'm tempted to advise them that they might find it easier if they just ran faster, but I think the coaches might organize a lynching.

A busy spring break week with enough activity to make your head spin off.

Family out here while the house in AK sold (sort of sad to see it go, but the lifestyle there was a money sink), and we lined up an apartment here.

I did 45 miles on five days, with a couple decent workouts (tempo on Tuesday, repeat 5 min at 10K pace on Friday, and long trail run on Saturday). Then downhill skied at 11-12000 ft on Sunday. My bad knee was hurting by the afternoon, but kept going and finished the day with no falls.

Alan Bennet wrote:

@Rtype - Any plans to build up your long run, say in the 90 min to 2 hour range?

As we illiterately say in the south: “I would if I could but I caint so I aint…” I’ve read every study on mitochondrial development since the original rainbow trout studies in the 70’s, so I know just how the good the long run is for you. I have some kind of mechanical problem when I run long which creates a variety of issues, starting with my peroneal tendons. But with running every day I’m getting stronger and I’ll never rule it out.