50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Grete - only occasionally check this thread, but I wanted to pipe up. I generally train for xc, which is 6k, and the longest I'll race in a half marathon. I cannot do 3 hard workouts a week, and I don't think I ever could, but I don't count my "long run" as hard. Back when I was young, I did two workouts (T and Th) and a long run on Sunday. Sometimes, we'd even race on Saturday.

Now, I generally aim for one hard workout a week and a long run. Last season, I tried doing 3 hard workouts (and two long runs) every two weeks. I usually need the recovery time.

So, for what it's worth....

Mon. 40 min paddle on the lake.

Tue. 25.2 km mountain bike ride with 285 m of elevation gain in 1 h 31 m.

Wed. 13 km run on steep and rough trails 547 m of elevation gain in 1 h 40 m.

Thu. 53 min paddle on the lake in very windy conditions.

Fri. 19.7 km mountain bike ride with 300 m of elevation gain in 1 h 18 m.

Sat. 5 km spin into the forest in 21 min (62 m elev. gain) then 5 km run on steep trails with 185 m of elevation gain in 37 min then 6.1 km ride home in 20 m.

Sun. 8.9 km run on steep trails with 300 m of elevation gain in 1 h 3 m.

Mon. 20.2 km run with my faster buddy Greg on the usual steep trails with 560 m of elevation gain in a solid 2 h 12 m. Then out for a 23 km mountain bike ride on fairly easy terrain in 1 h 14 m.

A busy week as we had grandkids and in laws staying at various times.

I included today's run as I deliberately kept the weekend runs a bit easier knowing Greg (ex 14.50, 2.26) would be up for a good long run today. Also had today off after working both Saturday and Sunday.

Wednesday was 4 x the steep rocky 1500 m climb up Pianta track, testing physically and mentally, drop concentration up or down and it usually means a fall and blood spill.

Saturday was a squeeze between visiting in laws and an afternoon shift.

Sunday was a morning shift, fortunately daylight saving finished so I had an extra hour sleep, still felt sluggish so cruised through the hills in a bit of a haze.

Today was pretty tough. The pace was up a notch and by the last climb I was pretty stuffed. The ride was solid but not too challenging.

Had a nice trip to New Mexico for spring break, couldn't believe how hard 6,500+ feet altitude made my runs! I did some incline training on the treadmill prior to the trip but it seemed to make little difference. I have a new appreciation for how I was able to cruise around up there so many years ago. My boys liked the trip and did fairly well with the altitude but they noticed the difference on runs too.

Have a good week all, enjoy the improving weather!

I don't know, KP... Your workouts sure do look like you're in 4:45 shape!

KP wrote:

Ongoing promising work including a 62 flat 400 after 6 x 200 & 6 x 400 at mile race pace.

My week went ok... Kind of a limbo week between my first 12 week session and my next 12 week block beginning tomorrow. 58 miles, no real workouts, I won a race.

M: 8 miles easy

T: 10 miles @ 7:25 in grass over rolling hills

W: 7 miles @ 7:21 w/7x20 sec @ 5:15

Th: 5.5 miles easy

F: 7.5 miles 5k in 17:03 1st overall.

S: 8 miles easy

S: 12 miles @ 7:30

Getting kind of tired of whining about the cold and wind but geez...did it ever kick my butt good in Fridays 5k. Started out well...everyone went out waaayyyy too fast when I looked at my Garmin and saw 5:08 about 1/2 mile in. Backed it down and took the lead at the mile in 5:21 feeling great. Then we do a big loop and head back into the teeth of a strong nasty wind. 2nd mile was 5:33. It's a good thing I had a big lead by then... Had plans of crushing it in but the wind right into my face the entire last mile really tested my will. Gusts were over 25mph making it hard to just breath...It was tough. I knew everyone else was into it too so I just hung on best I could to the finish. 5:50 last mile and still almost broke 17:00. Wow...

Starting a new 12 week training/racing cycle tomorrow. Still about a minute away from a goal that seemed attainable a few months ago; I'm beginning to wonder now...

Have a good one,

Dave

Isn't there a 60's plus thread here at letsrun? I could have sworn I posted to it once, but maybe I only think I did...losing all the brain cells and all. Anyway, at 67 and running pretty much competitively (nothing special, for sure!) since HS,

I find it hard to relate to the daily training of you "younger" guys and gals in your 40's and 50's! It sucks, actually! Are there enough of us 60ish geezers to actually have and maintain a training/racing thread for JUST US?

I'm not aware of a 60+ thread. I'm 60+ and I like hearing from experienced runners who are still fast but share in our common aches and pains. I'm not sure that there is a critical mass of of 60+ competitive runners here but if we wait a few years, the younger ones now will be 60+ too. :-)

Love the optimism! Sadly, though...as we might add folks, we also may lose a few (yikes! I didn't REALLY mean that!). Well...maybe more folks will chime in. Maybe there are enough of us still around and kickin' to actually start an informative thread for us Baby Boomers and way beyond!

You and SC Gal are my hero's. I hope I can still walk when I'm 60. If I'd known I was going to live this long I'd have taken better care of myself.

Having just come back from Yuma AZ, which they nickname God's waiting room, it's amazing to see the various stages of old. There are 60 year olds who can barely walk and 90 year olds swing dancing the night away.

old guy II wrote: &page=203

My goals for this year beyond staying uninjured are to run a good local road mile in March (sub-5:35?), Carlsbad 5k (sub-19:00), a local 7/4 10K (sub-39:00), and sub-40:00 at Club XC nats in Dec.

old guy II wrote: &page=211

I ended up at 6:07 (2nd in the 65-69s) which age grades to 78.86%.

Peaked too late. And he had to skip the Carlsbad 5K due to work obligations.

You can't have our moderator until he turns 60.

KP, you and the Bauman bros are going to blow us out of the water on Saturday.

racerdb wrote:

Gusts were over 25mph making it hard to just breath...It was tough. I knew everyone else was into it too so I just hung on best I could to the finish. 5:50 last mile and still almost broke 17:00. Wow...

Dave

Congrats! With no wind 16:45 easy. Might be interesting in 4 or 5 weeks to get into some kind of track 5K (DIII, DII college meet?) where the middle pack is high 15's low 16's to see if they can drag you along and get near that 16 mark.

muddy girl wrote:

I cannot do 3 hard workouts a week, and I don't think I ever could, but I don't count my "long run" as hard.

Now, I generally aim for one hard workout a week and a long run. Last season, I tried doing 3 hard workouts (and two long runs) every two weeks. I usually need the recovery time.

So, for what it's worth....

muddy - Thanks for chiming in here. I think that schedules makes sense for me as well at this point in my running life.

Spikez - congrats on the move! How FABULOUS for you and your hubby! And hey -- we plan to be in LA for the Marathon trials next spring. So maybe we meet up and cheer for the marathoners together!

SCGal - looks like no 5/10K race for me right now.

Well, last week started out well. And ended up with a swollen foot that was painful to even walk on. UGH!

Mon: a.m. 4 mi easy

p.m. 6 mi easy

Tues: 7 mi with 5 x 400 m (1:32 - 1:33 pace with 60 sec recoveries)

Wed: 3 mi easy

Thurs: a.m. 8 mi with 3 mi progressive tempo with training group (7:43, 7:19, 6:51).

p.m. 7 mi easy. Foot felt a little achy on run. Walked home with my hubby and by the time I got home, foot was swollen and I was in pain. Ice/compression immediately!

Fri - Sun: Rode bike, swam and very easy walks with the dogs.

SCGal - Sat was supposed to be my 5K benchmark run. I rode my bike out there to cheer on my buddies in the race. It was a perfect day - low 50's and no wind. UGH!

The good news is that I have done some low mileage, soft surface runs this week and had no problems or any more swelling. Still swimming and that seems to help stretch things out. I have been fighting a nagging hamstring, hip problem since last November and it is probably causing other problems now. One of my biggest problems is that my training group is all 10 to 15 years younger than I am. And I might need to just face it that I can't do the number of workouts in the past that I used to do.

So, I live to run another day. Here is to being 50+ and still training hard. And having 60+ runners on our board to encourage us to keep at it for another 10+ years! Best to all.

GreteHund wrote:

Foot felt a little achy on run.

That's one of the hardest things, trying to figure out if it's normal aches and pains, which we should push through, or a blossoming injury for which we need to immediately back off.

Weren't you doing Pfitzinger for your marathon? I would never dare try that. Nor Hansons neither. What worked well for me was alternate weeks of: (week-1) Tuesday workout (hills or long repeats), Friday tempo (classic 20-25 mins LT), Saturday long run 2 hours slow; (week-2) Tuesday workout, Saturday long run 2 hr 45 mins with the last hour at MP. Everything else easy.

Not sure what would work well for the 5K, I hope to be able to find out some day. I'm the king of less is more, but we also need to step over the line sometime in order to find out where it is.

@mg - I told one of my yoga instructors about the MKOP tonight. She said, "I've had that! I didn't know there was an official name for it."

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Week 201

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Greetings Semicentenarians! We're starting our third set of a hundred weeks on this thread, thanks to all that continue to contribute! I've recovered from my heartbreak of watching the Badgers national title hopes slip through their fingers---C'est la vie. But I did have a good week of running. Managed to squeeze ~38 miles out of these legs this week with a few harder efforts. Log read as such:

Sun: 5.0 easy (8:10 pace)

Mon: 2.5 easy (with backpack)

Tue: 5.2 fartlek (5 hard sections .25-.4 miles long, in the range of 5:30-5:45 pace)

Wed: 3.8 easy (with backpack)

Thur: 4.4 w/1.6 (6:29,3:40)

Fri: 6.5 fairly easy

Sat: 10.4 w/5@7:03 avg

So about the same as last week, but I added a short run to make up the difference and got some running in every day, even if a few were just an extended jog home after my evening class (Mon and Wed). Not sure how much adding an 8-12-lb backpack to an easy jog impacts training; not sure if it's for better (weight) or worse (form). I intended to go to the track Tuesday, but weather nixed that idea, and I snuck out the door prior to the storm to do some pickups: three of the 5 harder sections were about .25 miles, while two were about 0.4. After the fourth session (and both the .4 miles ones) my legs were fairly spent (a little disappointing), and I had to rest a bit before continuing on; the fifth pickup was thus hard. Felt good on Thursday's 1.6 mile mini-tempo; I think I could have gone a little further @sub-6:10 pace, but was happy to quit where I did. Saturday I ran fairly steady and a little hard on a hilly route for the first 6 miles, then eased off for the last 4.4. Pretty satisfied to be inching up towards 40 mpw with the legs and gut feeling no worse for wear. Still not where I was last September, but I feel like I've been being a bit more cautious and being more conscious paying closer attention to the knees.

Thanks for some kind remarks from last week. Weight is sloooowly coming down, so most improvements are probably just coming from that weight loss. Now sitting at about 168lbs.

Glad to see that others agree with me that KP is sub-4:45 ready (was there a race yesterday?)

Kudos to Dave on a race win. Sub-17 is certainly in the bag on a good weather day....maybe 16:30 soon? It'd be great to see you get in a race with a few faster dudes.

@Feeling Slighted-there are a whole slew of runners on here that are 60+; we're all along this aging continuum, and I don't know that there is anything magical about the transition at 60-years of age. Point is that there is plenty of room and interest in hearing your story, so please join the discussion!

Great to see some discussion regarding training intensity and frequency. As with everyone else, I think we're all trying to feel our way and do as much as we feel we can handle. The challenge is not to bite off more than one can chew, which is really hard to do when on a roll. Having a plan and following some basic principles help. I've seen it mentioned frequently that the 7-day cycle is not really appropriate and so I usually look at a two-week window, myself, in which I try to lay out some general rules like "in this window I need 2xintervals, 2xtempo, and one long run." It doesn't always go that way, and lately, I've been only doing partial workouts, never really taking it to the well. In which case, I think I can stand to do a little bit more frequency of hard efforts, but I'm not getting the same benefit of doing a full workout; on the other hand, it's keeping my legs from getting too beat up.

OK, that's all I've got for the week. I keep saying I'm going to dip my foot into the racing scene, but it hasn't happened as yet. I'm not quite feeling that fire yet, and am also having some trouble getting out the door in the morning; all my runs have been in the afternoon. Looks like I won't be getting a rust-buster race in before the 80-mile Rive-to-River Relay, so I'll probably have to do something solo this coming week that really taxes the system....I'm thinking maybe 3x1-mile@5k pace with one lap easy jog recovery. Thoughts?

Hope you all are in a good place, and I look forward to your reports.

All the Best!

Appreciate the confidence in me and a 4:45 mile folks. But not yet. Lots and lots of speed work to get there in May, June & July I reckon. Yesterday 20 lucky masters milers got to run at Hayward Field in the Masters Mile to kick off Pepsi Invite. I was a sluggish dud. Good first 3/4 mile with splits at 75-75-74 and then ZERO fuel in my tank with 400 to go. 5:07 for 6th place. Good news is that the younger Masters seemed to be a lot slower than they are first for. Fun? Barely. Still it is a massive proveldge to run at Hayward Field in front of THE TRACK FANS in the East and West Stands. Thanks to Craig Godwin who set it up, manages it, and if not for his surgery would have smoked most of us. Rust has been scraped off. Onward!

KP

Mixed 1 Mile Run

================================================================

Name Year School Finals

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1 Joshua Gordon M Bowerman TC 4:36.43

2 Ahrlin Bauman M Bowerman TC 4:39.49

3 Oscar Bauman M Bowerman TC 4:42.27

4 John Clifford M Bowerman TC 4:59.86

5 Nathan Hult M Unattached 5:03.14

6 Kevin Paulk M Bowerman TC 5:07.09

7 Lawrence Merrifield M Bowerman TC 5:14.80

8 Chris Dion M Lesser Vida TC 5:27.40

9 Steve Kollars M Unattached 5:31.34

10 Jonathan Silva M Seattle RC 5:36.83

11 Joe Moll M Unattached 5:43.56

12 Jen Fedorov W Eugene RC 5:51.62

13 David Elliott M Oregon Track Clu 6:00.81

14 Bob Schafer M Unattached 6:02.10

15 James Murez M Oregon Track Clu 6:08.77

16 Anthony Body M Unattached 6:10.37

17 Eryn Forbes W Multnomah AC 6:20.62

18 Fidel Banuelos M Oregon Track Clu 6:29.80

19 Janelle Dickerson W Unattached 6:55.32

We are lucky that the Ducks let us have 2 exhibition races during their track meet. We were also lucky that the rain held off. It's interesting that Craig used to have trouble filling lanes and now there's an alternates waiting list.

Hi Everyone,

I had a good week of training with 43.5 miles over 7 days. I'm doing two days of intervals and one long run each week. I don't count my long run as a hard day but I do take a recovery day afterwards.

S: 10 mi.

M: 4 easy

T: 4 easy

W: 4 + 8X300/100

T: 4 easy

F: 6 + 5 strides

S: 4 + 6X800/400 + strides

paul61 - You'll be 60 before you know it so keep moving and you'll be fine. In my mind I'm still in my 30s and I'm probably more fit now than I was then. I don't think about being older, I'm too busy being active and enjoying life.

Grete - Sorry about your foot setback. Hope you're recovery is quick. Have you thought about running track? You and Sabra Harvey would be tough to beat. Your splits indicate fast times :-)

KP - Good start to your 4:45 quest. What a great experience!

Spikez - Hope your move is goes well!

All the best!