50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

racerdb wrote:

Alright you guys, quit knocking the remodeling. That's how I make my living!

Dave -- me, too. Gave up a desk job (and a steady paycheck) to do restoration work full-time ... mostly pre-Civil War buildings, museum-quality stuff, but a lot of "sensitive" remodeling, too. Just me ... no crew, so hard physical labor is a daily thing. Hence, perhaps, the attraction of my low-mileage training. I average less than three "running days" a week. But I am feeling confident about my 3:30 goal, based on my long-run performances.

dhaaga wrote:

we're kindred spirits on Boston.....I ran it in 1983 as a senior in college, in 2003 to celebrate 20 years, in 2012 to accomplish my age-50 marathon time goal (not quite) and in 2014 to be part of getting back at it after the bombing the prior year.

Love the event, but you're right, it's become quite an ordeal to do. At least I'm 50% on pushing fellow American men to the win (Greg Meyer, Meb K)

cheers,

Dave

Indeed! For two decades, 1983 was known as "the last year an American won." I was in PR shape that spring, but ran the race essentially as a training run ... thinking I would concentrate on shorter races through the summer, and go for sub-2:35 in the fall.

I ran a 10K PR a few weeks after Boston ... little did I know that would be the last PR of my life! Career, house, kids ... never managed to prioritize running again during my 20s and 30s.

Happy trails to you!

Had a bad case of the flu the beginning of the month, so I havent posted in a while. Missed over 10 days of training and now trying to get back into it. Finding it hard to run back to back and get my long runs in.

M off

T 10 easy (7:50)

W off

Th 6 easy (8:30)

F off

S 5k xc club race 20:33 (6:34, 6:32, 7:10)

S 10 steady (7:45)

fell apart the last mile of the race, no quality work is killing me.

Have a good week of training.

I can see the merit in the Hansons' approach but looking at their "Advanced" plan, say week 12-11 to go until race day you've got something like this:M 6T SpeedW RestR Tempo 7F 7S 8S 14 I don't think I could hack speed, longish tempo and a 14-miler in one week, especially since it's followed by another Monday 6 Tuesday Speed. If I could follow that training I think my performances would be much, much better than what I'm likely to manage based on more moderate training, but I simply don't think my body can handle that intensity. Granted this is one of the heavier weeks of the plan. Closer to race day the miles go up a little, with a long run of 16 and the Tuesday speed work is replaced by strength training.Right now as I'm trying to get myself to the half marathon starting line 10/16 I've been following a slightly modified old Hal Higdon program. I can handle one long run and one workout a week, when I'm not dealing with a nagging pain. Granted I planned this race on a whim, so my buildup hasn't been as thorough as it should have been. Once I start into a November-January base building phase I'm planning to keep to something like this:M RestT 5-7 easyW 5 Progression runR 3-5 easyF 5-7 easyS restS 10-12 easy I'll start out about 25 miles/week and work up to maybe 35 miles/week then look for a 20-week marathon training plan but I'm guessing I'll still be working on something similar with a little more intensity, one speed workout one tempo one long run per week. I realize, though, that I'm basically cobbling together plans based on my sketchy knowledge of 1970s-era training and I have no real understanding at all of periodization in something like a 6-7 month marathon training plan.Any thoughts or comments appreciated.Happy running!AndyB

Alan Bennet wrote:

C0l0rado wrote:Their emphasis is on "accumulated fatigue," meaning you do the 16 milers at the end of some pretty hard weeks. They write that their 16-mile runs simulate the last 16 miles of a marathon, not the first 16 miles, because you go into them tired.

Their plan is to leave you tired throughout the cycle. Beginning of week, end of week, makes no difference. I found their book worthwhile. Some Hansons links below, most of my bookmarks were broken but google found the new links. :) I am sure there is more recent stuff. In 2011 I found Lydiard and in 2012 I stopped researching marathon plans.

Precisely why I'm not even tempted to try the Hansons' plan -- I would get injured for sure.

As for traditional marathon plans, Higdon, in Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide, has a good discussion of mileage required to do well. Look at pages 50-59 in the 1993 edition, or pages 57-64 in the 1999 edition. After reading, you will be left to draw your own conclusion.

Brad Hudson and Matt Fitzgerald, in Run Faster: From the 5k to the marathon (2008) page 141, give eight steps to creating your own training plan. I'm not sure if it was in that book or a different one, but Fitzgerald admitted that the many, many training plans he has had published were nothing special. In his opinion anybody with a decent grasp of training principles could create an equally good plan.

Thanks, Alan. I'll have a look.

AndyB

The long run versus weekly mileage discussion got me trying to recall just what my training was like leading up to my marathon PR long ago. I went into the attic and found my old logs. It was disconcerting to see how inconsistent I was even back then as a 23-year-old with few other responsibilities!

As a Masters runner, I roughly followed the philosophy, if not the actual protocol, espoused by Pete Pfitzinger in the 1999 "Road Racing for Serious Runners." It seemed very logical to me ... I think Pfitzinger's approach is based largely on Jack Daniels' work, correct? The Daniels approach certainly worked for you ... your marathon at age 54 is impressive. (Lifetime PR of 2:19?)

Anyway, this was the 20-week training I did prior to my PR in 1982. Only two runs longer than 18 miles during that entire period (and they were full marathons). Obviously I wasn't following ANY plan back then:

Weekly total/Longest run/Races

47....12......5K 16:47

55....14

51....13....10K 34:12

62....18....20K 1:13:50

68....22

37....14

34....09

49....26....Marathon 2:47:34

12....12

37....13

20....09

55....18

54....26....Marathon 2:45:57

39....13

62....16

47....14

72....18

40....09

28....09....3-Mile 15:31

62....26....Marathon 2:40:30

Allen1959 wrote:

Only two runs longer than 18 miles

Oops. Make that THREE. 22-miler in week five!

New to the thread.... Several months past my 50th birthday. Seems like there will be quite a contingent for Boston 2017....I'm in as well.

I'm trying to do 3 harder days per week... A long run, a tempo run and a speed workout. I'm not very good at running easily.

This past week for me.

Sunday: 4.3 in 32:00

Monday: 13.1 in 1:33

Tuesday: 4.3 in 31.30

Wednesday: 4.3 in 31:00

Thursday: 2w/u, 6x600 in 2:04-2:06 with 200 easy 1.5 w/d

Friday: 3.3 in 24:45

Saturday: 6.5 total with 4.3 tempo at 27.15

Total of about 43 miles. Will progressively build up the long runs and change the intervals to longer as well.

*************************

Week 278

*************************

Greetings, 50+ers! A little better this week. Still woefully under-rested and the packing up and moving stuff from room to room and all has put a chink in my "training" (have to put that in quotes.) Managed 27+ miles on five days as such:

Sun: 7.5 easy (7:59 pace)

Mon: Off

Tues: 6.2 w/4,3,2,1 lap reps (6:10,4:49,3:04,85) (half-distance recovery)

Wed: 3.0 w/backpack (two short runs to/from work)

Thur: 6.4 (1.2am to work, 5.2pm) 6:24 3rd mile in the pm run. (7:17 avg pace)

Fri: off

Sat: 4.1 progression 8:10 -> 6:37 (7:25 avg pace)

The house stuff will settle this week (knock on wood), and I'll get back to a more "normal" schedule. Tuesday's track work was suppose to be 3xcutdown miles, but my buddies were all doing different stuff, and after soloing the first one too fast, I changed the workout midway through the second rep. Tried to put a couple of hard efforts into a couple other runs this week, but I need to get back to some longer sustained tempo runs.

Continued good discussion last week; it's hard to keep up with it all! A lot of my friends that do low-mileage marathon training do a lot of cross-training that includes spinning, rowing, and boot camp. Many of them (primarily women) have BQ'd on such a schedule.

-hyt, so sorry about losing your wife to GBM at such a young age. I can only imagine that the hurt never goes away.

-Welcome, Marksch. Those are some solid training runs!

-Happy Birthday, topcat! Packers have a bye week, so I'll have no excuse to skip out of the Club Run today. ;-)

-Good luck to racerdb and any others in this morning's USATF Masters 5k Championships in Syracuse!

OK, that's it for me. What happening in your neck of the woods?

All the Best!

Fall finally arrived in SC on Friday. The cooler temps and lower humidity made me itch to see what I could run so I decided to race a 5k yesterday on a fairly flat course. I ended up as first female master in 23:22 and I was happy with how I ran (7:35,7:26,7:24). I finally feel like I'm racing, not just hanging on for dear life. It was just the psychological boost I need to keep training hard for my November goal races.

In addition to the race, I got in a good week of practices:

Mon: 6.3 Easy

Tue: 7.1 Track (3 x 1000H/200E/400H/400E)

Wed: 6.4 Easy

Thu: off

Fri: 5.3 Easy

Sat: 6.5 Race

Sun: 10.4 Easy

Total: 42 miles

Welcome to our new posters and thanks for making the discussion interesting this week. Dave, I hope you ran well in Syracuse. Good luck to our marathoners!

congrats racerdb national champion! from looking at all the age groups, I think my best shot at such a feat is a backdated birth certificate by 10, or better yet 15, years.

fun week for me incl:

Mon. 5 miles easy + 40:00 stationary bike

Tues. 11

Weds. 6 with hill repeats + 40:00 stationary bike

Thurs. 9

Fri. 3 + 24:00 stationary bike

Sat. 15 with freedom's run half-marathon 1:24:17 (1st overall)

Sun. 5 + 32:00 stationary bike

cutback week on mileage to accommodate race. It's a hilly [esp. in first half] half in Sheperdstown W.VA. Went out in lead pack of 5, almost lost contact with eventual 2nd place guy during muddy 2-mile stretch on canal towpath, followed him and eventual 6th place runner up series of hills in Antietam battlefield national park, took lead at 7 miles and held it to win by 24 sec.

0-5 32:55

5-10 31:53

last 5k 19:29

miles varied 5:58 (11, mostly downhill) to 7:08 (4, almost all up) despite subjectively even effort. Fun event -- 1/2, marathon, 10k, and 5k all start separate places but finish together in Shepherd U. football stadium

have a great week,

Dave

Congrats on the win, Dave and for the nice race, SCgal!

Dave, you must have inside information; I can't find any real-time results from this year's Festival of Races.

Cheers!

The Festival of Races times are here - just by place, not by age group yet

https://runsignup.com/race/results/?raceId=10392&customResultsPageId=9795

OK. So I have confirmation. Dave (racerdb) wins the 55-59 USATF 5k Masters Road Championship in 16:54 with Kerry Barnett (his teammate) a close second in 16:55. Kudos!

Now I'll post my week's summary. I decided to forego Syracuse since 5k races don't have much benefit when I'm in a transition phase - they cut into my mileage and I'm really not race-ready. I did run 9.5 this morning, partly along the last four miles of the Wineglass course, encouraging many of the runners I know who ran.

The weekly total was 41, with two workouts:

Thurs: 10x400 in 76-78, last one at 75 with 50 sec recovery jogs

Saturday: 6x800 in 2:50, last one a little faster, with 75 sec recovery

Did a couple of sets of rolling two's after steady state runs, and I'm happy to say that 33 seconds is finally feeling somewhat comfortable.

Traveling to the town in southern IN where I grew up and will do a tempo run over my old HS XC course for old time's sake.

Scott

Thanks for the link! And we should acknowledge Brian Pilcher (M60) in 16:39! Very nice!

And on the women's side: Marisa Sutera Strange (F53) in 17:55!

Wow fantasy times.

My Garmin 235 race predictor says I can run 19:11. I doubt I can come within 2 minutes of that time.

Got sick twice during the week or more likely almost got better then ran in the rain had trouble sleeping and got worse.

Nothing impressive. It did get in 35 miles most of which under 9:00. 7 mile bookends with my wife in 8:20.

Wife's birthday this week and she is the proud owneir of a Garmin 235 and an iPod shuffle.

Cheers

Ken