50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Just trying to get back into the routine of running after missing a week with the flu. Got in 50'ish last week, only decent run was a 67:40 10 miler on Thursday. Went 12 on Monday of this week while on vacation here in upState SC.

Fitness is coming back but not really feeling race fit. I've got serious concerns about my 25K in a few weeks...

It will be nice to be home later today and get away from all these hills & heat!

Dave

rlb wrote:

Mo'pak- with a 2hr mtn bike ride and the hr kyak as a pre races event, I'd guess you raced pretty darn well.

23 miles in 4 runs, including a Tues track workout with 4x400 @ 82-88 and 4x800 @3:04, 2:56, 3:04 and 3:11. Was running out of gas, but at least got some running in at under 6 min mile pace.

Also tried to do a faster paced run on Sat., but only made 2 miles in just under 14 mins., but still got in 7 for the day.

Had planned to do the 2hr bike on the thursday but time restraints prevented it. Had extra free time on friday so just popped in the ride before hitting the water. It did mean finishing the kyak session in the dark, a bit eerie out on the lake in the dark all alone.

Interesting thing is I felt the kyak session in the early part of the warmup saturday. The shoulder and core muscles were quite stiff to start with, took me a couple of kms to loosen them up. Quads and butt muscles felt fine despite the bike session.

The last couple of weeks I've done that 4 x 3.2k loop session running each one a minute or so quicker. I reckon this session is quite a good format to try and get something like your sub 14 2 mile into a bit of distance work. I find that progressive running like this allows me to get to the faster tempo in a relaxed controlled mode.

Just a thought.

Because of shift work I often have days of minimal eating. If I am on a late shift I often train on an empty stomach then maybe just have a Power Bar or a chocolate with maybe a Red Bull or Gatorade. The evening "meal" is often just a tuna sandwich and maybe a banana and plenty of water.

By the time I get home 11pm or later, I'm feeling fairly hungry so might have a bowl of cereal before bed.

I wake up pretty hungry the next morning. If I'm then on an early shift (up about 5-5.30)I will probably have a bowl of cereal and a protein shake and then maybe a tuna or egg/salad sandwich around 1pm for lunch, then training around 3.30-4. Then I certainly am ready for a big feed that evening, no holds barred!!

If I am on consecutive late shifts I sometimes repeat the pattern the 2d day until the evening meal and then eat up pretty big.

I certainly like my food and couldn't imagine being on a long term diet but these occassional days of semi fasting seem to help manage my weight. I have dropped a few kgs in the last couple of months. I suspect it is good for the general health and also good for training effect.

Runguru, I won't be at Hospital Hill, ever since it was incorporated as a not-for-profit entity and required to have a board of directors with that, the board hired an outside of the area race director (ironically, she is a for-profit RD, her business). So our local club isn't involved, so I'm not involved.

All for the better, I compete in community-wide KC Corporate Challenge during May and June (5 km on May 5, 1/2 marathon May 19th, track first week of June, duathlon mid June), so that is plenty of personal competition, and I enjoy that. I still help with a couple other races and still keep all the road racing records for Missouri (check out

www.mararunning.org

and

www.staterunningrecords.com

)

Omigosh this thread is HUGE! I don't have time to read through it all and see if my questions are already answered ;-) Sooooo .....

I am a 51-yr-old female, and have been doing mostly the marathon thing for a few years. I am trying to train for shorter stuff now -- 5K and 10K. So I signed up for a few races, but I'm not sure how to prepare for them. I did the first 5K the other day, and I ran the course for a warm-up (2 miles slow, stop and stretch, then the 3rd mile with a few strides). That seemed okay, but I was wondering if I should have shortened the warm-up to 2 miles, and had more left for the race.

I've started to do track workouts again, and did 10 x 400 last week, with equal rest (kinda embarrassed to state my times, but will if requested). This short stuff is hard!

The weirdest thing I am noticing about being older is that often I don't feel like I am running as hard as I can, but I can't go any faster. In my younger days I could go 'til my legs screamed and my head would feel like it was going to explode and I was SO sore the next couple of days. Now when I try to run hard I just can't get my legs to go faster, but I don't feel that bad, and am not that sore later. ???

Greetings OMG! You have a very loaded question, and the crux of it is certainly something most of us are (in our own way) experimenting with: trying to maintain (or improve) our speed as we age. Your 10x400 track workout is a good start to improving your speed (and BTW you should never feel embarrassed about your times, you are your own experiment, and it's great that you are wanting to improve what you are doing. More power to you!) Weekly repeating of such a workout will take a while for its effects to kick in, but continuing with this and throwing in another longer hard effort (like mile repeats and longer 20-30 minute tempo runs) should help you get 5k-10k ready. But you'll probably need to do something even shorter to know what it really feels like to explode with each stride. You may want to incorporate strides and maybe hill sprints to force your legs to extend their range of motion. As we get older, if we don't work vigilantly to maintain our power and stride, we lose them (we slowly lose them anyways, but we can fight hard as we can to combat the effects of age.) But fortunately, not all is lost. We can get a lot of it back, but it takes a lot of work. When you say you feel you can't go any harder, but don't feel wiped out, you're basically saying that you lack power and probably your stride is much shorter than it was in your younger days as well. As such, you don't really get sore either, even though you say that its hard.

OK, so here is a suggestion; these are two things that anyone can do. Magill's drills and Magill's 5k race plan, both of which are available on Running Times web site are great resources to help you develop your speed.

http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=17578

http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=19258

Even if you don't plan to follow them to the letter, they provide a good reference point that should help you improve.

OK, that's all I got time for now. Others may also have their take, but I hope that gives you a start. I also hope that you'd like to continue to let us know how your progress goes as you try to improve on where you are at.

Good Luck!

I'd say you're better off starting with 12x200m with 200m jog recovery. Start at 3k pace -- about 2 seconds per 200 faster than your 5k pace, and let the pace quicken as your legs allow. This won't seem very hard, but your legs may be feeling it a bit later.

The shorter repeats are better at first because the goal is to practice running fast.

Thanks for the suggestions :-) I think I'm severely lacking in fast-twitch fibers (since I apparently haven't recruited them in years!), so these drills and speed work should help. About 10 years ago I did some group track workouts, and my buddies laughed at me because I did 200's at the same pace as my 400's. Not on purpose -- I just couldn't get moving off the line. My favorite workout was the Yasso 800's, probably because it was a marathon workout. Then I moved, and without my track group, I didn't do any speed work except a couple of Yasso 800 workouts before marathons.

I felt very uncoordinated and inefficient doing the 400's, so I'm pretty sure I can make some improvements.

OMG wrote:I felt very uncoordinated and inefficient doing the 400's, so I'm pretty sure I can make some improvements.

Let me just add that you really need to approach speed work with caution. Many of us, myself included, have done speed work when we weren't really properly conditioned or we've launched in to doing too much too soon. This is a recipe for disaster, as you'll end end up injured and worse off than before you started. Strength should precede speed; so work on improving strength through drills and hills before taking it to the track....at least that's my suggestion (others may differ in their approach, but I'm leery of doing speed without the strength first.) Hill repeats is a great way to extend range of motion, build strength, and encourage driving arm motion, all at a lower stress-level to the ligaments and joints (especially if done on grass.) Here's another great Magill article on the topic:

So I would encourage doing at least a month of hills and drills (once a week for hills, maybe twice a week for drills...you don't do all of them every time) before getting to the track. Then, when you do get to the track, use McMillan's pace calculator to tell you what pace you ought to be using for your repeats.

It determines suggested paces based on real race results. This will help keep you from overdoing it.

Finally, don't do your speed stuff to utter exhaustion. Always leave something in the tank. If you do speed work when your form is breaking down, that will also defeat the whole purpose and you'll likely end up worse off than when you started.

Just my $0.02.

Cheers!

Just looked at the link demonstrating drills...hope it was a warm day to have that bucket of water dumped over him like that

Well, these days, just checking in here, not doing a great deal of mileage but still getting out there for 15 - 25 min. of running, managing some nagging problems....yeah, i sure wish I had been doing those drills, may have been instrumental in keeping my problems from developing over the course of the years.

There’s a thousand ways to make an omelet. Several may suit your tastes, but certainly not all. I think it’s important to remember you have all the time in the world to find what works for you. I look at the different methodologies as a smorgasbord of different approaches to try and see what works best for you. There are just too many to list here but everything listed thus far is really solid advice. I’d like to add to that smorgasbord with a link.

Particularly I point to the article by Jack Farrell on rethinking the hard-easy myth. This is different thinking. Also, my opinion is the only expert you will find is yourself.

Some classic links here. Thanks for those. Always hoping to learn something new. I believe you can teach new tricks to an old dog. Am thankful to those here who are open minded enough to include those of us who are not among the speediest. Don't have much to say to the rest of you.

Ha! I happened to run hills today before I read this, lucKY2b. And I like your suggestion, as the track is intimidating. (I hope I don't offend track fans, but I find the track monotonous too. I prefer the varying terrain of the roads, even if I can't get exact distance/time splits.) And one of those articles you suggested said to do hills and speed on the road too. So, hills and drills for a month, a couple of 5K's, and then maybe BolderBoulder.

That pace calculator is cool! It was spot on for the half and full marathons I've run recently, but I should be running a 5K about 45 seconds faster than I can now. Yikes, drop 15 secs/mile?

So, what races are you all training for now?

Olde Farte wrote:

I believe you can teach new tricks to an old dog. Am thankful to those here who are open minded enough to include those of us who are not among the speediest. Don't have much to say to the rest of you.

Agree whole-heartedly, Olde Farte! And I have been called worse than an "old dog".

;-) Happy Running to all -- The weekend cometh!

OMG wrote:

The weirdest thing I am noticing about being older is that often I don't feel like I am running as hard as I can, but I can't go any faster. ...

Nice insight! If I can get back to training I will have to test this out, it might explain something that has been puzzling me.

Rtype wrote:Particularly I point to the article by Jack Farrell on rethinking the hard-easy myth. This is different thinking.

Hmm, I presume you mean the one titled "Training Ideas".

Sorry to say, I more or less disagree with just about everything he says there. I could go into detail, but it would be longer than Farrell's article.

Mon- 1 hour kyak session and an easy 1 hour run.

Tue- 2 hour 15 min run in the forest.

Wed- 1 hour easy run.

Thu- 1 hour 40 min. run on a very hilly forest circuit.

Fri- 1 hour 40 min. easy run in the forest.

Sat- 1 hour solid bike ride in the forest then a 3km warmup and 5.2km race 20.47 (splits 10.32/10.15) and a 3km jog. The race was on reasonable forestry roads, quite a lot of potholes though. Generally uphill first 1/2 on an out and back. Went OK, legs a bit tired and I got caught in no man's land from 1/2 way.

Sun- 5km warmup, 5km very hilly trail race in the forests 20.30. 5km warmdown. Tummy upset overnight and felt prett unwell throughout race. It's a tough course pretty much uphill through to 1/2 way and then steep downhills (my forte) mixed with a few more uphills. Dropped 1/2 min behind a couple of O/50 rivals up the hills, caught them with a 3.35 4th km (mostly down) but one out kicked me over the last 100m.

Not a bad run given how bad I felt and how tough the course is. I did pull up with a bit still left in the tank. I think I held back a bit subconciously.

A good week of running. The bike was out of action most of the week so put in a few extra running kms.

Racing went OK.

Saturday's race was pretty much straight off the solid bike ride and works out around the 20 for 5k. I was on my own from 1/2 way and had no one closing so I might have been bludging a bit. I ran the last km pretty quick.

I think I had 20-30secs in me on sunday as I took it pretty easy in the first 1/2 with the tummy problems. Even at the finish I was probably holding a bit back. The course is always 40 or so seconds slower than most so it was probably worth at least the 19.50 I ran last week.

Rtype wrote:

Particularly I point to the article by Jack Farrell on rethinking the hard-easy myth. This is different thinking.

Alan Bennet wrote:

Hmm, I presume you mean the one titled "Training Ideas".

http://www.coacheseducation.com/xc/jack_farrell_june_02.htm

Sorry to say, I more or less disagree with just about everything he says there. I could go into detail, but it would be longer than Farrell's article.

Alan, I think Rtype was pointing at this article:

but the training philosophy is obviously the same as the one you linked to. While I can't say that I would follow his program (I like having a lot of variation in my training,) it would be hard for me to argue against the coach of a program that has been so successful over the years. Here's an LA Times article that talks about his career:

and here is additional commentary on Jack Farrell as a coach:

. I believe he changed his coaching philosophy before returning to coaching in the early '90's, he then had a remarkable string of outstanding teams.

So, as Rtype points out, it's just another approach, and Farrell definitely had success with it. Now, one could argue that a couple of reasons that it worked so well for him is that he was dealing with high-school kids, and able to get his kids to a) quit racing in workouts, and b) run more during the off-season. Both things that are hard to get high-schooler's to do, so that may be part of it. But even given that, he certainly had a lot of success, so I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and Rtype's tenet has basically been to point out that there are a lot of ways to achieve higher fitness.

Finally, there are a lot of people, masters in particular, that are looking for a good non-periodized training program. They want to be able to jump into a race any time of year and feel they can be reasonably competitive. This is probably as good an approach as you'll find for people with those aspirations...and let's face it, most of us are not going to be setting the world on fire, so eking out those last couple of seconds with a complicated training regimen might be more trouble than its worth.

With all due respect.

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

Week 47

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

Greetings 50+ masters. Where did this week go? The non-ending parade of meetings made it feel like I didn't have time for anything, so I'm pleasantly surprised that I somehow managed to bank 53+ miles on seven days of running. Other than that, nothing went as planned. I definitely got some quality miles in, but just not at all how I envisioned it. From an "every-workout-should-have-a-purpose" perspective, this week was a train wreck.

My weekly log looks like this:

Sun: 8 mostly easy, with 1.4@6:00 pace.

Mon: 6 moderate, with 1@6:15.

Tue: 7 mostly easy, with 2.5 on grass (of which 1.2@6:04 pace)

Wed: 6 easy

Thu: 10 w/6.1 on grass (of which 2k@5:54 pace)

Fri: 5.5 easy-to-moderate

Sat: 11.2 w/2x5k(18:53,19:40)

Notes:

1) Last week, I commented that my hamstrings (mostly the right one) were tight and a bit sore after Saturday's hill workout. I spent the first half of the week, just trying to get them to loosen back up. I was planning to just run easy on Sunday, but I just wasn't finding that the hamstrings were loosening, so I tried a little harder short effort near the end of the run. I then followed the run with some stretching and they felt a little less tight. I decided to follow that procedure until things got better. So Monday and Tuesday felt a little better each day after the same routine (within what time constraints I had). By Wednesday, it felt good, so I just ran easy.

2) Thursday was intended to be an interval day, but after a bad night's sleep, I just wasn't feeling it. After a few miles warm-up on the grass, I started ramping up the pace, and then managed to run a hard 2k worth before backing off and finishing easy.

3) Saturday, I was hoping to race a 5k, but a cold and rainy morning coupled with a brief drop-in visit by my father-in-law scuttled those plans. So I switched to a plan of a hard 5k tempo in the afternoon when the weather improved (and the father-in-law headed home to Arkansas) to be followed by a longer easy run. The tempo went as planned, and after an easy mile, I stopped for about 20 minutes to change from my lightweight trainers to the GT-2150's that I'm trying to use up (see footnote)* to run the easy miles. Somewhere about a mile into the easy portion of the run, I was feeling pretty good, so I started picking up the pace and decided to put together another 5k tempo effort.... though not quite as hard, but also in clunkier shoes. Then finished off with a few more easier miles. The average pace over all the miles Saturday ended up being 6:44, and while that did include a break after 4, it was a surprisingly solid day of running for me.

So in the end, I don't know what to make of the week. I don't think it was bad, but it wasn't the kind of week I would prescribe to anyone, either. Any thoughts? Also, I did ask about intermittent fasting last week, but didn't get much response, so I'll just throw it back out there, and see if there are any more comments on that, too.

I'm missing my buddies who ran the River-to-River Relay yesterday. I'm sorry that I just couldn't find a way to join them in the fun this year.

That's about all I got this week. Hope everyone is having a great week, and as usual, I'm looking forward to hearing how it's going in your neck of the woods.

*footnote: I'm switching completely away from clunky trainers in favor of lightweight trainers that I'm now finding I can log miles in without problems (something my ligaments complained about a few years ago), but I still have miles to burn up with my current stock of clunkers, so I've been using them on recovery runs.

Mon = 5K @ 7:26 pace

Tue = 4, Including 770 foot climb in 1.8 miles

Wed = 5K @ 7:48 pace

Thr = rest

Fri = rest

Sat = 5, 5:55 1600, 4 400’s averaging 1:29.25

Sun = 3.7, Mountain

Total Miles = ~19

Nice back to back races mo’pak. I’d say a 20:30 on a hilly trail with gut problems translates pretty fast on a flat and fast course. High 18’s if I had to guess.

lucKY, 7 days running and 53+ miles in which 5 of them have something hard is what I’d call a very productive week.

I had a good week. My sore calves recovered just long enough to hit a very hard hill climb on Tuesday. On the return trip I descended too quickly and that beat up my quads. It’s been a long time since my legs felt like rubber. On Wednesday, try as I might, I could not generate any pace. Quads, calves and hams were all sore.

Sat I returned to my new favorite track that for some quirk of scheduling is abandoned on Saturday mornings. Sweet! It is hard asphalt but I don’t care. The 1600 felt very good, almost like I’m getting my stride back. I did the 400’s clockwise and finished with very sore calves. Sore calves are a very good sign. For me these are the muscles I use to go faster.