50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Looks like a good week for a lot of us old folks. An excellent week for me. 74 miles in 7 runs, no workouts. This is the highest weekly mileage I've done in about 10 years. Now I just need to sustain it until XC season. I am planning to just run moderate effort with no workouts (other than weekend runs with my sons who drag me around at a much brisker pace) until the end of May and then start easing into some interval work.

Another easy week leading up to a 10K. I finished about 35:50, which was only good for second in the 55-59 age group because Steven Chantry ran 35:20. It's a crazy fast point-to-point course that is either gradual uphill or downhill but with an overall 190 foot elevation drop. I'm normally a negative split guy, but this course had me doing the opposite. The first 5 mile splits were 5:38, 5:44, 5:45, 5:49, and 5:52. I left the race feeling beat up, with one hamstring pretty sore. Given how fast the course is, it was nice to be able to calibrate my effort by having Chantry in the race.

M: 5 easy

T: 5 easy

W: 5 easy

T: 4 easy

F: 5 easy

S: 6 easy

S: 10K in 35:50

I just ran 29:21 for the Trolley Run 4 miler in KC MO, last race as a 60 year old, 8th of 85 in my age group, a good day, and it's a NIKE sponsored race, KP! Yeah. Wife Jane was 2nd in her 50-54 in 27:57, and she's 55 this summer. It was raining, lightning, no chance of any warmup more than 5 minutes long. Lucky to get the race off at all, and on wet roads and some light rain. Feeling good about all that. A good day was had by all!

76.5 miles in 7 days like this:

Monday- 9 miles easy

Tuesday- 20 miles with easy to moderate pickups from miles 6-18

Wednesday- 12 X 1/4 @ 1:41, then gassed due to 80+ temps, was supposed to do 30 times but bagged it while my training partner finished, she's 49 and tough as nails (Linda Barnhart, WLDR Executive Committee member and ADP Coordinator)

Thursday- 5.5 easy

Friday- 7 miles easy

Saturday- 10 miles with middle 6 at 25K race pace in some serious hills, legs are back!

Sunday- 20 miles in the chilly rain, happy to have it!

Hope you all can tune in to Flotrack and see our Team Nebraska mate David Adams go for the 8:23 Olympic Steeple Standard at the Payton Jordan Invite tonight (9:02 Central time)

You racing Grand Rapids? Looking forward to meeting you if so although the 50-54 age group just got really tough from the looks of your workouts.

Mon = 5K @ 7:17 pace

Tue = 5K with 6 X 1 min accelerations

Wed = 5K @ 8:37 pace

Thr = rest

Fri = rest

Sat = 5, Race 5K 20:12, 6th out of 160 Overall, 1st Age

Sun = 4.7, Mountain

Total Miles = ~20

Good week where the legs felt solid with no soreness. Mostly prepping for the Sat race. Semi-pleased with the effort on this hilly, slightly long course. This is the highest overall place I've finished in this race but I think faster runners stay away from this one since the times are never quick. Keep needing to remind myself to be thankful that my legs feel good.

Congrats all around, looks like folks are getting it done. Blackmore's 15:16 is just awesome. The first thing I thought of when I read that was how amazing it is. The second was, whew, boy am I slow. I mean painfully slow! It's not always easy to deal with the hard reality of the numbers put up by others. Seems there's always someone faster doesn't it?

But, beyond that frustration I think it's a triumph for all of us when some of us press beyond boundaries, limits, and, dare I say, the prejudiced negative assumptions of what older athletes can do. These 50 year old's who keep cracking into the 15's in 5K's are blowing away those assumptions. It's all good.

runguru wrote:

You racing Grand Rapids? Looking forward to meeting you if so although the 50-54 age group just got really tough from the looks of your workouts.

Yep... Shoot me an email if you want. We'll have a beer or 4.

Dave

Put the skis away figuratively last week and literally today--spent the afternoon putting a layer of base prep/summer wax on about 14 pairs of skis and put them away for storage.

Ran 51 miles on 6 days, including 3 workouts: a medium length tempo of 30 min at low-mid 6s; 5X hill reps (3:30 at 5K effort), and 20 min threshold with some (n=6) 45-55 sec surges thrown in. First 5K of the season next week.

Wow, 15:16 is very fast!

I wonder how many times Blackmore will lap the rest of us geezers in the 3k next week? Two, for sure, but probably not 3, right?

Apparently, I am down about 10 lbs now and very close (~ 3 lbs) to my all-time best race weight. Oddly, though, you really can't tell by looking at me (I can tell, but in clothes, it's pretty hard to discern a difference). We'll see if it makes a difference when I finally get around to a race.

From my perspective, virtually ALL the competitive masters women are skinny like OMG and and very, very lean and have been forever. So, she's in good company.

Genetically, I have an athletic build like both my parents and most people think I'm slim, but compared to my competitors I carry more muscle and thus more weight. Oh well, I am doing the best with what I've been given. It's not the number on the scale that matters so much as the body composition, at least that is what I will console myself with. FWIW, I feel faster. I've been losing about a pound a week the boring way - eating less and a bit better - fewer handfuls of chocolate chips. ;-)

Ran about 70 miles last week and slightly less this week. Still just doing one faster workout a week most of the time and incorporating hills or drills and tempo or some intervals by time each week, in addition to my weekly long run. XC is still a long way off and I want to be ready for that most of all.

Week 48: No running.

The plan is to start with a run-walk buildup on 5/19. I'll spare y'all the cross-training descriptions. There was a lot of it. :)

I did "race" the Derby Minimarathon (half) yesterday, walking it. I figured the best view as a spectator would be from the middle of the racecourse. Beforehand I told some friends I thought 3-1/2 hours would be a good time. My only regret is that when I signed up for this back in December, I didn't request an "A" bib, that would have been too funny. (I asked for the B-corral because it was supposed to be a two-hour training run.) I'll give the mile description first and then my time at the mile marker. I didn't have my Garmin, just a pedometer, so I could only check my splits by the whole minute...:

The forecast rain didn't show and the sky was blue so I tossed my emergency poncho in the trash. Then I walked to the last corral, the I-corral, but like most of the racers there strolled back up to the F-corral for the gun. Once we reached the line I went as well as I could, and it was wounding my pride some of the people who were passing me. (1st mile in 19 minutes). After the mile marker I looked back and realized I was in some danger of being dead last. With plenty of time to get the arithmetic right, I also realized I was in some danger of being charged an extra night for my hotel room. So I accelerated to a medium hard effort and stopped losing ground. Or maybe all the fast people had already passed me. (2nd in 17). Time to really bear down... I gave what I estimated was maximum effort. (3rd in 16). A little underdressed for walking, a little cold, hoping this sudden rain doesn't last long. Luckily it didn't. Distracted by the weather I missed the 4th marker. It was also in this stretch that I resolved to pass anybody with a cane or crutch, an extra motivation that made a real difference in what pace was achievable. (4th+5th in 30). Now I decided to see what I was really made of, and try to do 14s the rest of the way. I really stepped on the gas and went anaerobic. Literally. The sound of my breathing was equivalent to a good tempo run. Hah. (6th in 14). I actually had a secret plan to try a run-walk after a sufficient warmup, and the only question was how long to wait to try it. The guy with the microphone was cheering everybody on and calling them runners, so I was inspired to try a jog, but that effort lasted just three steps. Oh, well. (7th in 14). I'm finished. I want to quit. No, really. Thankfully, I have a good sense of direction and, realizing I was at just about the maximum distance from the hotel, decided there was no sense quitting here. (8th in 14). Now we enter Churchill Downs, which is supposed to be cool and the highlight of the race. But they have a tunnel under the track, and the ramp is at the exact downward angle to extract the maximum punishment. Going up the other side is a relief by comparison. Some of my friends saw horses flying around somewhere on the grounds. Of course my friends had been through that way about 45 minutes ago. I saw nothing like that. We were doing a loop inside, not on the actual racetrack obviously, and all I saw was a bunch of walkers hogging lanes 1-4. So I cheated when necessary by using lane 0. Back out through another torture tunnel. Just after Churchill Downs I found a portapotty with zero line, took my time in the water stop, basically chilled. (9th in 17). Still chilling. The full marathoners rejoined us from their detour, and when I saw the 3:50 pace group go by I said the f-word. Some girl behind me laughed, so I struck up a conversation. She admitted to doing the half on inadequate training, so, being the codger I am, I gave her some ludicrously obvious advice before speeding away. (10th in 15). Calmed down now, because I found out the full marathoners have a second detour and still 7 to go. Relieved, refreshed, rested, got my second wind. Finished it out with three consecutive 14s. In the last mile I passed a guy wearing a full-leg brace, leaning on his girlfriend's shoulder. We exchanged a fist bump and I powered home. Chip time 3:20:31.

And what I learned from it: (1) Walking a half is hard! (2) The bad patch. I've heard about it, read about it many times, but never experienced it before. Except for an accident of course layout, I would have dropped out at mile 8. So next time I hit a bad patch, I'll make some adjustments and wait for it to pass. (3) There's always an extra gear. (4) In other races, I only ever cared about my time, never about the medal. Now I get what the medal is about.

Mon- Ran the very hilly 25k Tooborac/Baynton loop. Slow and relaxed in 2.15.

Tue- 1 hr kyak session in big winds and choppy conditions. 1 hour easy jogging in the evening.

Wed- 2 hr run to the summit of Mt Alexander and return. 56 mins to the summit via the road with the last 43 mins. climbing @ around threshold effort. Ran another km past the summit then into the bush to descend via rough trails. All up just over 21kms.

Thu- 2 hr mountain bike ride while waiting for the car to be serviced. Out for an easy hour jog with 15 mins barefoot on grass in the evening.

Fri- Day off. Helping my youngest move into a house down in Melbourne, also visited Mum and Dad and my granddaughters.

Sat- 10k slow jog. Interclub relays but several withdrawels meant we couldn't field competitive teams. Rolled around a 3.2km leg in a lifeless 12.40. Running solo as we were 1.5kms behind the next team by then. Jogged 3 more kms.

Sun- Club race. Warmed up with 4kms jogging and strides. 6.5km handicap trail race. Course is moderately undulating. Pretty good surface. 3kms is on the main walking track, a few rolling hills. The other 3.5kms on secondary walking tracks that are in pretty good order, a few 1/2 decent hills but nothing too disruptive.

Had a nice race. Able to run the uphills aggressively and hammer the downhills in my usual kamikaze style. Through 1.5k in 5.45, 2.5k in 9.40, 4k in 15.40, 5k 19.40 and finished in 25.40.

Finished with a 3km jog.

Probably ran around 95-96kms for the week off 6 days.

I would have liked to have a decent crack at the relay 3.2k. Last year I ran 12.05 in a howling gale but in a very competitive environment. I carted all the O/50s along until getting outkicked in the last 100m.

This year though it seemed pointless to try and hammer it solo with nothing at stake so I saved my legs for sunday's race.

The Australian 50 plus records could be in for a review later this year when Steve Moneghetti passes that milestone.

Steve was still running in the top 10 in State XC champs last year. He clocked a sub 31 10k on a day where the winner (a 28 min man) couldn't better 30m.

Goal Race: Three Sisters Marathon, June 9th

Week of 04/22-04/28

Greetings from my hometown of Chicago and from my wife's hometown of Rhinelander, WI!

Sun, 04/22: 21 miles in 2:38:30 (7:33/mile avg.)

Splits: 8:02, 7:43, 7:42, 7:26, 7:26, 7:37, 7:37, 7:28, 7:40, 7:33, 7:40, 7:39, 7:40, 7:41, 7:39, 7:22, 7:15, 7:23, 7:12, 7:29, 7:14

Mon, 04/23: usual day off running

Tue, 04/24: 8.11 miles in 62:51 (7:45/mile avg.)

Wed, 04/25: 2 mile warmup, 6 x 1/2 mile with 2:00 recovery (2:57, 2:56, 3:00, 3:01, 3:00, 3:13 (uphill, into wind)), 2 mile cooldown. Day's total = 8+ miles

Thu, 04/26: 8 miles in 59:06 (7:22/mile avg.) This was run on my old stomping grounds of the Caldwell bike path in NW Chicago.

Fri, 04/27: 8 miles in 61:21 (7:40/mile avg.) This was run on another favorite training route when I used to live in Chicago - the path around Busse Woods in Elk Grove Village, IL.

Sat, 04/28: 4.86 miles in 38:39 (7:58/mile avg.) Run in Caldwell Woods again. Tapered a bit for next day's 18 miles with last six at MP, which went REALLY WELL. :)

Weekly total = ~58 miles

Weights/core on Monday & Tuesday only this week

My 18 miler on Sun, 04/29 went really well. Plan was to run the first 12 at a comfortable pace, then cover the final six miles at MP, whatever that might be (still not sure!). I averaged 7:35 for the first 12, then covered the last six between 6:47-6:53 per mile, with a final mile of 6:36.

Cheers,

Tim

Y'all notice 2:00.90 by 52 year old Ray Knerr at the Steve Scott Invitational? Wow!

western sandpiper wrote:Y'all notice 2:00.90 by 52 year old Ray Knerr at the Steve Scott Invitational? Wow!

Thanks for bringing this forward. Only 2s off Nolan Shaheed's American Record. Very nice! Speaking of Shaheed, I see that masterstrack.com updated their site with his new M60 3000m record at 9:49.76....which was apparently slower than a previous run that didn't get properly timed. Sheesh! Great stuff!

What a great weekend it's been for us masters. Very reaffirming....but also pretty humbling.

Glad that so many of you have had good weeks. I'm feeling like the winter doldrums have lifted and it's going to be a great summer. Alan, glad that you can maintain a healthy perspective and bring some humor to your latest setback...I was pretty put-out last summer, but tried to stay positive. So your story resonates, and certainly helps me to keep it real. Thanks for sharing that; I didn't realize you were in our fair state!

Cheers!

Hope its Ok to ask, because I'm not yet 50 yrs old. I'm 45, but if I had to drop one workout during the week which should it be? I do a track workout, usually 10x400/200Rjog

a HILL workout where I run every hill nearly all out on a 10 mile course(some long hills some short) there are 20 hills total on the 10 mile loop. A tempo/threshold type run either a 4 mile tempo or 2X2 mile/2 min rest...at 6 min pace. The 400s are at 80-82 sec pace..I also do a saturday long run. I'm aiming for a sub 2:50 marathon in the fall, but also need to keep my leg turnover going. I'm having trouble fitting it all in one week. I feel like one workout should be dropped. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. The other days are recovery(tue, thur, sun)

Why does all that have to fit into one week? I think having a variety of workouts is good, even for a marathoner, but having to rigidly fit it into 7 days seems like a recipe for disaster. You haven't hit the slide that often happens in the late 40s, but you probably will find you need more recovery between efforts.

I'd suggest looking into a 10 day or 14 day schedule. Since the marathon doesn't require as much interval or fast reps, so why don't you alternate weeks with that?

FWIW, this is what I do - long run (~12-14 miles) every weekend (though I admit this is largely for my mental health ;-) as I don't run marathons). Once a week - EITHER a tempo run/workout OR an "interval" workout (i.e. something like 6 x 4 min. at "5k pace/effort" with 3 min. recovery)

ALSO Once a week - either short hills (30-90 sec.) OR form drills/strides.

If I'm feeling flat, I'll space the workouts further apart or skip one. I generally run the tempo or intervals on Tuesday or Wednesday, the shorter form stuff on Friday, sometimes Saturday and long on Sundays, but I've often dropped one of the more intense workouts and just done one thing like (tempo or intervals or hills or drills) on Wednesday and the long run Sunday and run easy the rest of the time if I'm feeling tired.

Check out some periodization tables/discussion and see how you can spread things out over a 3-6 week period. You may find you have to spread your training out over more weeks in order to get sufficient amounts of certain workouts in, but your body will appreciate the extra recovery.

Just my .02.

NB Dickie wrote:

Hope its Ok to ask, because I'm not yet 50 yrs old. I'm 45, but if I had to drop one workout during the week which should it be? I do a track workout, usually 10x400/200Rjog

a HILL workout where I run every hill nearly all out on a 10 mile course(some long hills some short) there are 20 hills total on the 10 mile loop. A tempo/threshold type run either a 4 mile tempo or 2X2 mile/2 min rest...at 6 min pace. The 400s are at 80-82 sec pace..I also do a saturday long run. I'm aiming for a sub 2:50 marathon in the fall, but also need to keep my leg turnover going. I'm having trouble fitting it all in one week. I feel like one workout should be dropped. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. The other days are recovery(tue, thur, sun)

How about a day off to do some cross training, or....just rest? I know nothing of marathoning but check out imarunr's schedule above.

I'll tack on to what Muddy Girl said, although I'm certainly no poster child for proper training. At any rate, there is no reason to have a one-week training program.

Let me share what I learned at Kevin Castille's clinic the other week. He said that he has 9 elements (I think I've got this right) to his training that he tries to incorporate during about a 3-week period. Those elements include:

200m reps.

400m reps.

1000m reps.

2-mile reps.

Fartlek

Hills

tempo

Marathon Pace

Long Run

He recommends rotating through these elements (you pick the order), to insure that you've gotten all your paces. Some elements are part of an interval workout and some can be combined (fartlek and hills, for example, as you've done.) He does differentiate between easy and recovery runs that intersperse his workouts. Also, just for reference, he does run doubles and even sometimes triples, runs a lot of his "easy" runs on hilly trails, and is a very high-mileage guy. Even so, he said that anyone can rotate through these 9 elements to achieve a balanced training program.

Finally, Kevin is a fairly well-rounded, successful masters runner who has shown amazing ability from about 1500m to half-marathon, but he doesn't run the marathon (or, at least, he hasn't had the same success at it,) so you probably would want to adjust your mixture more to your focus, but the idea is still the same; 3-week cycle, not 1-week cycle. He also suggests easing up on the fourth week dropping to about 2/3rd's your usual level.

Note: Just to cover my rear, this is all based on my notes from the clinic, so take this as second-hand, with no intention to misquote what Kevin said or does. So it may not be 100% accurate, but I'm pretty sure it's close.

Hope that helps.

Thanks everyone for the training input. What I have been trying to do is what the great Aussie Marathon great Rob DeCastella did. He called it "complex" training. Where you do a variety of training in each week. Hills,Track, Tempo, Long Runs. It makes sense to make it a two week cycle. Especially for a 45 year old. Thanks again..