50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

The best way to use expert advice? Be knowledgeable.

Cancer sucks. It often hits hard and fast. Trusting the experts might be the best course of action also prevention is a tough one as well as the current surveillance methods are lacking. Hard to arm yourself with knowledge under this circumstance but I do know more than the average person about skin cancer as well as cancer detection and treatment in general. I am preparing kinda like the old chest nut hope for the best but prepare for the worst. For example I have a genetic polymorphism of a gene that is key to the repair of double strand breaks, ATM. This is associated with pancreatic cancer. My brother died of pancreatic cancer about 3 years ago. ONLY Because I identified this genetic issue I get regular surveillance of my pancreas. I also keep up with the latest treatment options it only takes maybe an hour a month to do these things. My brother was dead 6 weeks after diagnosis. PC takes over a decade to develop but once symptoms occur it usually is NOT treatable. I wish I had known what I know now when I got the call from Bill. They put him on chemo even though it had nasty side effects and was not going to help him that was standard of care. So yeah I got history and I am mad as hell about our medical system but there are good docs out there and good treatments so the more you know the better your chances of a good outcome. Heck even if it means just getting a second opinion that you can evaluate. BTW I avoid CT scans because they cause double strand breaks which that ATM gene does not work on so well but I do have others it is amazing just how much redundancy in our systems like glut4 activation. Anyhow I am sure most on this tread read NOTHING of what I post which makes me sad for them

Atherosclerosis for the most part progresses slowly and is often a disease of life style but it is also a disease that is still not completely understood. In fact the only runner I knew who died from a myocardial infarction was a devoted life long vegan.He dropped on Amazon trail at age 62. So am I against vegan diet of course not but it does show there are other factors that can cause unstable plagues . As I have mentioned a few times vitamin K2 is a big one. K2 moa is pretty interesting not ambiguous or contentious.

Insulin Resistance/Type 2 Diabetes is slam dunk treatable but the damage is not so reversible. Why the glut4 pathway driven by insulin quits working well is not really known but the ONLY treatment is cutting out the non essential macro nutrient .... Carbohydrates . The current system of treatment and detection for IR with the amount of knowledge is beyond negligent it is criminal.

So the general aging runner attitude on this thread towards running I no longer share. Health is more important to me than running my best times. However I still want to race and be fairly fit but not if that fitness reduces my health. In the long run I believe that putting health before fitness will allow me a better chance of being able to enjoy running the longest I call this runspan. My knee pain was minor and only occurred occasionally but always after running . My response was not to take NSAIDs or gut it out but to stop running and study knee OA implement a course of action to slow down the progression and to continue to refine this course. There is a ton of information out there on OA that does not reach main stream journalism .

It is not if I will fail nor when that failure occurs but what I do between now and then.

M64 5' 4" 127lb recent 5k 22:10

My 2nd post here. As already said, lots of good stuff to read here this week. The lack of edgy mood is relaxing after the other LRC threads. Special thanks to whoever posted the Dag Aabye video. What a guy, very motivating. Looks like Viggo Mortensen's dad.

I am base building, slowly increasing mileage. Back training on the road for the first time in 30 years. Cross training + zero drop + higher cadence between them have wrought a miracle and I can run pain-free on tarmac.

M am 60min X training pm 50min trail

Tu 70min trail

W 60 min X training

Th 40min on the road

F Rest

Sa am 60 min X training pm 40min trail

Su 40min on the road

Running at 8-8:30 mile pace, so 25-30 miles in all.

Good luck with the winter training!

Charlie,

I always read your posts.

PET and CT scans are the only reliable diagnostic tool for many cancers. Like chemotherapy, radiation levels (diagnostic or treatment) are monitored for lifetime limits of toxicity. Patients should keep an accounting of treatments received for future reference if needed. I feel fortunate to have a medical team that does a fine job of balancing treatment and disease risk. My hours of personal research has only reinforced that opinion.

Igy

We are expecting snow this week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6zaVYWLTkU

It was a very solid week for me with 21+ miles of actual running (no fluff). Volume and intensity continue to increase naturally post-injury. I even got in one “long run”! Erring on the side of caution, I chose not to defend my 2018 turkey trot age group medal. Hopefully I’ll be back at it next Thanksgiving. Meanwhile I’m watching the snow fall and wondering how it will impact this week’s running.

Regarding the intensity and rest discussion, those of you who follow my reports know that I have been following an alternating day schedule for much of the past few years. I’d rather get in some decent daily volume, then take a rest day rather than skimp on the volume in order to claim more training days. Works for me.

Sun: off

Mon: 52’ CR; body wt ex

Tue: off

Wed: 62’ CR; body wt ex

Thu: off

Fri: 53’ CR; body wt ex

Sat: walk w/ the bride

Sun: 51’ CR; body wt ex

Best to most.

“It was a very solid week for me with 21+ miles of actual running (no fluff). “

: -)

Mon. 40 min. kayak. 50 min. road ride.

Tue. 5 x 215 metre " hill reps" up the last bit of the Hard Way track on Mt Ida. This is 85 metres of elevation gain on narrow uneven technical trail. Used hiking poles ad wore my bike helmet. 5m 30s to 5m 50s for each gut busting rep.

Also a 50 min road ride in a howling gale.

Wed. The return of the Merida MTB from the shop. A solid 50 min trail ride followed by an easy 5 km trail run in 28 min.

Thu. Crook in the gut. Tried to do 6 x "Suicide Hills" (290 metres 52 metres elevation gain) but had a bit of a chunder when I got to the bottom after the 5th so walked back up number 6 and called it a day. Skipped the plannned bike ride.

Fri. 2 x my favourite stretch of the Campaspe in the kayak. 80 mins. The river was highe and faster than normal as they have released extra water from the Eppalock storage for the Chinese almond farms up north. A bit concerning (and contreversial) as Eppalock is now below 30% of capacity and no rain expected in the near future. Still it made for good paddling.

Sat. 2 hours of hilly riding on the mountain bike including a 30 min. tempo climbing effort.

Sun. 13 easy kms of running over the Mc Ivor Range on technical trails. 400 metres elevation gain. 90 mins.

Charlie. I enjoy your posts. Always plenty of food for thought.

As always, very inspiring posts on this past week’s training and racing. The perspective nearly always motivates me...thank you.

I had a good week but more importantly, a good month of November...best month in more than a year...132 miles,, two mini track sessions, a satisfactory Turkey Trot (:54 faster than 2 years ago)... so, progress...that shall hopefully lead to World Masters T&F Championships in 2020.

Anyone else have their sites set on that?

Here’s to another fine week of training and racing ?

MF

Not buying it: Rodent cancer tests conducted are being misinterpreted to mean that low doses of exposure to chemicals are relevant to human cancer. Furthermore, it's be established that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables is associated with lower cancer rates which is because anti-carcinogenic vitamins and antioxidants also come from plants.

"Last fall, a study of about 70,000 people by French scientists found a 25 percent decrease in overall cancer risk for people who ate high levels of organic food compared to people who ate very little or no organic food."

Recent performance of note was Roger Robinson's 27 minute 5km at 80. Roger has had both knees replaced!!

We also lost a great Aussie runner Graham Crouch to cancer last week.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

We are expecting snow this week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6zaVYWLTkU

I hope you don't get walloped like we did here in Denver this past week! (good old "Dorothy" is the culprit ?). A complete disaster - open space parks & trails, HS tracks, and most of the side streets buried in 16"-24" of snow. Just trying to drive to the gym this past week for workouts has been challenging (with all knuckleheads that moved here from warmer states that have no experience driving in winter weather conditions. ?).

And to make things even worst, a gym that I utilized for decades that had a nice, sleek indoor running track (12th/mile) closed last year and I don't have access to a running track. ☹ And this snow could take two or so weeks to completely melt assuming no more snowstorms/rain.

Just wet and sloppy so far. Plan in the morning is for track intervals, but may need to improvise.

You must be new here.

Denver Dave wrote:

You must be new here.

Nope...I'm a native born in 1960. And other than going to college out of state for a few years., I've lived here all my life.

My situation is that with chronic injuries and OA (both a hip & ankle ?), I'm pretty much restricted to running on softer surfaces such as trails & open space parks (treadmills don't work because of an equilibrium problem). Years ago I found a really nice open space park with a soft dirt trail close to home that's friendly to my OA. This park actually had snow removal services for several years as part of county property taxes that funded park maintenance, but was discontinued for some reason starting this year. ?

One day after that crazy bomb cyclone blizzard that walloped us last March, the snow removal crews cleared the entire path of over a foot of snow and I was good to go. ? With this blizzard, and no snow remova anymore, the park is already a perpetual mud pit with slush snow and icebergs all over the place. If I was younger and didn't have these pathologies, I would just run on the streets & sidewalks as they're pretty much cleared off in most parts of the city.

Thanks "Dorothy" - she really did a number on Colorado!!! ☹

Looking at the conditions this morning I’m thinking clipping on Yax Trax and doing 1 and 2 street fartlek runs.

Did Idaho dodge the bullet with Ezekiel? Watching TWC, Ezekiel is going to wreck havoc on the Northeastern coast today.

Also from here, but have also spent a lot of years in colder snowier places (Alaska, Minnesota/upper Midwest, upstate NY and New England for a few years, as well as a couple winters in ski town here). pfffft. Yeah this was a big storm and we've had real winter from last January into May last year, and and the storm pattern kicked in early this year with weekly or so storms rolling in by mid-Oct. But it's still mild here compared to any of the above.

Sorry about the OA though, have you tried XC skiing or treadmill as options? I taught myself how to XC ski (skating in particular) on a 1 km loop at City Park in Ft. Collins back in the mid-80s.

Plus we now have machines and health clubs out the wazoo now.

I've had to cross train the past 6 weeks, hope to start up some running this week.

Not Buying It wrote:

Not buying it: Rodent cancer tests conducted are being misinterpreted to mean that low doses of exposure to chemicals are relevant to human cancer. Furthermore, it's be established that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables is associated with lower cancer rates which is because anti-carcinogenic vitamins and antioxidants also come from plants.

As someone who once ran programs for a right-wing, pro-industry "watchdog" group, I welcome the ravings of the legit-sounding American Council for Science and Health, even if (or especially because) their ideas — like its "all your food contains deadly pesticides why you not dead yet" take, using a 30-year-old research paper — make no sense. The ACSH was one of many groups breathed into existence by the John M. Olin and Scaife foundations in the 1970s and '80s to "win the war of ideas." Since my anti-GMO stance is related to the use of land, animals, and greenhouse gases to keep the American waistline growing, I see no need to take the bait.

60 miles this week, brutal indoor mile trial on Wednesday followed by 6x400, and I'm still upright. On Thursday I guided the wife in a 5K. It's the first time we've done the wrist-grip (she's low vision), but that's not the reason she knocked 3:29 off her 5K from last year's Turkey Trot. She's just getting faster!

Muddy Girl, I wish you much success in figuring out a new way to think about racing. If I weren't as competitive I think I would do more social running. This year I've enjoyed having two group workouts a week, the long run and indoor interval training. Also I run in the park with the missus 2-3x/week. I don't mind the music in my head, but easy runs are a great time to schmooze as well.

Not Buying It wrote:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ehn.org/fruits-vegetables-with-most-pesticides-2632135188.amp.html

"Last fall, a study of about 70,000 people by French scientists found a 25 percent decrease in overall cancer risk for people who ate high levels of organic food compared to people who ate very little or no organic food."

Healthy user bias makes such numbers worthless. Epidemiology is pseudoscince. The reality is: plants cannot run away or fight back physically, so they fight back chemically with Alkaloids, Alpha-amylases, Arsenics, Cellulose, Cyanogenic glycosides, Fiber, Flavonoids, Gluten, Lectins, Mycotoxins, Oxalates, Phenolics, Photosensitizers, Phytic acid, Salicylates, Saponins, Sulforaphane, Tannins, Terpenoids and etc. And yes this includes your cheerful sugary fruits and your comforting fiber-heavy vegetables. The fiber itself essentially operates as a toxin as it is mechanically irritating to the gut and indigestible.