50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

I'd be very interested if LRC sleuths would look into Greater Springfield's truly great 50+ men's team. It is freakishly fast and I think it's unlikely that all but one of them actually lives in USATF-New England.

They scored just 51 points today.

I just poked around and it seems they live all over the place. Certainly not in Springfield, MA.

And if all but one of them does live in USATF-New England, it seems unfair that USATF New England is that sprawling.

Yeah I hear me whining, but honest competition is worth defending.

rules are f'in rules wrote:

I'd be very interested if LRC sleuths would look into Greater Springfield's truly great 50+ men's team. It is freakishly fast and I think it's unlikely that all but one of them actually lives in USATF-New England.

They scored just 51 points today.

I just poked around and it seems they live all over the place. Certainly not in Springfield, MA.

And if all but one of them does live in USATF-New England, it seems unfair that USATF New England is that sprawling.

Yeah I hear me whining, but honest competition is worth defending.

Oh give me a break.

Looks like most of them live in Western Mass. One lives in NH which is in the New England association. Two live in Connecticut, and one of those is in Simsbury which is a suburb of both Springfield and Hartford. Technically CT has its own association but they had no teams entered in any of the masters races, so were those two guys just not supposed to run? Massachusetts and NYC are loaded with running teams and CT isn't, so traditionally many of the better CT runners have joined those teams, especially the BAA.

so two of the their top five are outside their USATF Org? Then they broke the rules. My team has regulalarly had to tell people they can't score for us because of the 'no all-star' team rule.

Not sure why your reaction is 'oh give me a break.' My team is hurt by this rule all the time. People live 5-10 miles across a state border and they can't compete for us.

Igy, thanks for the shout out. I’m sitting in O’Hare waiting for my connecting flight home and don’t have my LR password on my iPad, and don’t remember it. A solid effort for me yesterday. 2nd place 70 plus team. Course was muddy but not that bad.

What's the deal? wrote:[/b

65 wrote:

[quote]El Coache wrote:

Unhappy to be home but glad to see Joe Sheeran and Greater Lowell in great form @ Club Nats 60 div today. Hope to join 65 & CM back in the ranks of the healthy and back to racing in 2020. Hope everyone in PA has a great time and gets home safe.

Mike

Congrats to all that competed. Looking forward to stories. Great to see John Barbour back after a couple of years away due to injuries. And Joe Sheeran. The guy won his race 60+ by a minute averaging 5:47 and age graded over 92 in all that mud. The guy is not human![/quote]That doesn't sound good? ?

Hey El Coache and 65 you are now on my newly resurrected FB page from 2018 Club XC. Not in the pic is Joe who destroyed us all last year. Even though not on the same team we were united in orange! Hope to see you out there next year.

Feeling better and running a bit, at 25-30 minutes of running every other day this week. Plus some elliptical. I gave some XC skiing a shot yesterday, and did 80+ minutes at 9400' but didn't feel good energy wise, and could feel some joint pain so cut back in effort and time a little. 6.5 hours total for the week of training.

Hope to mix in a couple days skiing a week over the next month or so, after that weekly at least.

congrats to everyone who ran club nationals. looks as if you got serious X-C course conditions.

fun, easy week for me:

M 50:00 + 40:00 x-t

Tu 50:00 + 30:00 x-t

W 40:00 + 1:00 x-t

Th 1:50 double

F 1:10

Sa 1:30 x-t

Su 1:20 [and turned in my last grades!]

bunch of meetings tomorrow and two writing deadlines friday, to make either of which will require quite a kick, so it doesn't feel restful yet, but in principle I'm heading into a pretty easy work phase -- on sabbatical in spring, so no more classes until late August. I'd put it off quite a while when I was department chair, so this is first one in 12 years. Should be a good time to get research done and more importantly to get in shape.

have a great week,

Dave

old guy Ii,

Terry and Gene are legendary, so you are in with some tough company. Very nice and glad you did well.

Igy

*Week 443*

Greetings, 50+ers! Still on hiatus; I can sympathize with Dhaaga....it's been like that at work. As such, I have nothing to report.

Happy to see some great racing in PA. Props to y'all that made the trek and toed the line. Sounds like it was real XC conditions. My buddies who ran in the open Men's race said there were plenty of sections with 6 inches of mud. Will look forward to reading your reports. Along with you regulars, our old buddy, msr, who hasn't chimed in for many years, but was here at the inception of this thread and its predecessor, had one helluva race, too. Always floored at the depth and level of talent that shows up for the Masters Club XC meet.

That's all I've got; hopefully, the winter break I will get things going, but for now, back to the grind....

All the Best!

Good morning.

Congratulations to all the racers. Interesting side note to some comments last week, a triathlete won the men’s open race at Lehigh.

Warm enough here that I washed a car and worked in the yard yesterday. Not sure how many times that has happened in my 23 years living here. My wife caught a cold earlier in the week, and Thursday I felt a tickle and a little more fatigue than usual. I thought it prudent to back off a bit. Must have worked, so far.

Monday: AM- 2 miles easy; 2 x ( 8 x 150m good speed / 50m easy; 400m easy; 4 x 250m good swing / 150m easy ) 400m between sets; mile easy; PM- 3 mile walk

Tuesday: AM- 60:00 spin; core; weights; PM: 1,000 yard swim

Wednesday: 2 miles easy; 2,000m tempo @ 11:07 / 1:00 rest; 1,600m tempo @ 8:57; mile easy

Thursday: 40:00 spin

Friday: off

Saturday: 4 mile walk

Sunday: off

I signed up for the YMCA Christmas Run, last year I ran 19:18 and had to walk a couple of times. It can be a bit discouraging at points until I think back.

Have a good week.

Igy

impressive results from XC Nationals in Bethlem, PA yesterday...here's a link:

https://results.leonetiming.com/xc.html?mid=1933

generally good geezer week here...28 miles including some track stuff ( 2 x 100 @ 25, 24 then a ladder: 200 @ 47, 400 @ 98, 800 sprint straight, run turn @ 3:21, 400 @ 92, 200 @ 41)...later in the week also on the track, a 4 mile progression run in 33:30 (9:14, 8:37, 8:10, 7:29)...surpassed 111,300 miles yesterday and silly streak at 351 days

congrats to those who braved Lehigh's harier venue...have a fine Sunday of NFL and a wonderful upcoming week of masters training and racing.

your pal,

MF

OGII and Cush: Congrats! Some really impressive times given the conditions. I heard you had to love the mud and have just the right spikes or you were SOL for that one.

Dhaaga: So you don’t get to totally goof-off on sabbatical?

TU: 4 treadmill with 3@8:30 pace

TH: 4 treadmill with 3@8:30 pace

SA: 4 road with 3@7:52 pace (very windy)

SU: 4 road with 3@8:23 pace (very windy)

Good week. Thankfully, seems like the steel-bolt-through-the-shoe-bruised-foot-thingy seems to have finally healed up pretty well.

I have been running too slowly on my easy days. So I’m adding more subthreshold runs. These are about 30 seconds per mile slower than my threshold pace. Pretty simple plan: I don’t run much, so I’m making the most of when I do run. So even though the times are relatively modest I put in quite a bit more work than usual and I feel it.

I was doing 50 pushups and crunches after each run but had to stop that as I’m developing some sort of irritation or hernia near my xiphoid process. I think it pruning a giant American Holly Bush/tree that did me in! And it still looks like crap….

What does Rosanne Rosanna Dannah say?

Have a great week folks!

old guy II, it must be a little disappointing to just miss the individual podium, but that’s a really solid effort in that competition! And congrats to the team!

Coyote, good to see you on the comeback trail.

dhaaga, I’ll say you deserve a sabbatical! I haven’t taken one in 8 years and that was only a semester, and by now I’ve maxed out my sabbatical credits. I plan to hand over the department chair duties in fall 2021 and take another sabbatical myself…I hope I’m still physically capable of running by then…

Igy, I hope you can beat back the cold bug and do the Christmas run.

MikeF, nice going keeping the streak alive! I have never counted streaks and I’d guess the longest one in my life was several months.

I had a solid week including a decent race and my longest run since September, for 72 miles total.

Mon: 10.4 miles

Tues: 10.7 miles, reasonably quick.

Weds: 10.4 miles

Thurs: 10.4 miles

Fri: 7.0 miles easy in my brand new NB Zante Solas shoes, which are less than ¾ the weight of my next-lightest shoes. Wheee!

Sat: 5K race in 24:19, wearing the new ultralight shoes. 6 and 7 seconds faster than 2017 and 2018, respectively, so I can’t complain. This is a huge event but very few are real runners. I won the 60-64 age group by nearly 4 minutes and was 11th out of 1166 total female finishers! The race felt very good, hard but controlled. I can’t recall feeling this good in a race for quite a while. Perhaps I didn’t go out fast enough as I was flying past people right and left in the second half, but lots of people have no idea how to pace a 5K. Considering how much trouble I’m having getting down to even 9-minute miles in training, being able to hit 7:50/mile in a race was very encouraging.

Sun: 18.5 miles in 2:50 (9:11/mile pace). Having raced yesterday, I took it easy and had a lovely run on a gorgeous sunny winter morning that still felt strong at the end.

I’m considering a half-marathon in two weeks to cap off the year, and then will contemplate goals for next year.

This was a tough week considering the weather challenges and a new boo boo. Consequently I was able to generate only about 13 actual running miles (no fluff). Thursday’s run included some icy surfaces which I managed well with only one slip of the left foot on push off. A couple of hours later I noticed some discomfort behind my left knee. Friday was a scheduled off day, then my Saturday run was cancelled due to weather. The injury felt fine on Saturday, so I figured Sunday was a go. Woke up with a little discomfort there, so heated her up for a bit before stepping outside. I got about a half mile before realizing it wasn’t going to work. Turned for home, but it kept getting tighter. I limped home for ice and Advil. Yuck. The old connective tissue ain’t what it used to be. I’m day to day with hopes of getting out again before the end of the week.

Sun: 42’ CR; body wt ex

Mon: off

Tues: 53’ CR; body wt ex

Wed: off

Thu: 35’ CR

Fri: off

Sat: off (weather)

Sun: 8’ CR

Best to most!

Enjoyed a Week of Fluff also did another 5 day "fast" fasting mimicking diet.

Various forms of Vicarious Achievement XC Events as well as the Chiefs beating the cheaters in the own back yard!

Joe Sheeran WOW AMAZING makes me feel a bit like a slacker . No sub for hard(vol+qual) consistent training

Nice RW feature article on Joe:

https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20857524/you-think-you-run-high-mileage-try-four-runs-a-day/

Natural Runner: Sheeran, who serves at an animal shelter and on an environmental commission, has maintained a vegan diet for 30 years and says that healthy eating is a big factor in his racing success. After his lunchtime run, instead of a regular meal, Sheeran “nibbles on a stash of vegan foods I keep in a file cabinet.”

Good Grades: A CWU exercise science professor, Dr. Leo D’Aguisto, whom Sheeran calls his “campus coach,” has found Sheeran to be a remarkable fitness specimen in physiological tests. Even in his 50s, Sheeran has shown excellent running economy and achieved a VO2 max of 75, something close to the world-class level.

amkelley wrote:

old guy II, it must be a little disappointing to just miss the individual podium, but that’s a really solid effort in that competition! And congrats to the team!

AMK, actually it's not disappointing at this point in my running life. Every time I can stand on a starting line feels like a blessing these days, and I ran this race about as well as I could at my current fitness. I believe that I have a good amount of room to improve my fitness and get past a couple of those people in front of me, but I have to put in the work to do that.

As for the race, I was wearing cross country spikes and it was the right thing to do for the conditions. I spent most of my race paying attention to picking the best lines through the muddy sections and not worrying about my competition. There were plenty of muddy sections but I didn't think it was that bad. However, we were the first race, and by the time Cush raced we and the masters women had done a lot of tearing up of the course. Cush was on the same plane with me from Allentown to O'Hare and I got to say good morning as he was coming down the aisle after boarding, but he probably wondered who the elderly guy in glasses was since we have only met a couple of times before when I was wearing my Toads singlet. My team mates did great and also both had excellent races. It would have been nice to squeak by Ann Arbor, but we'll probably take another shot at that in SF next year.

Well, old guy II certainly shows how it's done! At 8 years younger, I'd be HARD PRESSED to keep up!

Congrats to old guy and all who competed in the mud.

Interesting discussion about Greater Springfield veteran runners. I actually went to Frosh year of high school next door in Longmeadow. Ran 5:08 and sort of thought I was "good". HA!

Later went on to Lincoln Sudbury in Eastern MA. Ran 4:30.7 for high school, but this kid a year younger, next town over in Wayland, showed me up by running that pace for 2-miles. Yup, it was Alberto, the guy who is in hot water these days.

This week I looked to up my volume, a bit over two months out from the Napa Valley Marathon.

Mon 7.25 easy

Tue 15+ easy>med. easy

Wed 7.2 med. easy

Thursday 11+ easy

Friday 11+ (first 6 easy, tempo run from there)

Sat rest

Sunday 11+ easy out, fartlek back

63 - 64 miles on the week. A bit tired.

I'll look to do a loooooongish run this week, then taper just a bit for the Brazen (Almost) New Year's Eve half.

All the best, & happy running.

Thanks for that link, Charlie. I’m less interested in his diet than the fact he uses multiple runs a day to spread out his leg impact and stay fresh. Being out of the game for 21 years probably has helped keep him springy, too.

Kid Coach explained why he’s prescribing doubles for me — not just to get my mileage up but to spread out the fatigue, as it sounds like Joe is doing. But as I get closer to a long race, he’s going to make me do singles so I feel race-day fatigue more often.

53 miles last week, 60 this week, including 6x800’s at the indoor track. Kid Coach hasn’t told me if I’m doing those at T, I, or R pace. I like to be surprised!

Joe has many fine qualities one of which he is very humble. What I don't understand is the fact that he has basicially ruled xc Club Nationals, and a couple other xc races for the last three years but yet has never won the "XC Harrier of the Year" award.

C'mon...man; this is nothing but genetics off the chart! (don't you study the field of genetics?...I do). The times he can run, 85 mile weeks, no acute or chronic injuries, elite-level VO2max over the age of 50 - that's incredible genetics both from the perspective of the VO2max at his age but more so that he can run elite level mileage without sustaining any debilitating injuries. What was his VO2max in his prime? 90 or so? By contrast, I'm a couple years younger than him (59) and have a myriad of deliberating injuries all starting after age 50 (torn tendons, strained & torn muscles, post-traumatic osteoarthritis).

I can barely run 10-12 mpw spread over 3 days per week these days. No speedwork, no racing - just shuffling stepping along like an 80 year old. I've spent more time with orthopedic surgeons, sports medicine doctors and laying in MRI tubes the last several years that I can't even see straight anymore. And I've formed a bond with Acetaminophen & NSAIDs just to get through the day after a 4 mile run sometimes.

I'm also on a vegan diet like he is on, but it's done nothing for musculoskeletal health. So, with him crediting the vegan diet for his success the same diet hasn't done jacksh*t for me! I also take glucosamine and all that, and lift weights; but when you have my level of injuries it's constant pain & rehab...rehab & pain.

I want to RUN...it relieves my stress (I lost my wife of 20 yrs in 2016 to complications from an autoimmune disease). And I get tired of doing my cardio on bikes & elliptical machines at the stinking gym with all riffraff that comes with these joints these days (rude people, tough guys, people hogging machines while on their phones, middle-aged guys loaded on TRT acting like teenagers, etc.). I want to RUN: for fitness...for mental health...for outdoor enjoyment.

So, when I see genetic specimens like this guy (who can train consistently & run very fast without injury because of their exceptional genetics), I don't get all excited and start drooling. I realize guys like him couldn't achieve those accomplishments one bit without superb genetics while genetic scum like me can barely even run!