50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

On a related subject, I tossed my training logs from 2002-2016. They seemed irrelevant to my age 70 self, as my age 19-20 training logs to my age 51-58 training logs. Besides I needed to make room in my home office for items from my former work office. If I died tomorrow someone from my family would ask themself “what was he keeping this for.”

Igy

Iggy, it is a reality check when we start asking ourselves what our families will do with the junk we keep after we die. I never kept training logs, but I have started to toss ribbons and medals (just age-group stuff from road races, tbh, because I didn't pick up racing until after law school).

At this point I just keep track of mileage on my running shoes as a back stop to my body telling me that I am not getting the same kind of pop I am looking for. I suppose my watch/phone app keeps a lot of the information too but I have a good memory that will be sufficient for seasonal awareness.

M: off.

T-SA: 7.1km.

SU: 8.9km.

This was basically the same as I did two weeks ago. Sunday's "long" run went 9:54-9:42-9:35-9:26-8:45 (1.78km loop). 42 sec faster than two weeks ago, and 13 sec faster for the final lap. So I consider this as progress.

We just survived the first week of "hybrid" semester. 12 weeks to go, and then we will go completely remote, according to the plan. We will see what happens.

Hi all,

Training is going well.

I am sceptical about the new pay for content model here on LR.

So, I am reluctant to provide my content for free until I will understand where the site is going to.

BR, have fun and stay healthy

Seattle Grey Hair,

I tossed some race bibs at the same time, medals are in one box, donated a variety of trophies and plaques, but kept three with significance. I probably would have culled it further when stopped by sentimental family members. My wife and I have discussed the topic of clearing our life for the now and future. And as an attorney, you understand that goes to preparing to pass authority to others at the appropriate time. At some point that means going from two vehicles to one, and then none at all. We have told ourselves we will be more flexible as we age in comparison to our parents. We’ll see.

Igy

After age 55 everything I use to do in training stop working. More injuries, more fatigue and not feeling good are like training or just running. So I threw all my training that use to do out the window and just started doing what felt good and easy and progress from there. Not worrying about mileage and running more on how good or not so good I felt. This is a pretty good podcast that touch on older runners training. And how there are different ways to skin a catfish. I believe some you guys are already doing some of this successfully. GI, Charlie are good examples.

https://www.scienceofrunning.com/2020/08/episode-119-upgrading-lactate-dynamics-a-key-to-running-faster-longer.html?v=47e5dceea252

My mom is 94, she's selling her house and moving to assisted living. I'd left for the west coast in 1980, all my old awards, trophies and that stuff sat in the attic for 40 years. I told Mom A) toss it and B) sorry I didn't clear it out!

OVER here, the fires started 2.5 weeks ago. Bad air. Not much running. I did run up a local small mountain one day to see where the smoke and fires looked bad, of course I can look at the County fire map but it's good to put your body and eyeballs out there, take in the lay of the land.

I've gotten to the beach on a couple days when the wind cleared the coast, and ran some strides. I LOVE running fast on the beach, barefoot.

My Achilles still hurts, so I would not have run much anyways. This is the most out-of-shape I've been in 7 years. Hey, I realize I needed the RECHARGE. It's been a wonderful stretch, where I went from a 5-10K guy to a half/marathon person. It brought FUN back into running/racing.

61.5 yo black male 6ft 150lb

Mon 8/31: spinning bike for 30min then lifted weights

Tues 9/1: easy 50 min on treadmill.

Wed 9/2: easy to moderate 1hr on the treadmill.

Thurs 9/3: 4mile WU 8 x 200m @ 31-33s with walk/jog R=3min. 4mile WD

Total 10 miles.

Cheers to yall.

Guess,

I really enjoy the spin bike, but it causes issues with where I was radiated. Primarily a spike in my PSA via irritated prostate. So, I have migrated to more swimming and walking on off days. Miss it though.

Igy

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Guess,

I really enjoy the spin bike, but it causes issues with where I was radiated. Primarily a spike in my PSA via irritated prostate. So, I have migrated to more swimming and walking on off days. Miss it though.

Igy

Igy - could you find a bike seat with an appropriate with a 'cut-out' for the affected area?

Seattle Gray Hair wrote:

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Guess,

I really enjoy the spin bike, but it causes issues with where I was radiated. Primarily a spike in my PSA via irritated prostate. So, I have migrated to more swimming and walking on off days. Miss it though.

Igy

Igy - could you find a bike seat with an appropriate with a 'cut-out' for the affected area?

Seattle Grey Hair,

I could purchase or ask my gym to accommodate. Perhaps I will pursue that.

Igy

Guess,

One thing I see a lot of in the 50 plus runners, something I did myself, running the easy stuff fast thinking this was a good way to regain fitness after a loss of fitness. It works ok short term but long term benefits are nil. After 2 years of slow running I keep improving feel better and enjoy running. Once out of shape your aerobic threshold defined as 2mmol/l of blood lactate occurs at a much lower heart rate . So Old Joe wanna go faster starts a come back using a hrm and pegging 70 percent of mhr. Makes rapid improvement then gets injured and / or stalls out . It is too bad there is no way to check blood lactate levels;) LOL seriously I have even looked into continuous lactate monitors for runners and predict these will be common place in a few years.

anyhow thanks for posting and nice set of 200s.

Following link to very well written article explains why running slow / below aerobic threshold makes you faster , reduces injury rate and is ezr to do. This guy dropped his aerobic threshold(lt < 2mmol/L)went from 9 mm to 7:30 . He also improved his 5k race time by 15 seconds per mile.

The training I did in those 3 months wasn’t very fast, I intentionally kept my heart rate under 140, often under 130, for almost all of my workouts. Doing a large volume of slow training made me better at fast running, though, because my slow twitch muscles became better at clearing lactic acid. I tried running a 5k (3.1 miles) as fast as I could, before this training cycle and afterwards. My time went down from 20 minutes (6:27/mile pace) to 19:13 (6:12/mile pace).

Article

https://medium.com/@tgof137/aerobic-metabolism-and-the-limits-of-running-performance-438d2bd4bee

M65, 5' 4", 127lb

Charlie wrote:

Following link to very well written article explains why running slow / below aerobic threshold makes you faster , reduces injury rate and is ezr to do. This guy dropped his aerobic threshold(lt < 2mmol/L)went from 9 mm to 7:30 . He also improved his 5k race time by 15 seconds per mile.

Article

https://medium.com/@tgof137/aerobic-metabolism-and-the-limits-of-running-performance-438d2bd4bee

Charlie,

that's a nice read, thanks for the link. I should have grasped all this stuff, as I just bought Pete Magill's "Fast 5k" and "Your running body", as well as Joe Friel's "Fast after 50". The latter advocates more fast sessions for older runners, so I'm a bit confused at the moment.

At the same time, I'm coming back from several injuries and preparing for the European 10k masters champs in 54 days, so it's a tricky balancing act. I'll be back with some questions to the team soon.

Charlie, thanks for sharing that article. As my current goals are to reduce weight and increase fitness, the quote below is the main takeaway for me. My three-times-per-week, short, relatively fast progression runs have increased fitness, but my weight has been stuck at 180-182 for months. The dilemma is that my knees can't tolerate long runs, no matter how slow, and I really dislike walking (I won't do it). I guess the low-carb diet is the answer. Ugh.

... if you can only burn carbohydrates to exercise, it’s going to be hard to lose weight by exercising. Typically, you’ll deplete your glycogen stores, then crave carbs and sugar to refill these, then not lose much weight. Low blood sugar is associated with a decline in willpower. If you’re trying to eat well, at the same time as you work on exercise, this could sabotage your diet goals. If you’re exercising hard, these problem will be exacerbated.

To get out of this trap, consider exercising more slowly. If you’re out of shape, you might benefit more from walking for an hour rather than running for 20 minutes. Eating a lower carb diet might also help reduce this dependency."

Charlie, I'll add my thanks for a thought-provoking article. While I'm generally aware of physiology of endurance training, it's always good to read and be reminded of the basics again. A lot of the challenge of masters running training is finding the ever-evolving sweet spot of the best mix of aerobic and anaerobic work that puts minimum stress on the joints and connective tissue that get beat up by running.

Alan1959, I can understand your dislike of walking. However, I would suggest that the effects of the relentless aging process may make it become a necessity of a good training program. I found that post-age 65, there really was no running pace at which I could get my HR low enough for good recovery, and brisk walking is the most running-specific non-running training I can do. I was still running low to mid-19 5ks at 65, but can't do that very efficient low speed "shuffle" that was a mainstay of Ed Whitlocks's training. I am a firm believer that Ed knew what he was doing, and a high volume of low intensity training with just a dash of high intensity is the best path to long-term running success after age 70.

It's always great to come here and get interesting thoughts on how to keep hanging in there for those of us who still aren't ready to spend all our free time in an easy chair.

Alan55 wrote:

Charlie,

that's a nice read, thanks for the link. I should have grasped all this stuff, as I just bought Pete Magill's "Fast 5k" and "Your running body", as well as Joe Friel's "Fast after 50". The latter advocates more fast sessions for older runners, so I'm a bit confused at the moment.

At the same time, I'm coming back from several injuries and preparing for the European 10k masters champs in 54 days, so it's a tricky balancing act. I'll be back with some questions to the team soon.

the thing i liked about this article is the fairly straightforward explanations of some of the science that i usually struggle with; the second anyone mentions mitochondria, my eyes usually roll back in my head and i start seeing visions of sugarplums. with that in mind, my explanation for the root of your confusion should be taken with a grain of salt.

one area where the article may or may not apply to us--and it admits this--is our various training histories. it's like the studies that show how HIIT (high intensity interval training) improves athletes and makes them world-beaters--if you're a couch to 5k athlete, it will absolutely have a huge impact, but if you're already training hard in other ways (threshold runs, etc.), then HIIT may have a minimal impact, or even an adverse impact. same with the recommendations in this article--think the reverse: imagine giving cheptegei this training philosophy of more slower miles and see if he brings down his 5k world record further. this is not a criticism of the article, by the way, it's just that we all lie somewhere between these extremes of 5k-to-couch and cheptegei.

then add age as a factor, where we have make clear choices between increased fitness or increased health and longevity, and you can see where it gets to be messy.

then add various muscle fiber compositions, and it gets messier. for example, since i come from a miler background, it's clear i have a higher percentage of intermediate and fast twitch than the marathoners here. i could devote a lot of time to training my slow twitch, but more often that would be at the expense of training my intermediate twitch which is my bread and butter, and i would likely only get slower. so for me, i've found my sweet spot is modest volume with almost daily intensity--for example, i may benefit more from 10 miler with a few 6 minute surges at 70-80% tempo-ish effort (at current fitness that would be 7:30-ish pace on the easy part, sub-6 on the tempo-ish parts) than a 14 miler slow jog at 8 minute pace, but the 10k/marathoner probably needs the 14 miler more. that may change with age (i'm "only" 52"), decreased testosterone, etc., but so far that's held true for me up to this point.

anyway, i enjoyed the read, and it's quite possible--even likely--that i'm full of $#!+, so follow anything i say at your own risk...

carpe crepusculum,

cush

California distance great Bill Scobey summarized training this way: “I don’t get anything out of training unless my lungs burn, or my legs ache.”

I’ll get things started for the week, but not much on the training side. I did manage 12 x 200m repetition pace at a 53 average with 100m walk. Tuesday morning a 4 mile walk, followed by having my chemo port removed. The surgery and recovery more extensive than I realized. The incision was quite a bit larger than at implant, since it lies above the right nipple my backpacking plans have been sacked for the season. The surgeon nixed swimming, weight lifting, and avoid strenuous running for several weeks. Therefore, after a post surgery day off, have been walking 3-4 miles a day. I may try a few strides after a walk Labor Day.

Have a good week.

Igy

I hope everyone's Labor Day weekend is going well. Good week here as weather starts to give a hint that it might become Fall before too long.

M off

Tu 1:50 double

W 55:00 with 1 mile time trial (1600 in 5:37.53 + a couple more hard strides)

Th 1:15

F 1:10

Sa 2:20 with 3 miles at marathon pace (or a bit faster realistically; 20:28)

Su 1:00

Ran the mile Weds. evenly (85/84/85/84 laps). I guesstimated 5:40 for posting results on my club's "virtual mile" site, though did not have the mile mark measured out. My last mile race (July 2019) was a 5:32. Based on previous years in which I've done a time trial and then a real race I think these are close to equivalent. I know some can do it, but for mile pace in particular I don't seem to be able to push myself to run as fast on my own.

Two more virtual races, and I'll qualify for a pair of club-logo socks. Take that, pandemic!

Have a great week,

Dave

Kudos to Dan King (61) on his World 4:49.08 record in the mile at the SC Track Fest. Just amazing! Thumbs down to William and Mary for cutting Men's Track.

My week:

Sun 10.0 Easy (9:24 avg)

Mon 7.6 Easy, yoga

Tue 9.0 with 12 x 200 hill repeats

Wed 16.7 mi biking, strength

Thu off

Fri 7.0 Easy, 20.5 mi biking

Sat 8.3 Easy + Strides (9:03 avg)

Total 42 miles running

The leaves are already starting to change here and morning temps have been in the upper 40s. For now, running sure is a lot easier than in SC except for the 40mph winds we've had on several days. Can't wait for the tourists to leave after tomorrow.

Long may you run!