50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the positive reinforcement on the house. If it is ok I'll report my training and comment on house - also try to include Michelle's training to.

So on Monday I started my "10 day rule" (I got it from coach DeWitt). You have to do everything right for 10 days. One of my gal runners is struggling because she is at home trying to run so I told her would the first 10 days with her.

Monday Mike Day 1 1.5 miles 8:10 Michelle 1000 3:41-800 2:53 -600 2:01-400 72.1 -200 34.0

Put a wall up on part of the deck to make a windbreak in front of the dog door

Tuesday Mike 1 miles 8:13 Michelle barefoot grass light fartlek 7:45 pace No work was at the Dr. getting assessed for small hernia surgery

Wednesday Mike 1.25 8:44 pace Michelle 5 miles 7:33 Mike 20 mile gravel ride at night with friend Tom

Thursday 1.25 miles 8:40ish around the 2k loop on Armenia Mountain where the team did repeats - gravel road 46 feet of elevation each loop - Michelle went 8:00, 7:58 7:45 Put in the 3rd tier of deck - a walk way for gas meter reading and covering up where I cant mow

Friday Mike 1.29 mile trail run with one of my guys - real slow Michelle 3.5 miles run hike with here women. Yoga for the team after. Shopped for Deck supplies

Saturday Mike late night run 1 mile 8:19, Michelle 8 miles at 8:14 pace with one of our gals. Put 3rd tier of deck in, dug 3 posts total 4 foot wide and 17 long, (it is the front step of the main deck)

Sunday Mike 2.5 miles 8:13 pace Michelle 6 miles 7:36 pace Put hand rails on deck

Great juxtaposition, coach. Life imitates sport, or vice versa.

Mon. 20 laps of Hedleys Dam in the kayak, 49 mins.

Tue. 31 km/95 min forest ride on the mountain bike.

Wed. Pipers Hill running. 11.6 kms in 100 mins 540 metres elevation gain. Including 3 x steep climbs.

Thu. 48 mins kayak on the lake.

Fri. Hillier 30 km/99 min forest ride on the mountain bike.

Sat. Running in wild weather. I ventured back out to the grass tree country around Mt Black. Had to be careful not to bog the vehicle.

11 kms with 700 metres of elevation gain. 1 hr 57 mins. This included 6 x 400 very muddy metres up the Melville Lookout track a 90 metre elevation gain on each rep. Also twice up Mt Black.

A fun slog in atrocious condtions. I did also meet the biggest emu I have ever seen.

Sun. Club social run. 2 easy kms jog on the grass in 12 mins. A gentle 8 kms on the railtrail in 47 mins then kicked off the shoes and finished with a barefoot km on the grass last 800 in 3.30 to stretch the legs out a bit.

A quieter week as the fatigue from 2 weeks of nightshift kicked in.

I sacrificed some bike kms for a bit of extra rest.

4 Peaks would normally be held next Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue. Not happening officially this year. We will still head up for our 4 nights away at the old Tobacco Farm. Our hosts Joe and Jo hold our booking year to year. It will just be my wife and I there this year (usually 6 to 8 people). I will just be mixing it up and having some fun rather than running the 4 legs unofficially. It is a brute of an event and at 61 I think I am better off taking advantage of the year off. It would have been my 35th year of running in the event.

Good news here with a zero day of new Covid infections or deaths in Victoria. Not too long back we hit 700 plus nee cases. At the same time the UK was also around 700. They are now at 18,000 a day and we have got ours back to zero. Rolling 14 day ave. in Melbourne is 3.6 and in regional Vic (that's me) it is 0.2. So well done to us. No new infections Australia wide apart from some returning OS travellers in quarantine.

I note that the flying Irish 60 plus runner Tommy Hughes ran 2.30 in windy conditions yesterday.

I appreciate the feedback on my HR training. Until recently I too thought a HR monitor was just one more gadget to complicate an already over-complicated process of trying to figure out the best way to train.

And on gauging effort by feel, and that being a more natural way to approach it, I agree…. up to a point. Without a HR monitor I can get my HR to almost exactly 150 or 160 because I’ve done so much training at those levels. I know that feel.

However, I’m only using the HR monitor for one thing: training right at the edge of the maximum aerobic heart rate. I’ve found I just can’t do that by feel: its far too subtle. For me that number is 129, and I can’t feel it at all. But, as far as I can tell so far, it’s the “right” number for easy runs for me that has thus far allowed me to safely increase my training mileage 75%. This is a big deal for a low mileage person such as myself.

If the HR monitor is off, then it’s useless, and thus far the wrist monitor is way off. Anyway, hope this “splains” what I’m trying to do.

As a Residential Remodeler professional, welcome to my world! You never know what you're walking into most of the time. Though I have had the good fortune of working on some very new homes lately where most everything is very level/square/plumb, there have been many jobs over the years that haven't. Dealing with it is part of the remodeling game!

HR monitors? I kind-of-sort-of pay attention. I use the chest strap on my Garmin 225 rather than the optical wrist monitor. Which always seemed to be crazy off.

Day 11 post Tenex. I'd say my biggest concern is lack of pain. It doesn't hurt at all. Ever. Not during the process or anytime after. The brief times I'm without a boot during the day or night (after a shower in the morning or just before bed) I can walk normally. And walk down steps on my toes. Zero pain. Four more days in a boot and see what Dr Simons says I can do at my 2 week followup on Thursday. I honestly feel like I could go for run! But I won't until I get his ok.

I have done a few indoor rides, with the boot on. 14+, 14+ and 20 miles last week. With no achilles side effects. I do seem to be able to ride a bit faster inside than out. 18-19mph rather than my usual 16-17 outside. I'm pretty sure everything's calibrated correctly. It is about as mentally draining as a treadmill run.

My opinion on the Tenex so far? It was more simple than a dentist appointment. If anyone is concerned about it hurting, it doesn't. And if it did what it was supposed to do and gives me my running life back, I regret not doing it 4 years ago!

Have a good run,

Dave

I'm posting a little late after spending a lot of time on yard work yesterday and then feeling too lazy to post. I'm not a complete HR nerd but I do pay attention to the HR data from my Garmin 235 even though I only trust about 80% of its data. I find HR chest straps sufficiently annoying that I prefer to go with less reliable wrist monitor data. I like to wear my watch band fairly loose, but have learned that the HR readings are more reliable with tightening the band down for runs. I still believe that the monitor sometimes gets "cadence lock" where it starts interpreting arm swing as heartbeats, so HR readings become very close to cadence readings (~170 on training runs). I don't try to do HR training, but rather try to train at certain perceived effort levels and then see what sort of HR is recorded. The one piece of HR data I do follow is average resting heart rate, which is a good indicator for me of heading towards over-training if resting HR is on a steady upward trend for more than 3 days.

I took an easy week at about 2/3 of my average mileage after 3 weeks of moderately increasing mileage. It felt like time to ease up a little, and I read an article in Podium Runner by Amby Burfoot about how analysis of GPS big data was being used to figure out better training approaches.

https://www.podiumrunner.com/training/marathon-training/big-data-reveals-new-marathon-training-approaches/

The article discussed using a monthly cycle of hard week, hard week, easy week, moderate week to achieve better training adaptation. I decided to try that for awhile as an alternative to my usual approach of doing hard weeks until I feel worn out and/or injured.

28 miles running and 4 miles paddling for the week -

M- 4mi walk plus strides

T- 2mi walk; 2mi paddle

W- 4mi of 1mi w.u., 4x400 (1:37 ave) with 400 jog recover, 1 mi w.d.; 2mi paddle

Th- 4mi easy run 10:09/mi

F- 4mi of 1mi walk plus 3mi easy run 10:01/mi

S- 6mi trails with my son 8:30/mi

S- 4mi walk plus strides

Good running to all.

Anybody here use a “ nutritionist “?

Since 2008, I’ve been terrorized by acid reflux so bad that I used to have a little bag packed just in case I gave in to the pain and went to the ER.

I’ve had prostate cancer and was treated for it..

The latest GERD episodes happened between Sept 25th and September 29th, then again October 15th through the 19th..

It felt like a hit, nauseating jack hammer going through my breastbone

So, I got an endoscopy

It came out ok with some redness and biopsies which came out non cancerous, so the gastro guy referred me to a nutritionist

I didn’t know it was going to be this involved.. signing things..

And will she try to talk me into eating kale.? Ha

I’ve had some of my colon removed because of diverticulitis back in 2013...

I’m training great, 65 years old..

Anybody use a nutritionist?

Turns out my new way of training experiment is once again is kinda like several old ways

Easy Interval Method:

https://medium.com/@andywaterman/reactivity-806ec9694fc3

and

Magness on Igloi

https://www.scienceofrunning.com/2010/02/interval-training-why-its-misunderstood.html?v=47e5dceea252

Any ways after 3 weeks I am feeling pretty good. biggest difference is I emphasize running at effort with good reactivity. Reactivity is a great word but I could also use the words elastic fluidity . The recoveries are walking the length and pace when running is just how I feel.

The only measures are total time = walking+running.

On HR I ordered an Oura Ring mainly for sleep monitoring and HRV heart rate variability

Whoop is interesting as well

Whoop vs Oura vs HRM

Peter Attia has a new pod cast on you tube or the drive with every runners least favorite medical expert James O'Keefe. I listened to the whole 2hours with a few interesting nuggets

“The best way to think of Igloi’s system is in terms of swimming. Swimmers train both aerobically and anaerobically, yet they do it all through interval training. This is essentially what Igloi did. The genious of Igloi’s system and what you should take away from it is he created a type of training that allowed for athletes to run at or near specific paces, using specific biomechanics, while keeping the internal stress low enough that he could build up massive volume of this type of work.“

I recall one athlete questioning Igloi “Why don’t we train on the roads?” Coach replied “Does Mark Spitz train in the ocean?”

Charlie,

I wrote this piece for Track and Field Quarterly Review, which served as the basis for a presentation to the NCAA Track and Field Coaches Association. My experience would be the same as Magnusson article.

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:fa2019d9-bf53-46ff-9a02-60134c88f0bf

Igy

Hey Guess, you have been putting in the solid, consistent work.

Racerdb, sounds like you are on the rebound from surgery and will be back at it before too long.

Been a crazy year, and all the factors and then some came to a head over the weekend, with fires, covid, and a fall blizzard coming into play. Like everywhere, racing has been limited to hit and miss. An interesting 10 mile opened up about an hour north earlier this month, and was scheduled for Sunday. But with the fires raging out of control (East Troublesome fire raced from Kremmling to near Estes Park, about 40 miles and over the Continental Divide with 12,000 ft peaks of granite and tundra no less) nearby and air quality going from okay to unsafe, they weren't sure they'd pull it off. Then a blizzard was forecast for race day, so I signed up for a back up race closer by. Mistake.

It was a half marathon put on by what I had already pegged as a hokey race management company, more interested in participation numbers and goodie bags than quality events. With up to a foot of snow expected up north, but less here, I thought I could do better by staying close to home. Then got an email Sat. afternoon saying that the half had gone 100% virtual due to rising covid cases in the area. So on the spur of the moment, after already running 5 miles that morning, I ran 13.1 on a bike path near the Coors plant in Golden. It was more of a long tempo effort and averaged 6:44 pace (1:28). Submitted my results and they rejected it because my submission did not fit their format (a garmin/strava link rather than a screenshot from one of those), and you only get one try otherwise you are DQd. So go figure. I would have won the masters division, although I think virtual races are just weird or hard to get up for.

I won't be participating in events by that race company again.

51.7 for the week on 5 days, 1 day rest, and Sunday I did the bike trainer for 40 minutes as a recovery. That's my sorry story for the week.

Fast running, and at altitude.

Coyote,

A 1:28 half-marathon as the second workout of a double, at altitude, is indeed impressive. Too bad you didn't get official credit for it.

Here in California they're not even teasing us with the possibility of real races. I think a few little trail races are happening, but almost everything else has been cancelled (excuse me--"gone virtual") for a long time into the future including the Modesto Marathon scheduled for late March, 2021. The road back to normal life is going to be a long one.

Idaho has move back a stage with Covid exploding and hospitals stretched. One of the largest races the YMCA Christmas Run is now listed as virtual. The Turkey Day 5k, the largest, will be there soon. I can’t see anything in our state until spring at the earliest, and that I believe is doubtful to unrealistic.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Idaho has move back a stage with Covid exploding and hospitals stretched. One of the largest races the YMCA Christmas Run is now listed as virtual. The Turkey Day 5k, the largest, will be there soon. I can’t see anything in our state until spring at the earliest, and that I believe is doubtful to unrealistic.

That’s awful! Hopefully you can still sneak out for a haircut.

Bertrand wrote:

[quote]Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Idaho has move back a stage with Covid exploding and hospitals stretched. One of the largest races the YMCA Christmas Run is now listed as virtual. The Turkey Day 5k, the largest, will be there soon. I can’t see anything in our state until spring at the earliest, and that I believe is doubtful to unrealistic.

That’s awful! Hopefully you can still sneak out for a haircut.[/quote

I am more concerned about my barber making a living than some politician’s goal. You on the other hand are a faker that cares more about dishing crap my direction than real people that matter. As usual, stick it where the sun don’t shine.

Coyote Montane wrote:

Hey Guess, you have been putting in the solid, consistent work.

I was going to say that, too, Guess.

I learned last year you have to watch what race company to use. This will be my third race since the pandemic, and all three with the same company. They've earned my trust.

Igy, thanks for that paper which I look forward to reading.

KCgeezer,

In the back you will see actual workouts from my training starting from zero running at the start of the season in January. Broken down into six weekly samples of training I actually ran. Like all great people, Igloi was a remarkable man.

Igy

CM& KC you like wise. Just being consistent will be better long term then big workouts. And recovering from last hard WO and adjusting on the fly.

Cheers to yall