50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Alan Bennet wrote:

Interesting juxtaposition:

Rtype wrote:

So I'm taking advantage of this down time to ween myself from the inserts.

kudzurunner wrote:

I've been struggling for a couple of months with a bad case of posterior tibial tendonitis brought on by training without orthotics this summer.

Don't know why, but I'm thinking of season one, episode 12 of Twilight Zone's "What you Need" : About 19:50 into the episode. 'Slippery shoes'

I remember watching this as a kid. Hope other 50+'ers do as well.

My interpretation: One man's poison is another man's cure.

RuKiddingme!!! wrote:Well this is a new aspect of your training we didn't know about. Thanks for the revelation. Don't tell us you also are an amateur bigfoot hunter.

OK, fair enough; I mostly report my running stuff, because that's the one thing that I do consistently. Others do talk about more broad fitness routines they do; Ken (aka WOC) has a very specific non-running regiment the he adheres to....I don't. So there are small other things that I do erratically that I don't talk much about: Drills, warm-up routines, calisthenics (there's that word again), strides, stairs, stretching, retro-running (I guess this I've mentioned a few times)....and again, because I tend to be inconsistent about doing them (been much better about the retro-running, though). I readily admit this is a shortcoming to my training.

Regarding the stairs, as I said, I've run stairs off and on (i.e.-erratically) since the start, but only doing a few repeats of two or three flights at a time because of what I had easy access to; I just never felt like it developed into much more than, say, doing a few lunges now and again. But when a nearby hospital added a new 10-story parking garage last spring, that featured an essentially unused top-to-bottom stairwell, doing a set of stairs started to feel like I was actually doing something, as it would take a full minute to climb. I guess that crossed my threshold for being worth reporting. So in that respect, it is a new training mode that I am exploring. It was working well in the spring, but as I said I got greedy, so I shied away from doing them. Now I hope to reintroduce them smartly and at a sustained level that will hopefully be worth reporting.

So yes, there are other little things I do that aren't reported, but I haven't felt they were much worth mentioning; they certainly all pale in comparison to the running stuff. Regardless, thanks for calling me out to clarify that.

And, then there is the whole nutrition thing that I don't think any of us give much mind to reporting. Here's a hint, mines not great.

Cheers!

racerdb wrote:

What is easy? I almost always go by effort, and don't care about time or pace. But the times I have wore a watch, some runs are around 7:00/pace, others closer to 7:45. But truthfully, I really don't care what the pace is on easy days...as long as I recover for the next workout.

Your comment about recovery reminds me of Bob Kennedy;

see the 2nd paragraph under "Mileage Matters".

I will admit that my earlier post was 99% jest, reminiscent of Inigo Montoya's, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." But to address the 1%, I plugged your 1:15:42 HM into McMillan's calculator, it converts to 6:05 marathon race pace (MP). The easy paces you give are MP plus 0:55 to 1:40.

I am reading Luke Humphrey's "Hansons Marathon Method" (2012) and on page 45 he says easy pace is between one and two minutes slower per mile than MP. Defining easy pace off of MP appeals to me, partly because I do marathon training, and partly because MP is closest to easy pace so it seems a natural step away. Anyway, 6:05 MP would indicate an easy pace of 7:05 to 8:05.

Some other recommendations: The McMillan calculator has three different easy paces (Easy Runs, Long Runs, Recovery Runs), for your HM they range from 6:21 to 8:05. Pfitzinger/Douglas (1st edition, 2001), page 72 in the section "Recovery Days (or, Easy Days)", says recovery runs are two minutes slower than 10M to HM race pace. Per the McMillan calculator those are 5:41 and 5:47, so 7:41 to 7:47. Daniels assigns your HM result a VDOT of 62 and an easy pace of 7:11.

Q.E.D., your "slow as hell" easy runs are not "slow" but in fact right in the ballpark.

My easy pace though is a whole other story. I've been known to do recovery runs as slow as MP + 3:00, long runs as slow as MP + 4:00(!!!). I will admit those are outliers though. More typical easy days are MP + 1:30, typical long runs are negative splits with out MP + 1:30 and back MP + 0:30.

Week 6

Monday 8.08miles Steady

Tues 10.04miles (30mins level 3 7.10 pace)HR 141

Weds recovery 5.6miles

Thurs 9.6miles (30mins level 3 7.11 pace)HR141

Fri 7miles 10x100 strides

Sat 10.50 at 8.12pace.

Sun 4.27miles recovery

Total: 55.09 miles

At last iv run my age in miles!!!!!!

This is my second 21 day cycle, so the next 21 days i will increase the length of my level 3 runs. I will see how this all pans out! My calfs are still sore and right knee still clicking. KEEP RUNNING!!!!!!!!!!!

Looks like you are keeping on track. The above is from sept 19th.Well done!

How is the weight?

alf tupper wrote:

... right knee still clicking ...

Clicking knee: For me this is a clicking tendon, outside of the kneecap, caused by muscle imbalance. I would do general lower leg stretching and some exercise for the antagonist muscles on the front of the shin. One trick that sometimes works is doing lightly twisting "dance steps" where the foot is planted and the leg rotates either direction. I get some click every so often, different joints, but am always very careful to get rid of it quickly. I have a theory that every click is a tiny trauma to the tendon.

"Looks like you are keeping on track. The above is from sept 19th.Well done!

How is the weight?"...................

Thanks for your imput I am being very strict with myself regarding my training. I feel if I persevere through this period it should become easier. My weight - I have dropped 5lbs in the last 6 weeks. I am now down to 164lbs.

NB: Thanks Alan also for your input much appreciated :)

Read more:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4064465&page=87#ixzz2BelWwAzg

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Week 75

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Greetings, all, on this Veteran's Day. I never served; my dad, who passed away over a decade ago, was in the Korean War. He was never on the front lines though (they had enough sense not to put a gun in his hands), and served mostly as a company clerk. Many thanks to all that put themselves at risk to defend our country, I am indebted to you.

There is still a lot of work to get the northeast back to normal after insult was added to injury with the nor'easter this week. My thoughts and prayers go out to those still struggling to meet even the most basic needs. I once again echo MikeF's meassage, and ask whether there is any more that we can do to help.

OK, on to running. I managed another ~51 miles on all 7 days this week. My running log looks as such:

Sun: 10.3 w/1@5:54

Mon: 7 easy

Tue: 5 w/2km@7:13

Wed: 6.5 + 2x9 stories stairs (w/~8lb backpack)

Thu: 5.3 w/2x1.6 (10:04, 9:38)

Fri: 7.2 easy-to-moderate

Sat: 9.5 w/5k XC race in 19:11

Observations:

1) No intervals again this week.

2) The total mileage at harder effort was 8.5 including the XC race.

3) No, I wasn't intentionally adding weight for the stair climbs, just that I hit them on my jog home from work and had a lot to carry home that day. I took the backpack off when I got home to finish my run.

4) Thursdays workout was late-night. I had gotten up at 5 that morning, had to do a science outreach at the library up in Frankfurt in the morning. Tues-Thur I teach an evening astronomy lab, so I wasn't done until 9pm. My point behind all this is that last week, I'd done the same two 1.6 miles runs in 9:30 and 9:41; this one felt much harder.....rest matters.

5) Had to go back to page 23 of this thread to remember what the XC race was like last year. This year was about the same....maybe a little warmer and a little less windy. Still basically just ran behind the golf cart. He veered off the course at about the 3/4-mile mark causing me to slow to a stop, as I questioned whether that was the right direction. I think it cost me about 3-4s, so maybe I could claim about 19:08? Regardless, it was then about 23-27s faster than I ran it last year. I also noticed that I'd commented on the knee last year that I didn't think I'd ever be able to do deep-knee bends again....well, that's not true, so that's a good thought.

OK. That's all I got. Hope that everyone is whole and healthy. Any race reports?

Have a great week!

Salute to Veterans, father Korean War too, then a VFW officer for decades.

Kind of a weird week for me, some good some not so good:

Week of 11/5

Mon PM Indoors: 2+ mile warm-up, 4x100m strides, 2x200m, then 3x800m with full recovery 2:13.7, 2:12.7, 2:08.56 (63.91, 64.65), jog 1 mile then 4x200m with 30 seconds recovery - all low 30., felt strong on these. 1 mile cool-down. Hamstrings still sore when accelerating but felt fine on the last 4 200's, otherwise body felt fine, tiring last 100 of the last 800 interval.

PT1.

Tue PM 5+ mile run, tired, hamstrings sore. PT2, stretching.

Wed AM 5+ mile run, still tired but feeling better.

PM weights, massage PT3.

Thur PM 5 mile run on treadmill @1% grade. I feel fine except the hamstrings are still tight, so no progressive run, PT exercise, or stretching afterwards, giving the legs a break.

Fri PM 2+ mile warm-up outside then indoors: 6x100m strides, 4x200m down to 29 high, then 6x400 average 67 flat with 1 min rest, jog 1 mile then 600 in 1:36 (last 200 31.6), 1k cool down. My hamstrings were tight again thus the long warm-up. I actually felt the best on the last 200m of the 600 but starting that 600 I felt like I was gimping along, doesn't seem like an injury but a pelvic/hip alignment issue of some type, problem is bilateral, same muscles in each leg, starting at the origin down past the belly of each muscle. No PT or weights.

Sat AM 5+ mile run, easy, tired but in an odd way. Hamstrings better but still an issue. Massage.

Sun rest

Planning a pullback week to get the legs sorted out and to be ready for a VO2 max test on Thursday in N.C.. Hope to be ready for a normal workout by next Saturday.

Hope you all have a good week and those in NE turn a significant corner!

Man Ken, those are some solid 800's! You should be able to run under 4:30, right now.

Had a decent 64 mile week. Almost all recovery. Legs still haggered after last weeks HM. Feeling a little better yesterday running 13 at 6:51/pace.

Might try some 400's on Tuesday, suggested by my training partner. Haven't been on the track since before Syracuse, last year! Think I'm running an 8K XC race next Saturday with most of my Club XC teammates (Front Line Racing Team) then a 5K Thanksgiving Day race thru my neighborhood. Kind of cool having 1000 people running down my street.

Have a good week everyone,

Dave

Week 75: 11 hours 21 minutes in 10 runs.

No actual workouts, but four days in a row with runs of 90-plus minutes had me a little weary on the fourth one today. These are not all "easy" runs, for example on Friday I did an easy 45 out and hard 45 back, Saturday I did a hilly 2 hours with some hard efforts up.

I'm resisting the impulse to wear a Garmin to check my mileage. I can only estimate it was probably a little more than 75. Week 76 I will do about the same, then a fallback week, then a step up.

I forgot to post my sleep last week. It went okay, I hit my target (8 hours) 4 times:

Week 74: 8, 7.5, 8, 8, 8.5, 4.5, 7, avg 7.4

This week by contrast was quite poor, and my resting HR is up 4 beats. I have to be more disciplined.

Week 75: 7, 7.5, 8.5, 6.5, 6.5, 6, 6, avg 6.9

Hit 40 miles again this week, with 23 easy during the weekdays . I did 9 with my usual 8-mile tempo on Saturday. It wasn't as fast as last week (7 min/mile first 4, 6:30/mile second 4), but required a lot more effort. Given how I felt afterwards, I just did another easy 8 today. I think I'll try the hills on Wednesday.

Peace time service Jan 74 - Jan 77 Army mos 13e40 with 15 months at Camp Stanley Korea lots of time up on the DMZ in a sleep deprived state alternated between freezing or slogging through the mud (wierd winter weather)but nothing and I mean nothing like what the young men who have served in the middle east have went through. I am against war but deeply appreciate the willingness to serve just wish the interests served were closer to what it means to be a human being.

Running is getting fun. Decided to increase volume by doing doubles that is correct 2 x 20 minutes with at least 20 minutes of walking in between and up to a couple of hours. I did one run over 20 minutes without stopping. Kind of at the spur of the moment. Now I am not limiting runs to 20 minutes but I am just going about it in a really gradual way. Anyhow I opted for a longer tempo run instead of a 4 x 400 on Saturday. Decided to do 2 loops on Glendoveer (2.15 per loop). Two minutes of warmup then with the intention of warming up and progressing down to 6:50 pace or so. Well darn if I did not feel really good so what the heck I ended up at 6:37 pace for the 2 loops pretty even pace after the initial half mile 14:28 then 13:52 for 28:20. Started to feel the effort at 20 minutes but still was in the fun zone.Later I felt sore and a bit tired but slept well and ran fine the next day. Lots of verbage for such a relatively minor workout but with my history of chronic pf this was a really great day.

I really think the Goruns have alot to do with this. Also think landing on the mid to fore foot is the key at least for me. When doing the tempo I notice my focus is on pushing off instead of reaching out .

146 losing again 16 to go

Weight, I figured out why my weight loss stalled out NUTS I was eating 1200 calories of nuts everyday that is really not a lot of nuts them little guys pack a lot of calories so no longer part of my daily routine.

Sat -(3d Nov.) 20 min warmup, mountain race, up and down. 78 minutes. Also 1 hour mtn bike ride.

Sun - 20 min warmup,mountain race, up only, 1 hr 53 mins. Walked 2hours back down the mountain with my son. Also 40 minute mtn bike ride.

Mon - 20 min warmup, mountain race, up only, 2 hour 20 mins.

Tue - 20 min warmup, mountain race, up only, 1 hour 37 mins.

Wed - Back home and back to work. 90 minute mtn bike ride.

Thu - 50 min. kyak session on the lake.

Fri - 90 min. mtn bike ride.

Sat - 50 min run, 2 x hilly 4.7km trail. 35 min kyak on the lake.

Sun - 1 hour 30 min slow run through the forest.

Charlie wrote:

146 losing again 16 to go

Weight, I figured out why my weight loss stalled out NUTS I was eating 1200 calories of nuts everyday that is really not a lot of nuts them little guys pack a lot of calories so no longer part of my daily routine.

Man, that's pretty light...How tall are you?

Dave

racerdb wrote:

Charlie wrote:

146 losing again 16 to go

Weight, I figured out why my weight loss stalled out NUTS I was eating 1200 calories of nuts everyday that is really not a lot of nuts them little guys pack a lot of calories so no longer part of my daily routine.

Man, that's pretty light...How tall are you?

Dave

5' 6" on a good day

Indeed props to ALL Vets

...am former USMC myself...was Military Police correctional specialist (AKA prison guard) immediately post Viet Nam, ugggggghhhh...was largely based at USMC Cherry Point (NC)...my Dad, the single most important role model in my life,was a WWII Purple Heart USN (think assault on Okinawa)...THEN there is Louie Zamperini, my favorite Vet of all time...Olympic 5000 meter runner turned P.O.W. If you haven't already done so, you MUST read "Unbroken" by Lauren Hilldebrand (yes, she did write Sea Biscuit)

Aside from the very deepest commitment to patriotism, what we learn from Vets is, persistence, determination,HUGE endurance, unflagging preparation, team building, and problem solving.

Scratched out another 35 miles this week and have merely 35 miles to go till 100,000 miles...as next weekend is my final ever marathon some 40 years after the first, am referencing it as "the Last Suffer"

Deep heartfelt thank yous to the many of you whom have supported my frivolous undertaking...I appreciate your many Facebook posts and personal notes...the sense of community realized from my brothers and sisters here have inspired me to no end...THANK you!

warmest regards,

MF

Here's to hoping Ken gets that record. Personally, I'd love to see it as a huge achievement from a great guy.

MikeF wrote:

Scratched out another 35 miles this week and have merely 35 miles to go till 100,000 miles...

MF

I trust you will let us know when you hit 100K? Or will it be during your marathon?

Dave