50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Wow!..indoor gyms are still closed in your county?

Gyms/fitness centers here in the Denver-metro reopened with capacity restrictions & mask mandates last July - after the 3-month or so spring lockdown. This past November we experienced a bad surge in cases & hospitalizations and our governor went to a "Level-Red" stay-at-home lockdown order similar to last spring. However, the Colorado Gym Collation & some medical professionals met with the governor urging that the gyms be granted an exception under the mental health aspect people needing access to a gym, especially with the stress that Covid has caused many people. So, the govenor granted an exception with a 10% of capacity restriction and strict mask enforcement. Now currently the restrictions have been loosened up to 50% of capacity with masks & social distancing still required.

Mask compliance at the gym I'm at has been excellent. Social distancing is practiced pretty well and everyone wipes down the equipment or machines after use. And as a matter of fact, not one case of Covid has originated from any of the dozens of gyms in the metro area. So, I personally have never been worried about it, and since this aging body needs the gym for so many things these days (cardio, strength training, etc), the benefits far outweighed the risks...for me anyway.

KPdx wrote:

Cavorty,

You likely know this simple test workout for 5k fitness. I use it often when ramping up to a 5k road race. I'm slightly different in that my strength is 800/1500/Mile but do 5 x 1000m on the track with 3mins rest and that should give you a solid read on fitness. Note it should be a few clicks under 5k goal pace.

I'm gearing up for my debut 2021 outdoor 1500 and feel good about yesterday's road session after losing 3-6lbs from Jan1 to now and trending up in weekly mileage 5-10miles 45-50mpw with a lot better LSD runs.

1 x Mile @ 5:32 (5min rest)

4 x 880 @ 2:59-2:55-2:52-2:50

Hope all y'all are physically = mentally well.

KP M60

I know that's a good 5k session. Not recently but generally, I could do 6x1000m with 2:30 recovery at faster than 5k pace. My rep/interval sessions are always flattering, I think because I have a fairly high percentage of fast-twitch and quick lactate clearing. So I might finish a rep more in oxygen debt than another guy, but recovery again quicker. Actually used to happen a lot when I ran at a club in England - we'd do up to 20x400m with about 1 min recovery. I'd be bent over sucking wind before a lot of others, but still going when they'd dropped out.

I'm a much better runner of reps than are racer!

Funny that you added that session up to 34:50 8k. I did 5 miles continuous run yesterday made up of a mile warm-up, 3 miles with 1 min hard/1 min easy and 1 min warm-down. Went in 7:11, 6:47, 6:48, 6:51, 7:13 for 34:51. Felt like I could have done another couple of miles in low 7s pretty comfortably.

Average HR on that was 135 (I think my range is about 38 to 165). Did a fairly hilly 5 mile recovery run today today at 7:42 average, and HR was 119. My HR paces seem very out of whack with what I see on McMillan or Daniels. I did 7.5 on Sunday (my "long") run, at 7:09 average, starting a 7:30 for the first couple of miles, and working down on the last 3 in 7:07, 6:58, 6:45, and last 1/2 mile at 6:34 (82ft net climb) and HR average was 130 - 119 for the first two miles.

I guess, I've got to bite the bullet and start doing some harder stuff to see if I can convert the good sub-maximal efforts to something high end. 20:05 and 11:25 would age grade slower than my best open times, so I've got some work to do!

Coyote Montane wrote:

Cavorty, I'd take anything that your watch says with a grain of salt. Those can greatly underestimate or overestimate your fitness. I find tempos and sets of longer reps (600-1200 m) as best predictors, but your shorter surges with recovery might tell you something (then again, I like float recoveries with those types of workouts so you get that race feel).

My guess is you are 18:30+/- (how much? maybe 15-20 seconds). Maybe try a 3K time trial at 5K effort and see how that goes.

No. I found the Garmin estimate more amusing than anything. I'm about to be 64 so it's got me running the age graded equivalent of 13:55 5k. It works purely off an estimated V02 max, so if you are good at running sub-maximal paces you can fool it. Older runners have a LT closer to V02 max, so that also confuses it. At one point last year it had V02 max at 61 (possible I was lab tested at 72 in my 40s), but then thought I could run 17:30. I'd be thrilled if I could get down to 19:30, which is about 14;55 equivalent.

I do floats between the short reps - on the 300s, I was running 200m recovery at 8:00 min pace (actually average 59 seconds, so a bit quicker), and when did 3 miles of a minute hard/minute easy yesterday, I think the floats average about 7:30 - the 3 miles averaged 6:49ish.

Went over 400 miles for the year... did a 3 mile tempo 8:23-8:28-8:23

Then my feet were on ice for a zillion years.

65 years old .. my goal is to show up for the 5 miler on the 27th to get a great coffee mug

Latest cancer check up was positive anyway.

Allen1959 wrote:

My wife finally got a second opinion, which agreed with the first, and which apparently means her remaining years will be ones of constant pain. :(

I'm really sorry to hear that. That sounds pretty grim; I don't know how I'd handle such a prognosis. At this point I still have hope, as I have no indication that there's any permanent damage to anything. It seems to be my muscles that don't work, but muscles usually heal eventually. And so far it's stiffness that's the main problem, not pain. I just don't know how to get my body working again so I can run.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm doing to try going out for a longish (5 miles or so) brisk walk. It's no substitute for running but I feel I need to keep doing something bipedal, even if I can't get my heart rate up much that way. The biggest challenge will be figuring out how to dress for walking at 35-40 degrees. Probably equal to running at 20-25 degrees?

Because I am usually only running 3 x per week I try to get in regular hikes/walks. I am fortunate that I live at the base of a nice hill, about 18% gradient for the first 500 metres. This kicks the HR up pretty

When you first developed these issues you had an opinion of what you thought it was and took something for it. What was it you thought it was and did that treatment prove helpful?

'mopac wrote:

When you first developed these issues you had an opinion of what you thought it was and took something for it. What was it you thought it was and did that treatment prove helpful?

Almost a year ago, just after the start of the pandemic shutdown, I suddenly developed severe widespread muscle pain and stiffness for no apparent reason. Upon searching the Internet (and as a university faculty member I can also get access to primary medical literature) I found polymyalgia rheumatica, a disease in which the body's immune system attacks the muscles. It's most common in 50+ women of northern European descent (check), and causes severe muscle pain and stiffness mostly in the shoulders and hips, with a very sudden onset (check). There's no definitive test and it's diagnosed mainly by ruling out other things, but it normally responds very quickly to prednisone. I had some prednisone that had been prescribed for my dog, and started taking 10 mg/day. Within a day or two the symptoms had nearly vanished, but they came booming back as soon as I stopped the pred. Bingo, I thought.

It took about 2 months before I could see the only rheumatologist in town, who at first agreed with the PMR diagnosis but also ran a bunch of other tests and concluded that I actually had ankylosing spondylitis, a type of spinal arthritis. The symptoms seemed wrong to me and he based his diagnosis on a positive test for a gene which a bit of reading told me only indicates a susceptibility to AS; most people with AS have the gene, but most people with the gene never get AS.

I asked for a referral to another rheumatologist and after several more months got to see one at UCSF. She told me flatly I don't have AS and initially agreed with the PMR diagnosis, but ran a bunch of other tests and one of them came back strongly positive for rheumatoid arthritis. According to my perusal of the literature, a positive test for this antibody is supposed to mean a 98% probability of having RA. So even though my symptoms don't seem right for RA, that's now what I'm being treated for. However, the RA drug (methotrexate) doesn't seem to have any effect on my symptoms.

I'm still taking a low dose of prednisone (2 mg/day) to keep the muscle stiffness manageable for day-to-day life. If it's really PMR there is no cure, but it is self-limiting and usually goes away on its own after a few years. Long-term use of prednisone has all sorts of horrible side effects--it causes diabetes, osteoporosis, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, etc.--but no other drug has been found to treat PMR. So the trick is to figure out the minimum dose necessary to keep me functioning and hope eventually it goes away on its own. If it's really RA, it won't go away and will cause progressive degeneration of the joints. Which I don't seem to have, yet.

Sorry about the TMI, but I'm very frustrated with this.

Cavorty, another data point for you, 3 years ago when I was 68, I ran a hard 5 mile training run in 33:36 two weeks before I ran a 20:10 5k that I thought was a very good race effort for my fitness at that time. I ran the same 5 mile course this morning as a hard threshold run and ran 35:11. The McMillan calculator (which seems pretty accurate for 5k and up) says that is worth a 21:13, which is a little better than I would have guessed for my fitness right now.

Stocky Older Runner wrote:

What about finding a nearby gym that has decent spin bikes/spin room? Maybe that would allow better cardio workouts in between your run days? I thought about buying a road bike and riding outside, but I can't control the weather and besides the traffic here in the burbs of Denver is unmerciful at best, and I would have to drive quite a ways up to the foothills outside of the metro to ride on some of the less traveled roads. And I actually like being around other people in the spin room - I've met several former/current runners who due to chronic injuries have either thrown in the towel or have scaled back running considerably, and now I have other runners to gripe with about running injuries. Lol.

Stocky, thanks, all good thoughts, but I'm in a rural area, an hour away a "fancy" gym like yours, ha! When the weather's good, though, from my driveway I've got endless miles of country roads with no traffic. All flat, or rolling hills, depending on the direction I head. In the meantime, I'm good with 20 minutes on the trainer :)

Plus, I've got free weights at home that I don't use much, but should.

That said, during injured periods, age 58 and 59, I worked out at our small-town YMCA. I mostly used the elliptical, and various leg machines. Midday, I pretty much had the place to myself, but enjoyed chats with a couple avid 60+ cyclists who were often there.

No not too much info at all. It was pretty much as I remembered from your past posts but I wanted to check.

So basically you have PMR but blood tests show you as having RA but no symptoms for RA.

You respond to PMR treatment but not to RA treatment.

The RA treatment I am guessing is some sort of immune suppressant.

'mopac wrote:

No not too much info at all. It was pretty much as I remembered from your past posts but I wanted to check.

So basically you have PMR but blood tests show you as having RA but no symptoms for RA.

You respond to PMR treatment but not to RA treatment.

The RA treatment I am guessing is some sort of immune suppressant.

Yes, that about sums it up. One additional point is that based on what I read, "elderly onset" RA (ugh!) often presents with different symptoms than RA in younger people, and apparently sometimes does look much more like PMR. But the articles I read are quite definite that PMR-like symptoms combined with a positive test for anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies almost always means RA.

I'm taking methotrexate, which is the standard first treatment for RA. It was originally a cancer chemotherapy drug but is used for RA at doses 10 to 100 times lower. Everything I read says that the actual mechanism of action against RA isn't really understood, which doesn't inspire great confidence.

old guy II wrote:

Cavorty, another data point for you, 3 years ago when I was 68, I ran a hard 5 mile training run in 33:36 two weeks before I ran a 20:10 5k that I thought was a very good race effort for my fitness at that time. I ran the same 5 mile course this morning as a hard threshold run and ran 35:11. The McMillan calculator (which seems pretty accurate for 5k and up) says that is worth a 21:13, which is a little better than I would have guessed for my fitness right now.

Thanks. That was flying for 68, as was your run today. My 3 miles of 1 minute hard/1 minute easy was about 20:15 for three, so in the 21:00 5k range, then had a 7:11 and 7:13 mile before and after.

Did a 5.5 recovery run today at about 7:38 per mile on a fairly hill course - drop of 100ft out and 100ft climb back. What is odd is that HR only averaged 121 (which is in line with the type of HRs I've been seeing) which kicked the Garmin V02 max estimate up to 60, which they think indicates 17:52 for 5k (which I know is not happening). I think I've done so much running at tempo/threshold pace - I was running almost every run as a 4 or 5 mile tempo for a long time last year - that I've got really good at sub-maximal paces, but I couldn't convert that into race times anywhere near what that indicates. I notice on McMillen that my HR was right for a recovery run (based on HR Reserve), but my pace was way quicker.

I did do a harder run late summer last year and average 6:45 for 6 miles solo.

72 days down, 293 to go:

March 7-13

sun: 4 (rare run with wife)

mon: 4 (with h.s. team)

tue: am--5: 3x500 (73 pace through 400m), 4x200 (33/30/33/33)

pm--2 (with h.s. team)

pm, pt. 2: 5: 1x800 (2:30), 4x200 (35/35/35/35)

wed: 4 (with h.s. team)

thu: am--4

pm pt 1--3 miles with h.s. team

pm pt 2--5 (4x200, 100 rest, around 34s?; 4x400 @ 73-74, lots of rest as i was doing this

with 42 year old in town visiting, so i was leading the odd numbered 400s in his 8x400 set

with 200 jog; 3x200)

fri: 3 (with h.s. team)

sat: 5 (pt. to pt. road mile in 4:45, felt pretty good, about a 30 ft. decline and slight tailwind from start to finish, probably giving a 4-5 second advantage)

heading out on a 13 miler this morning before i get my first vaccination shot.

carpe crepusculum,

cush

KPdx: Holy cow on the 5:32! I did that at 53….9 years ago….

AMK: Have they done any mitochondrial tests? I guess what I’m saying is they still don’t seem to have an accurate DX, so the search continues. No one is better equipped to research than you.

Socalcush: Heck of a week. Hope you have some races coming up cuz it sure looks like you are ready.

Tue = 4 miles greenway with 3 @ 8:19 pace. 69 degrees!

Thr = 4 miles easy greenway with 3 @ 9:27

Sat = 4 miles same course as Tue with 3 @ 8:10 pace

Sun = 4 miles easy greenway with 3 @ 9:26 pace

1 week until my first race in 13 months. I seemed to wait until the last minute to actually train for it. I guess it’s hard to believe it actually might happen!

I have one more workout on Tue to improve my fitness. It disturbs me to say it, but sub 8 will be a good outcome.

Still, given my total training miles are effectively 12 miles per week (1-mile slow warmup before each 3-mile run) I have no reason to complain.

Make it a good week.

congrats on the road mile! Besides your speed, I'm in awe of your recovery prowess -- can't imagine doing that tues. afternoon session after another tues. morning

no need on my end to plot out amount of recovery between track workouts, as it was all super-slow plodding with tight/sore hamstring this week in wake of marathon DNF last sunday:

M rest

Tu 20:00

W 30:00

Th 36:00

F 40:00

Sa 45:00

Su 50:00

now to sharpen pencil for filling out my bracket tonight. Have a great week,

Dave

Rtype, best of luck on the race. I guess it’s actually going to happen if it’s still on just one week out.

socalcush, that’s indeed a very nice road mile and the streak is alive…

Unable to run at all after pulling a muscle in my hip in last Sunday’s attempted jog, I retreated to the bike trainer and walking this week.

M-F: 75 min bike trainer each day (ugh).

Sat: 5.5 mile brisk walk at 14:22/mile pace; 15 mile bike ride outdoors.

Sun: 6.3 mile walk at 13:59 pace; will probably do a short bike ride later today.

I was somewhat surprised and rather encouraged to discover that I can walk as fast as 14 min/mile. The last few times I tried to “run” I could only manage about 12 min/mile. Walking doesn’t feel aerobically useful, though; it works my hip muscles but I’m barely breathing harder than when sitting at my desk. I live about a mile from the most significant “hill” in my very flat city, which is steep enough that I need to gear down on a bike, but it’s too short to be very useful. I think I need a combination of cycling to get my heart rate up and walking to work the muscles needed for bipedal locomotion. Whenever this pulled muscle in my hip heals I’ll try jogging a little again.

Rtype, I’ve read about some of the mitochondrial muscle diseases, for which I haven’t been tested, but the symptoms really don’t seem right. I’ll read more, though, because I’m still looking for a diagnosis that seems correct.

Am I the only one who thinks Daylight Savings Time sucks in mid-March?

Good morning. Rather than counting days of training without a break, I am counting days of house painting without a break. I do think it is in a way a form of cross training. The previous two days I was painting a difficult to reach section from an area adjacent to the roof ridge. I was standing on a 3’ x 3’ piece of 3” foam rubber for stability and comfort, while carefully dipping an extension pole with an attached roller or brush into the paint. My personal form of Tai Chi. Stressful enough where I am waking in the night for a glass of juice or straighten a leg cramp.

Have a good week.

Igy

An excellent training week for me. Since the start of the year I have been running my weekly high effort runs on trails with my son, so I didn't really know precisely where I was at speedwise. Yesterday my son had other commitments so we didn't do our usual run. I decided to go and do a 5 mile threshold run on a paved path around a local reservoir. The path is a loop that is just a couple of hundred meters short of 5 miles. A lot of runners use it for training. As I was finishing my 2 mile warmup, Mark Belger and some other speedy 60+ guys showed up and said they were going to do an 800 repeats workout. I was tempted to jump in, but decided to stay with my plan. Before starting, my guess was that I might be able to hold about 7:10/mi pace if it went well. As I mentioned above, replying to Cavorty, I ended up holding 7:02 pace. I went through 5k at about 21:45. Last October I did a solo 5k time trial and went 22:36, so good progress since then. At the end I still felt like I still could have held on to the pace to at least 10k, so full race effort should be back to the sub-7 level for 10k. 47miles total for the week -

M- 7mi 9:15/mi

T- 7mi hills 9:57/mi

W- 7mi 9:41 /mi

Th- 7mi hills 9:43 /mi

F- 7mi 8:51/mi

S- 9mi of 2mi w.u., 5mi at 7:02/mi, 2mi w.d.

Su- 3mi 9:44/mi

amkelley, definitely not TMI. Your posts are a good reminder that healthcare professionals are used to dealing with the average older person, and their diagnoses and treatments are usually based on that. Finding doctors who understand that older athletes may have very different health situations that require a different treatment approach can often be challenging. Keep pushing to find the right answer for your situation.

Good running to all!