(Road Racing and) Time Trialing and Training Thread - Week Ending 11/22/2020

imagebearer wrote: . It’s always windy here, so I took advantage of the nice day. You might say I ran with it.

*rimshot*

***

I should belatedly post my week, just to keep up with the thread (sorry - things have been very busy):

Female, 46, 5'4", 107

PRs 5:25/18:51/38:56/1:02:28/1:24:08/2:57:42

Goal races: Jacksonville Half-Marathon; Louisiana Marathon

Goal times: 18:30 for 5K, 1:23:xx for half, sub-2:55 for full

45 miles, 1000 yards swimming, and 3:30 hours of pool-running

M: upper body weights/core and 50 minutes pool-running

T: 10 miles, including a track workout of 1600, 2x800 in 6:24, 3:08, 3:10. 5:09 recovery after the 1600; 2:30 recovery after the 800. Followed with leg strengthwork and yoga. 500 yard recovery swimming in afternoon.

W: 9 miles easy (9:00), drills and 2 hill strides, yoga, and 30 minutes pool-running.

Th: 50 minutes pool-running and upper body weights/core

F: 9 miles very easy (8:51), drills and two strides, yoga, and 30 minutes of pool-running.

Sa: 14.5 miles, including a workout of 3x2 miles at 10 mile/half-marathon effort. Splits were 13:06 (6:33/6:33), 13:03 (6:31/6:32) and 13:09 (6:36/6:33). Half-mile jogs in 4:30-4:50 between each. Followed with streaming yoga, leg strengthwork, and 500 yards recovery swimming.

Su: streaming yoga and 50 minutes pool-running

I had a bad workout on Tuesday - I simply couldn't catch my breath and felt drained and heavy, so I stopped early - I'm pretty sure that this was due to getting a lot of blood drawn for PRP last week. 7 days wasn't quite enough time to replenish everything that was pulled. So, I pulled back on stuff for most of the week and focused on recovery before trying a tempo workout on Saturday morning that went much better. Of course, perfect weather didn't hurt.

Zm swift wrote:

Hello all, great running all around. HHW, great work!

Nothing crazy here for my week, about the usual....lol.

Monday- 13.52 miles 1'23"16 6:09 avg

Tuesday- 13.51 miles 1'23"37 6:11 avg

Wednesday- 13.51 miles 1'25"33 6;19 avg

Thursday- 13.59 miles 1;27:08 6:25 avg

Friday- 7.24 miles 46:17 6:23 avg

Saturday- Warm up 3.01 miles 20:23 6:47 avg

race- 3.18 miles 15:42 for 4th

Cool Down- 6.07 miles 45:30 7:29 avg

Sunday- 13.52 miles 1'22"08 6:04 avg

87.1 miles on the week. Considering I do no workouts at all, the race was very good. I might still be able to break 15 again, not this year but next when im 40. I have three months until turning 40 which im conflicted about, but cant change it....lol!!!

BHViking, I see your doing training like I do, how has it been going?

Have a great one all!

Hi Zmswift

When I saw your training posted week after week, it really got me thinking.

This might surprise you but it reminded me of a lot of the Low HR Training threads. The theory being that for base training that you throw out the workouts and just try and run a lot everyday at a reasonable HR (not plodding but not above LT). The theory being that over time, your pace comes down at the same HR naturally. By sticking with this, supposedly this increases your lactate threshold and also allows you to run much more comfortably very near the lactate threshold at long distances. The problem that I have with this, is I don't enjoy looking at my watch and prefer to run by feel.

I then thought about some of the Lydiard threads where HRE spoke about just putting the miles in (priority one) and running to feel. I believe he described the feeling as "as fast as you can but slow enough so that you can get the miles in each day without needing to shorten days regularly. All runs at the fastest pace you can manage comfortably".

So what you're doing seems to basically follow these general philosophies and reallllly seems to work for you. So, I figured what the hell? I have nothing to lose. May as well give this a try.

So I'm doing exactly that. No long runs, no workouts, just consistent miles every day following the effort described by HRE.

HOWEVER, I did get experience a bit of a niggle today and cut my run short immediately (8.4 miles). What's weird was, I felt like a million bucks running fast and comfortable before I felt something twinge and aborted. This was after 5 straight days of 15 milers with the duration between 1:40 and 1:45. I think I may be pushing too far too fast!! Zmswift, I noticed that your time durations are always less than 90 minutes and greater than 80 minutes. That obviously seems to work for you. I wonder if I should drop back to a similar time duration at least for the interim? Any suggestions?

imagebearer wrote:

My previous fortnight was low-key. I did a track workout in the dark yesterday morning. It was below freezing, 26F, but no wind (2mph) . It’s always windy here, so I took advantage of the nice day. You might say I ran with it.

Hours after my worked it snowed :O

Great weeks out there. Always inspiring.

RRR how are you doing? Busy with work?

Slammed ... on my feet all day running around so legs are always tired. Lifting some as stress relief and trying to jog around some when I feel like it. Just have to fade the busy time and get into my winter bunker base mode. Our Ecom sales go INSANE on black friday thru the end of the month

Big Thanksgiving plans?

So, that makes three of us, me you and Zm, all in the same training boat. I have read the HRE stuff, too, and like it . I tend to like his point of view. In any case, my lesson learned after this cycle and recent marathon is that one of those weekly runs should be a long run, perhaps not every single week, but the long run should be in there often. I say this because my belief is that the LR really preps the legs for the beating involved in the 26.2. Gotta get that muscle memory going. In that vein, I am already noticing an increase in metal toughness and leg toughness after that difficult last 8 miles of the marathon. Noticed it quite obviously today in my AM after PM 10.5-miler.

Be well, my brothers in training, and have a great Turkey Day!

Zmswift, BHVIKING, OR - this is a great discussion. As you may or may not have noticed, I’m doing a lot of experimenting right now myself. Part of it comes from having a layoff and needing to be smart in rebuilding. Part of it comes from doing a lot of running with some slower athletes right now. And part of it comes from trying to run a lot in the fat burning zone so that I can lose some of this weight before re-introducing more specific work.

The point that I wanted to add is that my daily easy runs that I am doing 4 to 5 days a week happen to last between 80 to 90 minutes. I’m doing them as very slow 10 milers at roughly 8:20-8:50 pace, so roughly 83-88 minutes a day. What I am finding by feel is that there does seem to be something special about running for that duration. And I’m just wondering aloud if that is something that Zmswift and BHVIKING have also felt.

Right now, I have neither the ability nor the desire to push the pace of my daily very easy runs to something more moderate. In fact, I am enjoying the not really looking at my watch and running very slowly approach.

The other two days a week, I am doing some kind of quality, whether it is my own pace work or an athlete pace work, and then some kind of longer run.

I just wanted to point out that I am also really liking that formula, and it seems something that I can sustain week in and week out for a long while.

So while our styles may look a little different at first glance, I do think there are more similarities than differences upon closer examination.

The Stone Cutter wrote:

The point that I wanted to add is that my daily easy runs that I am doing 4 to 5 days a week happen to last between 80 to 90 minutes. I’m doing them as very slow 10 milers at roughly 8:20-8:50 pace, so roughly 83-88 minutes a day. What I am finding by feel is that there does seem to be something special about running for that duration. And I’m just wondering aloud if that is something that Zmswift and BHVIKING have also felt.

Stone - I felt that 11 miles was a sweet spot for me over the spring, its typically 79-82 min long. I look forward to getting back to that as a daily run.

Coach Stone - My short answer is yes. I am still in something of a recovery mode, but when I get going, most of my runs are 80+ minutes. I absolutely feel a difference in the later stage of those runs. It is as if someone flips a switch, even when I am feeling not so good. I noticed this years ago, and it is the reason why I keep my runs long. Something (perhaps hormonal?) happens after about 50-60 minutes...a better feeling comes over me, sometimes just a bit better and sometimes more than that. It seems to be that if I stop running at 45 or 50 minutes then I will end up missing out on something, skipping the best part of what that run could have been. It is nice to go short sometimes just to give the body a break, but I do it for that reason only, and do not do it very often. When I get the green light from the get-go, I know it will be a flyer...otherwise I just take things as they come and wait for the good feeling (or hormones) to kick in...

Agreed that it takes me about 30-40 minutes into these daily runs to hit that “zone” where suddenly the effort is lighter and things open up.

I feel that if I push them any longer than 80 to 90 minutes I would start feeling run down or risk injury. It is interesting that despite the range of paces of various runners who have chimed in on the thread, we all seem to gravitate toward that 80 to 90 minute daily run.

If I recall, I think AJ and JQ liked their primary daily runs around that same time duration.

For what it’s worth I plan to spend December-February basically doing this... running 9-13 miles a day with a once a week long run w/ some marathon pace work inserted and a stepping stone every 2-3 weeks. Actually really looking forward to trying to build up some volume without getting injured.

highhoppingworm wrote:

For what it’s worth I plan to spend December-February basically doing this... running 9-13 miles a day with a once a week long run w/ some marathon pace work inserted and a stepping stone every 2-3 weeks. Actually really looking forward to trying to build up some volume without getting injured.

That is some smart training, hhw. Enjoy it.

Spring races are won in the winter!

I am also looking forward to more winter volume .. I Do spilt runs up some times a week and go 5-5 say instead of 10 straight

BHViking,

So I guess I need to add some perspective into my training. I was in Germany from May of 2019 until June of 2020. Before that, I lived in Colorado my whole life. I pretty much ran 12.4 miles or 12 miles a day for years here in Colorado after I decided that I really didn't like traditional training which would have been back in like 2007. I tried all the interval stuff, track workouts and other workouts and never really enjoyed any of it. I could go do 16x400 meters on 1 min rest in 63-64 seconds but just didn't like it. So I just ran the same mileage everyday, decently hard and things always worked out.

When I got to Germany, I continued the same training but found that my everyday runs were much faster then what I was doing in Colorado. I remember doing two 12 mile runs on back to back days averaging 5:37 pace for both days. I did many runs like that, and decided to up the mileage in the first week of March by accident. I ran a 15:42 on a slow course on a 99 mile week and was a bit perplexed by the result. I didn't think I would run very well that day because I had run like 14 or 14.5 miles the day before.

A day after that race Germany basically went into full lockdown. So, with no races going on I just started running 14.5 miles a day, and really didn't change the normal paces I was running before. The timing was a bit unfortunate as I had decided that week before that I was going to start doing some "Workouts", not track stuff but 15 to 20 by min off min on, the 1,2,3,2,1,2,3,2,1 workout with half recoveries and the mona workout ( 90x2, 60x4, 45x4, 30x4 and 15x4 with half recovery). The lockdown basically was the end of that plan. I did the 100+ mile weeks for 9 weeks in a row. I cut back to upper 90's starting in mid May as we were getting ready to move back to Colorado, and we had moved into short term housing in a village that was way, way hillier then our one before. Even then, I was still hitting those runs at pretty good clips.

When I got back here, I cut my miles for basically two weeks (I think I was at 88), but thought I could still run about 13.5 a day and have continued to do that. As far as the duration of my runs, I basically just don't go over 14 miles, and pretty much run the same paces day after day with some being faster, but most around that 6:10 to 6:20 range. If you can make it work, aim for 90-95 minutes, and set a goal of 91-95 miles a week. That 9 week at 100 or above showed me I can do it, but also showed me that I really didn't need to be doing that much (and I know its only a difference of 7-10 miles a week).

My final thought is about the niggles and pains. Running above 100 a week will just make you more aware of things like that. I had times where I felt things, but smart or not I just pushed forward (Which I'm not saying to do or not) as I know my legs well and know when its time to cut back. If its something that feels off, but is not altering your form or gait then I would just slow it down and possibly go for 12, but not the 15 you were doing.

I don't know if any of this is helpful or not, but keep doing what your doing and enjoy the process!

OR and Coach Stone, that's interesting to hear about how you guys feel about the benefits that happen past 60 minutes. It kinda of makes me wonder if one of the keys is running well past that point for as long as possible without risking injury such as Zm swift suggests. OR, you had mentioned HRE's long runs. I was actually thinking I would implement those occasionally but only after I've established a consistent volume like what Zm swift is hitting for a long period of time. In other words, I want to prove to myself that I can maintain the consistent mileage day in and day out for many months on end so that it's just second nature before adding any kind of "outlier effort". For sure, I would introduce some long runs before a marathon.

To Stone's point, I'm beginning to feel like I could crank out the 80-90 minute runs every single day without issue as long as they are comfortable. Stone is doing his DEAD EZ right now and I'm doing mine more moderate but I'm also doing that at the expense of no workouts. But we are putting in the same amount of time which seems to be important.

To Zm swift's comment about hating the speed work, that is me 100%!!! I don't mind doing EZ intervals but workouts that many of you post doing regularly on here sound like it would suck the love of running out of me, haha! Yet, I don't mind doing comfortably fast long runs.

If I may pick your mind some more Zm swift? The summary of what led you to today is excellent! When you say that you do your daily runs "hard", I'm just curious what that means. Does that mean that you are breathing heavy and can feel acidic buildup in the legs? Or does it mean that you're just running really fast while maintaining fairly easy breathing with your legs feeling strong but not overdoing it? If you happen to have a reliable, non-wrist based HR monitor, do you know what percentage of MaxHR you typically run at?

For me personally, I'd like to eventually give stronger efforts as I get more used to this kind of training. You are already used to it and producing impressive results (back to back days at 5:35? Woah.) I assume if the time duration is held constant over a period of months that not only will it naturally be easier to cover more distance but it will also be easier to push greater efforts. For what it's worth, my post run analysis of my heart rate on these recent , daily runs seems to dial in at around 76 to 78% of MaxHR and seems to be very steady and stable at that range.

Good question BHViking, I think when I mean hard I just mean the paces are faster. I never feel like im really pushing it as far as heart rate goes. I haven't used a hr monitor in quite a long time, but I can say when I was really big into running on the treadmill, I was able to do a 12 mile run going through 10 miles in 50:08 (I think I was 60:30 at 12) with an average hr of around 165. Even when I was going under 5:00 pace I never got much above 168. I remember running 5 days a week on the mill where every run was 12 miles and the slowest pace was 5:35's. Im guessing now most daily runs are in the 140 to 150 ish range. The last time I had a Vo2 Max test, I was only able to peak my hr at 176 approaching a vo2 of 80 (in 2009!!).

What an astounding post. It reads like an OR manifesto! This is my kind kind of talk! I got tired of the traditional workouts (with my first coach, years ago) and never really liked them, nor did I think they produced the type of results I wanted. To me, that stuff is more for 5k/10k runners, and not for the marathon beast. When I say “beast” here I am being blunt, but I also intend a certain specificity—the marathon is a beastly race that takes beastly day-in day-out training—repeated mini marathon efforts of 10+ miles, daily JUST AS ZmSwift and BHV do—all the while building supreme mental toughness. It ABSOLUTELY must become second nature, or otherwise you will fade in the second half of the race and guys like Zm, BHV (or me?) who have gotten their bodies to become ONE with moderate (or moderate +) speed over long distances will roll you up in the 22nd mile. Even doing much of that, I still was not able to command the last eight miles of my recent marathon the way I wanted to. Perhaps I just did not have enough “in me” yet with my shortened build-up for the race (post-injury)? Perhaps...

In my view a 5 or 6 mile run is a complete waste of time for guys looking to max out in the marathon, or perhaps even a shorter distance. I would rather take a day of rest than do and easy or easy-ish short run. Waste of time. Filler. For me, it is not worth my time, unless I have a specific intent...such as by kicking up the pace in a 6.5-mile tempo and getting a “rest” in there, too. That 6.5-mile tempo almost becomes a rest day in that I can recover from that quite easily and then get back to the miles (and get a mental break from the distance, too). Yes, you must prove to yourself that you can withstand the pounding every day...10, 12, 14 miles. When done regularly and with some pace, those runs take much more out of me than a 6.5-mile tempo. But ultimately, they become second nature, and pure medicine, as they bring enormous highs, none of which I got from traditional training. They build a marathon machine. You will get no breaks in a marathon...why take breaks in your training session? I believe that is the only way I was able to hold on for the last eight miles—I did not take a single break in any run in the months prior. Continuous running builds mental toughness. I did not even think I could do it (suffer eight miles of quad pain) and yet I did.

Love what you have to say, too, BHV. Before I forget...this type of training is risky business and I realize that. It is unorthodox and done completely by feel. One must know one’s body well. I sometimes feel as if I am “cruising on the edge,” but I believe that the risk involved must be tolerated, since I do not have the time (years ahead) of a young person, and since I know my body well...Zm described this perfectly when he discussed “pushing through.” Gotta be able to know what is “pushing through” and what is injury. Also, the riskiest running I have ever “felt” has always been intervals...the dog slow then bat-out-of-hell fast polarization has always felt unnatural to me. With a good coach, I got better at it, but in general that type of running always felt like “asking for injury” running...

All the best, guys...

Good discussion going on here today. This is my preferred way to train as well, I hate formal workouts and prefer to just run. In college, I had a great block of training where as often as I could, I ran a 10.5mi route to the top of a nearby mountain. The route was such that it would rolling for 3mi, mostly uphill for 2.25mi, then turn around and rip it home. I loved it. 80-90mins is also my favorite duration for a run - longer than short, shorter than long. I find that even going easy all the time is fine so long as the duration is there, whereas if I'm stuck with an hour per day I have to add striders or similar.

BHV - we're in similar shape for longer races, you're probably slightly faster than me (I'd say I'm in 1:19ish HM shape). I'd say slow it down to 7:30s and go 12mi/day (90mins) with 5x15sec strides thrown in 3-4x/week. That sounds more sustainable, and then gradually crank the pace down a bit.

outsiderunner wrote:I got tired of the traditional workouts (with my first coach, years ago) and never really liked them, nor did I think they produced the type of results I wanted. To me, that stuff is more for 5k/10k runners, and not for the marathon beast. ...

Yeah, if you're not racing 5Ks, a diet of only long continuous runs, progression runs is great. But to maximize 5K performance, it's necessary to invest training time at that pace or faster. And to train at those faster paces, one needs to break it up into shorter distances.

That's the accepted theory, anyway. In his 70s and 80s, Ed Whitlock set age-group world records for 1500m to the marathon, doing only long continuous runs in training. But he raced often -- that was his speedwork.

During most of my running career -- 48 years -- I didn't run workouts. During my more competitive periods, though, I ALWAYS included track repeats and hill repeats. A difference between you and me, outsiderunner, is that I really enjoy workouts. I love the discomfort of it, the dread, the pain ... and the sense of accomplishment afterwards.

As a kid, I'd jog the four miles to a hang-gliding hill -- really more like a cliff -- and run all-out up it. As many times as I could. Brutal! The burn, the pain, the gasping. What fun!

Happy T-Day. Just my wife and me, zoom meeting with her side of the family at 2 p.m. Still, turkey and all the fixings, pumpkin pie ...

Great input, rucker and Allen.

I would also like to add, Allen, that I have observed that there would seem to be a difference between the ability to suffer (or take on pain) and the ability to hang on (or keep going). The ability to suffer comes from hard intervals and the ability to hang on comes from long continuous speedy runs.

Cannot wait to indulge in the turkey and stuffing...and pumpkin pie. May even take the day off from running. Had yesterday off from work and so I get a RARE two days off in a row. Yay!

One other thing...for ZmSwift...you need to take up the marathon, my friend. Your training and temperament are PERFECT for it. Also...may I ask how old you are?

Have a great Turkey Day!

Zm - I looked back and I see now that you are turning 40 in three months. Embrace it. You will make a GREAT master! I had no non-master “career”...started running late in life. I will turn 52 in about six weeks.

Gritty old fast runner...is the best title I can think of.