Masters weekend races and runs..

well, I am out for at least two months. soft cast/boot for one month and no running for another month after that. the bone scan and x-ray were pretty clear that I have a stress fracture in my heel.

I will be able to start running again at the end of November.

you asked about were everyone lives. I live in Albany, Oregon but consider Bend, Oregon home. I will be here for seven more years until I retire and then I will move back to the mountains.

RUN, I wish you the best in recovering and getting back to the roads. I am jealous of all of you who live in the great Northwest. It isnt by mistake that they call it the "great" northwest.I fell in love with Oregon when I went out there in June. anyway do you plan on lifting or anything during your down time..?

Sat: 8 very hilly miles

Sun: 8 very flat miles

week: 50

I'm in Omaha. The Omaha Marathon was this morning. 70 degrees and 100% humidity at the 7:00am start. Pobrecitos!

RUNINTHESUN: Have you met Jim McLatchie out there in Bend? One of the top coaches in the country imho.

OMBTS: Always great to harbor romantic notions about more exotic locales, but nothing beats home sweet home, regardless of where you make it.

Sat.: Day Off

Sun.: 60 minutes of trail running.

Spent the week in Orlando at a trade show and ran 4 days, always in the morning at 0'Dark 30. Rita sent a few rain squalls and some wind as we were on the upper fringe Tuesday. Nothing to write home about. Flying back Saturday we flew over Arkansas and had a few bumps as we encountered Rita again. I thought we would go a more southern route via Brownsville - guess that is why I am not a pilot.

Have a good week.

OMBTS. With just turning 45, I've found that in order to not burn out OR not get hurt, I've got to really watch the rest and, for me, not to do double days of running. If I do a double day, it's cross training and usually the rower.

Since I adopted this attitude (2 days of rest between hard workouts, 3 days after a hard 20) I've not gotten hurt or burnt. Yesterday was 20 at 2:03 and the majority under 6 minute pace. Today I feel OK. When it's mile training time, it's the same principle when easing into speed. I do fancy myself more of a miler but have decided to do a marathon once every 5 years to get that great base under my belt.

Well, put me back on the healthy-feeling good list again. Almost every run this week felt good. That is a good sign for me. Mostly shuffling through the hills here in Redmond, Washington, but got in two gut busters without setting myself back again.

Tues 4 x 1800 on XC Loop (race pace), 4 x :60 Hill

Sat 4 x :90, 4 x :60, 4 x :30 Hills

Back up to about 85 miles this week.

Good thread last week on mileage and running how you feel. Who knows what I will (re)learn again this week?!!

cheerios,

tony

Will, Agreed, however DC/Balt IMHO doesnt compare to Oregon.

my plan was to roller ski, bike and then ski when the snows came. My doctor said no to all the above. she said I could bike if it was just spinning. it is a substantial stress fracture and she threatened to put me in a hard cast. she knows how much running means to me and has treated me for other overuse injuries with that in mind. She told me swimming would be the best thing for me except unless it's a hot tub I freeze. I am not sure what I will do. I have been running consistantly since 1979 with only one break.

RunGuru- Jim Mac was my coach last year. some of his workouts were the hardest I had ever done. I repeated some of those workouts on my own this last spring. Jim & Carol are great people and have a true love and passion for the sport. I stopped working with Jim when I moved accross state, I didn't want to do the email coach thing.

Put me on the sick list this week. Started with a sore throat on Monday and got worse through the week. Ran only 3 times for 16 miles. I do feel better today, but still congested. I had wanted to go down to Paso Robles for the 10k, but it would have been a waste of time this week.

Weather is starting to turn chilly in Reno. The mornings have been very cool and daytime highs under 70. Good CC weather.

Have a good week, everybody.

JM

It's a gorgeous Portland autumn day today: no clouds, sunny and crisp and clear. The dog and I were up and out at 6:20 to avoid the madding crowd. It's downright chilly at that hour. Ran a serpentine 10 mile Forest Park loop that included treks up Holman Lane and Fire Lane 1. Nose to trail on the steepest parts.

Staying injury free? I've learned to keep the twice a month massage appointments which have helped keep my muscles supple. Taking a day off from running after the long runs (15 or so) and running on trails rather than roads seems to help. I'm not a racer so I don't have to deal with the twinges and squeaks that come from wearing spikes and doing speedwork. Ice baths or standing waist deep in cold water help tremendously with that. Speaking from experience...

Stay healthy everyone!

Two secrets for you: Secret #1- Don't tell anyone everything you know.

It used to be that I would do sprint drills religiously while coming back from injury, then I'd stop until I got injured again, and now- for the last 4 years, or so- I've been doing them consistently. Butt kicks, high knees, a wierd butt-kick-mutant that really stretches the quads and hips, skips, and karaoke. Sometimes backwards running, then sprints/strides- first a normal 100m, then one butt-kicking one, a high-knee one, a real-quick-step one, a real looonnngg step one, then a normal one, then one where I accelerate 30m, sprint like a machine gun burst for maybe 5 steps, coast 5 steps, sprint 5 steps, and coast to a stop. Do this after a 5-15 minute warm-up, then do any kind of run you want- tempo, long, easy, hills- doesn't matter. If you don't do this at least once a week, at least try to do it twice a week for maybe 6-8 weeks, or 3 times a week for 3-5 weeks, a couple of times a year.

Another trick is to get into the weight room regularly. Another trick is to occasionally mimic other good runners. I'm lucky here, because I have UW guys running past my house all the time. Saturday I trailed Solinsky for a mile, mimiced him- he doesn't know who I am, and he kept looking over his shoulder, and I almost couldn't run what for laughing so hard, but I couldn't keep up with him for long- the copy-cat-factor helps identify weakness- stride too long, too slow, too short, too quick, body too upright or too far leaning over, arm swing good or non-existent, breathing in- or out- of synch.

And then there's diet. For sure the best thing for supper is chicken sauteed in olive oil with garlic and oregano, over rice and lentils in cumin and tomato, but who wants to eat that when they're having a sale during happy hour: burger, fries, and two beers for $10.

70 for the week, but with a new counting-scheme. See, Pollard-the-acting-UW AD is off to Iowa, so we, here, who used to count in "badger miles" now count like this: every run is either 10 or 15 miles. Anything up to 75 minutes is 10 miles. Anything over 90 minutes is 15 miles. So, run 30 minutes a day, and get 70 for the week. It's awesome.

Did you guys get the joke about the two secrets?

OMBTS,

I'm 43 and have raced pretty heavily until June of this year. Lots bugging me so I have taken a hiatus from racing (with the exception of running a XC race against a bunch of young college guys). Anyway, I've noticed in the last year, that my recovery is slowing down. To the point that I am biking and swimming a bit vs running on easy days. I'm trying to only run 2-3 days per week. Body seems to like it but my aerobic capacity has suffered. I'm going to stick with it at least all winter to see how things go.

Oddly enough, I've lost weight. I'm down to 132 today from a usual 137.

The other thing I will add is that I don't run hard anymore. I don't ever run until I am really tired. My workouts are steadier with less rest. I have not run under 5:00 pace during a workout yet this year. But I've raced well under that pace for 5K still. For me, being healthy is better than being fast. And the speedwork only really sharpens me a few percent....not worth the risk for me.

BTW - Week was great. Ran 6 X 1000 and a steady effort. Ran 15 with a college kid who came home for the weekend. It was good to catch up.

Skin

Ran a marathon pr (3:02) by 8 mins. Not sub 3 yet but I'm happy with it.

Still shirtless in the NW for all 4 hard-med efforts this week(2's,6400mtempo,4's & a steady12). Wish I was in racing shape...I can smell the perfect racing conditions in the air.

Do's

-work on what is, or used to be, your strengths as a runner. Usually these are also the things that you enjoy doing too and also the things that have a major efffect on racing ability if/once you loose them.

-time your hard days(contrary to SoCal's advise, sorry). But for diffrent reasons than when I was younger. Now it's to make sure I don't go too hard and basically for curiosity and hopefully guaging improvement over recent similar efforts. Definitely not for the sake of trying to hit certain times or changing gears(as there are none!).

Don't's

-time your easy runs...not my norm but I'll take SoCal's advise on that one, thanks!

Around 60 miles for the week, mostly just EZ distance (recovering from last week's 5K). Then ran Paso Robles today: 32:21 for third place (Simonaitis won in 30:59, with Danny Gonzalez 2nd in 31:50). Ran the first four miles in a pack of 4, then the last 2 with just Ivan Huff, who decided to use one of his infrequent races to make things tough on me! Ivan ended up fourth in 32:29, and in 5th was Brian Pope in 32:35 (or something like that ... Brian definitely had a tough day!). Colleen DeReuck won the women's race in a mid-33 time (I looked over my shoulder at 2 miles and she was right there!).

Most importantly, the plantar fascitis hasn't returned as a problem!

Tony - good to hear you're feeling better this week!

Every week I am amazed at the runs some of you old guys do. Here is another one. Today in The Toronto Waterfront Marathon, Ed Whitlock, now 74, was 58th out of 1774 in 3:02.37!

Congrats, Locknload.

We had an absolutely glorious day here in the Detroit area yesterday - sunny but cool, zero humidity, a pleasure to run in.

Unfortunately, I chose to race the Capital City River Run 10-miler up in Lansing *today.* 90%+ humidity: ugh! I was soaked through after just a few miles, so soaked that by the finish I could hear my waterlogged socks sloshing inside my shoes. Still, the race went well. I didn't run it super-fast (not that I run anything super-fast!), but treated it as a marathon training run. My goal was to run the first half about 10 seconds faster than marathon pace, then pick it up by another 5-10 seconds in the second half.

This was a challenge, since I don't have the best sense of pace (to put it mildly), and have a really hard time holding myself to a plan during races. But I must be getting better, because I ran 1:12:00 (almost exactly what I had mapped out) w/negative splits.

Best of all -- instead of spending the last 5 miles wondering "when will this be over??," I felt great the entire time, and got to breeze by all the runners who'd started out way too fast.

So, turns out I'm trainable after all! Now, if I can just hang onto my newfound racing smarts in NYC, I'll be set.

Orville, Ed Whitlock is incredible. Thanks for sharing

Locknload. Congrats on a PR. What do you attribute your pr to..?..anything you special..?