Masters Weekend Races and Runs

Good morning OMBTS. Hope you're progress continues toward being healthy.

Had a good week here. Ran a 10K yesterday and ran very consistent. Paul Auf beat me handily but that's OK. He's pretty fit. I ran 5:15 pace. Ran 12 miles today ez with a few other old guys capping off my highest mileage week in 3 years; 48 (Of course, that does not include the weeks when I ran across the Grand Canyon).

Spring has come finally.

Can't wait to hear about Carlsbad.....

Decent enough week for me, except for a day of trouble with a stomach bug. Recovered pretty well from last Sunday's 15K with an 8 X 660 on the lower loop of Central Park. It's amazing how different doing speed work on roads is from doing it on a track. I fought with myself for the first couple, but then just let myself relax. Times were the same, but much less of a strain.

Finished the week with a 14.5 miler yesterday in beautiful weather -- it's overcast and chillier today -- which was the longest I've done in a while. Four mile race next Sunday, so I'll see if I have any speed in me.

Good to hear from y'all. I'm happy to continue my steady base miles plan for a few more months before hitting the track for summer 1500's and 800's prep. 60 miles last week. 65 this week. Dropping down 20% next week before ramping up some more.

Nice 1500 to John Hinton in NC. 3:57 at age 46! Thats Lickety-Split man.

KP

Very up & down week here... Managed 59 miles but missed Tues & Wed due to a migraine that just wouldn't quit!!! Highlite was yesterdays 10 miler in 59:44...real strong right out the door. Out in 30:20, came back in 29:24. Then today I 'recovered????' with an 18 miler at 7:23/mi. Somehow, that just doesn't seem like a recovery day!!

Skin & GaryB both had nice races races yesterday. Congrats guys!

See you on the roads,

Dave

Finally back out running. Ran at Lord Hill Regional Park in Snohomish, WA during a trip. Nice park and thanks to the poster who suggested a month or so back. Feels good to run again.

Missed the Great Race of Agoura, heard it went well. Hope poster 'Earl' enjoyed it. Hope everyone in Carlsbad runs well today!

Have a good week all!!

Another chilly week up here in the PNW. Got above 50 once or twice. I need some 60+ degrees to feel like I can even open up at all when I run quick stuff. I will just wait patiently.

Took a day off this week and managed around 70 miles. The goal was to end the week with 3 good workouts and hopefully no-worse-for-wear. Goal accomplished.

Mon 3(4 x 200), short rest (:30) @ mile pace

Thurs 8 x 800, short rest (:75) @ 10k down to 5k effort

Sat long warmup, 40 mins hard effort, HM pace down to 10k pace, long warmdown.

Felt tired this morning on the morning jaunt, but the smell of Spring in the air took my mind away.

Mr Hinton is amazing! Can't wait to hear the Carlsbad results and war stories.

Cheers,

tony

Last real hard week before Boston. Did a solid 800 meter work out with skin on Tues, and a good 4 mile steady state run on Thu. My 10k yesterday went very well, set a 19 second pr and got under 35 for the first time as a master. The first 3 miles felt horrible, but then I sorta woke up at 5k and actually ran the second half faster...something I never do!

Nice easy run this morning, legs are tired.

Now starts the taper!

Have a great week

Nice work, Gary (and skin, too).

I'm basking in the unaccustomed sunshine (two days in a row!) and running easy. Pheasants have colonized my neighborhood, and I heard them crowing like roosters this morning. Pretty soon the males will be out there strutting their stuff . . .

Welcome back, Humbled. I actually own a rooster (a bantam) and he's out there crowing all the time (and puffing his feather up to look bigger! ;-D ) Hilarious.

I had an okay week. I ran a bit more than 70 miles and took some advice from all of you and adjusted my training. I signed up for a half-marathon in May (instead of Bloomsday), so I want to be sure I am fit enough to do it.

I decided to do only two hard efforts a week, coupling a tempo run and alternate with a faster run of either "fast" repetitions or intervals. Since I did 1200m intervals last week, I went with 400m repeats.

Wednesday's tempo was 4 x 5,2s, one of my favorite workouts, but I did feel kind of tired. I did the 400s on Sat. The only thing good I can say about them are that I did manage to hit my "goal" time on most of them and that the 10th one felt just as awful as the 3rd, but not much worse. I felt like a flailing decrepit old woman out there, but I did them. I was pretty tired for a couple hours later! Today was a very, very muddy 16 on trails.

Highlight of the week was a sunny, though cool, 10 miler on trails -- so beautiful it made my heart sing. I was one happy runner out there! Can't wait to see Carlsbad results.

Welcome back, Humbled. I actually own a rooster (a bantam) and he's out there crowing all the time (and puffing his feather up to look bigger! ;-D ) Hilarious.

I had an okay week. I ran a bit more than 70 miles and took some advice from all of you and adjusted my training. I signed up for a half-marathon in May (instead of Bloomsday), so I want to be sure I am fit enough to do it.

I decided to do only two hard efforts a week, coupling a tempo run and alternate with a faster run of either "fast" repetitions or intervals. Since I did 1200m intervals last week, I went with 400m repeats.

Wednesday's tempo was 4 x 5,2s, one of my favorite workouts, but I did feel kind of tired. I did the 400s on Sat. The only thing good I can say about them are that I did manage to hit my "goal" time on most of them and that the 10th one felt just as awful as the 3rd, but not much worse. I felt like a flailing decrepit old woman out there, but I did them. I was pretty tired for a couple hours later! Today was a very, very muddy 16 on trails.

Highlight of the week was a sunny, though cool, 10 miler on trails -- so beautiful it made my heart sing. I was one happy runner out there! Can't wait to see Carlsbad results.

Had an inconsistent last couple of weeks of training. It showed at the local 5 miler yesterday as I only ran 29:30, at least a minute off of what I was expecting. I went out too hard (no sense of pace)and paid for it the last 3 miles. My quads are sore as hell today too, so that's kind of strange.

Next up is a 5K on the 18th, hopefully I'll have a much better result.

Nice races, skinnbones & GaryB! And that off less than 50mpw! I'm always jealous of those who can maintain decent fitness off lower mileage. In my case I can barely do workouts, let alone race, if my mileage falls below 50. Too much of a pure distance runner, I guess. :-)

Fairly easy weak for me. The Georgia marathon beat up my quads a little more than I'd hoped. Most of my tempo work is on flat roads, so this was the first time doing something faster than easy running on hills. No problem, I'm sure I'll have recovered by the time of Boston in 2 weeks.

Did 78 miles with 1 day off, 1 double, and 2 light workouts.

There's another thread about Lance Armstrong allegedly running an 8 mile tempo run at 5:20 pace or so. If that's true, then he'll definitely beat me at Boston :-)

Hope everyone has a great week,

Maurits

52 miles running, 150 miles cycling, ran off two track meets.

Still pimp-running a little bit, but, overall, back is feeling better. Wish I could run faster!

Humbled - where are you located with that big pheasant population? I grew up hunting them but they have declined in numbers so drastically over the years that there are few, if any wild birds left in our area.

Sorry, typo. Make that "easy week", not "easy weak". Must be a Freudian slip. :-)

All right, finally managed to get to the computer here. Got up at 4 AM to head to Carlsbad, then didn't get home until mid-afternoon. Had to catch a quick nap, then head out to dinner. But now I've finally got a second. Unfortunately, I still have my "runner's head" from this AM's race (and from copious amounts of beer, coffee, and candy bars afterward).

First off, it was absolutely perfect weather for the race. It was cool without being cold. Overcast. No wind to speak of. Couldn't dial up a better day for a 5K.

The gun went off. And Dennis Simonaitis went right to the front. Of course, that was no surprise. I outsprinted Dennis for the Carlsbad masters win 4 years ago, and he darn well wasn't going to wait around for that to happen again! With no other real challengers to act as a peloton (so that I could just drift back a ways), I was forced to run on Dennis's shoulder. And he punished me by taking me through a 4:40 first mile.

Now, I knew Dennis had run a sub-par 10K last weekend, so I figured maybe that first mile would hurt him more than it hurt me. I figured maybe he'd dial it back for the mostly uphill second mile. I figured maybe he'd even let me set the pace for awhile.

And then he threw in a nasty uphill surge that actually had me tasting lactic acid in the back of my throat! He settled back into a reasonable pace after a couple hundred meters, and I figured, "Well, okay, I can hang with ... Damn!" Because there he went, surging again. We came through 2 miles in 9:23. And this very loud voice in my head started running through a laundry list of excuses I could use to drop out right then!

But I hung on, and a couple minutes later we were making the final 180 degree turn, ready to head up a quarter mile uphill before the course levels out for a couple blocks, then plunges 300 meters to the finish line. And now one of the voices (a loud one) in my head said, "You know, if you can get to that final 300 meter plunge even with Dennis, this race is yours!"

And that's what I did.

We turned for the final 300 meter plunge side-by-side.

And I almost laughed, thinking of the various ways I could cross the finish line: with my hands held up in victory, or maybe just pumping a single fist and looking serious, or maybe leaping through the tape like Bob Beamon on his record-setting jump.

And then I told my legs to kick ... And they just laughed at me. "Kick!" I told them. And they looked up at me and told me to go to hell. And next thing I know, Dennis - a marathoner - is leaving me in the dust, kicking away to victory, crossing the finish line first in 14:47, while I stumbled and tripped in 3 seconds behind him (14:50).

So here I am 46 and just ran a 14:50 at Carlsbad, and I didn't even win my age division! (Dennis is 45.)

Seriously: One of the best race experiences I've ever had! What a blast!

My clubmate, Christian Cushing-Murray, took 3rd place, with Bunnies grabbing 6 of the top ten spots.

There were some major glitches in race management - a new company took over the race this year.

But a heck of an experience all the same!

Okay, hope everyone has a great week!

I watched you two duel at both turn-arounds while I lingered and finished 61st place, 20th in age division. You two are really amazing. I had hoped to do a little bit better. Time for me to move down to middle distances. The elite men's race was very exciting, though Webb DNF was a diappointment.

So Cal, you are way too big a stud for our weekly post...full masters results here:

http://results.active.com/pages/searchform.jsp?rsID=60883

Congrats to all of you bad biys and girls who went down to SD to mix it up in my always favorite road race...bummin not to be towing that line.

On the other hand, I hit the rugged-ass Dipsea course this morning for some serious punishment...in fact ran a Double Dipsea from Mill Valley and up and over Mt Tamalpais and descent to Stinson Beach...then, turned around and ran back up and (uggggh) over the beast back down to Mill Valley from whence we started some 2 1/2 hours prior.

Maybe not all that challenging for a young fit race horse, but, as a 52 year old who has pounding pavement for more than 40 years, is fat and outta shape, and has not steped foot on this radical piece of classic USA turf in a full three years, it was, needless to say a serious "schlep"...one in which that self talk between the ears is all that's getting you up and over the next topographical challenge...for me today, that self talk was loud and clear AKA in the words of the immortal Elvis (sung at full pitch and often):

Yes she said: only the strong survive, only the strong survive,

Youve got to be a man, youve got to take a stand

Only the strong survive, only the strong survive,

Oh, youve got to be strong, youd better hold on

cos only the strong survive

Only the strong survive, only the strong survive,

Well, youve got to be a man, youve got to take a stand

Only the strong survive, only the strong survive

Congrats to our "Carlsbad"ians...good luck to our upcoming Dipsea demons...press on brothers and sisters.

...to yet one more week of pickin 'em up and puttin 'em down,

warm regards,

MF

Howdy Masters,

I'll see your rain Old Man, and raise you snow, snow and more snow here in the Inland Northwest. A little Spring would feel great right now.

Crappy runs all week. Tired and flat. Nothing over four miles Monday thru Friday.

Friday night I went to the store and picked up a slab of red meat, which I don't eat often. Later I spent about half an hour doing brutal and obscene things to my legs on the floor with a foam roller.

Saturday morning I did an easy five in driving snow and felt pretty good.

This morning I raced a 10K, snowy, slushy wet and cold, and took second overall against a small field. There were a couple of good hills. First race since the end of cross country season. Face was frozen at the finish and it made me talk funny. Or funnier. Felt good to do decently after a tough week.

Have a good week everybody.