50+ Weekly Training Thread

4 races in 5 weeks on minimal training. Maybe 18-22MPW with one long run of 7 miles, the rest mostly 15-minutes to 4 miles, with several missed days.

What did I discover? I wasn't last in any race (2 were relays), but the 4th, a X-C race, was an eye-opener. X-C beats the daylights out of road running/racing in terms of difficulty, especially when you are 'way off form, and NOT wearing trail shoes nor spikes.

Woof!

Running from the back and picking people off was actually fun in the other races.

Now to get back into some sort of shape.

Thanks for the warm and gracious welcome everyone!

NLS, awesome 5K race.

AK-52, I am amazed at the variety of your cross training. I took a note to never, ever rollerski! I hope your recovery continues to roll along.

Muddygirl and Lucky2B, I had some hip issues myself and resolved them with a lot of stretching and the exercises you are doing. I also made a effort to balance which side of the road I ran on. I found that running on the same side was definately contributing to my problem. Hang in there and I am sure you will resolve this.

As for my longest layoff, I have had several layoffs of a few months at a time since I started running in 1973, but never anything running into years.

My typical build-up after a layoff is to start with about 2 miles and add a 1/2 mile a week until I get to around 60 a week. I am trying the Whitlock, boiling the frog approach as an experiment. I have found that I have had my best periods of sustained training following a long, gradual build-up, which is what I am trying now.

I had one question on protocol. Do we just keep adding our weekly reports to this thread or will we be starting a new thread each week with a title something like "50+ Training Week Ending xxxxxx ? Just wondering how this works.

It depends on whether anyone has started a new weekly thread by about noon next Sunday. The rules committee is still debating it :>)

Good for you runmore. You are out there doing it and you have a plan. The most common thing I see is runners not being patient and listening to their bodies. Learn that and you can do amazing things.

Last week I had 33 miles in 5 days and I finally got myself back on track at the track with 5:55, 5:56, and 6:03 mile reps. I’m trying to tune up for a few fall 5K’s coming up.

I took off from 1996 to 2006. To get back in shape I started with every other day walk/runs. I started with a mile, walked a min, ran a min. The next week, I ran 2 min, walked a min. I jumped to 5 min and then the whole mile. I kept bumping it up until I ran the entire distance and I stayed at 3 miles every other day for a long time (6 months). I have just slowly morphed the training based wholly on how I feel with much experimentation. Every person’s body is different. There are no cookie-cutter programs in which one size fits all. Running is rife with faddish training programs and theories. None will ever fit you as well as you can fit yourself.

I tore my achilles in college, and it must have scar tissue because it aches at times and is not as flexible as the other one. I'm trying to get back at it and attempt to build my base after taking the entire month of September off from running. I needed a break after a tough track season! I feel chunky and sluggish but I do feel improvement with every practice. Have a great week!

Guess I'll checkk in on this one. My layoff was from 28 to 50. Cheat factor was a couple of years of old folks non-competitive soccer in my late 40's.

Badly damaged my hamstring early in my running comeback (on a trail run) but was able to recover well enough to get to Boston. Reinjured the hamstring in 2007 and am still not the same. The upside: I can talk for hours about patience and the joys of bird watching and ripping off landscaping ideas while on the run.

Thinking about moving to the womens' division in body sculpting.

Rollersking per se is not evil, but rocks on the paths (brought to us thanks to rednecks on ATVs) are vicious.The variety is partly out of necessity but also it's part of xc ski training which I do half the year anyway. The doctor still thinks it's early osteoarthitis and something that I'll just have to learn to manage. So my training is going to take a fairly radical turn next year, with a lot of cross training and PT type work, some light jogging, and then just jumping into the races.

runmore wrote:

Thanks for the warm and gracious welcome everyone!

NLS, awesome 5K race.

AK-52, I am amazed at the variety of your cross training. I took a note to never, ever rollerski! I hope your recovery continues to roll along.

AK-52, i look forward to you healing up, and then to hear how your proposed regimen plays out when you race. i guess the closest i've come to this tactic is reticently racing a 30K trail race just two-and-a-half weeks after my first post-stress-fracture jog a few years ago -- i had been cycling furiously all summer to retain as much fitness as possible. i was quite ready to drop out if i felt even an inkling of pain in my fibula (the site of that stress fracture), but all turned out fine with the leg, and i managed to nab second place/first masters female, too, which was a confidence booster after the time off.

runmore wrote:

I had one question on protocol. Do we just keep adding our weekly reports to this thread or will we be starting a new thread each week with a title something like "50+ Training Week Ending xxxxxx ? Just wondering how this works.

Typically, we start a new thread each week, but this isn't the first time that we've had this "run on" thread occur. So I like your proposal to add a posted date to the start of the thread each week. So this Sunday, I propose that we start the thread calling it:

"50+ Weekly Training Thread (for week ending 24-Oct-2010)"

I know there are subtlties that some go Sunday-Saturday, and some Monday-Sunday, but I think we can choose not to be OCD and just deal with that.

Thoughts?

This works for me.