Make that 9 runs. Apparently the O2 debt hasn't completely faded from this morning.
Make that 9 runs. Apparently the O2 debt hasn't completely faded from this morning.
Euro,
Thanks and good luck with the massage.
I must share something non running related. I've been working on a home improvement project since last June. Mind you I have zero experience in any trade. Today, the door I purchased fit perfectly in the space I measured for it months ago. Nearly as satisfying as the last week of training. :)
Impossible Dream wrote:
Today, the door I purchased fit perfectly in the space I measured for it months ago. Nearly as satisfying as the last week of training. :)
Remarkable! Let's just hope it expands/contracts at the same rate as the house around it. My last project involves a garden shed whose door fits perfectly in spring and fall, won't fit in the hole in summer, and is so loose it won't click shut in winter.
BTW I just got a neat iPhone app called 'Seconds' and used it for my circuits tonight. I set it for 40 sec work, 20 rest - just enough to get into the next exercise. Incredibly simple - you can pick a playlist for 'working' and one for 'resting', or the same playlist for both, and it beeps when it's time to change. First time I've tried it to music but it really helps keep the work rate up.
Meanwhile I used Runkeeper on Saturday while waiting for my Garmin to be fixed. Thanks for the tip, I'm impressed. I had it set to call every half mile and ended up doing hard/easy. Tweak Malmo's session to do half-mile, kilometre or mile reps, and Runkeeper will track it nicely and call the changes. Otherwise, if you just want to go on time, Seconds would do the job perfectly.
Wow, we dropped to page 3. Can't have that! Need a new topic...
Can I ask if anyone else here tries to get massages from time to time? What is your experience of it?
I don't mean the warm, gentle, pamper-me-and-empty-my-wallet kind, but the ones where someone with a deep knowledge of anatomy and thumbs of steel find dozens of agonizing sore and tight spots you didn't know you had, and leaves you feeling like you've been through a meat grinder - but two mornings after you leap out of bed feeling great. Or, at least, I hope I will on Wednesday.
My secret weapon is a young lady with a sports therapy degree (basically a full 4-year physical therapy degree but with more time on sports injuries and less on hospital rehab etc..), a 1500 time not much slower than mine, a client list including a house of Kenyans. She comes round to "service" my wife (who has back trouble) and I from time to time (which also gives us a great excuse for double entendres at dinner parties!).
When I was younger I quit a City job to train seriously, and to support myself I qualified as a sports massage therapist, and worked at it part time for 3 years. So naturally I'm a believer already. I used to find that I could train harder, more often, and get early warning of things that would otherwise have grown into injuries. My weak spot always used to be back trouble and I avoided that completely while getting regular massages.
It has taken a little while to get "management buy-in" at home for the expense of regular preventive treatments rather than just waiting until I'm too stiff to walk, but I plan on getting at least one every 2-3 weeks from now until May as this is the peak training period.
Sorry to change the subject, but courtesy of some shell fish I've had a set back. Hit me like a ton of bricks last night after I took my wife out for her birthday.
Motivated by this event I'm considering using this as my easy week. Thoughts? Recommendations on how to structure the easy week?
Hope it passes soon (and that your wife ordered something else...). Look on the bright side, maybe you'll drop a couple more pounds.
Definitely make this the easy week. You've earned one.
Thanks Euro,
Feeling much better as of around 4 pm yesterday afternoon when I finally ate.
Ran a very easy 2 miles on the TM last night.
Woke up to 6 inches of snow this morning, so I got my cross training in.
Very weird illness. I just started feeling lousy, flu like. Ran a temperature, got the chills, splitting headache. My dreams were halucinogenic, but no stomach pains, no throwing up. Didn't sleep a lot that night, but slept well the following day and last night.
I think I'll do a light weight work out and core tonight and 4 or 5 easy miles on the TM.
Impossible Dream wrote:
Ok, so I can be resourceful when I want to be. So whereas I do think the extra 10 lbs will be hard to lose, I can admit when I'm just wrong. Using varying sources (a body fat scale and 2 different calculators on the internet) I can confirm that my body fat % is between 14 and 15%. Not bad for the average fit soon to be 41 year old, but obviously indicating a fair amount of fat I can find and unload.
Given what I've read of your training and performance on this thread, that body fat number sounds very high. Those body fat scales (and the caliper measurements) are calibrated for the "average" body, and don't tend to work so well for athletes.
Source: my body fat was measured at 15% (tub immersion method), and I'm far, far less fit than you. Not particularly muscle-bound either.
Thanks for the very enjoyable and informative thread.
boston one day wrote:
Given what I've read of your training and performance on this thread, that body fat number sounds very high. Those body fat scales (and the caliper measurements) are calibrated for the "average" body, and don't tend to work so well for athletes.
Source: my body fat was measured at 15% (tub immersion method), and I'm far, far less fit than you. Not particularly muscle-bound either.
How old are you? It may matter a lot.
I'm 44. I used a set of impedance scales in my gym and it gave me a depressing 16-17% a couple of months ago; I am hoping I dropped a little, having lost 7-8lb. But as a young athlete with a 91% age grade who looked pretty skinny, I was still given a 12% figure. I have been told that all of us inexorably gain fat in our forties, especially inside around the kidneys, and from what I see, getting to the low teens at our age is about as good as it gets.
From everything I've read on this (and there's a good discussion as always in Racing Weight), body fat measurements are all estimates extrapolated from cutting up Victorian corpses long ago (even tub immersion); all you can hope for is to use a consistent method and track changes over time.
I hope you're feeling a bit better today.
I was in a rush and didn't spot the 'how to structure the easy week' part, sorry.
Personally I'd aim to keep in touch with all the basic elements - a few hill reps or strides at some point, a slightly shorter/easier tempo than usual - but cut the mileage back significantly by having a couple of mornings off.
Do you want to do the 3200 time trial this week? If so I'd suggest maybe some hills on the treadmill tonight to wake your legs up again after the illness, then the time trial on Saturday. It would be good to end this block with some sort of 'measurement'.
First, I never acknowledged VF Runner's post. Very sorry about that. I read it right after your post and meant to post a response and for what ever reason I never got around to it.
Congratulations on the mileage! That is just awesome! I'm also assuming you have maintained your consecutive days streak? I hope so, because I'm chasing you. 36 days and counting for me.
I agree on the need for core work. I think its even more important at my current age than it was back in the younger days.
Keep up the great work VF!
B.O.D.,
Welcome to the thread and thanks for posting. Feel free to contribute any time. I'm glad you have enjoyed the thread.
As to my body fat %, its likely that Euro is correct. Especially in my case, it is very likely that I'm packing some fat in with my internal organs considering my life of sloth up until December 2009. I'll continue to cautiously try and drop a bit of weight until it is very obvious I have no real fat to lose. At that point, I'll just play the hand I'm dealt. I figure that point will be when I have some muscle definition in my abdomen, which is a pretty rare site for me :)
eurodonkey wrote:
How old are you? It may matter a lot.
I'm 44. I used a set of impedance scales in my gym and it gave me a depressing 16-17% a couple of months ago; I am hoping I dropped a little, having lost 7-8lb. But as a young athlete with a 91% age grade who looked pretty skinny, I was still given a 12% figure. I have been told that all of us inexorably gain fat in our forties, especially inside around the kidneys, and from what I see, getting to the low teens at our age is about as good as it gets.
38 at the time of the test.
Please don't remind me about my love handles.
Euro,
Thanks for asking. I'm feeling just fine.
I'll throw in some strides at the end of my run this evening for sure.
I was planning on doing the regular circuit training tomorrow during my lunch hour at work.
Mileage I think will come in at UP to 60 for the week, probably a little less. I'm planning on up to 90+ for 4 of the 5 weeks leading up to April 16, BTW. I think I can handle that with out too much stress and besides that I think I'll benefit from it and I'll likely enjoy it as well.
I was planning on doing the 3200 m time trial on Saturday.
What do you all think, is sub 11 too ambitious of a goal for that TT?
Impossible Dream wrote:
Mileage I think will come in at UP to 60 for the week, probably a little less. I'm planning on up to 90+ for 4 of the 5 weeks leading up to April 16, BTW.
That'll be impressive. We'll have to be careful not to overdo the speedwork and circuits/weights if you're upping mileage too.
I was planning on doing the 3200 m time trial on Saturday.
What do you all think, is sub 11 too ambitious of a goal for that TT?
Looks about right to me. According to Jack D, 11:00 is worth 17:49 and it's eminently reasonable that you got 30sec faster in the past month.
This was a glaring omission on my part but can you remember how you trained in your youth when you did 15:35? Was it high mileages?
eurodonkey wrote:
This was a glaring omission on my part but can you remember how you trained in your youth when you did 15:35? Was it high mileages?
Definitely not a lot of high mileage. In fact, I first ran that time when I was a 20 yo College Sophomore. Average mileage for the era, but I didn't keep a log, so I can't give you exact numbers. I would guess 50 to 60 a week, with a lot of easy days run hard and a lot of 12 x 400 sessions with out any idea what pace should be run except for hard.
I followed that season up with a trip home for the summer and my own sort of summer of Malmo, where I did put in a lot of mileage, up to 90 miles per week. I ran a certified road 10k during that summer off of no formal speed training in 32:11. When I got back to campus in the late summer, I was in just fantastic shape and felt ready to conquer my conference in XC.
Although I did have a decent XC season that year, an untimely injury and some unfortunate issues with being able to focus my attention appropriately prevented what might have been an even better season.
I guess my long winded point is, I responded really well to that sustained stint of high mileage and I strongly believe I will react well again.
BTW - I repeated the 15:35 performance my senior year of college after a sub par junior year track season.
Thanks ID. No worries. In about an hour this will become day 42 in a row.
It's foreign territory for me. I suppose back in HS I went weeks/months at a time without missing a day, but since resuming my running career 11 years ago I don't think I've gone more than about 20 days in a row. Frankly I'm wondering if at some point I should take an off day just to catch up. For now I'm just monitoring how I feel closely and if I stop sensing improvement from week to week I may find a way to take a day off.
Kind of ironic as I think about it - it was breaking my streak of not running at least 3 days per week that allowed me to even begin this current streak.
As for core, I did a tiny bit on Mon. and I'll do just a bit more today. Not much as I'm still feeling pretty worn out from last week - particularly Sundays long MP effort.
Impossible Dream wrote:
I guess my long winded point is, I responded really well to that sustained stint of high mileage and I strongly believe I will react well again.
That makes sense. It would be brave to shoot for 90 if you'd never gone above 60 in your youth.
I think it's very important that we respect the mileage and don't over-tire you with highly specific quality sessions at the same time as building up mileage.
I am also living proof that you can still carry a little flab at 70mpw, but I'm sure that at 90 you'll be a racing snake.
Just so we're all on the same sheet of music with the mileage, if I run all my sessions as planned for the last 4 weeks or so, I'm in the mid 80's for mileage. Of course, I missed sessions every week over that time for various and sundry reasons.
So, I'm essentially planning 1 or 1.5 extra miles per day max (per day, not per session) and hopefully running all sessions to get me over 90.
More specifically. I'll probably bump my long run from 14 to 15.
I'll bump my morning runs from 4 to 4.5 and my evening sessions from 8 to 9, although time constraints might prevent that extra .5 in the mornings on some days.
Cumulatively, it will likely be less than 10 minutes of extra training time per day.
Well, I definitively answered the should I train for a marathon in the fall or not question this evening by registering for the LV Marathon! The clincher, its a night marathon on the strip and that just sounds like to much fun to pass up on December 4. Talked to my wife and we're going to make a family trip out of it.
So, I'll get through my peak 5 k race in August. Take a week off and then spend 3 full months putting in miles for the Marathon.
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