Soup to Nuts - Letsrun Train Me

OK, time to post some plans up for the season ahead...all feedback welcome. If I'm getting overambitious

On reflection, I guess I had a really good season.

- no major time off with injuries (just over a week was the worst)

- 2700 miles in the year, up with my best years

- got down from 76kg to 71 for my peak race. I now dare to wear speedos in public, although mostly to embarrass my kids! (Sadly the end-of-summer beers and barbecues have pushed me back up a little...)

- Worked up to 22nd place in my local cross-country league; - got two open-age-group county medals on the track (5000m bronze, 3000s/c silver), which really should not happen to an old geezer, but if the youth of today wants to sit on their arses, that's their lookout!

- 15:36 5000 and 57.1 for 400m at two different ends of the season

- 2:08, 4:15 and 9:11 for 800, 1500 and 3000

On the minus side...

- I had major interruptions with travel in mid-summer, trying to hold 'racing shape' for 6 weeks of travelling but not really managing. This should be different.

- my shins and calves have been in a fairly horrible state for months. I thought I had a heel bruise from spikes but turned out it was plantar fasciitis. I think this resulted in poor form with my 'springs collapsing'. Now getting some massages and doing a ton of lower leg exercises to sort this out.

- family life often made it very hard to get to midweek or distant races. This won't change

The first thing that strikes me is that my times for 800/1500/3000 are out of line with 400/5000 and really ought to be way better. If I use Horwill's rule (4 sec/lap difference for 4 minute milers, 4:30 for a 4:30 miler I guess) it creates a perfect fit from the 400 to the 5000, and suggests I should have run 2:03, 4:08 and 8:50ish. So if I can achieve the same fitness but 'execute the season' better, those would be great times to aim for.

The bigger question is whether any more improvement in either 5k time or top speed is possible, and what I should do to try and elicit them.

My season involves doing club cross-country until mid-February, spring road relays and then track kicks off again in May. The way the UK year works, Oct-Nov-Dec are like a 'summer of Malmo'. So as I see it there is lots of time for quality work later on. I was thinking of three key goals between now and Christmas:

1. maintain muscular health - calves and ankles need to be springy again

2. try to achieve a higher mileage and fully adapt to it, while still keeping up a couple of '80% effort' sessions each week. Averaging above 70 with the odd week in the 80s would be nice!

3. try to achieve higher levels of leg strength and power.

Naturally (2) and (3) conflict, but with the approach I am taking to strength work I've already hit a lifetime squat best in 3-4 weeks so I think I'll keep it up a bit longer.

In terms of sessions:

Most days:

- run to work and back (4-6 miles each way).

- some strength or mobility work of the non-sweaty variety during breaks at the office or at home in the evening. Strength stuff is in the other thread referenced recently...

Tuesday or Wednesday:

- fartlek or hill reps or longer reps on grass/dirt, preferably undulating. The reps vary - my coach has a monthly rotation of sessions - and I don't care much if they are long or short. I am lucky and can run at lunchtime once or twice a week, either getting out into the park or (if weather really sucks) hitting a treadmill for some long reps on autopilot. Training with a group sometimes happens on Tuesday night, but I can't plan on it.

Saturday: pick one of...

- a cross-country race (we have lots around here),

- a 5k time trial on dirt (happens every Saturday 2 miles from home at 09:00)

- a controlled tempo

Other stuff: my route home from the office in winter takes in about 5 hills, so try to slot in 3-4 fast strides uphill once or twice a week (once my calves are sorted) if I have not managed to tack these onto my sessions.

If anyone thinks I'm being overzealous, missing anything or heading in the wrong direction I would definitely welcome criticism and ideas....

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And don't be shy about posting up your own plans!

I'm not shy, but you sure have me beat (currently - I'm working on being more optimistic) on organization, so I don't have my own plan to post yet.

I notice you don't mention any kind of long run. Was that an omission, or are you really not doing a specific long run? For 5k and down, but with the volume you are talking about, I can see not needing a single run of more than 10 miles so mostly I am just curious. And the way you are going about it, I don't see (2) and (3) as that much of a conflict.

I am immediately taking one thought from the strength thread - do a little bit every day instead of figuring out when to do more occasionally. I think that will help me get good habits going. The other general thought I have is "Run as much as possible" - doubles, earlier in the morning, longer, more reps ... whatever. It's going to start getting colder/windier etc here, so any kind of PR/peak performance before march would be a long shot. I guess that almost means it's time for a winter of Malmo.

VF Runner wrote:

I notice you don't mention any kind of long run. Was that an omission, or are you really not doing a specific long run?

Good point.

I often tend to miss mileage targets because I'm planning on a 10:00 Sunday run with the local group and it doesn't happen due to family stuff. I'm not hard enough to get up at 7am and miss my only lie-in of the week either ;-) I'll probably aim to get in a 12-miler every second week - either a midweek one on the way to work, or a Sunday run if there is nothing on the Saturday.

A surprising number of winter tempo/interval sessions ended up being 11-12 miles anyway last year. I presume that counts!

eurodonkey wrote:

I'm not hard enough to get up at 7am and miss my only lie-in of the week either ;-)

I used to feel this way also. The odd thing was even at my highest mileage points, on days when I left the alarm off and wanted to sleep in, I'd still wake up at the same time. I'm finally giving in, getting up a bit earlier and running around 6:30am whenever I can. It's already helping with both getting more mileage in AND having more family time.

eurodonkey wrote:

A surprising number of winter tempo/interval sessions ended up being 11-12 miles anyway last year. I presume that counts!

If it's like the 10x800 I did last night with w/u and c/d that adds up to 11.5 miles but takes two hours, no. If it's a 2-3 mi. w/u straight into a 6-7 mile tempo session continuously followed by a 2-3 mi. c/d, yes.

Nice to see this thread is active again. Some thoughts on some recent posts:

DW, your post on apparent muscle/tendon overcompensation is interesting. I've been having some similar issues lately and I attribute it to too many changes in too short of a time. Between strength training with some new focus, actively doing some new stretches, and some mechanical changes, some of my joints seem a bit imbalanced and strained at times. Especially the tendons and connective tissues.

lurker, you are right. A year is a long time. And the up and down cycles a lot of us have experienced this last year are quite telling. It seems running progress is only as fast as our weakest link.

Euro, your performances this last year have been very impressive. Between family and running your business, you have been very inspiring to me to stay focused and goal oriented with running and other things in my life. (BTW Euro, I have not gotten to Python yet, but the list of programming/DB/internet technologies I've been exploring is getting quite long!)

As for me, I took some time off after running THE Boston (yeah, I'm calling 2011 that now). No more marathons planned this year, and maybe not ever. I did some experimenting with diet this summer and have ended back where I started - no wheat or dairy, especially withing 5 days of a race. Fitness is excellent now - able to maintain my college racing weight without struggle!

I had an interruption this summer when I tried to get ready for a mile road race after my time off and ended up rushing into some hard and fast workouts. Knee tendon strains and some more time off followed.

Despite these interruptions, the upper body mechanical changes mentioned earlier are producing positive results. Each race is producing a slightly higher age graded result. I was able to run a certain half marathon six minutes faster than last year and it actually felt easier as well.

PhysMech wrote:

I was able to run a certain half marathon six minutes faster than last year and it actually felt easier as well.

A 30-second-per-mile improvement in a year is very nice work!

I'm totally with you on doing less marathons. I always thought the "suffering to reward" ratio was all wrong ;-)

Best wishes to everyone here for Christmas and New Year!

I just thought I'd check in quickly to see if everyone's well and for a little public self-flagellation. Impossible Dream, if you see this, it would be great to know you're alive and well, whether you are running or not!

bump

Mush wrote:

bump

Bump

Looks like soup to nuts turned into nuts to soup.

Seriously1 how does a guy just "drop off" w/o letting all of those who followed him here on this board know wtf was going on?

Menu man wrote:

Looks like soup to nuts turned into nuts to soup.

Seriously1 how does a guy just "drop off" w/o letting all of those who followed him here on this board know wtf was going on?

This man is correct. It's a 50 page thread dude, give us an update!

show us some love brah, get back on the train

1. Going balls to wall rarely ends well.

2. A slow build saves lives.

update please

Any chance of an update my brother?

I miss you

Menu man wrote:

Seriously1 how does a guy just "drop off" w/o letting all of those who followed him here on this board know wtf was going on?

Going on about 3 years since this thread was started.

So many lessons to be learned.

So many questions... including the one above.

Did anybody that has his email address ever even get an reply? Amazing if no.

This thread was very memorable. Nice to see the progression, but many on page 1 seem to have nailed it.

I'd love to know how it all finished.