Soup to Nuts - Letsrun Train Me

eurodonkey wrote:

Out of curiosity, do you think you now have more fat and less muscle, or do you think you have actually achieved the same body composition? And if it's not rude, were you a skinny runner shape in college, or a normal beer-drinking student shape? ;-) I'm really curious how lean 40-50 year olds can get...

Arms and shoulders are bigger with more muscle now, but quite a bit more ripped actually. Abs and chest are also probably slightly fitter now, but let's call that a draw. Legs are still just slightly less fit than when I was in my best shape. My quads were really big back then. John Cook at George Mason had me doing lots of step-ups on an 18-inch box back in the day.

By the way, I was actually one pound UNDER my old race weight this morning, but that is probably from setting my PR for miles run in a day yesterday. I was able to do runs of 10, 8, 8, and 6 miles (I had the day off from everything, so....) so my weight might end up slightly different tomorrow.

My pics from the half marathon:

Just curious (and I'm guessing I won't be the only one). Why a "quadruple" instead of a double.

Either way, nice job.

Yesterday's mileage took the place of a single long run in preparation for an upcoming marathon. I experimented with 3 x 10 miles about 3 weeks ago and I liked the results. Each run was out and back, and included a timed 1.5 mile segment where it was my intention to run in just under 10:00 every time. That was the plan anyway. Rest between was 2 to 3 hours, with carbs and protein immediately after each segment, to limit any muscle breakdown.

Unconventional and interesting. I'll be interested to see how that works out for you.

PhysMech wrote:

My pic from the half marathon:

http://www.brightroom.com/view_user_event.asp?EVENTID=77247&PWD=&BIB=1833

Ripped! Good work, Jon.

ID, I just re-read your OP so here is something I believe you MUST do to achieve your goal: You need to educate yourself as much as possible on certain processes taking place in your body and create a model for yourself of how your body works.

Due to your timeframe, you need to be juggling weight loss with body building pretty much on a daily and hourly basis. Since you can't really lose weight without SOME muscle breakdown, you want to become an expert at both efficient muscle building and controlled breakdown of fat.

I recommend reading "Nutrient Timing", by Ivy and Portman.

Pay particular attention to the Cortisol and Insulin hormones - that they do, how they do it, and what triggers them. Keep what you take away from your reading simple.

Also pay attention to the parts about fast and slow proteins.

There is SO much to learn, but this is a good place to start.

Thanks for the advice Physmech.

I'll pick that book up.

Regarding weight loss, my plan is to actively pursue weight loss as my primary goal until I get below 165 and then at that point shift my focus more towards training, initially putting quite a bit of mileage and gaining a lot of aerobic strength. Obviously, I'm doing a fair amount of supplementary work in terms of strength training now and I of course plan to maintain that.

I'm also not planning on drastically increasing my caloric intake. Rather, I'll increase gradually and maintain nutritional balance.

My thought is that I will continue to lose weight, but at a more gradual pace and I think I'm ok with that.

Thoughts on my approach are invited.....

Shifting gears here a little bit regarding training, I'm considering adding a couple of informal quality sessions to my training once I hit my next weight goal of 169. These would consist of a couple days a week where I let the pace drift down to what ever feels good. The remaining sessions of the week would be at a prescribed easy pace, in line with the Daniels formula pacing charts. The purpose of these sessions would be to allow me to start feeling again what it is like to run with a little more pace and prepare me mentally/physically for quality sessions which are likely a few months or more down the road.

Thoughts on this approach are also invited....

Thanks for all the great input folks!

You might not like my tone, but my advice to you is that you are going about this the wrong way.

You can train hard, run fast AND lose weight all in one. You are only a few weeks away from your goal weight whicheve method of weigh loss you use. But you are months away from good race times, so why waste time with all that slow running?

After a fast run, your body uses metabolizes fat at an accelerated rate for many hours. Forget about all that 'Fat burning zone heart rate' nonsense that you see in glossy magazines and gym wall charts.

Yeah, forget all that stuff that's been published and follow the advice of an anonymous person on the Internet.

Impossible Dream wrote:

Regarding weight loss, my plan is to actively pursue weight loss as my primary goal until I get below 165...

Man, this post is really on the right track. But remember, all the running you do before you get to 165 has definite value which you didn't mention and should not forget. And it should be the focus of how you think about it right now, IMO. Every little bit of running has value, because...

Every time you run early in this comeback conditions your body to handle more running.

Really fit runners would have to strap on a weight vest to get the kind of advantage you just have naturally. I guess it's all in how you look at it, and a REALLY positive attitude will help you. So you are part of a research project which is studying comeback runners who wear weight vests permanently as part of their training.

Get it?

PhysMech wrote:

Man, this post is really on the right track. But remember, all the running you do before you get to 165 has definite value which you didn't mention and should not forget. And it should be the focus of how you think about it right now, IMO. Every little bit of running has value, because...

Every time you run early in this comeback conditions your body to handle more running.

Really fit runners would have to strap on a weight vest to get the kind of advantage you just have naturally. I guess it's all in how you look at it, and a REALLY positive attitude will help you. So you are part of a research project which is studying comeback runners who wear weight vests permanently as part of their training.

Get it?

That had occurred to me, PhysMech. :)

I do feel as if I'm getting very fit in the process of dropping this lard.

It's a weight vest, not lard. I see this positive thinking thing might take some time. :)

Impossible Dream wrote:

Regarding weight loss, my plan is to actively pursue weight loss as my primary goal until I get below 165 and then at that point shift my focus more towards ...quite a bit of mileage...

I figure from your weekly summary that you are doing about 65mpw. That's pretty impressive for BEFORE you focus on it!

How did you feel after the hill sprints? Anything sore?

I got a good chuckle out of that post.

Is that 65 mpw correct ID? If so, that is already a good start.

T -3 days for me. I'm hoping to go back to running on Monday since that is when my marathon training is supposed to start. I intentionally hacked up a new pair of shoes today to take away any possible heel pressure when I go back to it. Not sure I'll be at 100%, but I'm way closer than I've been in the last month or two.

Euro,

The mileage doesn't really seem all that difficult at this point. Obviously the easy pace has a fair amount to do with that. The hardest part is getting up in the morning to get that time in, but its much harder to be fat and do just about anything physical, so I just remind myself of that.

I feel fine after the sprints. From experience, though, I'm not out of the woods yet in terms of potentially being sore.

BTW - I did these by setting my incline to 12, then walking on the treadmill at 4 mph. I have mph buttons on my treadmill that allow me to go right to whatever increment I want without manually increasing the speed, so as I'm walking, I just punched it up to 11 mph... It took around 10 sec or so for the belt to get up to speed and then I would continue for 12 sec or so, the total iteration from acceleration to me jumping off the belt around 20 to 25 sec per rep.

VF Runner wrote:

Is that 65 mpw correct ID? If so, that is already a good start.

Measuring Sunday to Saturday of this week, I'll probably hit 74 miles, maybe a couple extra.

This might not be that novel an approach, but I don't anticipate having a lot more than 90 minutes on week days to run, so when I'm looking to increase mileage, its going to come about as a result of my pace dropping. I've got a little room for that now, obviously.

With a little extra mileage on the weekends, I think it will be reasonable to get into the 90's this year for mileage.

BTW - VF good luck with that heel. Don't rush it.

Impossible Dream wrote:

These would consist of a couple days a week where I let the pace drift down to what ever feels good....

You're ready for it. You are now normal weight by "normal person" standards; I've trained hard at your weight despite being an inch shorter.

Maybe time to read 'Summer of Malmo' - look this up if you don't know it. Or start a Daniels schedule (the first 6 weeks of which is pretty easy and similar to what you discuss).

I would suggest to cycle through a wide variety of paces. You can literally do anything, from hill sprints to 100m strides up to mile reps. The two I'd do most of are

1. tempo - have a 3-mile stretch where you bring the pace down gradually. You might feel like doing 7:15 ay first, but you'll adapt quickly.

2. shorter stuff e.g. 30 seconds fast, 1 min easy, many reps, to get legs turning over

Whatever you do, a good yardstick in the "early base" period is to stop at a point where you are pretty damned sure you could do the whole session again if you had to. If still on the treadmill, vary inclines as well as speeds. One "hard" day then two easy ones at first.

BTW I have been calorie counting since Monday morning. Dropped 1.5kg (3lb) so far - now back at my pre-Christmas weight of 74.5kg. It will probably get a bit harder soon...

Impossible Dream wrote:

...but its much harder to be fat...

Don't make me smack you!