50+ Weekly Training Thread (for week ending Dec.26)

Crappy week here...

Started out pretty good with three 10 milers Sat/Sun/Tue. But Tuesdays run was on some slick roads and I really aggrivated my hamstring. Ran a real easy 6 on Wed but I felt like I was hobbling the last mile. Tested it Thursday and made it just a few steps. Took Thu/Fri/Sat off. Iced & rolled it out often. Feels great right now so I'm going to go out and give it another try this morning.

Tech for me? Kind of up and down. I do enjoy my Garmin on Tempos & long runs. Most other days I don't wear a watch. I always take along my IPod when I run alone. I do like DriFit shorts & shirts. In the summer my daily dress is Shoes/shorts/No shirt/Oakleys. Oh yea, I do have the Oakley Thump MP3 sunglasses too...Guess I'm more of a techy than not!

Have a good week...

Dave

Good to see someone else on the low tech end. Just an eight dollar watch to keep time.

Will admit to having decent clothing.

As I intimated last week, this week didn't happen; managed zero runs. Really felt weak and miserable through Wednesday, started feeling better Thurday, but didn't want to push it. Then we were on the road all day Friday, and Xmas day just didn't work out. Did get out today, but that'll be counted on next week's docket.

Sorry about your injury Racerdb. Hope you rebound quickly.

I like technology, but I'm not willing to pay for it. Even the tech shirts I have are from races that had gave them with the entry fee. I do have a Garmin, but the batteries have gone dead. I've been using a watch that does have a decent lap feature, so I'm not really missing the Garmin too much. The only thing I'm willing to spend money on is shoes.

Have a great week, everyone!

75 miles in 7 days. Most in some good hills as they provide the only reliable traction right now with sand/gravel my friends.

Decidedly low tech with devices. I rarely run with a watch and eschew most every accoutrement.

My winter technical running gear however borders lavish to keep me right in the elements. The Brooks Wanganui Fleece collection, hasn't failed me yet.

Pretty good week of 38 in 5 days between major weather events here in the mountains of Virginia. Glad we missed the blizzard racing up the east coast now. Hope all are safe there.

Managed to break my streak of not falling during a run yesterday on my Christmas run. I had not fallen since about 1979 and busted my butt good X2 on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the same spot: very odd.

I’m a network engineer, so tech-wise, I have gravitated to techy things. But I’ve paired it down big time as I don’t see tech as much of an advantage as I once did. I use my Garmin 405 mostly to give me the freedom to go off course, anywhere I want and I know how far I’ve gone. I like that a lot. I use my heart rate monitor in races and on the track. I’ve found I use it to make myself go harder than I feel like going.

Funny story: I have a friend who is one of those “Zen runners” who uses no tech. But, she did not like it when I would not tell her the 400 time on the track. My retort.. “Get a watch…” did not go over too well :-)

Got in maybe 12 miles on 3 runs; 2 spin train sessions of 25 minutes.

Notable cross training in the form of wood cutting 3 to 5 hours per day. Snow levels are at about 15" locally. Lugging a 15# saw, and bunching pulp is firming this old boy up in ways Pilates never dreamed of.

Seriously missing ski time, but business before pleasure.

Techwise; Have to admit I got sucked into Madison Ave's vortex for awhile. Now though, Garmin, I-pod, and Polar HR monitor are gathering dust. 8 years into my "comeback" intuitive and natural feel just right.

a good week for me with just under 65 miles in six days. four trail runs (one lasting 2:20), one road run with fartlek (2 min 30 sec of what i hoped was mile pace with 30 sec all out tacked on -- three times with full rest) and much of the rest of the 13-mi run at marathon pace), and one killer track workout, which went as follows:

30x 200m with sinusoidally varying jog rest of 60s, 45s, 30s, 15s, 30s, 45s, 60s, 45s, etc. this was run at or slightly faster than my recent mile race pace (i ran 5:51 earlier in the month and maintained 42-44s for this workout, although i was wheezing for the final couple of short-rest reps). whew!

as for the week's topic, i tend to think of myself as pretty basic when it comes to running, but maybe i'm techier in this dept than i consider myself: simple shoes, tech-fabric weather-appropriate clothing, and a pretty simple watch, albeit with chrono functions. i have a garmin forerunner, but very, very rarely use it. i do use an ipod shuffle for lectures or armband radio to listen to NPR (or both, in case the batteries on one craps out during the run).

let's hope for a healthy 2011 for all of us and our families.

A good, but modest, 27mi this week for me. The highlight was an AM trail run on the 24th with my sons, who put me close to my redline for an hour. Between torrential rains in SoCal and the holidays, I took several days off.

I have had my ups and downs on running tech. Currently, I am back to being old school with nothing more than my Timex IM watch. Since I rarely face Winter weather worse than the high 40s, I have minimal cold weather gear. It's usually an old race t-shirt, shorts, and whatever light weight trainers/spikeless XC shoes have been on sale for me.

I haven't had time to figure out what my mileage was the last two weeks, but it was pretty low. I ran every day, but one day I only got in 4 miles (run as a hard tempo run). My longest run was only 11-12, so I'm guessing that it was pretty low - high 40s-low 50s? Technically, these were my yearly "recovery" weeks coming after fall xc. If I want to run winter xc, however, I should be running more.

I didn't do ANYTHING to prepare for xc (okay, I bought like 3 presents) before I went to club nationals. Then my week back was truly hellish - lots and lots of work with the weekend devoted to tree cutting and cookie baking. This meant that the week before Christmas I was scrambling to get things ready with the results that I had little time to run or sleep. I went to midnight mass Christmas eve, which was lovely, but it was also at midnight (duh) which meant that I got home at 2 am and still had some more presents to wrap. Needless to say, it was short night of sleep. I barely did anything productive yesterday save my "long" run.

I hope things improve.

I am fairly low-tech. I own a Timex chrono watch (50 lap) which is falling apart, but which has two interval timers - useful for "repeats" run off road/track. I have good running clothing, but am in need of new shoes (trail and otherwise). No need for a Garmin and even the watch is kind of pointless on the trails. I have a headlamp for HTC and sometimes remember to wear it running at night (more for people to see me, however), but that's about it. Oh and if I can find them, I have a nice pair of sunglasses.

Best wishes for a healthy new year for all of us "geezers".

oh, yeah, headlamps! i keep trying new ones in the hope of finding one i truly love, especially since i recently have come to enjoy running the trails at night. between my husband and me, i think we probably have about ten! i really like the diminutive petzl e+lite for its lightweight and lack of bouncing, but it just doesn't put out enough light unless the trails are snow covered and therefore reflect well. i've otherwise been using the tikka plus 2 (i think), and it's really quite fine if the batteries are fresh. now that i'm no longer nervous about seeing when running at night, i have no good excuse (aside from sanity) for racing a 100 miler. um, we'll see what the year brings ;-)

muddy girl -- what's HTC?

like the rest of you who have been specific, i also use a timex 50-lap IM watch. it fits properly on my scrawny wrist, keeps time (in two time zones), captures my splits, and wakes me up when i need it to. it does other stuff too, but what more could i want in a watch?

at my husband's suggestion, my in-laws got me a new pair of injinjis and quite an attractive buff headwrap for xmas. very nice! otherwise, xmas for me was very low key -- that's what happens when you instead celebrate chanukah.

what goodies have you good folks received?

chappy cholidays to everyone.

NLS - HTC is "Hood to Coast" relay and it's in August. It's the event that Scott asked you to run for us last year. ;-) 197 miles, run by 12 people in 36 legs. 20 hours or less of running, not sleeping, laughing and bonding. Very, very stupid in terms of training, but a lot of fun nonetheless.

I have the same watch as you (mines pink) and I love it (except this version's strap tends to fall apart).

No running stuff for me this year -- but I'm eyeing the sales.

my bad -- i should have figured HTC out. sounds like loads of fun. if your team needs another old lady in the future, i'll be there if my travel schedule permits it. last year, it was very shortly after i came back after running the white river 50, so returning immediately to the northwest just didn't make huge sense at the time.

around here, and presumably in dozens of locations across the country, there will be a screening of a documentary on HTC in a couple of weeks. i'm looking forward to checking it out.

my (purple) watch band has held up well, but my husband, who has the men's model, has had fits with two pairs (midnight blue and black) of his when the ring that holds the end of the strap in place has broken.