50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

l2b, check that your pain isn't related to the psoas. Good luck with it.

My week

103km

Sun: 26km (5.10/km). Just felt great out the door and ran faster than usual for this hilly off road loop.

Mon: 11km easy

Tues: Mona fartlek - (averaged 4min/km)

Wed: 18km + core etc.

Thurs: 8 x 400 (200 float). began the 400s at 90secs and worked down to 84. Float 200s were all 50secs.

Fri: 8km easy

Sat: 8km "tempo" (4.05).

Wife started back to work part time this week and I have taken leave from my work place to take care of our 4 month old. Running fitting around their schedules rather than my own. Running in 30-36C temperatures each day (apart from Thursday and the weekends I ran at lunchtime when my wife returned from the coal face) was fun! Happier with the workouts this week and I felt much better on the track than the previous week.

A couple of late nights in the week as well. On tuesday a few of the other old farts from my club and I drove to a nearby rock festival to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse... Home in bed by 3am and then up at 6am to feed the boy - no rest for the wicked...

Ive another week of parental leave (which is simply a blast) and then off to Moscow.

@Ken, mate, great to see you continuing to improve- you must be one of the few folks who get faster when putting on weight :-).

Great week to you all.

DrT

Alan -

Great idea on switching back and forth on the diet and measure results. You are not the first to tell me that maybe her guidance is not entirely correct. My dad and husband, the doctors, roll their eyes at me whenever I discuss. But I was having pretty debilitating stomach issues, including alot of nausea, that literally have left me at the point where I no longer wanted to run. So the desperate will do almost anything....

Good news, week 2 and stomach issues virtually gone. A tad of nausea still remains at high mileage. Too early to tell if it is a permanent solution. Maybe its like massage, ice baths, etc... it works if you think it does?

Noticed also that Desiree Davila finished near the top on the Bix7. Hope that means she is coming back. I've always enjoyed watching her run. Such a tough competitor. Joan Benoit - what an inspiring athlete.

Second week in a row of 35 miles total, including an 11 miler on Sunday. Off to do 1000's today, hope for 5 but the humid and warm weather can be tiring. Got to clean house for my brother's visit this weekend, cheers! ML

Sure am enjoying that big 'ol bag of Kansas coffee Mike. Please say "hello" to Jane for.

KP

You're welcome and I will pass on the hello.

Turned very humid today after the rains, so we're postponing our 1000's until Thursday. The legs are not recovered yet from Sunday!

GreteHund wrote:

But I was having pretty debilitating stomach issues, including alot of nausea

Gluten?

Hear, hear!

That's awesome! Inspire, encourage, cajole, etc. All the runners I know are so cool, ergo your daughter is now cool.

What is your estimated accuracy of the 1500m on this track?

Please be real! j/k

StrengthRunFaster wrote:What is your estimated accuracy of the 1500m on this track?

Please be real! j/k

Well, I personally went out there with a 30m tape measure and painstakingly went around the entire track measuring it to be 375m. I'd conservatively estimate that I could have been off by as much as a meter (that'd be 8cm per measurement systematically off), so could be 1496m, it could be 1504m. I've been meaning to get my buddy to bring his wheel out as a cross-check, but just haven't gotten around to it.

Lane 4 without a stagger should be about 400m to the lap.

Nope. 1) The lanes are not even a meter wide, and 2) there is no lane 4.....it's a goofy little track, clearly just meant for gym class.

No offense, but this is a pretty banal topic. I'd rather hear some discussion regarding Charlie's decomposition of training strategies.

Charlie, what I'm reading sounds more like fine tuning to me....as in how to maximize what you've got. I'm just suggesting that one can get most the way there just by staying injury free, mixing in some speed (of various types) and working on strength and form on the side. How you do it is far less important than simply doing it....and being mindful to engage those basic elements consistently. Then, what I'm wondering is if the body doesn't adapt and plateau (and possibly develop overuse injuries or imbalances) if one doesn't purposely mix up the routines a bit from time to time. Of course, if you change up too much, too fast, that would have it's own consequences. (Just thinking out loud here.)

Thanks, Alan. She is now getting to the point where she gets antsy if she doesn't go for a run two days in a row. :-)

I can't say the same for me. I may be out for a bit more. This gut thing has me a little worried, and I don't want to tempt it, so I'm backing off until I have a better handle what' going on.

I was wondering the same thing.

Ken, great to hear that you're starting to get your legs back under you. Knowing your tenacity, I shouldn't be surprised. Still sending good vibes your way!

OK, so much for my quick "study break"; I better get back to writing my final exams for my summer classes.

Cheers!

lucKY2b wrote:

Seems I might be at the onset of a sport’s hernia (See

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3154758

and links therein, as one of many threads on the topic.). Note: they say it’s not really a hernia, just a strain in the adductor region. So I've decided to take a few days off, read up on it and try to understand it, before it becomes a serious issue. Hopefully I've not already crossed that threshold, and it seems from what I've been reading, I’m not that far along; it doesn't hurt to sneeze, for example. It’s about time to schedule a full physical anyways, so maybe I can get hooked in to see a PT, as well.

I have a similar injury in the right groin from December 2009 that has never completely healed. I've written about it before but not in detail.

The MKOT is fascinating. Since spraining my left ankle last October, with loss of mobility there, I guess I've been short-stepping the left leg a little, at least it feels like that on any slight grade. No choice there. To balance that out my left elbow has decided on its own to drift away from my body. At the same time my right groin injury has worsened again, particularly noticeable after 45 minutes of running.

Here's the fun part. I decided to "fix" my left arm swing, and it worked! My right groin felt much better on the next couple of runs. The bad news is that my right hamstring started getting sore, even worse than the groin before. I've never had any hamstring issues in any sport. I gave up on my fix and let the left arm do what it wants. The hamstring quickly recovered and the groin is sore again. My new strategy is to lavish TLC on the left ankle and hope the groin improves in tandem.

MKOP not "MKOT". Apologies to muddy girl.

Training let us talk about training...

Ed Whitlock ran a 4:02 1500 in 1975. This is an age graded 93 percent. He did this off what he calls track training.

He took his fifties off.

Ed ran a 2:54 at age 73. This is an age graded 100 percent.

He did this off daily long runs of 2 hours at a slow pace. His speed work was frequent races.

The LSD mixed with frequent racing seems to have worked for Mr. Whitlock.

I can't take LSD but long up hill hike are just wonderful.

Also the uphill sprints feel really good.

I know how to keep the tempo stuff on the back burner.

Looking forward to some good results by next spring.

Brief thoughts on training. My goal, right now, is a Boston Qualifier (sub 3:55) in Des Moines. My PR in the marathon is a 2:54 from 1984. I have reached 35 miles/week, and can manage a track session and a long run, all else is "whatever" miles, sometimes a hill to run over. At age 62, with 36 years and over 70,000 miles on my legs, I have to mind the slower recovery, and the fact that my right heel is giving me notice, though it doesn't feel like PF (had it in left) it feels more like a tendon that runs perpendicular to the foot. I have a heel cushion that seems to be VERY slowly helping that I am walking in many days at work (running shoe store). My backround is in ex phys, but my training is simple, do what the legs need/want to do to reach the goal.

I have never done heartrate training, and have done ok by perceived effort training (hard days hard, easy days at whatever level the legs feel like going). Progress in the 1000's with a goal of 10 total (I like them as a VO2max workout) and will attempt 5 today (4 last week, started with 3 the week before) and gradual increase in long run miles every week to two weeks. Felt tired just in the last quarter mile of the 11 last Sunday, so believe 12 or 13 is possible this Sunday. Hope to reach at least 17 or 18, if not a 20 miler by 3 weeks before Oct. 20 marathon. Only a couple races planned, a 10 km in mid-Sept is the longest, maybe a 5 kn or two otherwise (hard to recover from them for a long run the next day, anymore). Hope to get over 40 miles/week consistently, if my legs hold up, and that would be a lot for me now (did 70's consistently in my prime).

There's my training, very simple, but don't seem to handle much more, and it's fun for me, and motivating. Willing to hear comments and thoughts from this wonderful thread of good people.

lucKY2b wrote:

StrengthRunFaster wrote:What is your estimated accuracy of the 1500m on this track?

Please be real! j/k

Well, I personally went out there with a 30m tape measure and painstakingly went around the entire track measuring it to be 375m. I'd conservatively estimate that I could have been off by as much as a meter (that'd be 8cm per measurement systematically off), so could be 1496m, it could be 1504m. I've been meaning to get my buddy to bring his wheel out as a cross-check, but just haven't gotten around to it.

Have you measured the track using gmap-pedometer.com?

Since my running goals are not lofty, my training practices can be simple: Run a lot. Try different things. If any of those things leads to injury, stop doing it. Work on my weaknesses. Pain is not the same as injury. Recognize that sometimes the best training is no training.When I was training with ambitious goals (not running) there were theoretical complications.(1) What feels best as training may not be doing any good. There are many reasons why this may be so, the one I have in mind is that what feels best comes from exercising my strengths, whereas it's my weaknesses that lead to failure in competition.(2) Certain types of essential (in the long term, like years) training would lead to a worsening of performance (in the short term, like seasons). What happened is training system A depressed system B. I don't mean depressed by neglecting system B, I mean actually harming the function of system B. So my solution was to train system A cyclically. (Being a little cagey here with "A" and "B", I don't want to reveal too much.)

lucKY2b wrote:

Then, what I'm wondering is if the body doesn't adapt and plateau (and possibly develop overuse injuries or imbalances) if one doesn't purposely mix up the routines a bit from time to time. Of course, if you change up too much, too fast, that would have it's own consequences. (Just thinking out loud here.)

I'm a little suspicious of any theory that considers adaptation a negative. Canova I think also has this idea. To my mind, adaptation precludes overuse injuries and imbalances, those would arise from a failure to adapt to the training. Also, I think it's a little greedy to go after the super-compensation rather than being satisfied with the adaptation. Borrowing a little from Vedanta, in training you have the building up, the maintaining, and the tearing down. You need all three phases. The building up should always proceed from the maintenance phase. Call it a plateau if you want. If you build and build and build, that's when injuries happen in my experience. The plateau is only frustrating if you don't recognize it as an inevitable and necessary stage to further improvement. Youngsters frequently quit when they reach their first plateau, before that they were always improving. Then at the plateau they struggle heroically to continue the previous trend, make things worse and can't handle it. The tearing down is what nobody wants to do. It feels like a loss, wasteful of previous effort. (Was tempted to mention Lydiard here but it would probably be the death of the M50+ thread!)

StrengthRunFaster wrote:

lucKY2b wrote:

Well, I personally went out there with a 30m tape measure and painstakingly went around the entire track measuring it to be 375m. I'd conservatively estimate that I could have been off by as much as a meter (that'd be 8cm per measurement systematically off), so could be 1496m, it could be 1504m. I've been meaning to get my buddy to bring his wheel out as a cross-check, but just haven't gotten around to it.

Have you measured the track using gmap-pedometer.com?

I measured this "track" some time ago as 376.5 m using a wheel. Probably had I taken more care to get as close as possible to the inner edge, it might have been closer to 375m.

I prefer to do my workouts on grass, though. It's easier on the legs.

StrengthRunFaster wrote:Have you measured the track using gmap-pedometer.com?

Can't---the satellite image pre-dates the track. There's a smaller 200m or so track behind the elementary school (that must be what you are thinking we're using, but it isn't); the field behind the middle school is undeveloped in the photo. Thanks for the confirmation, "the buddy", is that you C.Y.?

As one last piece on the history of this measurement, you can go back to page 55 of this thread, I've already talked about it in some depth.

This is getting silly. Can we please move on?