50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Week 242: 8 hours 6 minutes in 7 runs.

Mon - 1 hr easy

Tue - long run 20.27km in 2:00:34

Wed - 1 hr slow

Thu - 1 hr easy

Fri - 1 hr easy

Sat - tempo run 12.88 km in 1:06:44

Sun - 1 hr easy

Tuesday morning it was so cold my water bottle froze, and I also had ice inside my jacket and gloves. First time I have done a long run on a weekday. It was a tough day at work after. I needed a nap!

The idea is to not do a 5K-race and a long run on the same weekend. I will sometimes be doing long runs Tues+Sat instead of Sat+Sat+Sat (2x LR in 21 days instead of 3x). The non-race non-LR Saturday will be a workout of some type....

This Saturday it was a tempo run, 35 mins warmup, 20 mins at Daniels T-pace (4:29/km), 10 mins cooldown was the plan. I was a little slow (4:48) for 8 mins, found the pace (4:28-9) for the last 12.

It's early days, but I think not doing a long run every Saturday is already helping me. Felt very good on my easy run today (the weather helped).

Steve Prefontaine's 65th birthday would be tomorrow...shouldn't banks, schools and post offices be closed?

Countdown to 60...just 98 days remaining.

Only 31 miles this week but included 2 track workouts and an intense 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 with just 1:00 recovery run...not a recovery jog, but run...ouch!

Opening with 10,000 meters track race in 3 weeks in an effort to rank USA top 25 at 800, 1500, mile, 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000...tall task.

Whoever said "if your dreams don't scare you, then you're just not dreaming big enough" was an utter genius, as I am nothing if not petrified ;)

Hope that your upcoming week is one of great progress...train don't strain

Your pal,

MF

I had a steady week of running and an action-packed weekend. I spent most of Saturday at my granddaughter's swim meet, at which my younger son and his girl friend finally announced they were engaged after being together for about 10 years now. This morning I had to shorten my run so my wife and I could go supervise my 4 yr old grandson while my son, daughter-in-law ( who swam yesterday) and 7 yr old granddaughter ran a 5K which raised funds for my granddaughter's school. My son ran with my granddaughter and my d-in-law ran it seriously, ending up 1st woman in 18:12.

I stuck pretty closely to my plan to run 8 miles in 90 minutes every day for 3 weeks starting this week. Now that I am getting heart rate data with my Garmin 235 I find that my easy runs probably have not been easy enough. My calves are still tight but getting a little better day by day. My week went like this,

M - 8 miles 11:11/mi, HR 159

T - 8 miles 10:36/mi, HR 169

W - 8 miles 10:41/mi, HR 156

Th - 8 miles 10:26/mi, HR 164

F - 8 miles 10:33/mi, HR 164

S - 8 miles 10:07/mi, HR 166

Su - 4 miles 9:11/mi, HR 103

I'm not sure why my heart rate was so much lower for this morning's shorter run, but I think that getting back down to 8:30-9:00 pace is much more efficient for me if my calves hold up at that pace.

We are lucky to have only a few inches of snow here. Strong wind over the weekend was a more serious problem.

M: off.

T: 7 miles.

W: 12 miles. (9th-11th miles @ 7:53-7:47-7:41).

R: 7 miles.

F: 9 miles.

SA: 7 miles.

SU: 18.9 miles. (last mile @ 7:17)

This is probably as much as I am willing to run in singles. Time to resume doubles, but a cutback week before that.

I don't believe your HR data. My max was 185 in 2011. 10:30 pace will have me at 115-120, 9:30 pace gets 130-135, maybe drifting to 140 by the end of a long run. 103 I might see on a run-walk, 165 on a tempo run.

Good running plan though.

Hey old guy II

I've been running basically 8 miles a day every day since December 2nd. Running steady mileage and not taking days off is a great way to really pile on the miles. I've been feeling good, nice even energy levels throughout the week. I have done a bit too much and there is something going on with my leg. Reducing my daily mileage this week from 14 kms to 12kms seems to be giving it the small amount of rest it needs to heal. As for the heart rate data, my max is 172 and on my easy runs, which are about 8min pace, I am typically around 120. My 5km racing heart rate is not as high as your training runs. It seems like your heart rate monitor might be picking up your cadence, which apparently can happen.

Re your confusion on hear rate being lower.

Seriously consider whether the wrist band was tight enough. I have noticed the same 'lower' hear rate when I'm obviously in the 140's or higher. After adjusting wrist band heart rate comes back up. ;).

Cheers

Reboot runner wrote:

Re your confusion on hear rate being lower.

Seriously consider whether the wrist band was tight enough. I have noticed the same 'lower' hear rate when I'm obviously in the 140's or higher. After adjusting wrist band heart rate comes back up. ;).

Cheers

That is a good reminder, but I learned that lesson fairly soon after I got the 235 when I did a run with my son that had me totally aerobically red-lined but HR was reading about 105. On that run I slowed down, tightened the wrist band and my HR jumped to 175.

I suspect that the lower HR mainly was due to starting off with no warm up and the pace was not aerobically that difficult for me, so HR was increasing slowly. My current limiting factor on pace is my fragile gastrocs/soleus muscles which still are healing from a strain and not very strong, rather than any lack of cardiovascular fitness.

kevin402can wrote:

Hey old guy II

I've been running basically 8 miles a day every day since December 2nd. Running steady mileage and not taking days off is a great way to really pile on the miles. I've been feeling good, nice even energy levels throughout the week. I have done a bit too much and there is something going on with my leg. Reducing my daily mileage this week from 14 kms to 12kms seems to be giving it the small amount of rest it needs to heal.

Sounds about right. From Dec 2 is 7-8 weeks, right? :) As old guy II was saying not long ago, something goes wrong after 8-9 weeks of steady mileage. Try a fallback week of 75% volume every fourth week. See how that goes.

Alan Bennet wrote:

[quote]kevin402can wrote:

. Try a fallback week of 75% volume every fourth week. See how that goes.

You should have told me that three weeks ago. Of course three weeks ago I wouldn't have listened, everything was going great. It will become a regular part of my planning now though. I don't think my leg problem is serious but refusing to listen to warning signs is not clever.

I am coming off a seven month hamstring injury. I am an 800/1500m runnier and would like to do a race to test my progress. I have two choices for a mile race this weekend.

One is at a state of the art indoor track and would be fast and very intense. I have only run one indoor race before.

The other is at an outdoor track (no snow where I am at), would probably also be fast but not as intense.

My questions:

1) Is January too soon or the wrong time to be running a mile? I have been doing some 800s, 1600s and tempo runs in training. My first race is in April and the bulk of my season falls in June and July because that's when the masters races are.

2) Is an indoor mile better than outdoor?

I am self-coached. I tried getting a coach and it didn't work out, probably because of my age, 50+. I'm leaning toward the outdoor mile this weekend but it would help to have someone else's opinion. Thanks, Cupcake

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over, but expecting different results.

kevin402can wrote:

Hey old guy II

I've been running basically 8 miles a day every day since December 2nd. Running steady mileage and not taking days off is a great way to really pile on the miles. I've been feeling good, nice even energy levels throughout the week. I have done a bit too much and there is something going on with my leg. Reducing my daily mileage this week from 14 kms to 12kms seems to be giving it the small amount of rest it needs to heal. As for the heart rate data, my max is 172 and on my easy runs, which are about 8min pace, I am typically around 120. My 5km racing heart rate is not as high as your training runs. It seems like your heart rate monitor might be picking up your cadence, which apparently can happen.

Alan has good advice. My belief is that people at our age who still are trying to train to be competitive are far more likely to cross the line to fatigue and overtraining than undertraining. While I don't like to back down from mileage or pace when things seem to be going well, programmed down weeks are a prudent idea.

I am pretty comfortable that I am getting good heart rate data from my new 235. In my late 40s I trained for a couple of years with Polar heart monitors until I got frustrated with wearing the chest strap and the all too frequent batteries dying or sending unit breaking in the chest strap. Back then my max heart rate was 195, and I would race 5ks at 187-189 HR, and 10ks at 185-187 HR. My current HR readings are consistent with what I was doing back then, just at a pace about 1min/mile slower now :>(

elviejo wrote:

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Got a track 5,000 this coming Saturday. I'm not in the shape I was at the end of 2015 when I was running in the low 19's. I'll be doing well to get under 19:45 for this one, I think.

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Quoting my own post ... Ha, ran 19:45.3!! Sucks to be old and you KNOW what you're gonna run. Not a lot of mystery anymore.

Got in a 66.5mile week including that race, a fartlek run and an 18 miler the day after the 5K.

Have a 10 miler this coming Saturday. That 5,000 predicts a 1:06:11 but this is a tough race with some hill climbing. I do tend to run relatively better at 10miles than 5K so I'm going to predict a 1:05 (based on losing four pounds of blubber since that 5K, and adding a minute to overall time to account for course profile). It is supposed to rain so, dang, who knows? I'd be fairly happy to be around that 1:06:11, though.

old guy II wrote:

I am pretty comfortable that I am getting good heart rate data from my new 235. In my late 40s I trained for a couple of years with Polar heart monitors until I got frustrated with wearing the chest strap and the all too frequent batteries dying or sending unit breaking in the chest strap. Back then my max heart rate was 195, and I would race 5ks at 187-189 HR, and 10ks at 185-187 HR. My current HR readings are consistent with what I was doing back then, just at a pace about 1min/mile slower now :>(

Well I still don't believe that 103 on Sunday.

But if the other readings are accurate, then you are running way too fast on a daily basis. Say for the sake of argument your max HR is still 190. According to Daniels your E-pace should be 65-79% of max. (If you know your resting HR, Parker says less than 70% of HRR.) 65-79% is 123-150. Your lowest HR was on Wednesday: 156. Yikes!!!

The pace you are running is called the zone 2 trap. Too fast to allow complete recovery, too slow to qualify as a workout. If you slow down to zone 1 on most days you will recover better, you can run actual workouts on some days, your fitness will improve, and later you will be running these same paces in zone 1 instead of zone 2. That's the theory, anyway.

It's actually quite difficult to run in zone 1. It feels unnatural. Just remind yourself of the purpose for the run, and take the bitter medicine.

Alan has good advice. My belief is that people at our age who still are trying to train to be competitive are far more likely to cross the line to fatigue and overtraining than undertraining. While I don't like to back down from mileage or pace when things seem to be going well, programmed down weeks are a prudent idea.

Last year I think I did pretty well because I lived by the motto, "It is better to get to the start line than it is to be sitting on the sidelines in great shape." I've been problem free long enough I fooled myself into thinking I was getting unbreakable.

My leg was pain free today but I stuck to the reduced mileage. If things go well for the next couple of days I will do some intervals on Sunday but keep the mileage down for at least two more weeks. I actually think the huge (for me) mileage I ran in December and January will stick around until April so now it is time to think about getting safely to the start line.

kevin402can wrote:

If things go well for the next couple of days I will do some intervals on Sunday but keep the mileage down for at least two more weeks. I actually think the huge (for me) mileage I ran in December and January will stick around until April so now it is time to think about getting safely to the start line.

One down week is good, but after two weeks you will lose some fitness. Depending on when your race falls in April, and how long it takes you to get sharp, you might want to go back up in miles for another two or three weeks.

old guy II wrote:

I suspect that the lower HR mainly was due to starting off with no warm up

It was just not a good reading, especially not being warmed up.

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Week 243

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Wow! I can't believe that I missed including the signature week, when I cut-and-pasted my post last week.

Warm Wishes, 50+ers! Still taking a backseat on the thread. It's been super busy with teaching and committee meetings. This week will be similarly packed. Even so, a little better training than last week. Feeling weaker and heavier than before Christmas, but otherwise OK (quad niggle is gone.) Managed 23+ miles on 5 runs (6 if you want to count the walk/jog). Log reads as such:

Sun: 5.2 easyish, slight pickup last 2 (7:32/mi avg pace)

Mon: off

Tues: 5.2 (w/ 6 hill repeats)

Wed: 3 miles of brisk walk/jog (about equal amounts of each)

Thur: 5.2 easy-to-moderate (7:26, some progression)

Fri: 4 super-easy (8:37 pace)

Sat: 4.1 w/1.6@6:50 pace (65 degrees out!!)

Not much to add. Just trying to build back up slowly. I tried to put a few harder efforts in there, but no serious workouts in the forecast for the next few weeks.

A lot of good stuff last week. Nice!

-Since I don't wear an HR (but rarely), I'm not going to get in on that discussion.

-Totally agree with the cutback week idea. Mine usually result just as a matter of course (life happens), but I've always tried to cutback about once every 4-6 weeks (believe it or not, there was a time in my late 40's/early 50's when I got 3+ years of injury-free training.)

-Rtype, yes! A standing desk is on my short list! Anyone have recommendations? Treadmill....still resisting.

-AlanB and SCgal, nice race reports! (I missed mentioning that last week) And KP, too!

-Man up cupcake, welcome. KP is an 800/1500 guy, maybe he can give you some advice.

-Glad to see some people getting excited about indoor track.

OK. That's all I got this week . How's life in your neck of the woods?

All the best!

Oh! And what about Anselm LeBourne? Yowza!!

http://www.runnersworld.com/rt-web-exclusive/anselm-lebourne-55-runs-a-437-indoor-mile