50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

OT was a bit exciting figure that Rupp would make the team and Meb. too.

That third spot I didn`t have a clue. Ritz maybe but he cramp up.

Did a 5k couple Sat back and ran 1759 2nd AG. But went out to fast thinking I could handle 535 but was laboring to breath. And not racing in 2 months + very cold 30 degrees. Next Sat schedule 1mile & 3k indoors,

This week was good training.

M 6 mi easy

T 6 mi easy + 5x strides

W DS+ 2 mi WU 8x600@200 R 200j 2 mi WD 7.5 mile total

T 11 easy in 1:38

F off

S DS+ 2 mi WU 2mile@ 600/p 3min R 1Mile@ 549 3Min R 2 mile@ 600/p

3min R 400@ 78s 3min R 800@250 2mile WD. 10 Mile total

S 15.36 miles last mile MP

Weekly total 55.86

Jeffery

Oh no, SC! Such bad luck! There's been a rash of illnesses around here, as well, to the point where a campus bulletin was issued. Hope you recover quickly!

Props, Spikez! Very excited for the prospect of some new AR's at Indoor Nationals.

And Dave, you've had a great winter (weather be damned!) I'm expecting you to rock this HM! I'm predicting Sub-1:18 (OK, can't damn the weather on that one, though.).

Thanks for the props, Rtype; I am feeling optimistic these days!

Keep 'em coming------Cheers!

My week went pretty well, after reducing both mileage and intensity last week my leg was pain free Sunday so did my usual 4 x 8 minutes with 2 minutes recovery. That workout went really well.

I did about an 65 minutes easy from Monday to Thursday, each run was 12.6kms. The roads were snowy so I took it super easy and no tempo on Wednesday. I also used an Arc Trainer for 35 minutes Monday thru Thursday.

Friday I did a 15 kms as I didn't want to use the Arc Trainer and it was supposed to get super cold on the weekend and I didn't know if could run.

Saturday and Sunday were super cold, windchill of -30C on Saturday but I dressed warm, took it easy and did 14.5 on Saturday and 15.5 on Sunday.

It was a good week, my leg seems to better, running slower in the snow seems to be the best strategy and my mileage turned out to be pretty decent at 92 kilometers. How come we call kilometerage mileage?

lucKY2b wrote:

OK, so I will temper my previous remarks a bit and offer props to the "old man", Meb, for reeling back in all the others in the race and coming in 4th; a very commendable effort in his final Olympics. Other than his broken hip misfortune in '07/'08, he's been a remarkably consistent and resilient marathoner over the years.

Nearly four years after this was written about his "final Olympics" , Meb has exceeded every one's expectation once again by making yet another Olympic team. Seriously, who would have expected this four years ago?

During the NBC broadcast, Masback said something curious. Rupp had to dial back his weight training because he as getting too strong. Was he gaining too much muscle mass? If not, how could he be "too strong"? (I could understand how he felt fresher by dialing back. But how was he getting too strong if he was not bulking up?)

Here is my week.

M: off.

T: 3.5 miles / 6.5 miles.

W: 12 miles (7th to 11th miles @ 7:53-7:47-7:41-7:35-7:30)

R: 3.5 miles / 6.5 miles.

F: 9 miles.

SA: 7 miles.

SU 16 miles. (13th-15th miles @ 7:53-7:47-7:41)

The snow on Sunday morning forced me to move the long run to treadmill, but I survived 16 miles by watching b-ball on TV.

It's just hearsay but apparently Rupp does put on "too much" muscle in the weight room.

SCGal, Cipro can be a danger and there is no one immune to the risks, so glad you could change the RX.

I have finally recovered from the virus, then had a heckofa couple days of major blah (medical diagnosis :) of sinus issues, these strong winds stirring up something.

So just to run is now good. Regarding the Trials, very troubling that it was run so late in the day, Shalane needed IV fluids, how slow should she recover, and her such a talent.

Typing fast, sorry, off to run and work.

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Week 246

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Greetings, 50+ers! Ups and downs continue for me; one week over 30, but a backslide for this week, and now I've developed a nasty cold...such is life. Logbook says 24 miles on 5 days:

Sun: 5.2 easy, but a little slick out.

Mon: off

Tues: 6.0(w/ 7 hill repeats)

Wed: 2.4 easy, untimed

Thur: off (too busy!)

Fri: 6.6 easy (after sitting in conference all day)

Sat: 4.0 w/1@6:35 (feeling a cold coming on)

Still mostly running by feel, and that current state is "rundown". To many irons in the fire this semester: not getting enough sleep, trying to shoehorn runs in, it's been generally unsatisfactory.

RF Reader, funny that you would find that post from four years ago. I certainly didn't anticipate that he'd still be besting the field at 40; also interesting that he himself had stated that it was his last Olympics after London. His resilience and continued success have been truly remarkable.

OK, not muh more to add. Pretty minimal effort for me, but better than nothing. Hope your week has been more productive!

All the best!

PS-tried out some Hoka One-One Challengers (there was a good sale at the local running store) last Sunday on the slick roads. I rather liked them; seemed to take some of the stress off my arthritic big toes.

lucKY, I can’t help but have a flashback to the Nike LDV 1000 (moon shoes) with the ultra wide heels back in the 70’s when I look at Hoka shoes. They were so wide they clipped the insides of your calf when running!

Mon = 35 min medium road, snow and ice

Tue = Rest

Wed = 36 min easy road

Thu = 37 min easy road

Fri = Rest

Sat = 38 min easy cemetery

Sun = 39 min easy cemetery

A good week. Nothing exciting going on except I’m really enjoying running nowadays. The hardest thing for me is to be patient with the spring races coming up. I’d like to get to an hour a day then perhaps add a tempo or progression on Saturday’s. Thankfully the knees and various other injuries have slipped back into the sub-chronic status….waiting for me to screw up.

Have a great week all!

Mon. 28 km mountain bike ride in the forest 1 h 36 m pleasantly hilly.

Tue. 11 km run on the McIvor Range 280 m of elevation gain rocky footing 1h 14 m.

Wed. 1 hour paddling kayak on the lake.

Thu. 11 km hike on the McIvor Range 370 m of elevation gain on rocky footing in 2 h 20 m.

Fri. 31 km mountain bike ride mostly dirt farm roads. 1h 47 m.

Sat. Down to Melbourne for Mum's 90th birthday party.

Sun. Our little town's first ever running event. I ran the 10 km. Out along the railtrail. I was hardly in shape for a 10 km race and the quad was a bit sore in warmup. I reached 5 km in 22.01 but eased off on the way back and finished in 45.44. 200 starters over 3 events. The 10 km was won by one of my over 50 mates from Bendigo. We also had some orienteering events going on near my house with several internationals competing. In May a marathon, half and quarter plus an Ekiden are planned along the railtrail.

In the afternoon I went down to the Campaspe River in Axedale and did a solid 1 h 10 m session in the kayak.

Finished a month of night shift, averaging around 30 hours of sleep per week.

My right quad was still sore during the week. Although it is the medial aspect of the quad I think it is ITB related. Thursday I chose to hike ala Charlie instead of running. I wanted to be ok to run on the Sunday.

The quad didn't bother me during the 10 km. I went a bit quicker than intended early and had to back it off in the 2d half. I just haven't done any running at a sustained pace so didn't want to smash myself.

One week up, one week down. I had a great opening meet last weekend, followed by a brutal week of training leading up to another meet yesterday. The training wiped me out but I had 2 days in which to recover, but instead of recovering, I developed a nasty cold. Sore throat, coughing, headache, yuck. I went to the meet anyway (it was out of town and we were also visiting family) and although I felt OK when I got there, things went quickly downhill. I started my warmups and felt drained and dizzy, but I was going to run my first race anyway. It was lack-luster. No surprise, right? So I said, "That's it!" and bagged the rest of the meet. I spent the rest of the weekend taking Tylenol and Day Quil, but at least I got to spend some fun time with my step daughters.

So anyway, rest for me for the next couple of days and hopefully I will feel better soon.

Another week feeling under the weather for me. I dragged myself through work every day even though I had brain fog, took a nap when I got home, and then slept the whole night through. I had virtually no appetite and had to force myself to eat. I felt so terrible I went back to the doctor on Thursday. He ran blood tests that showed I'm perfectly healthy! I suspect the antibiotics were causing me to feel so bad. Thankfully, I'm finally finished taking them and already have started to regain my appetite. Now I can begin to rebuild my strength after two weeks of a diet of jello, applesauce and rice.

I was happy to get in any mileage this week given how I felt. I'm just taking it day by day and trying not to be too compulsive about getting out if I feel like it's too much for me.

Mon. 6 Easy

Tue. Off

Weds: Off

Thurs: Off

Fri: Off

Sat: 6 Easy

Sun: 8 Easy

Next week will be better! Good luck at the GHS HM, Dave ;-)

Week 246: 6 hours 42 minutes in 6 runs including one race.

Mon - 45 mins easy

Tue - 2 hrs 2 mins long run in the snow, 20.83km

Wed- off, sore foot from Tuesday

Thu - 45 mins easy

Fri - 1 hr 7 mins easy

Sat - 1 hr 2 mins, mostly slow, finishing up with 2x long hill and 1x stride

Sun - 1 hr 1 min with 20 mins wu, 5K in 21:04 (7th OA out of 187 5K entries, 1st M40+ by just 4 seconds), 20 mins cd

No detailed race report. This was a flat one mile loop course with 5K, 10K, half-, full- and relay-marathon combined, so in that crowd a fast time was out of the question -- the winning time was "only" 18:14. But I knew as much going in, so I set a simple race goal of correct pacing, in particular not going out too fast. No success there: 4:07, 3:58, 4:13, 4:14, 4:18, and additional 0:19 at 3:27/km, total gps 5.09km (anti-tangents!) in 22:09. Some work to do for even splits.

I started to get a little sick in the 2nd km (the same happened in the 4th km of my last 5K), so I need to figure out a more 5K-appropriate breakfast. Maybe nothing? I have been eating a big breakfast four hours before the start, same as I would before a long run or marathon. It's clearly not working.

About fifty with a nice 10 today including a mile of running

Did a couple of treadmill sessions that were pretty good 7 miles in 2 hours at 10 percent grade but left my left big toe metatarsal tender. I will call this treadmill toe. Only hurts on treadmill.

It is going to take me longer than planned to get to 100 mpw of walking. On the plus side 50 mpw of walking is pretty easy;)

Sorry, gps said 21:09. I even proofread that. :(

@SCgal - I am sure you are right about the antibiotics. Last time I needed to take them, they really messed with my digestion, knocked me out! Luckily it was just for four days.

AB - thanks for the confirmation on the antibiotics. I've never had any problem with them before. When the doctor told me that the side effects were more pronounced in "the elderly" I didn't understand he was referring to me!

I don't eat anything before a race 5k or shorter. I always feel like I'm going to throw up in races with fast paces. For a 10K and longer I normally have a couple of bites of a plain bagel and not much else. I'm not good at eating on race day.

Also, I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed the Millrose Games. My teammates are talking about getting a relay together for next year.

I guess I would cal this an experimental week that was a failed experiment. I felt like I had gotten pretty stable at running 8 miles per day, so this week I took Monday and Tuesday off and then ran 10 miles on Wednesday, which felt tiring, but otherwise OK. Another easy 10 miles on Thursday which felt a bit better. Friday I ran and started feeling kind of beaten up at about 7 miles, so I stopped at 8 miles. The rest of the day and Friday night both knees were really sore (and I never have problems with my knees). I took some Aleve and Saturday morning my knees felt OK. Saturday I walked 6 miles and my knees felt fine after that. Today I took a rest day. So I ended up at 34 miles for the week.

Tomorrow I will go back to my usual 8 mile daily run, and, hopefully, can repeat that all week. I am racing the Masters National Road 8K next Sunday. 2 weeks after that I am racing a 10k, and a week after that a road mile, and then 2 weeks later the Carlsbad 5k. With the upcoming racing schedule I will not try to move up mileage until the above sequence of races is completed. My primary plan this year is first to get fully healthy again and strengthen my calves, which have been a recurring problem the last couple of years. Once my legs are fully healthy and I have built some strength, then return to some speed work. I am trying to be patient and take whatever time it takes to get healthy and maintain some easy base mileage.

Hey old guy II,

old guy II wrote:

Tomorrow I will go back to my usual 8 mile daily run, and, hopefully, can repeat that all week.

I'm with you on extremely similar daily runs. I sort of gage how I am feeling for a week and then will adjust my daily mileage. I find that works the best for me. My runs this week were 13.4, 14.1, 14, 14, 14, 12.4, 15.2 and on Sunday 12.3 kms with intervals.

I have been reducing the intensity of my intervals for a couple of weeks now and I am now doing 4 x 8 minutes with 2 minute recovery at about my 10 km race pace. Interval days are no longer so hard that I dread doing them and I am not wiped out for the rest of the day. With all the talk about Drew Hunter and CV paced intervals it's interesting I have slowed to that pace almost naturally. It's good to know that there is a least some kind of hypothesis that supports slower intervals.

Kevin

Alan Bennet wrote:

It's just hearsay but apparently Rupp does put on "too much" muscle in the weight room.

If this is the case, then that makes sense. I have been lifting a lot since last summer, but I have not gained more than 2-3lbs at most. (Went from 128 to 130 over the summer, back to 128 right before my December marathon. Back to 130-131 again now. And hopefully back to 128 by the next marathon in April.) So I am not going to worry about "getting too strong."

On the issue of race day breakfast, I usually eat my "regular" breakfast. This includes everything up to half marathon, and I would probably do the same for marathon if I could eat at home. For any race shorter than 60min, I probably have enough fuel in my body, and therefore don't have to eat anything. However, feeling hungry could be distraction, so I eat my regular stuff just for the psychological effect. I understand this can be different for every one, just like training. So just my 0.02.

M: swimming 1000m.

T: 4 miles / 7 miles.

W: 12 miles with 6th-11th miles @ 7:53-7:47-7:41-7:35-7:30-7:30.

R: 4 miles / 7 miles.

F: 9 miles.

SA: 7 miles.

SU: 20 miles with the last 3 miles @ 7:44-7:38-7:20.

Wednesday's progression had an unexpected challenge. As soon as I hit the first mile, I noticed that my treadmill was "off" by about 10 sec/mile. I wanted to hop onto another one, but none was empty. So I waited until I was around 2.3 miles when finally another treadmill was available, and ran the remaining 9.7 miles.

On Sunday's long run, I was initially thinking of picking up the pace for the last 5 miles. As I felt sluggish, I scratched that idea in the middle of my run, and decided to wait until the last 3 miles. It turned out the pick-up didn't feel as hard as I had expected, and I could probably have done 5 if I wanted to. But better to be safe than sorry.

Kevin,

By experimenting I have found that since my late 50s, mostly consistent daily moderate effort training seems to work better than the hard day/easy day approach from when I was younger. I have been influenced by articles on Ed Whitlock's training as well. Also, I seem to have a little bit better natural speed than a lot of other guys who are still running distances ( I was a 51 second 440, 23 second 220 guy in my college days and could still run a 26 second 200M at age 47), so speed work is not as critical for me.