50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

This great passage from Daws's book "The Self-Made Olympian" will show you how crazy determined this guy was to make himself from a complete no-talent no-name into a runner.

I mean, it just brings tears to my eyes, no lie, when I think about this obscure guy back in the early 1960s, with no record of achievements, no coach, no support or encouragement of any kind, and he just wants to run:

"During my entire career at the U of M[innesota], I was never included on one spring track trip, nor did I ever run in a Big 10 track meet. Only by the seat of my pants did I qualify for a track letter. Out of school, with no more races available...I quit running altogether to ponder the future.

"Later, freshly married and struggling to secure a decent job at a time when the economy was still struggling to pull itself out of a recession, I faced two broad choices. I could go back to school or I could run. An advanced degree would enable me to get a better job and establish a career, and running would...running would do what?

"...I decided to run."

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Mighty,

Don't know if you have seen this. Check out 7th, 36th and 45th, other names of note:

http://wtrunning.com/2014/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/24.1978-FC-All.txt

Igy

Hi,

You brought up another "blast from the past" in that list. I knew the second, John Bednarski, very well when he ran in England.

He won the International Junior x-country in 1968 and was second to Dave Bedford in 1969.

He came to US and ran for UTEP. Was 5th in the NCAA, 14 seconds down on Prefontaine, with Sid Sink 8th and Marty Liquori 9th.

He later ran a 67:47 half as a 40+ and I spot a 2:34:52 for a marathon in 1997, when he must have been near 50.

Cavorty,

I was on the backstretch of a three mile race at UTEP in, I believe, 1973, and Bednarski was finishing. Some guy shouts from the stands "hey the race is on the other side of the track." Bednarski was a barrel chested guy if I remember correctly, like a Carlos Lopes.

Igy

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Cavorty,

I was on the backstretch of a three mile race at UTEP in, I believe, 1973, and Bednarski was finishing. Some guy shouts from the stands "hey the race is on the other side of the track." Bednarski was a barrel chested guy if I remember correctly, like a Carlos Lopes.

Igy

Yes, you're spot on with the description. He came back to England for a while after UTEP, which is when I knew him. He had a lot of injury problems, but would show flashes of really good form.

We'd occasionally train in an informal group led by Martin Hyman, who was probable then in his early 40s (I was around 19/20), but had been ninth in the Rome Olympic 10000m and had the British record at 6 miles at one point. Others that would sometimes show up included Steve Jones, who was then at RAF Lyneham, and running for Swindon AC (our home town), and Bruce Tulloh (European 5000m Champion), who was teaching at Marlboro College, but had been a good friend of Martin Hyman for years. I actually ran against Bruce, who must have been mid-40s by then in the Wiltshire x-country championship, having run against his son Clive (who was also to go to the US, Boston) in the junior race a few years earlier.

I heard rumors of a huge "burn-up" between Martin Hyman (who in his words "had just finished being a really good runner") and the much younger Bednarski in a training run around the local roads, with Hyman who was a formidable road-runner (defeated Abebe Bikila to win the San Paolo road race) emerging on top.

Brittle Master 1958 wrote:

RF Reader wrote:

SA: 5k race. (22:28, 1st in AG)

Nice job winning 1st in AG.

What is your age group?

My age group is 50-54.

The competition has got significantly easier since I turned 50. (There are also a lot fewer competitors compared to the 45-49 AG.)

Thanks for that result sheet, Reid. Great memory recollections about our training runs from so many decades ago! Yes , we did that 16 miler on Thanksgiving in Lovington. You also took me on my first 20 mile run in Great Bend. I thought I was going to die, Coach. About that race result from West Texas. What was in the water that day? If anyone wants to check out that small race result page you will see:

a future American President

a future state governor

a famous inventor who later became a billionaire

a future Nobel Prize winner

a future world famous geneticist who changed our food supply

a future NASA space shuttle astronaut (R.I.P. Willie McCool, a true American Hero)

three future professional athletes

a future National High School coach of the year

a future cancer researcher who has changed the outlook of thousands of cancer survivors due to his life work

I'm pretty freaked out by this gathering of males and females who would alter so many lives in their future activities.

Lots of amazing stuff posted here.

My Tuesday activities were fun but not amazing:

- 1 mile running on treadmill, 2% incline, 10:54

- Hip stretches

- Basic stretching routine

- 3.1 miles running in local 5K race: 24:22, 7:51 mile pace, 13/29 M50-59, 49/126 M

I definitely spend more time stretching than running, but it seems to help me stay in the game.

At 170 pounds, I was two pounds lighter than last week's race. Weather conditions were similar (mid-70s and quite humid). Using the rule of thumb that 1 pound of weight equals 2 seconds per mile, you would expect me to run 12 seconds faster this week, but I ran only six seconds faster. Perhaps dieting (i.e. slowly starving myself) makes me a little weaker. When my weight stabilizes (i.e. I am no longer starving myself), the data may be cleaner.

This morning I was 169 pounds. Shooting for 160 pounds, and then I'll reevaluate the situation. At 6'5" and 160 pounds I would be pretty skinny, and I don't want to get rounded up and stuck in a zoo with the giraffes.

On the other hand, if you take my height in inches, 77, and double it, that is only 154 pounds: which is one rule of thumb to determine what a marathoner should weigh. As has been discussed, some marathoners (e.g., Frank Shorter) have weighed less than that guideline. In fact many elite marathoners may have weighed less than that guideline.

Of course I am not an elite marathoner, but I still want to do what I can to run faster, which is why I think about these things.

Derek Clayton was 74 inches tall and weighed 160 lbs.

August 16

Wednesday

- 3 miles running on treadmill, 2% incline, 10:40 mile pace

- Back stretching routine

- 50 pushups, 50 situps, 30 dumbell curls each arm (20 lbs), 30 lat pulldowns (85 lbs), 30 wrist curls (30 lbs barbell)

- 1 mile elliptical

mo'pak wrote:

Derek Clayton was 74 inches tall and weighed 160 lbs.

Clayton is a marathon legend: the first to break 2:10 and the first to break 2:09.

He was a tough SOB, by most accounts a bit of a b*st*rd including trash-talking his opponents at the starting line.

Supposedly before the start of his sub-2:09 race he said to his opponents, “I’m glad you guys are here because I’m going to smash you into the ground. I think I can run a world record. I’ve just come from Ankara in Turkey where I ran 2.17 and it was a breeze and I think I can go under 2.10.”

Of course, he was right. He did smash them into the ground and he went under 2:09 (although some claimed it was a short course).

Unfortunately Clayton disappointed in both of his Olympic outings and most of his other big races. This was probably due to his many injuries, which caused him to retire at age 32. He was a big man and ran very high mileage by any standards, sometimes over 200 mpw, and MOSTLY QUALITY: at marathon race pace or close to it.

It seems to me that his relatively large size probably added considerably to the stress on his body from such a large volume of quality mileage.

Clayton himself said in retrospect he wished he had taken it a bit easier, and even said he should have taken six months off after his sub-2:09.

Thursday

August 17, 2017

Rest day. Unplanned, but things came up.

Friday

August 18, 2017

6 miles on the treadmill, 2% incline, in 55:31 (average pace 9:15 per mile; actually a progression run from 6.1 mph to 8.0 mph).

Two weeks of travel coming up: I will be staying in Atlanta in an Embassy Suites, August 20-September 1. The hotel has a 24-hour fitness room with three treadmills. May have to modify my fitness routine a bit, but it looks OK. As always for a masters athlete, diet is critical: don't want to gain weight.

Still working on comeback.

Today 4x (500m; 45 sec jog + 200m) 400m/3 minutes between sets.

Trying to run 1500m pace for the 500, 800m or somewhere near for the 200m

1:41, 38.4; 1:41; 37.6; 1:41, 36.8; 1:38; 36.4

Felt like very hard work, lots of lactic build-up. What is a major shock is 4 years ago, I could do 4x1000m at 80 sec per 400m - is that a typical drop off from 56 to 60? I can run 32 for 400m, but 80s for 500m felt like a sprint.

32 for 400m?!

Eamonn wrote:

32 for 400m?!

Not these days! No, I can get down to 32 to finish 6x200m, but when I tried the 500m at 40 sec per 200m, it felt like sprinting.

Cavorty wrote:

Still working on comeback.

Today 4x (500m; 45 sec jog + 200m) 400m/3 minutes between sets.

Trying to run 1500m pace for the 500, 800m or somewhere near for the 200m

1:41, 38.4; 1:41; 37.6; 1:41, 36.8; 1:38; 36.4

Felt like very hard work, lots of lactic build-up. What is a major shock is 4 years ago, I could do 4x1000m at 80 sec per 400m - is that a typical drop off from 56 to 60? I can run 32 for 400m, but 80s for 500m felt like a sprint.

IMO it is not the age but the workouts. Your speed is fine but your Vo2Max needs work. The workout you did totals less than 10 minutes of hard running with 12 minutes of recovery!

My approach to vo2max has evolved into accumulating time at vo2max effort

with TIME at vo2max being more important than PACE. With SHORT recoveries.

For example 3x5 minutes with 1 minute recovery. Let me tell ya that third one is tough and it is slower but that is ok because the goal is not to hit splits or hold back so you can blast the last set . The idea is to accumulate time at vo2max not run a time. This goes back to my deceleration run idea which is for another time.

btw I am running FASTER at 61 in a week or so than at 56 on Less training.

Here is a decent article on vo2max with the last workout being ok except for the emphasis on pace. The importance of Pace is way overdone.

Charlie,

Jack Daniels would agree. Two points that are important is acquiring the conditioning to handle that effort: 1) technique efficiency and raising your anaerobic threshold and 2) being judicious in your recovery. I find after six months of consistent training I am only now able to handle this type of of max Vo2 training.

Igy

Thanks.I did a version of that Billat protocol years ago, where you cycle through something (on different days) like 5x500m at vV02, 5x300m a 5% faster and 5x600m at 5% slower (from memory).

A bit of context on where I am. I'm now 60. At 56, I'd got pretty fit, including one particular session of 4x1000m, averaging 3:17 a couple of weeks before the indoor nationals.

I then had several years of injury, with intermittent training, and ultimately a meniscus op in 2015. Tried getting back from that too quickly, which caused some other problems. From May last year to this year, I did manage to start consistent steady running. I'd say about 40 miles a week at anywhere from 7 to 7:30 per mile, running 6/7 days a weeks and from 5 to 10 miles.

Started back with faster stuff in spring, doing stuff on road (to save running curves) like 8 x 2 min with 2 min recovery, and 6 x 3 min with 2 min jog recovery

Did start on the track with some things like 100m sprint/100 jog, where I got down to three miles in 19:30. Also 16x300m in 64 (10:40 3000m pace) with 1 min jog recovery.

This week, the other two main sessions were 3x1 mile LT session - miles in 6:35; 6:30; 6:31 with 30 secs jog. This was comfortable - I've done a continuous LT of 3 miles (or at least 4800m) in 19:00 this year, but the idea here was to run a bit slower, and concentrate on form, and the breaks were to stop me getting quicker and quicker!

Just under 10 miles on road at about 7:20 - was a fair bit quicker, low 7s for a long way - but did get a little tired in the last couple of miles.

Friday would be the first time that I've attempted to run 1500m pace for anything over 200m in about 4 years, and of course I'm aiming at 5:00 for 1500m which may be a bit ambitious (although it's in line - age graded - with what I ran at 54, which is last time I raced a 1500m). The 500s did just about average that speed and the 200s were on about 2:24 800m pace.

What kind of pace are you doing your 3x5 minutes at, would they be a fair bit quicker than my LT runs?

Charlie wrote:

My approach to vo2max has evolved into accumulating time at vo2max effort

with TIME at vo2max being more important than PACE. With SHORT recoveries.

I guess I don't understand what your saying since VO2max effort is necessarily pace dependent (aka vVO2max).

1:49.86 800 Whiteman age 45- today. Wow. Talk about a study in aging.

1:49.29 at age 39- only slowed .57 in 6 years.

I predict a 1:53 or better age 50.