50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Alan,

Running in college races, is indeed, possible. The trick is to find one that matches your ability. I run college xc races a lot. I pick ones that I can finish respectably, though. I have checked the previous year's results before I enter to be sure and then I ask the coach. Running college races gives me a LOT better competition (there are many more college women for me to race than in an open race - even at my pace) and the races are often cheaper, too ($10-15).

The same can be true of college races, although they often have qualifying marks and those can be pretty tough to meet. But if you try Division III or community college meets, you'd probably fit in. Check the previous year's results to get an idea of whether you'd be competitive. Some meets might welcome filling empty lanes, others may limit the competition to a certain number of entries.

It's definitely worth asking and it can be a lot of fun to run with the younger athletes. I think the experience is really good for me and I try not to think about the fact that two of my children are IN college now. ;-) Ohio has a LOT of colleges and I bet you can find a few that will allow you to race.

Also check directathletic.com, where many schools post their meets and do their entries.

I'm finally doing some track work. This past week 2 sessions- one on the track, 4x300 and 4x200 with about 2:00 recovery.

Then on the roads 5x400 at 6:00 pace, 400 at 8:00 pace for recovery.

Not too bad, I am on my way back!

muddy girl

Thanks for the detailed response. Can you tell I have never even spectated at a track meet? I doubt I could be competitive at any level right now, but there is some time before track season. A new adventure.

Alan,

Some college meets allow open runners, but as muddygirl said, you should do a little research from past years to see how your performance would fit. For example, I can usually hang with some of the DII and DIII runners at Cornell University meets, but I'd be dead last by more than I'd like if I competed at Bucknell or some other places.

I think you mentioned you're from Columbus. I did a quick google search "columbus all comers track" and I found a link to a list of summer track races in central ohio:

http://www.watkinsfootball.com/track/youth_track/meet_schedule.html

There was just one on May 20th in Columbus that specifically mentioned Masters. The next one is June 9th. You can also contact some of the meet organizers to get more information on the series that they run.

Good luck, Scott

There are probably scientific reasons why one way of building up might be better, but I'd guess the gradual increase is the key. I happen to like more days off.

My highest mileage week this year (27 1/2)in 5 days. In my current buildup I tried to add a 6th day, but strained a calf doing 300s at a good but not that fast of a pace. We were supposed to do 20, I almost got 5. Salvaged it by changing over to a hill near the track and did 5x 1:20-1:25 sec up hill reps. Used a type of shuffle and foot plant that minimally involved using the calves. Only felt a few twinges of pain on the down hill jog. Did get pretty tired. Also seem to be able to jog the usual slower pace on recovery days without too much damage.

The hill one went well enough,(minimal calf pain the next day) so I did another one on Sat, going 5x 1:50 sec. With interspersed days off it seems to be getting better. Hoping to run some track meets in June, but it looks like it will be hill reps until I can run normally again.

rlb wrote:

I happen to like more days off.

Yeah I decided to go with my option A for that reason.

@nyloco: Awesome link! Google is magic IF you have a good idea of the search terms. This summer is a little early for racing, the first step is to research MY potential performance. But I will definitely show up at some of these events to scope out the track scene. Thanks.

A new job has had me working long hours early in the week so haven't got around to posting the last couple of weeks. So here's a bit of a catch up on what I've been up to.

Sat 19/5 -am.Kyak session for 1 hour. pm. 3km warmup, 8km hilly trail race, pretty rough terrain in some places, ran 33.20.

OK time for this course but last year I ran 32.40 (which I rated my best race for the whole winter season). 3k easy jog and 12k mtn bike on the trails, measured the course with the bike (recently calibrated) as being a bit long.

Sun 20/5 -am. 3km warmup, 8km hilly trail race, ran 33.07 which was 20 secs quicker than last year. I was very happy to drop my long term O/50 rival Jim on the downhill 2d km and put a minute into him by the finish. Ran myself ragged on the day and felt very pleased with the effort. Jogged 2 very slow kms warmdown.

Mon 21/5 -am. 1 hour easy jogging, cold morning and legs felt pretty weary.

Tue 22/5 -am. 1 hr easy running, feeling a little better in the legs so picked it up a little bit.

Wed 23/5 -am. 1 hr easy running with a couple of hills.

Thu 24/5 -pm. Weights, 1 hr steady running.

Fri 25/5 -am. 1 hr mtn bike on steep trails and 1 hr steady running.

Sat 26/5 -pm. 45 min kyak, 4km warmup, 3km trail race in 12.00 then 3km jog then 1.5 km trail race in 6.00, 3k jog.

Sun 27/5 -am. 5km jog, 6.5km trail race in 26.50, 5km jog, 15km mtn bike ride on trails.

Mon 28/5 -am. 18 min/4km hilly run then 45 min kyak session.

late pm. after work did weight session then ran 4kms barefoot on grass track. Temps close to 0 deg C. both am and pm.

Tue 29/5 -am. 70 min run on the steep rocky trails from home.

Wed 30/5 -am. 15 min brisk run over the hills near the lake, thick fog. 50 mins of kyakking with virtually zero vis. through pea soup fog, pretty spooky!

Hope to get out for a long run, maybe my 25km hill loop tomorrow as I have the day off. I do have to get down to Melbourne (100+kms) to mow my daughter's lawn and visit my parents.

Hoping to get out for a good long session on the bike on friday, another day off.

Theis weekend there is another clubs 5k invitation race on saturday. Sunday is a relay event. 3 x 1400m x3. So basically 3x 1400m with about around 10 mins recovery, quite a hard event.

Is there no organised interclub track meets in the US?

Here in the land of Oz we have weekly interclub traclk meets (in spring/summer) run by the State Associations. The events are graded to cater for the fastest (State League) and the slowest of plodders. There are also a number of weekly Masters meets put on by various clubs.

In my region, we have the usual saturday interclub plus a tuesday night distance race on the track.

What's a club?

Alan Bennet wrote:

What's a club?

Exactly! The closest track club to me is 200 miles away. 300 for a good one.

Rtype wrote:

Alan Bennet wrote:

What's a club?

Exactly! The closest track club to me is 200 miles away. 300 for a good one.

Well we have no club here in my little town of 2500 but 50km north is a rural city of 100,000 and it has 4 track clubs that compete in Aths. Victoria sanctioned interclub each weekend over the "summer".

In winter a combine regional team competes in the 8 or so "winter" State events. The 4 clubs all run their own xc/forest/rd events on a saturday with occassional all in "invitationals". There is also another xc club that has races on the sunday. I am a member of it as well as one of the AV sanctioned clubs.

Of course we have very limited school track and field/cross country. Once our kids go to Uni. they have very little chance to run other than in club comps unless they are genuine stars.

mo'pak wrote:

Well we have no club here in my little town of 2500 but 50km north is a rural city of 100,000 and it has 4 track clubs that compete in Aths. Victoria sanctioned interclub each weekend over the "summer".

There are a fair number of running clubs (of widely varying degrees of organization), but here in the States, and there are quite a few youth track programs. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to find decent track clubs (as opposed to running clubs) that have a significant presence of masters runners in cities of less than 500,000 (metro area), except in isolated pockets, where they take T&F seriously. And rarely multiple clubs for inter-club team meets. In most parts of the country, interest in T&F has been squeezed out by overriding interest in the big money sports. We have a few meets here in Kentucky, mostly catered to youth. Those meets that offer open/masters participation get such sparse participation in those categories that it's hardly worth the effort to drive 70 miles (or whatever) to compete. Basically, a small, nuclear, motley crew of dedicated athletes (more a fellowship, really) of varying abilities and ages get together and just run their thing almost as a sideshow...it's rarely competitive, especially in the distance events. 'round here, masters distance runners pretty much stick to road (and occasional trail) races.

That's my jaded perspective, please correct me if I am woefully off base. I don't live in the only masters T&F desert in America, do I? Alan, I think we might live in about the same extended desert.

The US of A is home to the fattest people on earth by quite a large margin.

NASCAR drivers are referred to as "athletes" and "turning left", apparently, is an actual sport here. Why am I thinking of the movie Wall-E with a population so fat and listless their bones atrophy? Soon, USA, soon....this is the future.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

In all the youth and adult recreational sports I have participated in and/or witnessed, the USA tends to be structured as leagues rather than clubs. Let me explain the distinction.

A club is a band of people who get together, at a facility that they own or rent, for practice, development, and TEAM competition.

A league is a seasonal competition, hosted by a facility, between teams that, at least in the USA, typically exist only in the framework of the league.

I'm not sure my appropriation of the word "league" in this sense is completely correct, but this is how I understand the difference. In professional sports the clubs are inseparable from the league, in college sports it's very similar. But in amateur sports either one or the other has more permanence.

Running in the USA has few adult clubs and no leagues, so is worse off than other sports. I'm no expert, but the adult clubs that I read about tend to have formed around a coach that just attracted a bunch of talent over time. That's a different thing than a club taking on a coach, which is how I imagine it is done in the Commonwealth.

Rtype wrote:

The US of A is home to the fattest people on earth by quite a large margin.

30.6 percent. Let's resolve to do better.

*************************

Week 53

*************************

I'll bump us for the week, starting off the 2nd year of this thread! Thanks to everyone for keeping this experiment going. I've greatly appreciated your all's advice and encouragement, and I've enjoyed your stories, that have allowed us share in your journeys.

It was a pretty anemic week for me, as I only managed to log about 27 miles. Too much traveling, too much eating, some resting from a semi-serious niggle, and not enough training, but it'll all work out, I'm sure. My weekly training log looks as such:

Sun: 0 (drove ALL day!)

Mon: 3.1 easy

Tue: 5 w/4@6:33 pace

Wed: 5.5 w/ 6x1 lap,4x1/2 lap (1/2 lap recovery) on this weird 4 lap=1500m track.

Thu: 0 (more driving!)

Fri: 7 w/5 moderate stepdown 7:20 -> 6:40

Sat: 6 w/5k@18:17

Notes:

1) Sunday was the return day from our excursion to Iowa. I was also still nursing that sore hip flexor that I was worried would become a bigger issue. I think that the forced rest in the car help me from doing more damage, and I felt strong enough to test it Monday, then give it a moderate tempo on Tuesday. Once I cleared that, I felt comfortable moving back to normal training.

2) Wednesday's track workout was faster (but fewer) compared to the repeats of week's past. We averaged 77.3s for the 6 laps (add 5.1 s to compare to 400m times) done with 1/2 lap jog recovery. Even with the jog recovery, we finished the ~2 miles of repeats and recovery (8-1/2 laps total) in 12:36. We then did 4x1/2 lap averaging 35s, with a straigh-away walk, curve jog recovery. Hip felt great, so I was pleased with the workout.

3) Thursday, my wife and I had the honor and privilege to join my good friend in Dayton, OH, to celebrate his retirement as a Colonel from the US Air Force. It was a 3-hour drive each way, and the ceremony was followed by lovely all-afternoon reception at his family's home. By the time we returned to Lexington, we were absolutely beat. If I were MikeF and had a 500-day streak on the line, I probably would have mustered up the energy to log a few miles....but I'm not, and I don't, so I didn't.

4) On Friday, I hedged my bets a little, knowing that the weekend was going to be beautiful weather for a race....and if the spirit struck me I would want to run. So I cut my run short, but gave it a bit of zip...certainly not enough to wipe me out, though.

5) So Saturday comes, it's right around 50 degrees and calm, and although I knew I wasn't really race ready, I couldn't turn down conditions like that in the month of June in the mid-south; I had to get out and see my buddies and race on such a gorgeous day. I weighed myself before the race, and I'm up 3-4 pounds from prior to our trip to Iowa...amazing what a week of sitting around and eating too much can do. So I really didn't have very good expectations. I thought I'd be lucky to break 18:40, especially after I learned that the third mile of the course is pretty much all up hill. It's a T-shaped course, where they manage to make the 2-mile mark the lowest point on the course. There were about 600 participants (half of which are really walkers) in this popular charity event. I saw a few people that I knew would be very fast, so I figured to settle in somewhere behind them. Between the downhill, and not wanting to lose sight of the leaders too quickly, I came through the mile at 5:42 (the leaders were already 30+s ahead). By this point, we were pretty much already well spread out and I was running behind the two really fast guys (one who is a very good 41 yo) and a string of four fast-ish 20-somethings, but there was quite a gap behind me and the rest of the participants. I tried to keep it even on the rollercoaster second mile, coming through 2 miles at 11:33 (5:51 split), knowing that the third mile would be a bear. I lost a bit of ground to the guys in front of me, but I feared blowing up on the uphill, conscious of the extra weight I'd put on. The third mile was tough, I gritted it out, and actually gained some on one of the 20-somethings who started to fade on the last mile. It was still slow, as I hit the three mile mark in 17:43 (6:10 split), but I'd made up about 10s on the guy in front of me. I didn't feel that I'd given it my all going into the chute, but I felt the 18:17 was respectable enough considering where I'd been a week ago. The post-race replenishments were excellent, along with the usual recovery drinks, bananas and oranges, they also had rolls and bagels from Panera's and some sausage sandwiches (OK, I had to try one...although I shouldn't have) and most people stayed throughout the awards, which was nice.

So where am I at this stage of the summer? I feel pretty fit aerobically and my leg strength is good (not great), especially after the hip scare last week. Leg turnover is coming around and will just need some fine tuning. But if I want to recapture any of where I was two summer's ago, I have to lose some weight. At 165 lbs, I'm 9 lbs over where I was at that time. If the 2s/mile/lb rule holds, I'm actually in pretty good shape on the other fronts. So that is my one big goal for the month of June, to lose 2-3 lbs/week and get back to some semblance of race weight (even then, I'm probably over optimal) for the 10k race on the 4th of July.

Masterstrack.com reports (although I've not seen it officially, yet) that Tony Whiteman has become the first masters runner to break the 4-minute mile barrier since Eamonn Coghlan's famous indoor sub-4 in 1994. Also, props to Marie-Louise Michelsohn (age 70) on her 46:38.50 10k age-group world record. Anyone else have some racing news to report?

Just want to remind everyone on this anniversary of this particular thread, that this is an open forum on running and racing past the half-century mark, so I invite all that have been lurking on the thread and are interested in such discussions to pipe in and tell us what is on your mind; join in the discussion and tell us your journey.

Cheers to one and all!

Congrats on your race lucKY.

Mon = 5, Mountain Holiday Run

Tue = 4, Mountain (770 foot gain in 2 miles)

Wed = 4, @ 7:47 pace

Thr = rest

Fri = rest

Sat = 7, 5:58 1600, 8 400's at 89.37 Ave

Sun = 5, Mountain with #1 son who just turned 25!

Total = 25

This was a hard week and a little bump on the total mileage. I ran hard all 5 days.

Looking back on the week, neither the track work nor the hard mountain runs hurt as much as this one intense 770 foot climb in just under 2 miles. Brutal does not describe it especially if you are trying to push it. Also, my left leg was just a little more sore than I was comfortable with. So, I’m not doing that one again for a while. But fortunately, by Sat I was all well again and ready to hit the track hard.

The plan is to make 25 miles the standard now and stick with that for several months or more. And then I'm just going to slowly crank the pace downward and not the miles.

Now that I have done it I think the formula for how much faster you go with less weight is a little more complicated than just X seconds per mile.

The real benefit? One can train harder with a lower likelihood of injury. Losing weight does not magically transport you faster, you still gotta do the work. But at least you can do the work more safely.

Think I'll have about 60 miles this week, if I run today. Real happy with my 10K at Sunburst yesterday. Went 34:47, felt strong, passing much younger runners all the way in! Went 536,533,529,529,551 with a couple of good hills,528. 4th overall and won the Masters. Good way to end my Spring season.

No race plans for the summer just a bunch of miles. Might jump in some local low key races. Thinking about which half marathon to run for my Fall race; leaning towards Indianapolis Monumental. Going to bypass the 5K stuff this year...

Might be more of a lurker here though...Kind of getting tired of the internet. Seems like it's a real time waster! Even deactivated my FB yesterday. Just wasn't for me.

All the Best,

Dave

As others have indicated the US has a plethora of running "clubs" (where a club is an affiliation of runners who wear the same uniform sometimes, sometimes travel to races together, and put on their own races), but very few track clubs. The club system is most active in the Northeast and West Coast with a few pockets in the Rockies and Midwest.

Don't even know where to get started on the "Running Clubs" in this country. A lot depends where you are. There are some good ones out there.

In my community of 100,000 or so, we have one club with maybe 1,000 members and pretty much controls every aspect of running here. But to tell the truth, it is a jogging club run by slow runners (hate to be a snob but you're talking 3:45 to 5:30 hr marathoners). I've been here many years and the board has hardly had a single athlete who competed at the high school or college level. It's managed by adult onset plodders.

Track at the adult level is dead. The club now manages all the local high school races (comical at times, e.g., they use a finish chute for the 800 and up at local meets), but it gets annoying when you see hobby jogger officials berating athletes and coaches about petty rules and protocol.

Anyway, the club now has two outdoor all comers meets and a club mile. In the past few years we've had as few as 3 or 4 show up for the all comers meets, so we just take turns timing the other runners. About every other year I've rousted up some interest in running a fast 5000 and have got 8-10 of the faster/younger crowd to race. This is an "on" year, so we might actually have a dozen or so on the line running from high 15s to 18.

About 100 people do the club mile each summer, which is part of an eight race series. When I first got here the cut off for the men's "fast" heat was 5:20. Last year it was 6:00. Only three broke 5:20. Everyone is getting older and slower or disinterested in track. Off distance trail races now dominate the summer calendar.

The club also has weekly canned interval sessions(same sets every year) which I never attend. It's 400s, 800s, 200s with no plan other than running faster than jogger pace.