50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Good to see you back, mo'pak. Sounds like you're doing well and having fun.

Today was the deadline to cancel my obscenely expensive San Francisco hotel, so I guess I'm running the marathon. Every day I lose more confidence. My short easy runs this week feel hopelessly lethargic. Partly it's because California is now getting its own heat wave and triple-digit temps make me tired even when I spend most of the day in air-conditioned buildings. The forecast for race day is for a high of 107 here at home. Fortunately San Francisco's high should be 30-35 degrees lower, but it will still be in the 60s during the race with a forecast for lots of sun. Fine for a 5K but pretty warm for a marathon for someone who hates warm weather.

I will try to kick back and relax for the next three days, and run the best I can.

I'm just an old d3 hack/now older and now a hobby jogger so probably not at your level, but over the past 20 years have usually mixed in some trail racing, average 3-4 a year, from 5or 6Ks a year. And I do hill climbs as well. I've done Pikes Peak, Mt Evans, and some of the Vail series in the past few years. And I run trails several times a week. But I also had a couple of bad falls (one with injuries requiring surgery and 6 mo of rehab) on the trails a few years back and now avoid technical/rocky terrain in favor of more groomed or rolling. To each their own.

I do get the sense that trails appeal to older runners who would rather hang up their shoes than run one more mile on asphalt.

The park where I run has so much traffic on it, and such a nice well packed shoulder, that it’s a pleasure to step off the trail a few times during my run and dash through the grass. And then I cool down on turf, so it’s about a mile a day, which pretty much satisfies my need for off-road and keeps my fine-motor skills tuned.

CM, you ran D3??? Who else on this board ran in college sans scholarship? I’m a fan ...

KCgeezer wrote:

Who else on this board ran in college sans scholarship?

I entered college just as Title IX was starting to force colleges to offer programs for women. I had never considered participating in any form of competitive sports and I had no idea that there was anything I could be any good at. But my sophomore year in college, my institution started women's track and cross-country for the first time. I paid no attention until I read an article in the school newspaper talking about the trials and tribulations of trying to start up a program from nothing. The article said that the fastest woman on the team had gotten down to a 7-minute mile. I had run a 7-minute mile the last time I tried, in 9th grade. So I tried out for the team, laid down something like a 6:40 mile in my first workout, and immediately became the star of the team. Alas, the coach had no idea how to handle 18-20 year old women who had never run competitively before, and within a couple of months everyone on the team, myself included, was injured. I didn't run a step for the next two years and came back to running gradually, on my own terms, while in graduate school.

AMK GOOD LUCK THIS WEEKEND !

Before dropping out of high school I beat all the track guys in a mile race wearing levis .

Won the PT 2 mile in basic 9:xx I think

Was recruited/talked into running at a JC by the XC coach who observed me out on a run. Threw me to the lions I went from 12 miles a week to 60 and hung on sore achy no fun but I finished the season then moved on.

Took 18 years off then at 38 bet a runner at work who was trying to break 20 for a 5k that I could run 6 minute miles easy. So signed up for a 5 miler took 4 months ran every day with a weekly time trial but I did it in 29:56. They were impressed;)

The pinnacle of my career was at 43 where I dropped a 4:13 1500 I was on fire.

The Next 20 years was a Mike Tysonish failure filled descent into mediocrity

but I did stay in shape for the most part and the story is not yet complete!

I was D3 and technically didn’t have a scholarship although they help me a bit with academic scholarships even though I don’t think I was smart enough for those.

So if CM is a hobby jogger then I run at the rate of tree-ring growth…..

On trail running, I’m in an area with great trails but the community is so obsessed with Ultra’s that literally nothing else matters to them. The group reminds me of a high school clique with the same adolescent “exclusiveness” and comparable maturity.

I ran my best when there was no monetary incentive and balancing a normal busy life. One reason I don’t say “when I retire I will ____.”

KCgeezer wrote:

I do get the sense that trails appeal to older runners who would rather hang up their shoes than run one more mile on asphalt. ..

CM, you ran D3??? Who else on this board ran in college sans scholarship? I’m a fan ...

1) Actually trails appeal to anyone who would rather hang them up than run one more mile on asphalt - see Kilian Jornet for starters ?. But yeah, after all those years of pounding pavement I have absolutely zero interest in another road marathon (re: roughly 10K limit now) - yet I'm currently training for one of the coolest mountain races in CO (Grand Traverse - 40 miles from Crested Butte to Aspen via a mixture of high mountain trails and jeep roads).

2) Ran D1 as a walk-on - pretty common back then. Although minor table scraps were thrown my way intermittently (coach's spread scholarship $$$ around to the extent possible by splitting it into smaller components like books, room and board, food, etc...), in the end I was little more than a plow horse on a team with conference champions, All-Americans and so forth. Chasing those guys really helped develop mental toughness and grit - good ole fashion suffering at it's finest!

Happy trails...

KCgeezer wrote:

I do get the sense that trails appeal to older runners who would rather hang up their shoes than run one more mile on asphalt.

The park where I run has so much traffic on it, and such a nice well packed shoulder, that it’s a pleasure to step off the trail a few times during my run and dash through the grass. And then I cool down on turf, so it’s about a mile a day, which pretty much satisfies my need for off-road and keeps my fine-motor skills tuned.

CM, you ran D3??? Who else on this board ran in college sans scholarship? I’m a fan ...

I ran at UCSD in '71 and '72 when it was an NAIA school. It had less than 2,000 undergraduates then and we didn't even have enough members on the track team to fill all events. My two sons also ran at UCSD when it was D3 and when it moved to D2 (my older son was the first UCSD athlete to compete in a D2 championship when he qualified in XC).

Nice - hitting it hard I see. ? If I bothered to track daily training maybe I'd post it, but I just do whatever I do and move on, Strava be damned...

I ran one season of DIII track. Senior year, as a walk-on. Four years prior, the coach had recruited me for cross-country as an incoming freshman, but I blew it off because pre-season practice would have necessitated quitting my $2.30/hour job. Ha!

The coach must have seen some potential, even though I was a lackluster high school runner. He was also the track club president, so knew my name from the summer meets, where I posted somewhat better times than I ran in-season -- 4:30 1500, 4:45 mile, 17:30 5000.

I was dealing with a hip injury for that one-and-only college season (senior year), but still managed 34-something for 10000m, and 16-something for 5000. In regular meets, I could score in the 10000, mainly because the competition was extraordinarily weak. Never scored in the 5000.

Regarding trails, I'm far too fragile and uncoordinated. But the roads here have wide, soft shoulders, so I'm never on pavement. Also, I have endless miles of flat crushed-stone towpath available.

mo'pak -- Good to see you're still fit and healthy! My wife and I didn't even pull our kayaks out of the barn this year ...

amkelley -- Enjoy the last few days of your taper. And have a great race on SF this weekend.

KCgeezer wrote:

I do get the sense that trails appeal to older runners who would rather hang up their shoes than run one more mile on asphalt.

The park where I run has so much traffic on it, and such a nice well packed shoulder, that it’s a pleasure to step off the trail a few times during my run and dash through the grass. And then I cool down on turf, so it’s about a mile a day, which pretty much satisfies my need for off-road and keeps my fine-motor skills tuned.

CM, you ran D3??? Who else on this board ran in college sans scholarship? I’m a fan ...

I ran D3.

Haven't been on the board in ages, but I was happy to read someone else who thinks like I do regarding timed runs/workouts/races vs. trails -- and xc in my case. Personally, I rarely run on pavement - even if that means running loops in a park and I'd never own a garmin!

Been slogging along after another weird fall/injury in February and finally I think I've turned a corner this week. Some of runs have been dreadful, like a couple of Fridays ago where my goal was to run for an hour, and after 15 minutes, I was doing fractions in my head (1/4 done, 1/3 done, 2/5 done, etc. up until 11/12ths.) Felt like crap the whole time - brutal. The only runs were I feel okay are my long runs on the trails, even when I have to do them without my Sunday run partner. But I feel a tiny bit better this week - improvement maybe?

Still taking Mondays off to do strength and injury prevention stuff, with a longer run mid-week, a "workout" of sorts on Saturday and longish (10-12) on Sundays. So far, it seems like it's working.

I'll check back in towards xc season.

D3 here as well, 4 years track (indoor / outdoor) and cross country. Upstate NY

Eight days to go before my target race (15K). It's my first race in nine months, and my confidence is not high.

This morning I ran 5 miles at perceived "threshold" pace, which should equal 15K race pace. A sluggish 7:14 per mile! I can't believe how long it's taking to regain fitness after my 6-month layoff.

Looking at my likely competition, I'll need at least 6:45-pace to have a shot at defending my M55-59 title.

For the past few weeks I've been running two workouts (one 5K-pace, one 15K-pace) plus a longer run every 7 days. That's pretty aggressive for me. So I'm hoping fresh legs in race morning will make a difference.

But what's the chance that a taper plus race-day magic can make up 30 seconds a mile?

Any suggestions on how to approach these remaining eight days?

I've raced 15K three times during the past 13 months, and had three different approaches the week before. The first was just a couple easy runs and a few days of biking (sore knees). The second had a medium-long run early in the week, then light mileage incorporating some minutes at 10K pace. The third had sustained mileage, but nothing fast as I was babying a pulled hamstring.

Each approach netted a decent race. Of course, base fitness and average mileage were higher than now, so it's difficult to correlate directly to the present. I'm leaning toward light mileage with a few minutes at 10K pace.

Well, onward and upward. I've got a 5K planned for the end of August. That might be the better target race. New age group then!

Muddy girl wrote:

But I feel a tiny bit better this week - improvement maybe?

Still taking Mondays off to do strength and injury prevention stuff, with a longer run mid-week, a "workout" of sorts on Saturday and longish (10-12) on Sundays. So far, it seems like it's working.

I'll check back in towards xc season.

Check in whenever! Great to hear from you and best wishes in your recovery.

Nice to see I'm not the only one with a dirty mind (or shoes) ?

KCgeezer wrote:

Who else on this board ran in college sans scholarship? I’m a fan ...

Ahhh college memories....

I went to small NAIA (now a D3 university) state college for my undergraduate degree, motivated largely by 1) affordable cost and 2) mostly because they had a terrible cross country program that I was able to make .

In my sophomore year everything changed as the college hired a great coach that recruited the heck out of a lot of high schools and JCs.

By my junior year, the team second finished in the country in the NAIA cross country and repeated the same in my fourth year. It was a DEEPLY talented team. I just barely hung on to the way back of the pack, but the team was so deep we were able to send two and sometimes three teams to different events. (so I often got a chance to run) On one memorable weekend the "A" won the Notre Dame invitational, the "B" team won the Springbank (London Ontario) festival of Races team event, and the "C" squad (of which I was fifth) was second out of 43 teams at the Grand Valley Invitational. The coach never cut anyone that was able to complete the workouts. And although with my very very meager abilities, I would be darned if I didn't drag myself through every workout (even though it often felt like I was racing just to hang on).

Crazy times. But at the same time, it helped shape the foundation for another 40+ years of running. (I am looking forward to some more x-c races again this Fall!)

KC yes DIII and was a 'jog on' runner at that. I did field events (PV and LJ) as sophomore and not very well and didn't run track after that, and never XC. But at the end of my senior year took up jogging (Dr. Kenneth Cooper 3X a week for 20-25 minutes) to get out of gym class for my last trimester of school. Did some summer track meets for fun, but ran sprints and tried hurdles a couple times. On to college the XC coach spotted me jogging a 3 miler around campus and tried to convince me to joint the team, and I said no way--but did plan on running track for 440 y and 440 H. That didn't last long and by end of my freshman year was a (rather slow) miler. Ran 4 years of XC and 3 of track in college, but much did better on the longer road events in the off season (10K-20K).

And that's my story.

And now as an over-aged doof, although I do like XC the most, for whatever reason seem to race better on the roads. I don't apologize for that because that's just the way it is. I do about half my training off road/trails, but as I said earlier now prefer the more benign sandy/gravelly trails over rolling terrain--or access roads up a mountain--and not the steep technical trails that the purists like. At our age it's all good and what ever floats your vaporfly 4%s or rugged Inov8s and gets you out the door.