50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

LK2B Good for you and wishing you the best on your return to fitness!

Igy Really encouraged with just how effect the treatments are for 19.

OGII your enthusiasm makes me want to see where I am at for 5k

Rtype interesting aerobic buildup

Dhaaga 33:54/5 a tad fast after the half ru shooting for a sub 3 at 60?

AMK hope tapering the prednisone works. Re heel at least you are getting in some good rides

So not much going on doing lots of easy short stuff one experiment is doing 2 runs a day for a total of 50 minutes. I want to see if this helps me transition to running on hard surfaces and it might also just be a better way to train. Maybe the warmup process is the best part of a run?

- 3x400 98,87,70 The 70 was close to all out felt a bit awkward

7x10 seconds small grassy hill barefoot with a hard start super fun

25 minute hill easy

A bunch of 15 minute runs in the sand

Overall 30 to 40 minutes of running per day most of it super slow

REL - Welcome and congratulations on your MRI results. I had no idea the pounding/injuries we endure could look like bone cancer.

LucKY - Happy to hear your schedule is allowing you to get back to it!

amkelley - My husband's evaluation for Tenex is tomorrow. I'll let you know what we find out.

I just heard that my college is going online for the next two weeks. There has been a surge of Covid cases on campus late this week. Gee, do you think that might be related to the administration's decision to hold in-person graduation on October 3? I'm thankful I don't have to juggle teaching in-person and online at the same time until January. I'm considering using my old age to request online teaching only.

I got back into my regular training schedule this week. My next race is an 8k on Thanksgiving. I wish it was sooner but there aren't any in-person races in MI or WI that I could find.

Sun 5.2 E (recovery after my 10k)

Mon 6.7 E

Tue 6.6 E

Wed Off

Thu 6.0 Track (2mi @ 10k pace, 1mi @ 5k pace, 800 @ 3k pace)

Fri 4.0 E, 23.3 bike tempo 2 x 20 min @ 21.4mph avg

Sat 10.1 E

Stay healthy everyone. Long May You Run!

68 year old male. In a rut, but a relatively good rut. Another 31 mile week of running and 75 miles of cycling.

Greetings 50+ers. This week featured a bit less than 15 actual running miles thanks to a combination of weather concerns and a local volunteer commitment. The right hammy seemed to be 100% healthy by week’s end, though the left developed a mysterious sore spot. Fortunately it did not adversely affect my running. Still, out of an abundance of caution, I continued to avoid “speed” work and hamstring intensive exercises. All in all, life is good!

Sun: off

Mon: 53’ CR; body wt ex + med ball ex

The-Wed: off

Thu: 44’ runs (3)

Fri: off

Sat: 52’ CR; body wt ex + med ball routine

Best to most!

Charlie wrote:

Dhaaga 33:54/5 a tad fast after the half ru shooting for a sub 3 at 60?

........that would be great, but i think doubtful. My last one was approx. 1:30/1:40 to 3:10 the hard way. Hoping for a March '21 marathon (which would be age 59 3/4) -- will see what goal time workouts support by then.

cheers,

Dave

M61, 5'11", 175 lbs

OCT 4-10, 2020

Sun -- Off

Mon- 4.0 miles (9:03, 8:37, 8:09, 7:24)

Tues- Off

Wed - 4.0 miles (9:52, 9:12, 9:36, 9:19)

Thur - Off

Fri --- 4 mi wu; 1-mile TT - 6:36.5 (1:37.6, 1:41.9, 1:38.8, 1:38.2); 1 mi wd

Sat -- Off

TOTAL: 14.0 MILES

Another week with three modest efforts, a pattern I've maintained since the end of June when I ventured back to "training" after about an 8-month layoff.

I did manage a 1-mile Time Trial on Friday, a disappointing effort on a windy day. I was confident I could run 6:28, but just couldn't maintain pace after the first 440y.

Still, an improvement over my previous TT (6:52 or 6:48, I forget).

Have a great week.

Well looks like everyone is doing good back to more routine training. Routine training is good but gets boring especially with no races to reward your hard work.

61.75 yo black male 6ft 145lbs.

10/5/20 Monday 706am easy 50 min on treadmill with 4x striders. Lower right back tender.

10/6/20 Tuesdays 651am Spinning bike for 30min then lifted weights.

10/7/20 Wensday 641am 1hr on the streets total 7.05 miles. Eay to moderate to light tempo. 837min/mi

10/8/20 Thursday 647am 10 miler 1hr 30min WO wu 4mi 10× 200m @ 42s with 57s 200m float. 4mile WD back home @ moderate pace. Feeling 15.83 miles from previous Saturday.

10/9/20 Friday 703am Easy to moderate to light tempo

10.14 mi 1:24:21 831min/ mi

10/10/20 Saturday 926am

Slept in to help me recover best medicine. Easy for 45min then 30s surges@527min/mi x10 with 30sec R @ 730min/mi. WD moderate pace. Total 7mi 1:15:01.

10/11/20 Sunday 709am 10miler 1:27:49 845min/mi Easy to moderate.

Can't believe I signed up for a local race. I race sparingly any way may 4 - 5 races at the most. That will be in 2 weeks. Time to try and freshen up.

Cheers to yall

Just another token check-in. Running is mostly non-existent. Tenex surgery on my achilles is Thursday. Its either going to be the beginning of good things in my 60s if it works, or the end of running if it doesn't. I'm ok either way but just want to know how its going to play out.

I'm somewhat encouraged by my mile effort last week. I went 5:49.94 on Thursday. With essentially little to no running for the past year. Which led me to say to my training partner... I know with no doubt I can run a minute faster, if only I could run and train consistently. Looking back at my log ...I've avg'd about 10 mpw for the past year. I'm biking about 80 mpw, walking everyday and running barely anything.

Anyhow, after Thursday, I'm down for 8 weeks. I don't know if I'll be able to bike, walk, work or whatever. I'll chronicle my progress or lack of, here. I'm just in the dark as you are. But first I need to pass my eff'ing covid test tomorrow... Then the surgical process Thursday.

Have a good run...

Dave

Dave,

You definitely have the talent. Hope the surgery goes well.

Igy

Mon. 49 min. kayak session in Hedleys Dam (20 laps) in the rain and cold wind.

Tues. 11 fairly hilly (170m.) kms of running in 64 mins with final km in 4.30.

Wed. A 30 km slog on the mountain bike. Pouring and blowing a gale, where is our Spring weather? A hilly mud bath in 110 mins.

Thu. 11 km running on steep hills (280 m.) in 80 mins. I found Spring at lat 27 deg C.

Fri. Some tough "uphill" grinding in the kayak on the Campaspe River. Really a bit of a lazy 53 min. paddle.

Sat. 11.7 km. A 2 plus km warmup jog then 3 x Staffords Lane up Mt William. That is a 1.1 km climb gaining 180 metres. Not a lot of power on the climbs. A bit slippery on parts of the descent. Finished with some strong running for a couple of flatter kms and a final effort up a steep hill. Varying versions of course elevation gain but will settle for garmin at 635 metres. 100 mins.

Sun. Solid mountain bike ride in the One Eye Forest. 30 plus kms in 80 mins. First sighting of red bellied black snake post winter. A beautiful 1.5 metre specimen who was keen to get out of my way.

A solid week given a busier than normal schedule. I had Harvey (7 month g.son) duties in Melbourne on Tuesday. My wife brought him up to our place on Thursday and he has just headed home this morning (Monday). My girls are Covid testers and Harvey's mums testing site is closing next week so she is smashing out as much work as she can between now and then.

Covid has been a financial bonus for my 2 girls, the younger has put away a fortune working 6 days a week at $350 to $450 a day. Living in locked down Melbourne she has nowhere to spend it.

We aren't in lockdown in Regional Vic. We can only visit Melbourne for carer duties. Can't go into any shops etc.

The poor Melburnians had an 8 pm curfew, 5 km movement zone and just 1 hour to exercise. During the 2d wave peak, it peaked at 700 infections a day. That has been eased a bit now. They were hoping for a big shift in restrictions on the 19th. Unfortunately a couple of small clusters may prevent that. They needed a 14 day rolling average of new infections to be under 5. The last week it has been hovering just under 10.

Charlie wrote:

Rtype interesting aerobic buildup

Today is a holiday, so allow me to digress. And please stop reading if you don’t want to read a bunch of stuff about Ed Whitlock.

So, the question is about my aerobic buildup. This is exactly how Ed Whitlock did it over and over, especially when coming back from a long time off. He had to take up to a year off on at least two occasions. And both times he came back to set age group records. That’s why I find his career so amazing, the ability to come back and set world records after having not ran a step for a year!

People forget he was an engineer, and thus, had an engineer’s approach to solving his knee and training limitations.

He had serious knee problems and a lifelong Achilles heel problem that limited his ability to hammer out interval workouts. He “engineered” his running around these limitations.

He would sometimes start at 15 minutes and occasionally skip minutes if he could get away with it. But he added a minute a day and, while not a streaker, seldom took days off. Again, he was an engineer, and he understood that not only was adding a minute a day incremental, to allow a slow buildup, but it was also ruthlessly cumulative, in adding a very big workload, but spreading it out as evenly as possible. He specifically mentioned this on several occasions on the board here and in some long interviews about spreading out the workload, again, in engineering terms.

I often marveled at how he continued to pound the pavement with really bad knees. It made no sense to me until I listened to one of his interviews on a panel. He took a functional approach, whatever worked, he did it. He found by trial and error that running on even, firm surfaces, allowed him to train. His cemetery runs became famous. For him, these runs, being close to his home, allowed him total control over his efforts. Again, Ed the engineer is thinking here. I’m having to speculate a bit here, but I’m sure he knew the tolerances for his knee problems were microscopically thin. He had to have a predictable surface, and again, using engineering terminology, he modeled the structure and angle of his gait to reduce torsion in his running. You cannot do that on a soft, unpredictable surface.

Interestingly, only recently have studies come out to show that the type of surface you run on does not change the number of injuries. The idea that running trails reduces injuries is not correct. You just have different injuries.

But why run “so slowly” in an isolated spot using only a wrist-watch to measure your runs? Ed admitted that it was painful for him to run so slowly, not physically, but mentally. He knew if he ran with a group, he’d go too fast. He joked about his son running with him a few times, that his son was too fast. Using minutes, rather than miles is a whole other story. It took his mind off the fact that he felt he was going so slowly. Calculating a “pace” would be painful accept.

I’ve wondered if he was aware of the Maffetone method of running with a low heart rate. The commonalities here are you have to run so slowly it’s downright embarrassing, and by definition, you cannot run with other people because you are going only at your unique heart-rate-based pace. Ed did not wear a HR monitor, although he said he tried one a few times. I’m guessing he did run with a low heart rate because he knew he had to recover enough to do it all over again the next day. But as to following Maffetone, probably not. His was a parallel discovery. It just worked for him.

I do think it highly likely that he was extremely knowledgeable of aerobic conditioning, and clearly, he was on the internet doing his own research. He obviously knew what he was doing.

But what pace did he really run? We’ll probably never know. I’ve seen some speculate he ran in the 9 min range. Running 3 hours on many days at 9 min pace would put him at 20 miles a day, 140 miles a week. I seriously doubt this. I’ve watched interviews with him running in the cemetery over the years. just watching his cadence how fast he was going is quite variable. Again, it was for the camera, so it’s hard to tell. But on some of them he was going a lot slower than 9-minute pace.

As he approached 85, he INCREASED his run time over 3 hours. He had the same argument over the decades, he ran the same minutes he hoped to finish the marathon. As he reached 85 this got close to 4 hours, and danged if he did not run up to 4 hours on some runs.

Anyway, obviously, I’m a fan of Ed. He had about as much to teach about humility and decency as he was the destroyer of world records. This was a truly humble, honest, and decent man, someone to look up to. He never preached about his way being any better than anyone else’s and he never gave training advice. That says a lot.

Rtype wrote:

He never preached about his way being any better than anyone else’s and he never gave training advice.

Of all the remarkable things about Whitlock, this may well be the most remarkable one.

My week.

M: off.

T-W: 8.9km.

R: 10.7km.

F-SA: 8.9km.

SU: 12.5km.

My focus was on completing the increased volume. I tried to push the pace a little bit on Thursday and Sunday, but the weather was too hot for that. This week will be a cut-back week, and I will see how much my fitness has recovered.

RF reader wrote:

Rtype wrote:

He never preached about his way being any better than anyone else’s and he never gave training advice.

Of all the remarkable things about Whitlock, this may well be the most remarkable one.

It would be nice if more of us were like him.

E-man wrote:

RF reader wrote:

Of all the remarkable things about Whitlock, this may well be the most remarkable one.

It would be nice if more of us were like him.

What's wrong with giving training advice? Just don't be upset if your advice is ignored.

Hi,

It seems the pay for content model did not convince too many.

The weeks are going by while CV19 is still dictating big parts of our live. Right now we have a high positive rate in Europe. The new normal is not yet found.

Mo 6x100m, 4x150m with walk back

Tu 7 miles easy, 3x100m accelerations

We no time, solved issue at work

Th 1 h drills and jumps uphill

Fr 7 miles easy, 3x100 m acc.

Sa. 7.5 miles moderate and surging uphill

Su 1:20h easy hilly

Would be happy to read training advice from Ed. Sharing decades of experience is not that bad.

Stay healthy!

E-man wrote:

RF reader wrote:

Of all the remarkable things about Whitlock, this may well be the most remarkable one.

It would be nice if more of us were like him.

So speaketh the Troll, from his glass mansion overlooking the valley of the proletariat.

Have not posted for quite a while, nothing much to say, but still just walk/running a bunch, working, etc. Made a quick trip, driving, to Arizona, too, with my wife. One stop was in Albuquerque, where we ran the trail that UNM ran on prior to their NCAA D1 XC championships. Found their plaque at the trail that noted the names of all the team and coaches, AD, etc. Pretty cool to see our local gal, Courtney Frerichs, named, I believe she lead the team that day.

Have been walk/running about 43 miles/week, the running has usually been about 17 miles of that, or so, in short intervals of 1/4 to 1/2 mile. Yesterday we finally hit the track to have a totally flat, soft surface. I managed to twice run a mile, first in 956 and the second in908. Interesting that I ran the outer curve on the first and let my Garmin tell me a mile. The second, I ran the full, marked mile of the track and Garmin gave me a mile at 1600m. So my Garmin appears off by about 0.02 mile short. As my wife said in jest, that is for those satellites on that day. Anhow, second mile per the track was a 908, in trainers, without a partner (she ran with a friend we found there.

None running related: our trip to AZ included a stop at one of the local Toyota dealers in Phoenix because my steering wheel was vibrating and steering to the right during our trip there, found out that we had a large (like 4 to 6 inch) bulge on the inner side (non-visible) of my front tire. Could have blown out any time, like going down the mountain, coming into AZ, It happened DURING our trip there, had not had ANY sign of that before we left. So am feeling so VERY fortunate to have our health, as such, and have my wonderful partner to share life with.

amkelley wrote:

E-man wrote:

It would be nice if more of us were like him.

What's wrong with giving training advice? Just don't be upset if your advice is ignored.

It depends. I’ve seen posters here offering very specific workouts without knowing much, if anything, about the person to whom they are giving the advice. The first rule of coaching is get to know your athlete — training age, history of injuries, strengths, weaknesses, etc.. A workout should be part of a comprehensive training plan and not some seat-of-the-pants “advice”. Otherwise it could do more harm than good.

It depends. I’ve seen posters here offering very specific workouts without knowing much, if anything, about the person to whom they are giving the advice. The first rule of coaching is get to know your athlete — training age, history of injuries, strengths, weaknesses, etc.. A workout should be part of a comprehensive training plan and not some seat-of-the-pants “advice”. Otherwise it could do more harm than good.

Big difference between a specific piece of advice and personalized coaching.

Fact is I enjoy giving and getting advice . Remember as AMK said you can take it or leave it.

The late great Ed Whitlock:

Dogged tenacity without being a dick .

Light on his feet and heart yet tough as nails.

Too bad Earl Fee gets overlooked he is just as amazing as Ed in the Mid D competition. Earl broke 90 for 400 at 90!

A good article Ed vs Earl

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/fitness/running/running-ed-whitlock-and-earl-fee-compared/article34897068/