50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

I will get in early as we will be heading off on our 4 day hike in the morning (Monday).

Not a standout week running wise. I did just tick the boxes. My plan has neen 2 runs of 10 to 20 km and one of 5 to 10 with at least a little bit of uptempo. I just scraped in.

Mon. Usual steep single track hike, 3 km/160 metres elev.

66 min windy bumpy kayak.

Tue. Hike as above then a 33 km 100 min mtn bike ride in the forest.

Afternoon into work for my 1st dose of the AZvax.

Wed. I was up at 5 am for work so no morning hike. After work a gentle 10 km shuffle in the forest. A lot of colleagues have had side effects from AZV. No issues for me at all but I thought I would take it easy anyway.

Thu. Usual morning hike then a 64 min kayak session.

Fri. Bigger hike, 6 km 200 metres.

40+km mtn bike in 116 mins on mixed forestry trails.

Sat. 20+km mtn bike in 58 mins first 15 grinding away in the forest last 5 mostly on the gravel railtrail took just 10 mins.

Changed shoes then ran 7 kms with a 1.5 km 150 metre technical climb enroute. 6 th km was a sharpish 4.30.

Sun. Slow morning jog of 10 kms.

The family all visited saturday and stayed O/N so I skipped our club's first race of the xc season.

Hiking 4 days at Wilsons Prom from tomorrow morning and will be home thursday.

Flying to Tasmania saturday home on thursday bike event friday local running festival on sunday, just a 5 k for me.

Newbi wrote:

Hi RB,

how do you feel after your hard 10 miler? Are you very tired? How do you recover?

Have fun!

Newbi, After my hard very hilly 10 miler the feeling is the same as if I just ran a hard 10k road race. A bit tired for a short while but normally recover fairly quickly. I normally follow that up the next day with an easy 8 miler feeling no effects from the day before.

Greetings, fellow 50+ers! I enjoyed spending some time this morning catching up on recent posts in this thread. As always, the training discussion is interesting and informative. Alas, I remain a “run for fun (and health)” guy, so it will have little impact on what I do. Hey, someone has to be the hobby jogger of the bunch!

There was a weather disruption to my planned week which reduced my actual weekly running to 20 miles. I wanted to avoid the b2b running days this week, so I went a little longer on Wednesday and took Thursday off. Then a deluge arrived for Friday, so I ended up taking b2b rest days. That was probably a good thing.

The hammy still murmurs a bit on most runs, but not enough to shut things down. I’m starting to fear that this may be a chronic condition. Oh, well. Comes with the territory, I guess.

Sun: off

Mon: 76’ CR; body wt ex + med ball routine

Tues: off

Wed: 65’ CR w/ utility pole fartlek (5 x 1 on / 3 off); body wt ex + med ball routine

Thu-Fri: off

Sat: 61’ CR; body wt ex + med ball routine

Best to most!

Biology has become exciting my background is software and biology is software that does stuff!

The 90 minute run was in zone 1 so burning fatty acids in the mitos using slow twitch fibers . This is super super slow running with the idea of fatigue/stimulus coming from duration not intensity.

The 4x30 second sprints are with 4 minute walk recoveries which allows for a recharge my cp engery stores. If the lactate levels get high it is for a very very short period of time which does not seem to compromise the fatty acid work . The neuromuscular benefit ,based upon last years experience , is substantial. It is important to emphasize I DO NOT create mitochondrial stress when doing the sprints. I create neuromuscular stress.

The other workout I did this week was in fact a 60 minute run with 44 minutes at what most runners consider aerobic effort with 16 minutes of 2 x 8 easy tempo say 80 percent of mhr. Then I did 1600 with hr hitting 90 percent of mhr at the end time of 6:09. Probably 3k pace.

So 90 minute workout emphasis was slow switch endurance with I will call em easy sprints for type 2 fibers. The easy sprints do not stress my type 1 fibers because they are short with full recovery low volume .

Good morning all. Beautiful spring day here in Eagle. I am about complete with my painting project. Yesterday I remembered that one of my former athletes Karl Niedermeier, a good age group runner from Buffalo, New York, died several decades ago from a ladder fall. Tragically leaving behind a wife and three children. So glad to have the most of the high work behind me.

Last week walked and ran 16 miles. Thighs are tight from the all the ladder time, but still managed a 6 x 400m track workout Saturday. I timed the 400s with a wrist sundial, averaging four freckles past a hair. Not bad considering. I plan to get into the 20 mile range next week.

Keep up the good work.

Igy

Races are finally starting to occur in my area, but they don’t sound like much fun. I read all the rules for a 2 mile/5K/15K that occurred yesterday. Bibs and t-shirts are given out via drive-thru and your bib has your starting time printed on it. No gathering before the race—you show up in the start corral right before your start time and go off one at a time. Masks required until the moment you cross the starting line, and must re-mask immediately upon finishing. Finisher’s medal and snacks handed out in a paper bag right after the finish. You must leave immediately after you finish, no gathering to socialize post-race, no festival, no award ceremony. This really doesn’t sound like something I’d want to pay $50 to do even if I were able to run.

I had another uneventful week of healing my dislocated/broken shoulder. Monday through Friday I spun the bike trainer for about an hour; Saturday and Sunday I cut the bike spin down to more like 40 minutes and added a 5.5 mile brisk walk. I also slow-walked my dogs 2-3 miles per day and went to the gym four times to do strength and resistance training with my legs and my good arm. The arm keeps feeling better and around mid-week I pretty much ditched the sling but continued to try not to use it much. This coming Thursday I’ll have another set of x-rays and a follow-up appointment with the orthopedist and I hope to get the go-ahead to start gentle range of motion exercises and start jogging a little. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Best wishes on that.

april is the cruelest month--streak’s over as i took 3 days off. hip/knee was not progressing, so i did the right thing and rested. ran 3 miles friday and felt almost 100%, enough to try honor a pacing commitment i made for a road mile on saturday. i tried to pace a training clubmate through sub-5 on a course she did in 5:11 a month ago, but she fell off the last 600 and ran the same time again. i kept an even pace for other runners in our pack, and cruised to a 5:01, pacing a couple of people to significant PRs, so a good day overall.

enjoying the biology discussion and charlie's explanation. my eyes usually glaze over with the word "mitochondria" (which i always purposefully confuse with midichlorians when discussing these things with pete magill), but i know it matters. i also know i need to include more neuromuscular work--consistent fast 100m strides/150 buildups/3x200 reps at the end of recovery runs have always done wonders for speed maintenance and, at least for me, achilles health, but i unfortunately am lazy with these things partly because in the absence of actual track races (even pre-covid for me) i simply forget about them...

hopefully i can slowly build back up mileage/quality this week--heck, i may even try cross-training and get on my elliptigo…

carpe crepusculum,

cush

sounds similar to how races are starting back in my area. I share the sense that it's not that appealing, though I will probably do it once I'm able.

Good week for me -- saw my massage therapist weds. re hamstring, and it helped a lot -- much better range of motion, and less soreness thereafter. I probably got too greedy with workout this morning, so I'll dial back and try to get in some decent marathon pace and half-marathon pace running before revisiting anything faster. Felt good to make myself tired rather than sore for the first time in 6 weeks, though.

M 1:30

Tu 1:05

W 1:05

Th 1:15 with drills and strides

F 1:30

Sa: 1:15

Su 1:30 with 3 X 1600 @ 5k effort, starting every 10:00 (6:23, 6:15, 6:17)

have a great week,

Dave

I love the training physiology discussions here. They always provide material to stimulate thoughts about how to improve my training. I had about the same mileage as last week plus a little more cross training. Recently, I have been experiencing some minor pain under my left heel when I get up in the morning or after a run. As someone who has made it through 55+ years of running without ever having plantar fasciitis, I am going to try and not expand the amount of stress I currently am putting on it. 34 miles this week -

M- 4 miles easy 12:14/mi; PM 7 mile bike

T- 4 miles easy 12:11/mi; 2 mile paddle

W- 5 miles with 1 mi w.u. 16x200 moderate(:55s)/200 easy; PM 7 mile bike

Th- 4 miles easy 8:30/mi; 2 mile paddle

F- 7 miles easy 9:00/mi; PM 7mile bike

S- 6 miles trails with my son and d-in-law 9:35/mi

Su- 4 miles easy 9:42/mi (plus 2hrs walking at the zoo mostly carrying my 19month old granddaughter)

Good running to all!

Hi Charlie,

We are on the same page with the one difference: 30 sec sprint is not a short sprint for me. I am generating a lot of lactate doing 200er quickly.

Stay safe

Hi RB,

Thanks for your answer. We seem to be different animals. My legs after a hard and hilly ten miler would be dead for a couple of days. Because of your outstanding race performance, I was wondering: can I copy him? The answer is definitely "no".

Keep going & BR

The week was

Mo. 5x50m flying sprints, 4 miles recovery pace

Tu. 1 h drills and jumps uphill

We. 7 miles easy, 4x100m buildups with slow jog back

Th. 12 x 1 minute on/off, total 6 miles

Fr. 7 miles easy

Sa. track 8x100 m & 2x150 m with slow walk back, 4 miles recovery

Su. 80 min easy hilly

On Saturday, I was trying to hit 15 sec per 100m pace for all runs. Timed two runs only which were on pace. On Thursday, the quick minutes were good effort for me, which I still felt on Saturday.

Happy week to all!

Hi Cdb, good to see you back; you are running great!

rdb, I keep track of miles but kind of base things by time--so a 90 minute run is a mid-long run and if I run 90 minutes now that's now more or less physically equivalent to say 12 or 13 from back in the day, whereas now the distance might be more like 11-11.5 miles (sometimes less than 11), depending on weather/terrain/how I feel on a given day.

60.7 miles this week plus 4 short workouts on spin bike (20-30 minutes)--I just did one workout, 4X 800, 2X 200, and 5X 100 on the track. With 1 min recoveries on the 800s, = distance on the shorter reps.

16.5 today, with at 13.1 at 6:30 pace (race at 5000 feet, which is the lowest elev. I have run in a year and a half). Got 4th in the race, 1st masters.

Call me a cherry picker...

Pete Magill podcast from 2019:

https://scientifictriathlon.com/tts203/#tab-con-1

Pre Race Baby Aspirin I also take an aspirin(81mg) before hard or long runs.

https://www.sportsperformancebulletin.com/endurance-injuries-and-health/endurance-health-and-lifestyle/older-athletes-aspirin-pre-race-friend/

Thanks Charlie for posting and Pete for writing. After reading the article it seems to be in line with what I am doing. I attest to the fact that Pete is solid in his research. Training on hills nearly everday I am certainly reaping the effects that Pete mentioned. I too am a believer of the long (2 hour run) at it's benefits. Finally the section on strenght and conditioning. Again I am a witness with what Pete advocates. I am doing almost everything he mentions in that section. Doing those exercises will keep one healthy. I might stretch my hamstrings about 20 seconds a day. Yet by doing the hamstring curls along with a couple of more hamy exercises, I have no problems. So personally, I don't stretch my hamstrings, but then every time I run sprints I am actually loosening them up.

One more thing I would like to add regarding hamstring issues. I am not saying I have never had them. But in my case they flared up a couple of times over the years. In each case it was because my pelvis was off or a vertibrae was too narrow which caused the pinching of a nerve . So a quick trip to the chiropracter took care of the hamy issues. Now I do a lot of exercises to prevent each of those cases.

Coyote Montane wrote:

Hi Cdb, good to see you back; you are running great!

rdb, I keep track of miles but kind of base things by time--so a 90 minute run is a mid-long run and if I run 90 minutes now that's now more or less physically equivalent to say 12 or 13 from back in the day, whereas now the distance might be more like 11-11.5 miles (sometimes less than 11), depending on weather/terrain/how I feel on a given day.

60.7 miles this week plus 4 short workouts on spin bike (20-30 minutes)--I just did one workout, 4X 800, 2X 200, and 5X 100 on the track. With 1 min recoveries on the 800s, = distance on the shorter reps.

16.5 today, with at 13.1 at 6:30 pace for a(race at 5000 feet, which is the lowest elev. I have run in a year and a half). Got 4th in the race, 1st masters.

CM- 6:30 pace for a half marathon at 5,000 feet! Amazing. Seems the farther you go the better you are. Do you have any marathons planned for the future?