50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Anyone here compete at Huntsman? Tuesday was a crappy weather day but Wednesday was great.

Well Done Orient. Reads like a smart race strategy and result. I admire your AG% mark as well; 5k+ for me is miles tougher to hit my best AGs than Middle Distances.

Hope all is well for this esteemed chat group. I've been "re-learning" how to be a distance runner with the aim to represent my club at USATF 8k Nats in December. Past five weeks have been 50-60 mpw with one tempo effort in the middle of each week. I still struggle to run tempo properly. The foolish competitor in me runs them too hard. Local 10k on the calendar at the end of this month.

Run Healthy Y'all.

Orient - Congrats on the sub 19 and hope some more age graded PB before year's end.

ATP - Wow!

Busy week moving to our new second home during torrential rains. Risked the last load of furniture on our long driveway. The car is going nowhere soon. Would be better off with a boat at this point. Getting around on the electric scooter and borrowed gas scooter.. Plan on creating a ~500 meter jogging trail on the property between the fish ponds, over a tiny stream and between three rice paddies.

As for running, it was a low volume week. Around 26 miles running and another 15 incline treadmill walks.

Monday: Long rolling 11.2 miles @ 8:41 pace. Muggy and harder than it should have been.

Tuesday: 7.1 miles on muddy trails @ 8:31

Wednesday: 4 miles on a very technical trail. Hammered 20 minutes of the 75 min run. Trying to get the record on a Hoka race segment but always miss one of the 20 turns.

Thursday: 40 minutes on the trails Another attempt to get the PR on the Hoka Strava segment but missed one tiny turn. Would have smashed it. 21 minutes HARD!

Friday: 100 minute recovery treadmill incline walk. Watched most of stage 17 of the TDF which has to be the most boring tour on record.

Saturday: No exercise!

Sunday: 75 min very easy incline treadmill walk

Greetings, fellow 50+ers! October continues to demonstrate why I have always considered it to be the best running month. Moderate temps, lower humidity, and beautiful foliage make for ideal running conditions. And we still have half of the month left to enjoy!

My typical running schedule was modified this past week to accommodate an all-day volunteering opportunity at a local road race. But I can still report nearly 21 miles of actual running, albeit for an 8- day “week”. 😊 No serious niggles or other setbacks. And, as expected, no reaction from my annual flu shot, other than a little soreness at the injection site. Life is good!

Sat: 57’ CR; body wt ex + med ball routine

Sun-Mon: off

Tues: 54’ CR; body wt ex

Wed: off

Thu: 50’ running (3); 16 oz curls

Fri: off

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

Best to most!

Orient, congratulations on the sub-19 at 60+! I managed to do it only once a few months after my 60th birthday, and I just checked, and my last sub-20 was when I was 65. This was another somewhat erratic running week for me. I was still feeling tired early in the week, but finally felt pretty good on my Thursday run. Then Friday afternoon I got my Moderna Covid booster shot. Yesterday I woke with a moderately sore shoulder, tired and with mild flu-like aches and pains. I settled for walking 3 miles with my son and expecting-in-April daughter in law. This morning I felt pretty normal with a mildly sore shoulder. I am about to go out and do a bunch of yard clean up and then probably do an easy 4-6 miles mid-afternoon. Thankfully, I still have 2 weeks until my next XC race. Yesterday I did watch a couple of videos of the NCAA pre-Nats races on the course we'll be running for Club XC in Dec. A lot of it looked very wide and well-groomed like a good gravel road. A couple of comments in it indicated it does have a short steep hill which I didn't see.

Good running to all!

Very nice run Orient.

Good week in volume, and slight improvement on Saturday’s session over two weeks ago. I will do my best to keep the momentum going into a local Turkey Trot.

Sunday: 60:00 spin bike

Monday: 2 miles easy; 8 x 200m repetition pace @ 54 / 100m easy; 400m easy; 6 x 300m interval pace @ 1:27 / 100m easy; 400m easy; 8 x 200m repetition pace @ 52; mile easy; core exercises; 2 sets weights

Tuesday: 2,000 yards swimming

Wednesday: 2 miles easy; 7 x 600m critical velocity pace @ 3:12 / 1:00 rest; mile easy; core exercises; 2 sets of weights

Thursday: 60:00 spin bike

Friday: 2,000 yards swimming

Saturday: 2 miles easy; 4 x 100m repetition pace @ 25 / 20m walk; 200m walk; 2 x 2,000m tempo pace @ 11:08 / 2:00 rest; 600m easy; 4 x 200m repetition pace @ 49 / 200m easy; mile easy

Have a good week.

Igy

Mon. 40 min kayak. 10 km hilly trail run, 300 m elev. gain 64 mins.

Tue. 20 km mtn bike ride 64 mins. 5 km run in 31 min with 3 x 800 moderate pickups.

Wed. 10 km run with a steep scrambly climb then 6 x Melville's Lookout on a bit of single track I found. 400 metres with 80 metre elevation gain, hard graft. All up 600 metres elevation gain and 97 mins of running.

36 min kayak.

Thu. 20 km mtn bike in 1 hour with 1 very steep climb.

5 km run in 28 mins with 3 x 800 moderate pickups.

Fri. 40 min kayak. 10 km run on rolling hills in the forest with 8 x 800 fairly solid efforts.

Sat. 27 km mtn bike in a howling gale. 84 mins.

5 km run in 28 mins with 3 x 800 moderate efforts.

Sun. 21 km mtn bike 67 min and a pretty lazy 5 km run in the bush in 32 mins.

A decent week for me.

Well done Orient. Sub 19 at 60 is a good achievment.

nice going! those construction zone ramps sound like a challenging wrinkle to have on the course.

mostly enjoyable week of Fall running for me:

M 40:00 + 1:00 x-t

Tu 1:25 with drills/strides

W 2:05 double with 6 X 90 sec moderately hard hills

Th 1:15 double

F 2:00 double with 8 X 4:05 (3:55 jog) cruise intervals (simulating 1000's, no available track)

Sa 1:40

Su 1:30 with drills/strides + 1:00 x-t

Only hitch, causing me to postpone planned marathon pace segment from today to maybe Tuesday, was multiple aches and pains in the wake of a trail running fall Saturday. I'm still hoping to find a hiker or dog-walker who might have caught it on video so I can submit to Rex Chapman for a ruling on block (on the tree root) or charge (on me). Too tough a call to make in real time.

have a great week,

Dave

Finally joined the 60+/19-/5K “club” yesterday.

That is a club I missed by 5 seconds , it is on my bucket list . Someone needs to keep track of this stuff. There is a sub 2 800 at forty or age equivalent and running a 400 in fewer seconds than years of age then ya got the same thing for 10 miles in minutes so a sub 60 minute 10 miler for a 60 year old 65 minute 10 at 65 is ezr anyhow lots of worthy goals to choose from like the sub 3 marathon at 60. Then you have setting age graded PRs for various distances. Heck you can wipe the slate clean say a baseline at 60 or 70 or xx.

Gerschler maybe if I did this in the sand.....

Dr. Woldemar Gerschler coached Rudolph Harbig to a world 800m record in 1939, and the record stood for 16 years. He also advised the late Gordon Pirie, who broke records for the 3000m and 5000m in the 1950s. Gerschler outraged the running fraternity by announcing: ‘Steady running is wasteful of effort and inefficient.’ He went on to claim that with his interval training method he could achieve fitness in a subject in six weeks which would take twelve weeks of steady running to produce. He based his claim on work with 3000 subjects at Frieburg University. Another astounding statement he made was that it was not the actual running of short distances repeatedly that improved the stroke volume of the heart, it was the recovery period after such runs that did the building of endurance.

In order to carry out Gerschler’s regime it is necessary to know what your best times are for running the distances of 100, 200 and 600 metres, because all the running is done at a percentage of those times. This is the procedure.

Day 1

Run 100 metres 3 seconds slower than your best at the distance eg best 100 metres time = 14 seconds + 3 seconds = 17 seconds. Recover by lying on the ground with the feet elevated on a bench until the pulse rate returns to 120 beats a minute within 90 seconds. Allowing the pulse to register 20 beats for 10 seconds will suffice. The 100 metre runs continue every time the pulse reaches 120bpm until the pulse fails to reach 120bpm within 90 seconds. This might be after 10 x 100 metres or 30 x 100 metres. The session must cease when the pulse fails to recover to the required time limit.

Day 2

Run 200 metres 6 seconds slower than your best at the distance eg best 200 metres time = 30 seconds + 6 seconds = 36 seconds. Repeat the pulse recovery routine outlined in Day 1. The pulse may fail to recover after 8 x 200 or it may take 28 x 200.

Day 3

Run 600 metres 18 seconds slower than your best at the distance eg best 600 metres time = 105 seconds (70secs/400) + 18 seconds = 123 seconds. Repeat the pulse recovery routine as described.

The process continues for the week as follows: Day 4 as for Day 1, Day 5 as for Day 2, Day 6 as for Day 3, Day 7 – rest.

After 14 days of this interval training, it will be noticed that the time it takes for the pulse to recover to 120 beats per minute (20 beats for 10 seconds) will become less.

I have known subjects who have done 32 x 200 metre runs in this way, and whose pulse rate returned to 120bpm within 45 seconds. During the actual runs the pulse rate will be elevated to a range between 160 to 180 beats per minute. It is while the pulse is returning to 120bpm that the heart gains strength, increasing the stroke volume by one-fifth within 21 days. It will be noted that with steady running, the pulse will hover at around 130-140bpm. Whereas with this procedure, the average pulse rate will be 180 – 120 = 300 halved = 150bpm average.

Nothing of not this week just making the doughnutz

Bad week... 32.5 miles...

I have an excuse.

My 96 year old mom showed up. It’s my shift with her.

She stays in a trailer a half mile from my house and...... well, I don’t know how much trouble I gave her growing up.. thinking back it could NOT have been as much trouble as she’s paying me back ha

Keeping her out of cars, wondering around, not taking her phone with her... 4 or 5 trips a day to check on her ha

Found a dent in her car bad enough that the side panel was pushed out....

But, it’s my turn...

I did get 2 tempos in. I’m selling my NHL game tickets so I can spend more time training... that’s a good sign anyway.

Charlie,

Mihaly Igloi studied under Gerschler; a major influence of his theories

Igy.

Good on you Robert. Wife and I did the same for my father-in-law over seven years. Not an easy task.

Igy

That's a good time Orient. Keep up the good work.

With no races scheduled until December, I substituted ran a hard parkrun this week. Some residual tiredness in the legs and a couple of long drags slowed me down so I have room for improvement.

Mon - travel - no running

Tues - am - 40mins - pm - club session 4x1200m on tarmac untimed

Wed - 55min

Thurs - am - 40min - pm - track session 2x400m, 2x600m, 2x800m, 1x600m, 2x400m

Fri - 40min

Sat - parkrun 20:28 followed by technique, steps and hills session

Sun - 90min

Total 83km/52miles

Tired now, but I have some work next week so it will be a recovery week.

Good running to all. Aim for consistency.

Orient, excellent 5K!

BigMango, your location does give you a set of challenges that seen more daunting than those most of us face. Keep on truckin’!

dhaaga, watch out for those tree roots. One of them caused me a broken hand early in my running career—shortly before I decided I’m just too clumsy for trail running and gave it up.

Robert E, enjoy your time with your mom. Hopefully you’ve inherited the genes to keep going for many more years.

I didn’t post last week as very smoky air shut down almost all outdoor activities for two days. Then I came up with a sore knee after two days of jogging and had to take another day off. But this week things started to come around.

Mon: 35 min stair climbing, 15 min rowing machine at gym am; 20 minute very slow bike ride to campus; another 30 min stair climbing + weights at gym pm.

Tues: 30 min stair climbing, 15 min rowing at gym am; 15 miles on bike in the heat pm; weights at gym.

Weds: 1.9 mile jog, 20 mile bike ride

Thurs: 1.9 mile jog, 23 mile bike, gym

Fri: no jog (sore knee); 25 mile bike, gym

Sat: 1.9 mile jog, 31 mile bike, gym

Sun: 32 mile bike, gym

Mon: 80 minutes on bike trainer, gym

Tues: 1.9 mile jog, 60 minutes bike trainer, gym

Weds: 2.0 mile jog, 24 mile bike ride, 4 mile bike commute, gym

Thurs: 2.0 mile jog, 24 mile bike, gym

Fri: 2.0 mile jog, 24 mile bike, gym

Sat: 2.1 mile jog, 31 mile bike, gym

Sun: 2.1 mile jog, 31 mile bike, gym later

A 12-mile week is the best I’ve done for months. I have to quit remembering that quite recently a regular week was six times that much. Keep looking forward…

Kudos to Moscow.

Very enjoyable week:

Mo 7 miles easy, still sore legs from Sat.

Tu 30 min jumps and drills uphill, 2x(4x40m)

We 7 miles easy, 5x100m with jog back

Th 12 km in 57 min

Fr 7 miles easy, 5x100m with jog back

Sa WU, 5x400m in 80 sec with 400m jog in 2:45 min, CD

Su 95 min recovery pace in the hills

Next goal: work towards higher number of 400m reps @ 80 sec.

Cheers

Interesting Igloi article, talks about cadence, which few reviews of his training cover.

https://www.fastrunning.com/running-athletics-news/looking-for-igloi-in-the-21st-century/31745

M61, 5'11", 180 lbs

OCT 11-17, 2021

Mon - Off

Tues- 4.0 miles (9:57, 9:26, 9:00, 7:27)

Wed - Off

Thur - 10.0 miles 1:29:35 (9:12/mi out, 8:42/mi back)

Fri -- Off

Sat - 6.0 miles (9:39, 8:53, 8:50, 8:34, 8:11, 7:27)

Sun - Off

TOTAL: 20.0 MILES

Biggest week so far this year. I'm planning a 4.4-mile race on Thanksgiving day ... would help to lose some weight before then. Still contemplating a spring marathon. I'm thinking 20 miles per week is enough volume for sub-4 hours, but would require a few 18- to 20-mile runs in March-April. Not sure my knees would tolerate that.

Congrats to Orient! Sub-19 is a fading memory for me -- last time was at age 57.

Congrats also to MagicShoes for hanging on for sub-2, despite the health and westher issues.

amkelley -- Good to see a rebound this week.

I noticed on Facebook last night a couple of the local clubs sent teams to Masters XC in Boston this weekend. I havent checked results yet. Anyone here run it?

Be well.

“Gerschler outraged the running fraternity by announcing: ‘Steady running is wasteful of effort and inefficient.’ He went on to claim that with his interval training method he could achieve fitness in a subject in six weeks which would take twelve weeks of steady running to produce.”

At the end of my junior year in high school I was a 4:56 miler spending most of my time at the high jump pit. Through Ole Olsen former high school teammate and future NCAA champion, I was introduced to who I thought was Coach Igloo. Anyway, in less than a year I was running 4:23 mile and 9:27 2 mile. At the end of my freshman year of college I contracted a severe case of mononucleosis and I did not run a step until January 1st. In less than 6 months I ran a 14:04 3 mile.

With regards to 'cadence', everything I've ever learned about the topic, I learned from the great Humboldt State coach, Jim Hunt. He wrote this:

https://www.amazon.com/Rhythm-Running-Jim-Hunt/dp/1606794310

I had a fabulous week of geezer training...25 miles in 6 days. I am purposely skipping one day a week whether I need it or not...as it turns out, I generally need it.

Had a great 5 mile progression run on the track where the final mile concluded in a 7 something...a very high 7 something, but I was just tickled to see that number for the first time in more than a year after multiple surgeries.

Later in the week I did a 2 miles road time trial (probably 300 yards short, but its the same course I've used for nearly 2 decades, so therfore, benchmarking nonetheless) and I improved to 15:08...a number I hadn't seen in more than an entire revolution around the sun.

Even my recovery jogs this week were faster than those of late. Good thing, because they couldn't have gotten much slower.

Am a ways away from competing in my decrepit old 65 - 69 age group...but objects in the mirror are getting closer and closer ;}

Have a most swell week in the pursuit of your goals...stay inspired, and most of all, 'train don't strain.'

your pal,

MF