Road Racing and Training Thread - Week Ending 10/6

Xenon- definitely could be a track thing. I find some aches and pains from too much track time. You're being smart :).

I think we can all agree from your training that if you stay healthy this season you're definitely going to pr.

I've been following for a while. I haven't posted during this built up till now.

Goal race: CIM 12-8-13: 2:45

(PR: only ran once. 2:49:10 in 2009

8 weeks to go. I'm running 35-50 a week so far. Ran a 1:18:30 1/2 race yesterday and felt strong. I'll max at about 60 miles here soon.

I have a few questions for you guys. I'm loosely following Hal Higdon for my long runs. Do you guys feel that two 20 milers is enough? Or 3? For my one previous marathon I did one run of 15 and about 4-5 13 milers. Hit the wall a bit the last 5 miles. Trying to lessen the blow this time. Another question is do you guys think it's worth it to do one more 1/2 race hard 4-5 weeks out from goal marathon. I think in 3-4 more weeks I could get down in the 1:16-1:17 range. Is it really needed and beneficial? Thank you for any input and good luck to Chicago crew and everyone in training.

Cashclay: Thanks a lot! I've gone ahead and sent you an email.

reed: Thanks for the post. Here's the plan I'm going with, a lot of people have been telling me that Pikachu knows what he/she is talking about.

"Start doing doubles.

And keep two workouts per week + one longish run.

Try to work up to a schedule like this:

Mon: 60' moderate; 30' easy + strides or short hill sprints

Tue: longer reps or tempo run; 30' easy

Wed: 45' easy; 30' easy

Thu: shorter reps, fartlek or hills; 30' easy

Fri: 60' easy - moderate; 30' easy

Sat: 90' long run with some quality (e.g.: 30' easy, 30' moderate, 30' steady)

Sun: rest or 30 - 60' very easy

Some ideas:

- longer reps for example: 6 x mile or 3 x 2 miles @ HM-pace with 200 jogg.

- tempo: 6 - 10 miles @ projekted marathon pace (or 85 % max. heart rate)

- hills: anything from 15 x 200, 10 x 300 to 15 x 400.

- fartlek: 10 x 3' with 1' jogg rest, 15 x 2' (1' rest), 20 x 1' (1' rest)

- short reps: important to better running economy... Try 10 - 15 x 200 @ mile pace, 8 - 10 x 400 @ 3 K pace, 5 x 1 K @ 5 K pace. Important: CURRENT paces!!!

Pikachu"

I actually think I can be at this sort of schedule pretty soon, I would have been at 60mpw last week if I hadn't raced.

Hey,

nice to see some still care about Mr. Pikachu :-P

I missed to post for a couple of weeks (spent a couple weeks away from home) and was just silently lurking :-)

Originally I was searching something new for my own training here... And I found it - so I stopped posting here...

I just felt a little stale for most of spring/sommer season and didn't know why exactly.

Instead of running 100 - 140 MPW with 7 - 10 runs I switched it up a little bit and did more doubles (and did more quality), longer workouts and slightly decreased the MPW in my marathom build up (from typically 120 - 160 to about 100 - 130 for the most time).

And it really made a huge difference for me. I just feel more pop in my legs most days now. Yeah, in the beginning it sucked a little bit to run almost every day for 2 times, as I liked to be finished with my running early in the morning. But I adapted pretty well. Instead of running 90'+ singles almost every day I do much more stuff like 60 - 70' + 40 - 60' again in the afternoon. Now I feel like I recover better. Sometimes I run even just 2 x 45', when I had a long marathon workout the day before.

I talked very often with my coach, other athletes/coaches as well and read very much stuff and feel like I am progressing again after being a little bit stuck in the 29high/30low - 10 K / 2:18 - marathon times.

I believe I have the chance to run faster now, running is more fun as I am not that much drained every day like I used to be with the long singles and definitely will give the marathon a couple more shots :-) I will just give myself a little bit more time to adapt to the new training.

I know - everybody's different. But for me the "doubles, doubles, doubles" philosophy works pretty good. And some of your comments really helped me to get a new perspective of my own traiing stuff!! Thanks :-)

Cheers

Pikachu

some more comments

NP1112 - stupid question but what does BP stand for again? I assume its your goal pace for the 50 miler. And 3600' of climbing on the treadmill is ridiculous!

xenonscreams - Great 3x2 mile set. I hope the IT band issue is cleared up for you by now. Are you riding a road bike outside or in the trainer? Nice job of keeping the heart rate elevated, tough to do on a bike sometimes.

The Garbage Disposal - Great week and volume. Nice to see the 15 miler in there and looks like you are rounding into form nicely.

reed - I wouldnt beat yourself up over a 5k in the middle of an 80 mile week. Some great workouts in your week.

VF Runner - Sorry to hear about your foot injury:( I hope the rest is healing you up.

des-well this came up in last week's thread as well but I fought on an Achilles injury (thought I would have to settle on a B race) by primarily resting and PR'd. Trust your training, dont try to make anything up in terms of running and simply rest at this point (and dont put on lbs;)). You'll be fine.

printer-you have a great base already so just need a few MP runs and you'll be good to go for the marathon

[Tiger_runner / Diesel - Great to see your progress back and that you are running healthy again!

Napper - Good luck next weekend. Maybe we'll be around each other at some point with similiar goals:)

renewed marathoner - congrats on finishing your exams and nice base week

Pikachu- Great to see you posting again. Hopefully you'll post your workouts over the next few weeks/months so we can see what youre doing and your progress:)

Pikachu: good to see you back and feeling better overall

Cmm: BP is "building pace". What my old coach would call progression runs. It is easier to write down in my log so i stuck with it.

Pikachu- Running that many miles on 7-10 runs a week will take a toll on the body. When I'm in the 100-115 range I'll double up every day except long and I follow 9 day cycles, not 7 days, so I double 8 out of 9 days. You figured it out though. Looking forward to your posts since our PRs are pretty close for the most part.

Pikachu,

Replying to you here from my sub-16 training thread. Interested to know why you said to do 1 long workout and one shorter rep/running economy workout during the base phase? I haven't heard of this before, just like to hear your thoughts.

Once again, I've been slacking on the comments. I apologize everyone, I've been pretty busy. Looking to improve though!

Goal - PR in the 5K and Half this fall

Next Race - Half on Saturday

I took two days off this week to help heal up. Still dealing with some capsulitis and a few sore joints from overcompensating in my stride.

M –Off (planned)

T – 12 - Interval workout

W – 10 easy

T – 13 - Threshold workout

F – 10.5

S – 15

S – Off (planned)

Total Mileage – 60.5

Tuesday's interval workout:

3 mile warm-up/3 mile cool down

4 x 1600m with 800m recovery (~3:55): 4:44, 4:45, 4:47, 4:50

Thursday's threshold workout:

3 mile warm-up/3 mile cool down

3 x 3200m with 400m active recovery (~1:58): 10:15, 10:18, 10:15

cmm268 wrote:

reed - I wouldnt beat yourself up over a 5k in the middle of an 80 mile week. Some great workouts in your week.

just as a follow-up, i did a workout today that makes me feel better about that 16:40

here's my workout from this week and from 2 weeks ago

2 weeks ago:

1600m on track in 5:10 (1:19, 2:37, 3:55, 5:10)

3 minutes jogging

4mi tempo in 22:32ish (split 11:35/10:58)

5 minutes jogging

5x200m on track in 31 avg with 60 seconds jogging

today:

1mi in 5:14ish on grass, not fast surface.

2 minutes jogging

4mi tempo in 22:10 (split 11:30/10:40)

5 minutes jogging

5x30sec on 60sec off on grass, not as fast or as tough as before.

i ran faster in my 3rd and 4th miles today than i did in a 5k race this weekend. funny how that happens, this workout was very controlled, i had 2 teammates beat me by 10 seconds but they were putting in more effort, while i kept it controlled.

reed,

awesome splits on those mile tempos. way to cut it down and get rolling.

Yeah RunnersFix it definitely made a huge difference! And I guess, somewhere in the 12 - 15 miles range is the point, where I begin to not recover enough, when I workout on a high level (example: 3 fast workouts + 4 singles of 13 miles = too long singles to sustain good quality) :-)

Rumanujan: You never heard of this before? Ok :-) I know, some people might have different opinions, but I think you should NEVER go completely away from fast running. Because you WANT TO RUN FAST!! Even in base phase. Because you want to prepare your body & mind to go FAST - so do it!! I don't think you should bang out "hard" anaerobic stuff. But FAST aerobic running + progressing efficiency is the way to go IMHO.

The longer workout is high end aerobic running (better your treshhold) - probably the most important training zone for distance running.

The shorter reps make you more efficient at race paces without killing yourself and producing too much anaerobic stress. I think that's pretty much perfect for base.

When you do nothing faster than tempo effort in base phase you are more likely to get injured when you start fast workouts cause you aren't used to it anymore. And you lose some of the pop in your legs. So keep some faster running (at least strides or hill sprints) the whole year.

Makes sense?

OK, I'm back. Not even going to bother with a full report of last week. It was 25 miles on 4 runs for the record. The good thing is that after being able to workout last night, I think my foot is going to be fine. Hindsight makes me pretty sure I strained some of the connective tissues along the top of my left foot (along my 4th metatarsal). I think it occurred taking a funny step at work two Sundays ago, so not even running related. It hurt enough that I took Monday off and at the end of a moderate 6 miles Tuesday it hurt at least as much at the end of the run as it did to begin the run. Didn't run again until Friday and only really felt my foot (especially on downhills) in the last 3rd of 10 on Sunday.

As I said, the half is out. I'll work towards running a good 8k in November and a 5K in December and then I'll start to plan next year.

Now time to go back and comment.

First, thanks to all for the encouraging words.

StoneCutter - true to your name, seems like you are just making nice steady progress.

RunnersFix- some pretty nice "recovery" efforts in there.

Ramanujan- welcome

Force runner- Nice XC comeback!

King Hobby- I have followed pfitz almost to the letter with good results. After that last run with a few miles at MP I run even less the last few days, usually with 1-2 days completely off. A couple of 5 minutes jogs is a good way to go as far as warmup. As for the gels, I say stick with them. It's hard to get enough energy from the Gatorade along the course.

cmm268/NP1112- solid work and some nice weeks there.

Xenon- great Wednesday workout. Hope the knee comes around quickly. And yeah, definitely cut out all that unnecessary sleeping. Haha.

GarbageDisposal- looks like you are making good progress. Keep it up.

Reed- sound like you might have just been flat from the higher mileage. Certainly nothing to worry about, but I'm sure you know that.

Des- just get healthy no matter how much you have to cut back. The training will still be there, ... but if you don't get yourself healthy it won't matter.

Printer- making nice progress man. Good luck on the quick Kiawah buildup.

Muebele- Be careful and heal quickly.

Diesel- good to see things coming around for you.

Napper- good luck!

Ca$h- Nice stuff in there.

Pikachu- Sometimes the body needs that change of stimulus to go to the next level. Good to see you around and we're looking for big things in the future from you.

NJ Truth- Solid workouts despite your issues.

Pikachu:

sounds logical to me! so in the plan you gave me, there were fartleks, and hill repeats. do these count as shorter, faster rep workouts? right now i'm thinking i'll do:

mon: mile repeats/4-5 mile tempo/3 x 2 mile repeats at slightly faster than tempo pace

th: any variation of fartlek (10 x 3' with 1' jogg rest, 15 x 2' (1' rest), 20 x 1' (1' rest)), hill repeats 200m with recovery jog, 10 - 15 x 200 @ mile pace, 8 - 10 x 400 @ 3 K pace, 5 x 1 K @ 5 K pace.

i'm most curious about how to cut down tempo pace. say i'm doing 5 miles at 6:15 pace right now. how do i cut it down to 6:10? or 6:00 over time?

Raman: you and your body will know when you can pick up the pace and hold it. One day you will feel good on a run and it will happen. Then there will be days where 615s will feel like crap. Haha. You will know, dont worry.

StoneCutter- Nice display of patience easing back into it slowly. Do you have any races penciled in for the near future?

Also, thanks for the words of encouragement. I'm not really down on these races, because as I mentioned before I am also still working back down towards my racing weight. If I get there (with my racing weight) and have a few 100+ mile weeks under my belt and I'm still running these times then I'll be worried. :)

Runnersfix- Nice sessions this week. Good to see you building up patiently as well with more than 3 months to go til race day.

Ramanujan- It's good to think long term, and given the times you have run and your age I think they definitely reasonable goals. Welcome to the thread too.

Forcerunner- Very nice opener and seems like you beat a lot of pretty solid runners too. Keep up the good work man.

King hobbyjogger- Good luck this weekend, you have put in the work and it's time to relax and not stress out about the little things. I know the nutrition/fueling strategies work differently for everyone, so the only advice I would give here is to decide on your strategy in that department quick and then not worry about it after that. (mine is always fairly simple... alternate water and gatorade at water stops, and take a gel at 10 miles and another at 20... I might experiment with the details race to race, but once I make up my mind for that race I don't spend additional time worrying about the details and save my mental energy race for race day)

CMM268- Good luck this weekend as well! You're in PR shape, and hopefully the weather and conditions cooperate for you.

Slartzio- Good to see you at least managed to relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor from the last cycle for a few days :)

Np- Don't pretend you're not counting your mileage totals on here. Those of us who are FB friends with you know better :)

xenoscreams- Damn, hope it's not ITBS. I wouldn't wish that on anyone after what I went through this summer. Got my fingers crossed for you.

reed- Haven't you been doing more miles than you ever have in the past? It's a little hard to race your best when your body is still adjusting. You'll be good once your body has adjusted a bit more in the next few weeks.

Des- Sorry to hear about the recent setback man. I have similar experiences, but unfortunately they did not go well for me. The difference is that I got sick about 3-4 days before so I think unless you have something really really bad in your system you should be fine in 2 weeks. It's hard to tell, but you probably don't need to look for a backup until you get in the race and you're really feeling off. Don't be afraid to drop out and save it for another day though if you really feel off your game, it's still early in the fall season to find another race.

My personal experience last year was I was ready to roll for the Las Vegas marathon and got really sick 3-4 days out. I dropped out at 16 miles and was pretty much fine a few days later. I took 3-4 days off/easy and went straight into my next cycle, and 2 weeks after my DNF I nailed a 18-20 mile long run with 12-14 miles at MP. So since you got sick about 14-17 days out, as long as it's not super serious you'll be good in 2 weeks.

Printer- Saw the silverware from the 10K on FB. Nice work! Hope you're settling in as well.

Muebele- Sucks about the ankle man. Hope you've healed up and are nice and fresh from the days off.

Diesel- Good to see you keeping up with your comeback. Keep it up man.

Napper- Good to hear the hamstring is healing up. Good luck this weekend!

new2this- Another nice week of base. Crazy to hear about the tornado, hope all your things are back in order.

ca$hclay- Those are some nice quality workouts! and thanks for providing the details, seems like it would be fun to try some of those if I were to run another XC race in my life.

renewed marathoner- Nice week of training and even nicer week of real-life stuff. Good work man.

Portland- I think it's more important to get in solid MP and tempo sessions and a decent amount of overall weekly mileage than worry about hitting 20 for your long runs. I experimented with this last year and almost PR'd on a course that was much harder than the course where I ran my PR, during my "experiment cycle" my longest long run was 18 miles, but I had multiple 100 mile weeks and in general pushed most of my long runs.

Pikachu- Glad to hear you're doing well man. Aren't you racing a marathon soon?

NJ Truth- Sorry to hear it's still bothering you, but like others said it seems like you're still getting in some good workouts. Good luck this weekend man!

VF Runner- Sorry to hear about the setbacks, but it seems like pulling the plug is the right call here. Hope things start to go your way.

Garbage: shhhh dont tell anyone. Lol. I only added things up after a few weeks because i was curious. I keep a log on my phone and on paper so i know my totals even though i am not obsessed with hitting "x" mpw now.

GarbageDisposal: thank you. I appreciate the insight. Problem is

I will be only maxing at 55-60 vs 100. I'll take your advice and spend more time at marathon goal pace. This will only be my second full. So I'm still learning a ton. I sure wish I would have ran one right out of college! When I was able to train correctly and get in big volume. I guess at this point it is about how well I can run with the time I can put into the sport.