Training in the mould of Tinman - a thread and training log.

Current week so far:

Monday: Either 4.5 miles, or nothing (can't remember if I ran this the day before or not). No idea of pace.

Tuesday: Off

Wednesday: 4.5 miles at 6:40 pace. Felt well above easy pace, but nothing too taxing - an invigorating, lovely run. Felt like I was floating along. I imagine it was proabably how I'm meant to feel on a Tinman tempo.

Thursday: 6 miles at 6:45 pace. Felt almost identical to yesterday.

Friday: Off

Hoping to run 6 miles on Saturday and Sunday, for a total of either 27 or 22.5 miles. This is the first week where I've been able to run anything semi-reasonable without this injury screaming. The injury is right in my groin, and I know it's not totally gone as when I raise my left leg 90 degrees, I can feel it slightly, whereas I can't when I do the same with my right. I also might be able to detect it on runs, but it's so very slight that I'm not sure if it is real, or just psychosomatic.

Still, the plan is to take things SLOW. I'm not going to run more than 2 days in a row for the time being - I think at least for the next week, maybe the week after too. Also, no workouts, unless I feel really good and I start floating along at 6:40 pace for half an hour or so (as I already know this doesn't aggravate anything). One thing I will do is avoid hills like the plague - the only hilly run I've done since the injury really irritated it, although that was around a week ago.

OK, things still going to plan so far. Completed the two 6-milers yesterday and today, both at 7:15 pace per mile. This felt very easy on Saturday, and at a very slightly more moderate effort today (but still within the "easy" realm). So the week that was was 2 runs at around 6:40 pace, 2 runs at 7:15 pace, and (possibly) a run at some unknown pace.

Plan for the coming week is:

Monday: Off

Tuesday: 6 miles

Wednesday: 6 miles

Thursday: Off

Friday: 6 miles

Saturday: Off

Sunday: 8 miles if week has been going well, with nothing from my groin/hip flexors. If not, stick to the 6 miler.

The pace is unplanned on every run for now - if I want to run at a bit of a harder effort and let my stride go, I can, and if I want to take it easy, I can.

If the injury stays GONE (please, God...), then this week will be 26 miles again, and the week after, I shall progress to around 30mpw with the same "unplanned" approach. I'm trying to be super conservative, it was coming back too quickly that injured me last time. If I can increase by roughly 5mpw every other week, I will be at the mileage I want by early 2020, and since I am essentially running impromptu Tinman tempos every so often, that will hopefully have me fairly fit. The only thing to do then will be to designate a day for a regular Tinman tempo to occur, and to start including a CV workout - so things are looking up, provided I can stay injury free.

Also, I've just realised I misspelled "mold". Gah! Is there any way to change a thread title?

Even when you build up to your full plan, don’t overlook taking the easy days VERY easy in order to recover in between the consistent sessions. Keep the ball rolling with consistent training rather than stretching yourself too thin.

Only really needs strides the day before quality workout. Build up to 10x20s on/40s off.

Better off doing short 60m sprints rather than 100m sprints after CV.

Should add in one day of hill strides in place of flat strides as well.

Hi forerunner,

Those sound like good suggestions, I shall use them. Regarding strides - if you're doing 10*20s during an easy run, with just 40 seconds between, does this mean that they are done at around mile pace or slower? That seems slow for a stride, my cadence would be significantly lowered compared to my regular stride cadence. Is this the goal?

The bread and butter of this approach is those 3-4' reps (800/1k) which you have skipped in your first week... you should work around those and add rest days if need be not the other way round

Hi Kav,

I skipped those reps this week due to it being my first week back from an injury, which I can still very slightly detect. The plan was originally to run everything easy, but the impromptu faster 6:40 pace runs were unplanned and felt fine, so that's why I'm saying I could include those whilst still slowly building mileage around the end stage of an injury. I'd prefer to wait a week, but perhaps until the end of Sep, to add any CV paced stuff, simply since I don't know if that would aggravate the injury. The CV pace will be the bedrock once I'm at full fitness, though.

Maybe start the CVpace work extremely easy to feel your way? Like with 500s first week, then building with 600s et cetera.

That's an idea, I could start with something like five 90 second efforts, or something. If there's nothing from the injury, then I'll be able to incorporate more CV stuff. I'm just wondering whether there's any point at such low mileage, when a huge focus has to be building up the mileage and running consistently without any injury setbacks. If it really would be more beneficial to include CV stuff even at the low mileage of 25 - 45 that I'll be at until the end of Oct, then I'll do it.

Sorry i wasnt aware re injury. Thats a good suggestion above to build the CV distance. This type workout shouldnt feel taxing at the end.

HM guy wrote:

Hi forerunner,

Those sound like good suggestions, I shall use them. Regarding strides - if you're doing 10*20s during an easy run, with just 40 seconds between, does this mean that they are done at around mile pace or slower? That seems slow for a stride, my cadence would be significantly lowered compared to my regular stride cadence. Is this the goal?

Strides at 3k-5k effort. Not supposed to be sprinting super hard, just getting in more faster smooth running to prep the body for the actual work to come the next day.

forcerunner - what is recovery on hill strides?

would you also recommend cycling through tinman tempo, LT, CV, and leg speed days?

curiousmindz wrote:

forcerunner - what is recovery on hill strides?

would you also recommend cycling through tinman tempo, LT, CV, and leg speed days?

Totally depends on what you're training for!

Only being able to speak from my experience, including a CV workout with some hills and strides is the primary focus, then something specific to half marathon or marathon (which I guess could be called LT or Tinman Tempo) is what I use in my week.

For "leg speed days" as I think NAZ refers to them as, as well, I just do 2 days of strides per week.

In terms of cycling through the workouts, bread and butter is CV once per week then alternating between a half marathon or marathon effort workout as the second workout for the week is what I've found to actually be sustainable.

Whoops double post.

Recovery I've done is just jog back down, turn around, then start again! Keep it simple!

OK, thank you. I shall include those on my next easy run, it should be a good, very light introduction back into 5k pace stuff.

The good news is that for the same effort that I used to have to put in to run 7:00 pace or so when I was setting my fastest times at 17/18, I can now run at 6:45 pace, and the easy effort level that used to yield 7:30 miles is currently yielding 7:15s. This is exciting, as I imagine a year of consistent Tinman stuff will bring my times down by a great deal too. Injury prevention remains the primary current concern, though.

Where the hell do you get the 6:45 easy pace from? This is Tinman's calculator:

http://www.runfastcoach.com/calc2/

Please enter your race times (only if you could race these times today, if you think you are slower put the slower time) and look if your easy run pace is in the range of what Tinman perceives as "easy".

If it's not, please slow down a bit. Instead of doing a schedule of

6:45 pace easy run - OFF DAY - 6:45 pace easy run - OFF DAY ...

you could be doing 8:00-9:00 pace easy run - easy run - easy run - easy run ... AND have lower injury risk/pressure while building mileage faster AND developing mitochondria, strengthening the heart muscle, building blood volume etc!

Tinman would first have you get up to 60 minutes of running every day. If you can only run 7x30 min easy (at 8-9 min pace) right now, do that and extend your runs. Once you are at 7 days of running, you can run some runs faster like you are doing, or introduce workouts. Actually Tinman also has an easy-moderate-hard-easy-moderate-hard etc schedule that you might like.

But stop this fast - OFF - fast - OFF etc nonsense. That's not Tinman's principle at all!

People need to read the thread so far.

I am not claiming what I am CURRENTLY doing is Tinman training. I am claiming I am building up, slowly, to a Tinman schedule, having started coming back from an injury. That means I'm not in a position to run every day, since it was running every day after a layoff - for about 30 minutes, as you described - that injured me the last time. Therefore, I'm spending the next month or so building mileage, with the odd slightly harder run at about 6:40 pace (because it doesn't feel challenging, or aggravate the injury) - and will naturally come to running every day, in the mold of Tinman, by gradually building up.

The OP contains the plan I'm building up to. Does that seem more Tinman-like to you? Because I can't realistically hit all the Tinman points in the first week of training back from an injury. I'll get there.

Secondly, I haven't been saying 6:45 is easy. I've been saying 7:15 is easy. 6:45 doesn't feel difficult - it's the pace I settle into when I decide to elongate my stride and clip along a bit - but it's not my easy pace. I do it when I feel good, and am hoping it builds my fitness a little faster than nothing but easy running.

As for how I calculated my easy pace - I didn't. I have no recent races, and am not in a position to be racing this month. I just go out and run without effort, at a pace I can hold a long conversation at easily, and it happens to come to 7:15 (I don't run with a watch, so I'm not racing against one, I just know the pace since the run has unfailingly took me 43 mins, and I know how long it is).

Does this clear things up?

So the only reason for the two-day on, one-day off schedule is to avoid aggravating an injury.

The days are not fast, either - most are at my easy pace. The goal is to build to running every day, with the majority being easy, in a couple of months.

The few that aren't easy will be impromptu, dictated by my body, such as the 6:40 runs (this is done off effort, not pace, so day-by-day they may be faster or slower), or the off CV-type session if the injury can take it.

Then once I've been able to do this for a month or more, I'll be more rigid with the Tinman-inspired schedule in the OP.

Yes, but I still think you should reconsider the pace. Your 5k PR is 18:30 and your half 1:25, which are both ~equal performance level. EVEN if you were at that level right now, which frankly I don't believe since you had to take so much time off due to the injury, the Tinman calculator linked above gives the following paces:

Easy: 8:45 - 8:27

That's the range a 18:30 5k/1:25 half guy should run on easy runs and long runs according to Tinman. That's how an easy run should feel for a guy with these PR's.

Tinman Tempo: 6:51 - 6:41

This is in line with what you are doing and considering a "tempo effort". You said yourself 6:45 feels like a Tinman tempo to you. That's good.

What's not good, is that you consider 7:15 your truly easy pace. 7:15 in the calculator falls just outside of the "Easy Tempo" range, which is also called "steady-state". This is the pace most recreational runners run on their easy days without getting better but also not recovering.

If you always did your easy runs at that pace, it might have had to do with the injuries.

Just to clarify how far you are off - the Tinman calculator starts "allowing" 7:15 as easy pace for a 15:45 5k guy, with the range being 7:15-7:31.

I just want to help you. My easy runs were WAYYY too fast before I did a lactate test and found out about Tinman. I wasn't improving and had to deal with injuries all the time. It felt like walking/jogging at the beginning, but eventually got used to it. That's when injuries stopped and improvements started.

Hi Tom!

Thanks for posting your internal dialogue!