Road Racing and Training Thread - Week Ending 1/19/20

@PowSloke - I’m going to give it a go at Boston. Training smarter so I can be prepared for the hills this time, even if it means going to extraordinary lengths to do so (driving 1 hour each way every other Sunday to get a run in where there are actual hills)

@Sub 6:00 - There aren’t any decent treadmills at my gym, so I’m a bit stuck in that regard. Might try to convince a guy I know who is a coach at a local university to let me knock out some runs on theirs if it comes down to it. Though, I don’t want him to get in trouble by doing so.

Stone - Nice week, keep stacking those together and it'll lead to solid general fitness you can translate into race specific fitness once you have something in mind.

JQ - Definitely a really solid base and you've clearly made huge progress in the past year.

HHW - Really nice workout Saturday.

Moke - Nice week, you're getting fairly fit. Seems like 1ks or 3 minute reps were pretty popular around here on Tuesday.

GFMAH - Keep putting the work in. Good to see you getting consistent weeks in again.

AJ - Hey look, more 1ks on a Tuesday. Really solid week, man. Gotta point out my most recent race is longer than yours, though, so I'm gonna enjoy that. Maybe man up and run a longer race here at some point?

OR - Stop picking arbitrary dates and trying to force fitness for them. Just get healthy and then start thinking about a timeline. Going the other way around is setting yourself up for more issues.

GT - Nice week. Good mix of different workouts in there. And yes, winter is all about badger miles.

Powsloke - Nice mix of volume and quality.

Sub 6:00 - You ran 114 miles and some things were sore? No way! In all seriousness, good stuff man. That's a serious week.

TL - Treadmill workouts should always be on an effort basis.

Tyler - Nice week, good work on the pacing.

JB - Keep grinding, man.

DW - Good racing. More to come I'm sure.

General Race Response: I actually do love indoor track. The 200, or ideally 300, meter laps go by really quickly and the conditions are always perfect. It just would've been nice to start off a bit closer to my PR.

I have been MIA in the thread for the last 2 - 3 weeks as work became awfully busy. Running has also taken a hit, but I am plodding along. Kinda back at it starting last week, so thought I will start posting again.

M/40/5' 6"/170 lbs

Goal Race: Boston and Chicago 2020

M: Off, busy with work

T: 12.4 @ easy

W: 11.8 with a workout: 3 x (2 x 400m uphill on/off and 1 mile steady)

Th: Off, busy with work

F: 6.2 easy

Sa: 8 easy

Su: 17.7 @ moderate, with 3 x 4 miles at around date MP

Weekly miles and hours: 56 miles and 7h 30mins

Knew that I will be very busy with work on Monday and Thursday, so did a lot of mileage padding on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Wednesday workout was done on a treadmill, primarily by feel. Sunday workout was quite aggressive. I was worried about running such an intense workout for the first one in the cycle, but I hung on without too much damage. The critical thing, I think, was not to look at the watch and basically run by feel.

statfanatic wrote:

AJ - Hey look, more 1ks on a Tuesday. Really solid week, man. Gotta point out my most recent race is longer than yours, though, so I'm gonna enjoy that. Maybe man up and run a longer race here at some point?

Stat - Enjoy it for a few days. My 5k this weekend should restore order to the world - a world where real runners don’t consider 14 miles a “long run”

OR - been following your posts for a few months. all your runs seems to be at a similar intensity - rarely slower than 7/mile, most often progressing to low 6s. any thought as to varying your paces a bit? seems as if you've been going through some injury issues. no judgment - but perhaps you'd be better served not running so fast all the time? from my limited experience, even top-shelf elites don't run 6-something paces every run of the week, as it seems like you've been doing. again - not an expert - and you're obviously a much more talented runner than I am - just would like to hear your thoughts as to why you're constantly running progressions to near sub 6s on most every run. have you considered that might have something to do with your injury susceptibility?

nooky wrote:

OR - been following your posts for a few months. all your runs seems to be at a similar intensity - rarely slower than 7/mile, most often progressing to low 6s. any thought as to varying your paces a bit? seems as if you've been going through some injury issues. no judgment - but perhaps you'd be better served not running so fast all the time? from my limited experience, even top-shelf elites don't run 6-something paces every run of the week, as it seems like you've been doing. again - not an expert - and you're obviously a much more talented runner than I am - just would like to hear your thoughts as to why you're constantly running progressions to near sub 6s on most every run. have you considered that might have something to do with your injury susceptibility?

Yikes! The mods might delete this thread! Beating a dead horse is illegal in many states, and on the Internet too!

(I love you, OR.)

Dumb question for those with Garmins but it is bugging me.

How seriously do you take the "training status" and "training load" determinations by Garmin?

I was in the shower today and flipping through some screens and noticed my training status flipped from productive to peaking. I took yesterday off which decreased my overall 7 day training load but my last 7 days have still been 14/8/6/16/8/0/10 all at a pretty good clip with some quality. I know this is just some arbitrary value ascribed by a watch but it still gave me a what the hell moment! I assume the very slightly reduced mileage + recently lower heart rates due to cold weather (and hopefully some increased fitness) are sending the load number plummeting and causing this to flip over. Either way, how much do you guys pay attention to this stuff?

highhoppingworm wrote:

Dumb question for those with Garmins but it is bugging me.

How seriously do you take the "training status" and "training load" determinations by Garmin?

I was in the shower today and flipping through some screens and noticed my training status flipped from productive to peaking. I took yesterday off which decreased my overall 7 day training load but my last 7 days have still been 14/8/6/16/8/0/10 all at a pretty good clip with some quality. I know this is just some arbitrary value ascribed by a watch but it still gave me a what the hell moment! I assume the very slightly reduced mileage + recently lower heart rates due to cold weather (and hopefully some increased fitness) are sending the load number plummeting and causing this to flip over. Either way, how much do you guys pay attention to this stuff?

None

lol. There we have it.

There are too many variables that impact your heart rate, which is the key metric your Garmin uses to determine your relative fitness.

I actually think that Garmin gets it right sometimes, but there are too many bad assessments to put any stock whatsoever into any given assessment.

It's nice to look at every now and then but I don't put any real stock into it. I ran a 9:49 2 mile while my watch said I needed 50+ hours of rest and was unproductive

Smoove wrote:

There are too many variables that impact your heart rate, which is the key metric your Garmin uses to determine your relative fitness.

I actually think that Garmin gets it right sometimes, but there are too many bad assessments to put any stock whatsoever into any given assessment.

It’s just not reliable information. Even the heart rate data itself is often wrong.

I have all of those fancy things turned off on mine. HR, training status, training load, etc. Even the treadmill distance feature is off by over 50% from my 935 to my FR25, with the FR25 being the more accurate.

moke wrote:

It's nice to look at every now and then but I don't put any real stock into it. I ran a 9:49 2 mile while my watch said I needed 50+ hours of rest and was unproductive

Maybe you should have run faster?

(I joke. I joke.)

angryjohnny wrote:

highhoppingworm wrote:

Dumb question for those with Garmins but it is bugging me.

How seriously do you take the "training status" and "training load" determinations by Garmin?

...

Either way, how much do you guys pay attention to this stuff?

None

What he said.

[My Garmin thinks I should be running 2:49:43 for the marathon, and 17:43 for the 5k....I think it's fantastically skewed to begin with, and then the fact that I do my workouts on the track (where the Garmin mis-measures distance) skews it even more.]

Last week after my tempo my Garmin was unfazed and said I could use a nice 8 hours rest. Meanwhile after I ran 6 miles at an 8:30 average I needed 33 hours or something close. So, to conclude, yeah I don't trust it ha.

You have to run with the strap on for reliable info

runrincerepeat wrote:

You have to run with the strap on for reliable info

Please head over to the PNSO or Trump threads if you want to discuss strap ons.