Asphalt Junkies CLOSED AND GETTING OUR FIX (Page 125)

HAHA, Warren I'm pretty sure with that number no one will mistake me for one of the elite runners there that is for sure!

Little victories!  Although when I was going through those days they weren't so little.  Love it!!!!

Jeff I did see this in the newsletter and just checked it out. Man I can't believe how slow he recommends you run for the marathon training pace. I find that to be very interesting and it makes me feel like I've been running too fast. I can tell you that I am not. I also got a kick out of his "no puking" rule afte running the magic mile lol.

I also found it interesting that he recommends going the full 26 miles before your marathon. (Did I understand that correctly?  Pretty sure he said 14-15 miles for the half, 26 for the full.)  I have done my fair share of reading on the topic and most everything I read says 20-22 max and there's more harm than good past that.  Also was interesting (again, if I understood correctly from my one-time viewing) that he seemingly places more emphasis on the distance than time in terms of your longest run.  From what I gather from other places, it seems what's important about the long long runs is the time on feet, not distance.  I guess it's not good to come to conclusions based on a 6-minute clip, but these were by takeaways from watching the video. Thoughts anyone?

I thought the same things as was wondering what others thought.  26 miles at the pace he would have me running would take 4 1/2 hours or more!  That seems excessive.  But without having his whole plan it's hard to really say for sure.  My take away is to slow down in general on the long run.  I do hear almost every credible source say the pace isn't important on the long run, just that we're out there doing it.

I didn't look at the clip, so take my comment with a grain of salt.

I've been gleaning a lot of my running info from a local, old timer, super duper fast runner.  I don't know his entire history but I suspect that I need to sit down with him one of these days and take some history notes.  He's in his 70's.  Anyway, he said that for half marathon training, you should max your long run at 15 miles.  For marathon training, you should target 30 miles.  I thought this was excessive but I was trying to follow his advice for my half marathon back in May.  I'm pretty sure he is spot on!

I told him about my Boston dreams and he said that with my current times, I could do it with a lot of work but it would be close.  He has not given me any specific workouts, just general ideas.  Some of his ideas got me through that hill climb with a smile on my face.

Anyway....just food for thought from a previous generation.  It seems like training regimes come and go.  Whatever works for each individual with the least amount of injury is the perfect training plan.

Thank you!  He's been dry for another day!  This is HUGE!  We are going to try for an "underwear day" tomorrow!  (I'll pack a change of clothes and pull-ups for the new adventure.)

And.....in other news!  Never a dull moment here at the farm!

Our neighbors had a little forest fire last night!  Yep!  Total flames at 2AM!  Fire trucks......people.....hoses.....redwood tree and stump and brush in flames!  Neighbor out with a garden hose to keep it down as much as possible before fire trucks from the nearest city and Dept. of Forestry showed up.

Nope.....we didn't hear a thing.  We live (pretty much) across the street.  (Remember, we live in the boonies.)

Our outdoor dogs are worthless pieces of poop!  They didn't bark AT ALL!!!!!  They snoozed through the whole thing!

Anyway....everything is ok.  Very little damage done.  It could have been much worse but it's very scary.

Jeff, GREAT race and thanks for posting your report and all the tips you inserted through out the report.

Tony, congrats on the marathon.

Warren, my bike did the same thing a few weeks ago, so I took it o the shop and one of the cable was broken inside the rubber coating.  They changed out the cable, took 5 minutes and it was fine.

Hope everone has a GREAT weekend!

YAY! Very exciting!

I think this is the key! The only change I would make is getting to the line without any injury.  The paces and lengths of an individuals long run should be based on that persons fitness, likelihood of injury and time available for other runs.  If a person has a total run focus and won't be trying to fit any swims or a lot of cycling mileage in then more miles on your feet may be okay.  But, I am not sure I agree with the full distance for either the half or the full marathon long runs.  Certainly these types of runs can have a tremendous positive impact on the athletes mental attitude during the race but it seems to open a person up to more injuries.

Where I think going long like that can be okay is if you have the miles in your "history" and training to continue up to those distances.  I have read in other places that 3 hours is kind of the threshold for long runs.  When a person goes beyond that they seem open themselves up to the likelihood of injury rather substantially. 

Galloway certainly is a top notch expert on long distance running and I cannot question much of anything he says.  What I would say is that I think a person can run as far as they want on any given training plan provided they can back up the plan with TRUE training with balance and focus.  I think this would include a slow base building phase that would likely not have any speed work and it would follow strictly the 10% rule.

Now about paces.  Jeff is definitely a proponent for slow runs and I will, and have, follow that way of thinking for some time now.  This is where I think everything seems to be on target.  Running slow seems to keep injuries at bay and all of us running much more healthy and gets us to the start line ready to go and that is what we all want anyway.  The approach to this should be taken from a long term training approach;  We all want to be healthy for along time.  We all want to be fast right now!  And figuring out what is more important to us will impact which direction we go on the training front.  Fast is AWESOME!  Hurt SUCKS an it ruins races, causes us to lose money in race fees and sometimes defeats us mentally and maybe even pushes us out of the sport altogether. 

I have "coached" a couple of guys at work about running for the past couple of years.  Both men are sporadic runners.  They run for a while to either loose weight or get into shape and then stop for varying times, pick it back up..........  Each of them has had different goals for these couple of years.  One is content to run a few races with his daughters a year and not get really focused on being fast, just staying in shape.  The other earlier this year told me he wanted to get his 5k time down to 21 minutes from 26 minutes this year.  His trouble?  Basically, no easy running.  Every run, not races, has been an attempt to get a little bit faster, even if it's only a couple of seconds.  He has been slightly injured to limping a few times since March when he began training.  Many times he has told me about what is going on with this or that part of his body, asked me what I thought and then went about doing the very thing I told him he shouldn't be doing and re-injuring himself.

Anyway, all this long winded speak to say that training smart needs to be developed a little by the individual with solid, time proven principals in mind.  Running slow, and sometimes very slow, is key to getting to the start line healthy.  Warren and Matt have both been through some of this personally and come out on the other side running faster and remaining healthy throughout the entire cycle.

This is a link (that has been shared before) that can assist in finding all of your paces.  But for the distance athletes training right now for long course races pay attention mostly to the long and easy run paces found here.  Plug a PR into the specific distance and see where you come out.  I have found that my PR's for all of the distances have been remarkably close to this scale, regardless of the particular distance race PR I plug in.

McMillan running

Wow, underwear day is a big milestone!  congrats and good luck to the munchkin.

Tracy glad to hear everything turned out alright for your neighbors. You have a lot of excitement for someone who lives out in the boonies. Happy to see your son doing so well that is a major accomplishment.

On the Galloway video, I think that prescribing a 26 mile training run is a little unusual, not wrong, just not common.  If I'm remembering correctly he said it was for 2 reasons.  The first was that he sees runners hit the wall at the distance equal to their longest training run.  The second was mental (confidence).  I can agree with that.  I also think that 20 miles is enough in terms of preparation, but I'm not sure about runners only doing 25ish miles per week.  When my longest run was 20 miles, I was doing 100 miles per week so my personal experience doesn't include training for a marathon on a plan like that.

My daughter did a 1 mile race this summer.  She ran 7:24.  So according to Galloway, her predicted half marathon pace would be 8:50something.  Her full Marathon pace 9:38ish.  And he said that the long run pace is 2 minutes/mile slower than that?  She would be doing her long runs at 11:30.  She currently runs 9-10 mile long runs around 9:30, so that's definitely slow.

Most of us have never tried running that slow, so don't really know how safe or unsafe it is to run at this pace for distance.  He also did indicate that the first week's long run is equal in distance to the person's longest run in the previous 2 weeks.  Got to start out conservatively.

I know from elsewhere that Galloway advocates a run/walk approach to beginners doing marathons.  He suggests 1 minute of walking each mile I think.   perhaps he's having his athletes do this on their long runs.  Which would make his 26 mile long run no more damaging than a 20 mile continuous run IMO.

I have heard that there are sub-3 hr marathoners that use the run/walk approach....but doubt they walk an entire minute each time.

I advocate slow running for a number of reasons, but at the top of my list of reasons is that running slow (when done slow enough) has you comfortable enough to daydream, to talk to your running partner, to enjoy the experience...and this will keep you running.  It's precisely because running is uncomfortable that most people keep the runs short, infrequent, and fall off the wagon.

I am curious to work this out for myself.  I have to guess what I can do for a Magic Mile.  I will guess 5:45.  If that were the case, then my predicted marathon race pace would be 7:30.  And my long run training pace would be 9:30.  That's actually not too far off.  I probably fall in to about 9:00 pace for my long, easy runs.  It's nice to know that I could go even slower (which I do sometimes when running with Jordan).

In Japan, they call it "slow jogging."  As you may know, Japan's national soccer team won the most recent world cup, and was runner up in the Olympics.  I watched a segment on Japan's national news about how part of the team's training incorporated this slow jogging.  During practices this is one of the ways they build their endurance.  (Not sure how long they run for though.)  Additionally, they were showing after their practices that they take ice baths.  (They showed clips of the players both running around slowly, and standing in a tub of ice.)

Edit: *women's team

Someone in my town is selling a 2010 Quintana Roo cd 0.1 ultegra TT bike.  It's lime green.  I haven't gotten finance committee approval for such a purchase yet, but I'd like to ask the bike people what they think such a bike is worth, and how to evaluate it.  It has the stock wheels, so nothing extraordinary to add to the price.  I sort of know the owner (friend of a bike friend I used to work with) and apparently he only rides outside in nice weather, so I think it will be in pretty good condition.

What should I look for when/if I go look at it?  I'm not sure I will get the green light to buy it, but in the case of a miracle I want to be prepared.

It's a good bike.  If you ride it and everything works, there's nothing to worry about.  The important point to evaluate is whether it's the right size for you.  It won't necessarily fit as it's adjusted for the seller, but you need to ensure that it CAN fit you with adjustments.

I met a local budding triathlete on this forum over the summer.  When he was looking at buying this exact bike from a local seller he asked me for my opinion.  I volunteered to meet him and the seller and give him an unbiased opinion on whether it was the right size.  Turns out I knew who the seller was and was able to confirm much of the back story he'd been given which made him feel better.

Don't know what he paid for it.

Value?  That's hard for me to say with any confidence.  I think it retailed around $3000ish?  The bike shops would probably have knocked quite a bit off when the following model year came out, that erodes the value of the bike on the used market perhaps to $2000.  So the value of the bike currently is probably somewhere from $2000 down. 

Bring your allen wrenches to the test ride so you can position the seat where you want to.  Then evaluate where you would want the aerobars to go with your saddle position.  You would need to swap the stem to make that adjustment, so make sure it's within the range of adjustment a stem can give you.

We've had 5 small earthquakes since 5AM!  Geez!  That's a lot!  The first one at 5AM felt like someone yanked the sheet out from under us.  I'd rather have lots of little ones than one monster.

ETA.......Make that 6!

Does anyone have the soft HR monitor strap for your Garmin?  Mine seems to be acting weird.  I get crazy high numbers and then it comes back down to normal range.  I used my old Polar yesterday and it worked fine.

Is it dying?  Should I just buy a new one?