Experior and Slornow's Spring/Summer Mentor Group-CLOSED (Page 76)

Great discussions!

36 mile ride tonight, done.  Now off to bed.

A few thoughts from someone who was in a similar spot.  Like you, I was in the 9-10 min mile range for several years (depending on distance).  Probably lots of reasons why I was stuck there.  Here are a few:  Not enough miles / week (10-15).  Not enough days running week (3 max).  Too many sacks of potatoes to carry around (10-20 lbs over ideal weight).  Too many similarly paced workouts (I would just run at a slightly slower pace than "race" pace on most runs).  No interval or Fartlek training runs.  No hill sprints.

My first mentor group was with Michael who introduced me to intervals.  Before Michael, I thought intervals meant going 7.2 mph instead of 6.4mph.  Well, it turned out that I actually could go 9.0mph for 1/10th of a mile (after a good warm-up).  This shocked me.  I mean really deeply (and wonderfully) shocked me.  It also broke through what was partially a mental barrier about my running.  Okay, so my body could go faster, I just couldn't do it for very long.  Anyway, since that ah ha moment, I've done a little better on all the things above and I've made some good improvement (mid 7s for a 5K anyway).  I'll probably never be a good runner based on my body and age and I'm not sure if I can get under 7min/mi pace for a 5K, but by making those changes, I did significantly improve my pace at all race lengths.  That being said, the run is still my weakness in the triathlon.  But better :-)

Last caveat.  Please listen to others and your own body when it comes to how to mix in interval training, hills, more miles, etc.

Stu

Since we're on the subject of running, question for those of you who are more experienced runners than I.

So, my goal last month was to get caught up on the marathon training plan to give me the option of doing a marathon in November.  That has more or less been accomplished without injury, so now I have the choice of whether to do a half or a full.  That is yet to be decided, but one thing that I found last year was that it took a LONG time for my body to recover after the marathon.  I think I was still feeling some effects of it in Feb.  Is that likely to be the same again, or is my body more prepared the 2nd time around (presuming more or less the same training / preparation)? 

Any thoughts / experience on this one?  I probably won't make the call until after the last tri of the season in Oct (which I am finding myself more excited about than the marathon!)

Stu

Thanks everyone for all of the excellent running advice.  I'm currently planning what I'll do between now and next June and this info will help me enormously.

Looking forward to more great advice.

-Mark

X2 (except for the Ironman part )

Randy

Jason-I think you could do that right now in a stand alone 5k assuming a decent taper. Based on your June HM time you would get pretty close to that using the VDOT calculator.  Of course, you were one week out from a HIM so not much of a taper there. You would be shooting for around a 18:33 5k.

With your miles I bet you would smash the 18:33 on a nice flat course.  I'm serious!  Then your wife could be married to a triathlete and a runner!

Randy

OK gang....who is racing this weekend?

Randy

Thanks for the thoughts, Rene and Jason.  Last year, when I did the marathon, I fully expected it to be my one and only, but a) I enjoyed the race itself more than I expected, and b) I lost 3 weeks of peak training last year, so there's a bit of unfinished business there as I felt like I could have done a bit better.  But as you surmised, the downside was that it really affected my training post race.  I've recovered quickly from the HMs that I've done, but the marathon threw me for a loop.  So, your comments and questions are very much to the point.  We'll see where the next few weeks take me... but for now, I'll keep aiming for the marathon as it will push my training more.

10K for me on Saturday with my 79 year old father-in-law.  This one will be a stretch for him, so send good thoughts his way!  This will also be a nice comparison for me with where I was last year.  Hoping to stay sub-50 on it.  My miles are up to where they were last year, but speed/pace is a bit behind.  We'll see.

Stu

Good job Blanda!

So often I wonder what my true potential would be if I were to take a year off work, hire a coach, and devote myself full time to the pursuit of IM tri training.  I know this can never happen for me in this world, but still I think about this a lot. 

The next 12 days are going to be a huge challenge for me to get training in.  I have work/family activities all weekend, with little time in between.  Then Monday I am driving my son to San Diego (32 hours each way) for college, computer engineering at University of California, San Diego.  Between driving, getting my son settled, parent orientation, and the return drive, I am going to try to fit some training in between the gaps.  Not to mention the heart ache of leaving my son to be on his own for the first time!

So my thoughts are to try to get in short runs when we stop at hotels, and see if I can get access to the local YMCA's in San Diego to swim.  I used to live in San Diego so I know my way around.  I have come so far in my training, and with my IM coming up in November, I hope to at least maintain my fitness during this trip.

Anyone else ever try to train while driving cross country?

Jamie-I second Rene on the "Trigger Point" kit for the lower leg.  A little pricey but does  a great job of hitting those tough areas. I use a foam roller as well on the larger areas.

Jason-good luck on your race. You should kill this one given your training.

Blanda-that's a great week of running....especially in that kind of heat.. Great job!

Jimmy-when I'm on the road I try to get up early and hit the treadmill at the hotel.   If I know the area I will run outside somewhere close.  You have a great base built up so you would not likely lose anything even if you didn't train.  Do what you can when you can and you will be fine.  Bennet. a member of our group lives in the San Diego area nd may be able to help you with training options there.  If you touch base with him tell him to check in and let us know how he is doing .

Randy 

Hey everyone. I've been swamped getting caught back up at work, but I've been thinking a lot about the great running discussion here. Lots of good stuff.

I'll start by reiterating a point that several of you made, and one that is, quite rightly, nearly always emphasized in these discussions: the most important and effective ingredient in running faster is consistently running more. We've talked about consistency before, and I won't repeat that discussion here. Suffice it to recall that we will succeed at consistently running more only if most of that running is at an easy effort.

Having said that, I'll also say that Stu's post is, IMHO, pure gold. I want to focus on the idea that most if not all of us can run faster than we think we can. (I've been pondering this point a lot since IMWI, coming to believe that I've got a lot of room for improvement.). Specifically, I want to focus on the 1-5% of our training time that we run hard, whether that be in the form of structured intervals, fartlek, tempo running, or whatever.

Here's the paradox that we all face. The paces that we should try to hit in this hard running are related to our race paces. For example, a common prescription for running 400s is to run them at around 5K pace. But if we've never run 5k up to our potential, then we will end up training too slowly, and we might then never hit our potential! On the other hand, we can't go out there and just run at some arbitrary or hoped-for race pace. That way injury lies.

So now I'm going to take a shot at helping ourselves discover our 'true' hard running paces without reference to races or tests. I'm not suggesting that using race results to determine training paces, or using LTHR tests to determine training zones, are bad ideas. Not at all. Ultimately one of these is the way to go. But before those ways make sense, we need to be sure that we are racing, or testing, up to our potential. I believe that many many age groupers do not race to their potential, and do not do the LTHR tests properly. I include myself in this category -- I've made both mistakes more times than I care to recall.

So how do we get there? I suggest that it could be useful to think it terms of three paces. I'll describe them first, then share some thoughts about how to make use of them.

1. Running from bear pace. This is the pace you'd run, for a short distance, if something of great moment (like being mauled by a bear) were on the line. Never run this pace, unless you are being chased by a bear. It is a very good way to get injured. Professional sprinters spend a lot of time avoiding injury for a reason -- the stresses on the body during an all-out sprint are huge.
2. Chasing the dog pace. This is the pace you'd run chasing your dog (for fun) for about a minute, assuming a fast dog. It's as hard as you could be running and still consider it 'playful'. After a minute, both you and the dog are exhausted, but in a little while, you can do it again.
3. Late for the wedding pace. (I was raised in the Midwest, where guilt and social pressure created a big incentive to be on time to things like weddings. If you grew up on the west coast, you might need to substitute something else, like 'late for the wine tasting'.). It will take you five minutes or so to get there, and you are highly motivated to move as quickly as you can to get there. (By the way, I was actually late to my own wedding, so this pace is very real for me...)

As I said above, you should never run at bear pace. I describe it here to give ourselves a top-end point of reference and a sense that even when we are running very hard, it should never feel like sprinting.

The point of describing these paces in this way is to get us thinking in terms of just how fast we could go, and for how long, with the right motivation. If you're late to the wedding, you don't stop just because you're tired. Indeed, you probably don't even think about being tired--you've got much more pressing things on your mind! If you are play with the dog, you are focused on playing with the dog, and not on how your legs feel.

Now I'll suggest that for those who feel that they are leaving time on the course, it fight be a good idea to try out some dog pace and some wedding pace. Run dog pace for 200m (which is not as long as you could run it--you should be able to hold it for about twice that distance, but don't!). Run wedding pace for 800m (again, probably half the distance you could really hold it).

I'm going to do this myself over the next few weeks. All of my running breakthroughs except the first (which came about by just running more) have happened as a result of a very small, but very effective, dose of hard running. I've tried everything from 100s up to 2 mile repeats. I don't recommend doing 100s. As for a mile or more, there is a place for those long repeats as late-stage preparation for a longer race, and if your weekly mileage is high. But for the purpose being addressed here -- the purpose of exploring the possibility of a faster pace -- 200s up to 800s are probably best.

Keep the dosage small! A small amount of hard running will serve the purpose and leave you feeling faster. A large amount of it will just wear you down, or worse. So, for example, if you are running 25mpw, consider doing 8x200 (dog pace) or 4x400 (wedding pace) some time. You could even do 6x200 or 3x400. The pace should drop off little if any, both during each interval, and from one to the next. If it is dropping off, you are going too fast. I feel I've done me right if I can go a little harder on the last one and drop a second or two from the previous efforts. But if I could drop 5-10 seconds on the last one, then I wasn't going hard enough on the previous ones.

If you are running less than 20mpw I would recommend, instead, that you do strides -- 30 seconds of wedding pace 4-10 times during a run. You do not stop between. Just speed up for a bit, then slow down. Exact timing is not crucial. I generally do them simply by counting 45 left foot falls, which is around 30 seconds for me.

Good luck to the racers!

Jamie:  I use the roller sometimes.  I also see a very good massage therapist about once a month for 90-120 minutes of pure torture.  It works, though.

I have a lot of catching up to do on reading the forums, but just wanted to check in before that

I had a really bad incident with my knee on the 4th. On mile 2, it felt like someone took a hammer to it. I had to walk the 2 miles back to work and I thought I was out of commission for a long time. After a visit to the chiropractor and lots of ice and ibuprofin, my knee felt great. One week later I decided to give it another shot. At the end of my run (mile 4) the same thing happened. Again, a visit to the chiro and a massage therapist + ice and ibuprofin. I was worried at this point and decided to see a sports medicine doc. He said it was my I-T Band and referred me to PT.  I left PT today very hopeful. This is a common running injury and with some stretches and exercises, I should be good to go after awhile. 

I have to refrain from running for a bit, but should be able to race my next "Sprinternational" in 2 weeks. I'm good to go on the bike and with swimming in the meantime while continuing therapy on my knee.

Honestly, I thought I was done for with running for awhile, so I'm really happy to learn that this can be treated.

Good luck to everyone on their races and I'm looking forward to catching up on all the forum posts I've missed while I've been down in the dumps and out of commission these past 2 weeks!

-Nate 

Rene-have fun!

I'm about to head out for a long ride then a short run.

Randy