Fred D Mentor Group Part III (Page 9)

Most of my running (for better or worse) is done on what could loosely be called "trails" ... that would be the collection of rubble/potholes called "roads" in my 'hood. No even surface; no flats. The attached pics are from last year and the roads have been through another wet/flood season of disrepair.

I got great mileage out of my Brooks Addiction trail version; now I'm running in New Balance trail shoes (much lighter) and they're fantastic. Sturdy-nimble-light. I think it really comes down to what fits your foot well and the weight you're comfortable with on your feet ... and if they ever get wet.

Both my models of shoes also run really well on regular road and other surfaces. New Balance better, I felt.

(010.Road.03 (Small).jpg)

(011.Road.04 (Small).jpg)

Good question.  I find the same thing - running too slow forces me to use a stride that feels very unnatural, and I simply don't like it, or feel good doing it.

My own question of the morning.  How do I go about building a 4 month off season plan?  The information on monotony as well as the info from the ST thread John posted has me thinking about how I can build a plan, but admittedly my head is all over the place on how to accomplish this.

Thoughts on the best resources that will follow some of these principles, and let you create your own plan?  I can just workout, but I'd like to move to something more structured that will result in some improvements.

I'm probably not qualified, but I am slow.  So, when I'm actually trying to run slower than normal in training, I usually start off really slow.  My turnover picks up with shorter strides and I try to focus on posture and staying over my feet.  I'm tall with long legs, so running slower than normal have been difficult for me. 

I don't really feel like my form is breaking down, just deliberately slow.  I tend to negative split my training runs (even when I was running longer) because I really try to ease very slowly back in to a more natural, yet slow, pace - but still trying to focus on the slower nature of the training run.  Mentally, it helps me fell a bit better about the run if I'm running slightly faster at the end than the beginning.

Shorter strides and possibly slightly (only slightly) lower cadence.  It will likely feel weird, but shorter strides will allow you to maintain the essentials of good form more than massively slowing down cadence (which leads to the Ironman shuffle with which many of us are, alas, quite familiar).  My guess is that you are not shortening your stride enough, the result being that the only way to slow down is to lower cadence a lot.

Having said that, the motion that your legs go through will not be exactly the same.  It can't be.  It shouldn't be.  One of the big problems that I have with some advertised 'methods' of running (sorry -- if that topic is verboten forget I said it) is that they try to make runners who are running 10:00/mile look like they are running 6:00/mile and the result is that they look ridiculous.  So, for example, your knees will not come as high -- they don't need to because the recovery part of the stride covers so much less ground.  And your hip flexors and adductors will not go through nearly the same range of motion either -- again because of shorter stride length.

Probably the best thing you can do is run slowly with someone who is fast, or maybe watch fast folks warm up at races.  I occasionally run with a guy who easily goes <1:10 in a half marathon (I account him as fast...) and doing that was a huge eye-opener for me on several points, including this one.

I just exported now through January from my training logs into an excel sheet. That's my physical means of planning between now and then.

Running will be my primary focus, though I will only hit 30mpw in late December, so I'll have time for other things. I filled in BarryP's plan to start. So, fill in your priority first, generally.

Then, I'm alternating between 2 swim / 3 bike, and 3 swim / 2 bike weeks. I haven't worked out the details of those yet.

...but that's a start.

See, I feel I can do that as well, but now I'm beginning to really think about how to structure the individual workouts and how they balance one another as opposed to just slotting workouts into specific days.

i.e. Bike - first priority is how many days, then how much time each day, then what type of workout (how many weeks focus on VO2 as an exmaple vs how many weeks focusing on the sweet spot), then how much rest between each bike session, is there value to add in an "easy" bike session, etc.

Repeat for swim and run, but then make it all work together so, as was mentioned earlier, the hard days are hard, the easy days are easy, and that I'm seeing improvements and adaptations based on how the plan is constructed.  I winged it this year, and had a good year, but I want to do even better next year.

My head hurts just thinking about this....

Perfect....thanks!

This is similar to my plan, which is also based on an off-season (winter) run focus. However, I am going to stick with 2 swims and 2 bikes per week on top of 6 runs (BarryP) per week.  This gives me 2 days of run-only and 1 complete day off.  I'll do my last race in October, take it easy during November, and work the offseason plan from December to March.

Last year, I hit all of the run goals, but missed many of the bikes and swims.  This year, the goal is to actually do those in "maintenance" fashion. Now I'm not sure I can address a precise definition of off-season maintenance, but for me, they are 1 hour max workouts. 

Since I am not on speaking terms with swimming, that means I will simply aim for getting to the pool and swimming twice per week, even it is just a 2k-3k continuous swim. 

For the bike, I will simply ride for an hour by feel. If I feel good, I'll go harder. If not, I'll go easier. NOTE: I do not have a power meter. I do this on the trainer, with one hard ride (i.e., 2x20) and one easy ride (i.e., 3x10 @ 100 rpm). Sometimes I'll throw a few ladder-type intervals in there just to break the monotony.

3,000 Masters this morning.  Lots of 100's nice change from the longer sets.

3 mile run this evening.

I don't have anything to add to the above questions about running slow or planning an off season, but I am watching and ready to learn!

I like adding my planned workouts to a Google Calendar.  Then you can have it automatically send event notifications to your phone each morning.  Wake up, do what your phone says.

I do better when I don't look at the entire buildup and just focus on today.

Isn't that the truth!  I'm using Training Peaks and they send my workouts to my email.  If I look too far ahead, I get kind of discouraged.  One day at a time...

I guess I look at it the other way around.  I like to see the big picture, and how today is a building block to 3 months from now.

It's hard to give up fitness in one area. It's harder to keep confidence it will come back.

But this is supposed to be the 'offseason'. I hate winter :-)

Yeah...my biking went into the black hole last fall/winter as I was marathon training.  I think I was only doing one 40 mile ride (relatively easy) a week for 3 months.  The bike fitness eventually came back, but it took about 8-10 weeks.  This year I'm hoping to still ride a few times during the mid week, but mainly just Z2 stuff with "intervals" in Z3.  But no way I can hold 3x15 @ 95%.  Unless of course I assume my FTP is back down to 200...LOL.

So, I usually am completely unstructured during the winter months, but now you guys have got me thinking. I didn't race much this year, it was a planned year off, therefore I got very used to not having any structure/training plan. I loved the spontaneity of jumping into group rides, avoiding the pool and running on the trails sans watch. I was going to just plug along like that this winter. I do want to race again next spring, and now that I am reading your posts about winter training, I am wondering if I should try to follow some kind of program, mostly to get used to having a plan?

Thoughts? I'm not even sure how to go about finding a training plan. I plan on mostly racing sprints, time trials and maybe the occasional Oly. Do I even need a plan?

I tend to look a week at a time because I need to adapt workouts to my schedule. Other than that I try not too look to far ahead...I don't like to know the hard workouts to far in advance. Haha.