SBR "U" (Page 90)

We talked about all kinds of things. Nothing in particular. There was plenty of comfortable silence, too. The day we ran until 11:30 pm, there was a lot of food talk

Just checking in - group has gone very quiet and I'm guessing that has to do with end of season, etc.  I had been really thinking I was going to try for a marathon in November, but pulled the plug pretty quickly when I sat down and figured out where my running was at the moment.  Hopefully I'll aim to do the HM instead, although I don't think I'll be setting any PR's.  Speed just seems to be totally missing from my legs lately - ran some 1min intervals last night and even though I felt like the legs were flying and the effort was good, there was just no speed.  It's kind of frustrating to feel like I should be motoring and then checking pace and thnking "that's it...?".  If anyone has thoughts, would love to hear them.

I'm officially registered for Pucon 70.3!!!  I'm pretty pumped about it.  Just gotta get this silly stress fracture fully healed, start running again, and book flights

I have no running advice for you, Neil.  Sorry to hear it's not going as well as you'd like, but hopefully things will come around before November.  There's still a decent amount of time and you've always been a solid runner, so I expect things should shape up nicely.

I'm racing in IM Barcelona coming up on Oct 4.  Still have a few weeks left to grind out here...

I'm not sure if your logs are up to date or not, and I didn't dig too deep into your history and whatnot but your running looks to be a little inconsistent. That would be the first and most important thing to address. Then, when do you do "speed" stuff and do you dial the biking and swimming back before?

Finally, how were you running these 1 min intervals? Were you trying to do reps at a specific time? Did you do the first few faster and slow down for the last ones? I guess, what were you trying to accomplish with the intervals? 

Finally, are you taking all the other variables into account? One session of intervals isn't really any kind of indicator of where you are at. Or at least I wouldn't place any real value on it. 

Interestingly enough I kind of felt my running was more consistent the past 6 months than it normally is.  I'm never "high" volume, and I know that I'll fluctuate from week to week, but on a monthly basis I've been averaging 130km (80 miles) which is reasonable for me.  Ideally I would like to get myself up to that consistent 100mile/month mark but I'm not there.

At the moment I've really scaled back on biking and swimming (they barely exist) just because life as a whole has been kind of hectic, so I would assume I'm more fresh from a training standpoint.  As to the specifics for this last run, it was 20min w/u, then 30min main set with every 3rd min @ 5K pace.  I figured I'd run a 4min pace and that should be "fast" but very doable.  Didn't work out and I was about 15sec/km slower, and like I said the legs felt like they were really moving, but not what I expected in terms of speed.  2 weeks ago I ran 8x800's at the track and was running about 3:12/14 and held that from start to finish - but I still consider that a bit slow given I was under 20min when I ran a 5K at the track back in early, early Spring.

Running fast at the moment feels like I'm moving much faster than I actually am.

Always envious of your race destinations!

I don't have any real advice for you but I can tell you that I've switched to HM training mode and for the first two weeks of runs that included any sort of intensity I felt like garbage, not being able to come anywhere close to paces I was able to do fairly easily in the spring.  Then this week I did a 20:00 T pace run and it was suddenly doable and my paces dropped right back to where they were.  I just needed to tough it out a bit for those two weeks.  Hopefully you find yourself in a similar situation.

No, I don't mean you have to be a high volume runner at all.

I guess I am looking at the weekly variations. You seem to do like, 5 miles one week, then 10 then 30.  When you ran faster in the early spring, what kind of volume were you running that week? 

Also, how frequently are you doing quality workouts like this? 

How were your tracking your pace for those "fast" minutes? I would think that simply the inaccuracy of GPS, especially for short bursts like this along could account for a slow reading. Also, I don't think I am quite understanding the details of the workout. What do you mean 4 minute pace?

I should mention that I am curious of the details but really, my advice would just be to keep at it. 

It seems like you have a lot of variability in your training schedule so I would imagine that the specific training times might fluctuate a little. Overall though, if you are being consistent and getting some speed injected in there it will come around. 

Personally, I can very rarely run as fast as I *should* in training. I typically have to run with a group that is slower than my race times suggest. Which is odd but I don't sweat it too much. 

You're absolutely right about the weekly variations.  Some of it is due to life, some due to races, some are just missed days..I would say that most of my running has been a little "easier" for the past few months with less intensity, and at this point I am thinking that I need some regular intensity to remind the legs and rest of the body how it feels to occasionally run faster/harder.  These quality workouts are now being added back into the schedule.

I track the pace based off GPS, so I know it may be off a bit, but it was pretty consistent throughout the intervals.  And 4min pace was meant to say 4min/km. This details for this run was after warm up run for 30 min, 2 min easy 1 min hard, repeat, run easy for 10 min.

Was thinking along these lines and hoping things would fall into place over the next few weeks.  HM is right at the start of November so I have a little bit of time, but not much!

I'm finding that my hip flexors seem to be the first thing to fatigue on a longer run.  Any thoughts on how to counter this - strength exercises perhaps?  I just figured they would develop over time with more running, but thinking back they always seem to be the weak link, even on the bike sometimes.

Hip flexors were my nemesis for a long, long time.  I conquered them not by strengthening them but rather by stretching them out.  The single most effective thing I did was to start reading in bed each night while lying on my stomach up on my elbows.  Mine were so bad that the first few times I did it, they spasmed and locked right up on me when I rolled over.  Keeping at it made a world of difference in a short amount of time.

Or try powercranks

Originally posted by dtoce Hang in there Neil, you'll figure it out. Did my last race today-SOS Well, that was challenging to say the least. Weather, cramps, dead power meter... Too much fun, but I am a survivor. 5:39:xx w chip 54A, 4: AG

Nice work!  I think I really need to do that race.

Arend - I gave this a try last night on the couch for about 10min.  I didn't really "feel" anything while lying there, but I think they feel less tight this morning.  You said you were doing this every night.  How long each night, and how long did it take for you to start to feel a difference - did you notice it post runs, or during runs as well?  Any specific stretches you did right after running?

Power improvement question.  I likely asked this in the past, but have forgotten the response at this point.  Given that the Tremblant HIM will be my A race at the beginning of next season, I figure I've got 9 months to make some improvements.  Specifically, I need to improve on the bike and that's a combination of position and power, but for this post I'm concerned with power.  If I aim to put in a bike block for about 16-20 weeks, any thoughts on what a realistic expectation should be in terms of % improvement over current CP?  I'd aim to put in the focus between Nov-Feb, and would guess my current CP will drop a bit before I start just because I'm run focused at the moment, but in season I would have been around 245-250 CP.   I'm trying to figure out if hoping for ~8% is too much of a stretch.

Probably 10-15 minutes and I noticed a difference probably within a week or two.  I had two big issues - 1. for longer runs (60+ mins) they would tend to get very sore and start to cramp up.  2. At the very beginning of runs they would often be rather painful for the first couple of minutes - it felt like they were reaching up into my guts and tearing my kidneys out.   #2 went away fairly quickly, #1 took a bit longer.

How much training do you normally invest in season to achieve 245-250 watts CP?  How much more training are you planning to invest during this bike focus?

Originally posted by dtoce Hang in there Neil, you'll figure it out. Did my last race today-SOS Well, that was challenging to say the least. Weather, cramps, dead power meter... Too much fun, but I am a survivor. 5:39:xx w chip 54A, 4: AG

Hey, nice to see you!

Sounds like an adventure. Nice work!

Jason - I would say I was averaging about 20 hrs/month for the 4 months or so right before the HIM's in the past. Sometimes training was a bit spotty.  Obviously a chunk of most weeks would include 2.5-3hr rides outside. Given I'll be doing almost all this training (barring any nice days) on the trainer I would expect to max out around 2 hrs on the trainer.  I have no idea of how many sessions/duration I'd be looking at right now.  Part of the question would be figuring out what I need to invest in terms of time.