September 2015 Running Challenge

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  • dawniemate
    dawniemate Posts: 395 Member
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    Morning everyone ☺ I started September how I ended August. ..5mile run. I intended to run each morning as usual then my plan went up the swanie! !
    September 1st. 5 mile
    September 2nd. 0 miles
    September 3rd miles

    So no running til Monday 8th. ...that's gonna hurt my target but I need to rest this stupid shoulder. I had surgery a couple of weeks ago.and started back running the week after but it's causing sooo much pain I need to rest it a bit! !! Keep on running people ill try to catch you all up ☺



  • 7lenny7
    7lenny7 Posts: 3,493 Member
    edited September 2015
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    5 more miles in the books tonight. 77F temps with a 73F dew point made for a hot, muggy run, but it felt great.

    9/01 - Rest
    9/02 - 6.1 Miles
    9/03 - 5.0 Miles

    Goal: 135 Miles
    Progress: 11.1 Miles
    Remaining: 123.9 Miles

    4ihjq29ptr6j.jpeg

    @WhatMeRunning, we'll be driving through your neck of the woods next weekend. It's family day at KU and we're heading down to visit my daughter. I'm planning on a couple of runs in Lawrence and was not looking forward to the heat, but when I check the long range forecast it's telling me to expect lows in the mid 50's...I love the sound of that! I don't trust long range forecasts but hopefully it will be close this time.


  • patrikc333
    patrikc333 Posts: 436 Member
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    01/9 12 miles
    02/9 12 miles
    03/9 10k
    04/9 12 miles

    79.1km/400

    today my knees were really really tired, I thought I was not coming back home after 15k, not being able to move the legs properly is really annoying - next week will be even worse as I'll need to get used to the new waking time, and to the dark/cloudy sky/cold, and the second week is always the worst

    nevermind, I earnt my super pizza tonight, can't wait!

    I kept meeting a deer this morning, it let me stay at <2m from it! then I met a deer family with a baby deer, very cute. And on my last lake lap lots of ducks took off from the water and passed at max 2-3 meters from me, that was amazing! wish I could fly with them and NOT stay in this damned office all day now :disappointed:
  • patrikc333
    patrikc333 Posts: 436 Member
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    @shanaber

    thanks - Amy is a 2 years fatty lab, and she's prob digging all my garden right now :grin: !

    I will, got 2 pairs that have both done more than 1000 miles, no more support

    looking forward it (a rare moment when a man is looking forward to do some shopping lol) - as long as I'll find someone that can advise me, very rare nowadays

    I went to a store last Saturday, and the clerk was really busy playing with his phone instead of asking if I need help, so left
  • ddmom0811
    ddmom0811 Posts: 1,878 Member
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    9/1 - 5.25 miles
    9/2 - 3.55 miles
    9/3 - strength training + cycling class
    9/4 - rest — didn’t want to, but started getting that sore throat feeling the day before you get a cold and got 3 big days of cycling/long run planned so decided I should rest and starting pumping the EmergenC.


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    @9voice9 - Oh my gosh! I'm glad you are okay. Yeah, you wife is going to be worried sick now whenever you go out to run.
    @Stoshew71 - nice college t-shirt day! Poor Gator in AL. One of my best friends is LSU alum and fanatic and that's how she feels with all the Gators in FL.
  • Stoshew71
    Stoshew71 Posts: 6,553 Member
    edited September 2015
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    Date Miles today. Miles for September

    9/1 10.5 miles - 10.5
    9/2 6.6 miles - 17.1
    9/3 9.5 miles - 26.6
    9/4 6.85 miles - 33.45

    Recovery day today.



    exercise.png

  • dawniemate
    dawniemate Posts: 395 Member
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    Stoshew71 wrote: »
    Date Miles today. Miles for September

    9/1 10.5 miles - 10.5
    9/2 6.6 miles - 17.1
    9/3 9.5 miles - 26.6
    9/4 6.85 miles - 33.45

    Recovery day today.



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    Come on now you're just showing off lol!!!!!
  • ryblueeyes
    ryblueeyes Posts: 257 Member
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  • karllundy
    karllundy Posts: 1,490 Member
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    @9voice9 - Holy crap! So glad you weren't hurt worse. You did everything right and some knucklehead still hit you. At least he eventually stopped. Feel better soon!
    @7lenny7 - your a celebrity runner! Word of the fabulousness of this group must be getting out!

    9/1 - rest day
    9/2 - 5.2 miles treadmill "hill" workout with HM training group
    9/3 - 4.5 miles around the 'hood...heat and humidity is back 74° and sticky at 5:30 a.m.
    9/4 - 4 miles in the humidity...pretty good pace today

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  • Stoshew71
    Stoshew71 Posts: 6,553 Member
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    9voice9 wrote: »
    Well, I guess I've become a statistic. I was hit by a car on my run this morning (more-or-less side-swiped, I guess).

    I saw him coming, and moved closer to the white line edge of the road. I saw him NOT moving aside, so I tried to move into the grass, but his sideview mirror clipped my right shoulder, and I tumbled into the grass/ditch. I'm pretty sure I didn't hear any vehicles coming toward him (preventing him from moving over), and I didn't see any lightwash, either.

    He did stop (eventually), and the police came to make a report. I was transported to hospital for checkup, and no broken/fractured bones, just soft tissue inflamation. I was indeed wearing my RoadID LED wrist light, and my NoxGear Tracer360, and given my general level of pale-white-skin-ness, those 2 items plus my white legs and chest give him no real excuse for not seeing me.

    I'm REALLY not posting to get sympathy - just to remind everyone about being careful, and realizing that you can do everything right and still have problems.

    On the bright side: @Stoshew71 - I was taking your advice about slowing the pace, and got in a lot more running than walking this morning. At least until I was so rudely interrupted.

    I'm more pissed than hurt right now (tho I know I'll be a sore sore man for the next several days). 1) I was doing so well with improving my run. 2) My wife is gonna be that much more trepidatious about my running from now on. 3) I was planning on doing my first official 10K race on Monday (Macon Labor Day Road Race). Dadgum it!

    On the 10K, I guess we'll see what Sunday holds. Rest Day tomorrow, maybe a light mile or so Saturday, and then we'll see. I'm pretty much resigned to not feeling up to it, though. Prob go on and cheer, and get my shirt anyway.


    I am so happy that my advise helped and you are able to run a bit further.
    I am not so happy about the car clipping you.

    I found out a lot of drivers are very clueless. They refuse to move over to the next lane or give you room as they drive by you. Some never bother to look both ways as they exit out of a driveway or side street. I even had a woman come straight at me making a left turn into the Kroger parking lot last week. Though I had some close calls, I haven't yet by the grace of God been actually struck.

    Be careful out there and so sorry he clipped you. Did he get charged for anything?

  • vandinem
    vandinem Posts: 550 Member
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    Long run today after two off days, the first because it was too damn hot, and the second because we took our son to college! A nice cool morning, so not too bad.

    Question: anyone here use a non-dairy protein powder in their post run shake they'd recommend?
    Date      Miles      MTD
    ------    -----    -----
    Sep 01      5.2      5.2
    Sep 04      9.1     14.3
    

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  • Stoshew71
    Stoshew71 Posts: 6,553 Member
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    ACSL3 wrote: »
    @7lenny7 - that's so cool! Congrats!

    @9voice9 - glad it wasn't worse! I've gotten close to getting hit but thankfully it didn't happen. I've had some bicyclist friends who've been hit or run off the road :( Hope your shoulder feels better soon!

    Question for those of you who have done marathons. I started doing half-marathons about 8 years ago and have always had a full in the back of my mind but work/life would be such that I couldn't get long runs in to train for one. Now I'm looking at a marathon on April 3rd 2016. I'm slow - my half-marathon times are around 3 hours but the time cut off for this marathon is 9 hours so I have plenty of time. And I should have time now to train for it as work has been less intense. When would you recommend starting to train specifically? Now seems a bit early. 3 months ahead of the race? More/less?

    The training aspect is actually the hardest part of the marathon. Lots and lots of hours during the week including your long run days where you can spend up to 3- 3 1/2 hours of actual running. It's a time commitment that you will have to manage.

    I haven't paid attention to what your weekly mileage is right now, but it requires more weekly mileage to be sucessful at the full marathon than the HM. While training for the race itself does seem to be too early, it's not too early to start now by thinking about getting the mileage up. Long runs for a marathon can peak to 20 miles. if you follow the 25-33% rule (and you should), that means you need to run at a minimum of 60 miles per week when you hit that peak. Offcourse many people don't and only get up to 40 miles which means your peak LR makes up 50% of your weekly mileage which is risky for injury.

    So I would say that the best thing you can do now is to work on increasing mileage, and do it slowly.
    There are so many conflicting advise as to how to increase miles. Some say no more than 1 mile per week (very conservative). The most popular is no more than 10% increase. That means if I ran 20 miles this week, then next week I should be able to add 2 miles (10% of 20) or 22 miles. I don't deel with fractions for mileage increase so even tho 10% of 22 is 2.2 miles, I would just increase by another 2 miles until you get to 2.5 miles. Dr. Jack Daniels (Runner's World named him the current best running coach in America) suggests whatever number of days you are running per week, then that is the number of miles I let my athletes increase each week. So if you run 3 days a week, you can increase by 3 miles. If you run 5 days a week, then you can increase 5 miles. But he adds, that if you increase, you have to stay at the mileage for at least 4 weeks before you can increase again.

    The other thing you have to make sure is that don't just add your mileage to one particular run. Like folks will constantly add a mile or 2 to their long run but keep the rest of the runs during the week the same. This is dangerous. Your long run should only represent 25-33% of your weekly mileage. So spread those miles throughout the week.

    As you increase mileage, keep the pace at an easy conversational pace. If you want to add a day of fartleks or easy strides once or twice a week, then that is fine. But as you are increasing mileage, you need to keep it easy on the pace cause your body is adapting to the new stresses of the additional mileage. The other thing you may have to feel out is cut back weeks. For me (as of recent) if I have 2 hard weeks where i am increasing mileage or doing intense quality workouts) the third week I cut it back on my weekly volume. So maybe week 1 I will do ~60 miles and week 2 I do ~60 miles, the third week I will cut back to maybe 45 miles with a shorter long run as well as maybe less miles during the week. Then I come back the following 4th week back at 60 miles or maybe even 62 miles as my long run increases.

    Once you increase your weekly volume to a point where you think you want to steady out a bit, then the next thing you need to work on is your lactate threshold. You will need to learn what your LT is and throw in a tempo workout or steady state runs or maybe tempo intervals once or twice a week in addition to the long run. All of this will prepare you for marathon training when you eventually need to start marathon specific training. And all of this you can work on right now.

  • snha
    snha Posts: 388 Member
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    @kristinegift Thanks and not late at all. Your suggestion makes a lot of sense. I think I will start trying these strategies this week and see where they lead me. I did notice that sometimes you run more than once. Maybe I will do that in a few months!
  • AngieFlames
    AngieFlames Posts: 61 Member
    edited September 2015
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    9/03 - rest day
    9/04 - 3.89 miles (long run for me, since I am a newbie) lol
  • Stoshew71
    Stoshew71 Posts: 6,553 Member
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    Ohhim wrote: »
    @ACSL3 most of the training plans I've used have been between 18 and 22 weeks in duration, so roughly 4 months. Still, if you've been doing a fair bit of mileage already, you can probably just find a good starter plan, see what "week" you'd be at going into it, and just pick it up at that point closer to the race.

    While most training plans are 18-22 weeks I have issues with most of the plans out there.

    First off, 18-22 weeks is probably a good time to focus on marathon specific training itself. And if you decide to actually commit to a marathon for the first time ~20 weeks out from the race, maybe there is some merit or benefit from these plans.

    In ACSL3's case and the situation I found myself in when I decided to do my first one, we had more time then that. I find most of these 18 week plans are like cramming sessions. Remember when you were in college and realized you had a midterm on Monday so you locked yourself in the library all weekend cramming for it? That is what the training plans are to me. They work for many people, but not the ideal. There is a concept called periodization that Arthur Lyndiard is accrediated to father back in 1960's as he coach the Australian team in the Olympics. This means your training is actually longer than 18 weeks (in fact it's all year long) but the training is broken down into specific periods called meta phases and microphases. The first phase may be dedicated to aerobic base building and when you get closer to your target race, you enter into a phase where you do special workouts that will prepare you for that specific race. Metaphases can be about 18-20 weeks while the micro phases within a meataphase can further be broken down into 4-6 week smaller periods.

    The point I was making was that just because you have 6-8 months to your target marathon doesn't mean you can't do anything to prepare for it. And if you do it the right way, you will find out that (the way i found out), when you are ~20 weeks away from the marathon and you finally look at one of those training plans, you are way ahead of the curve. In that case you don't just drop back and start in week one. You instead jump in at like say week 10 or 12 and just repeat weeks slowly until you complete the plan in a much prepared way as opposed to cramming.

    I decided to sign up for my first marathon (last December's Rocket City Marathon) around end of April 2014, shortly after I completed my first HM. So I was already used to doing 14 mile long runs on saturdays. I immediately look at training plans and they had me running a 6 mile long run with about 20 weekly miles in week 1. This confused me. Do I just drop back down and start all over again? And do I wait a few months to start this? And if so, what do I do in the mean time? A good running buddy conviced me that I was way too advanced as a runner for this particular beginner's plan and even the intermediate plans. He told me don't drop down and instead start in the week of the more advanced plan according to what I was doing now.

    That is when I started reading everything I could and learn as much as I could on all of this stuff. So instead of following a specific plan, I ended up following concepts from a lot of experts in the field of running. The same advise I give now is what I learned all last year. Although I am learning more stuff all the time.

  • skippygirlsmom
    skippygirlsmom Posts: 4,433 Member
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    I'll need to catch up on all the posts later, gotta get to school and get Skip

    9/1 - 3.5 miles - way too many pushes on the snooze this morning! :smiley:
    9/2 - rest day walked the doggie instead
    9/3 - 5.1 miles
    9/3 - 10 miles last 2 were HOT HUMID and MISERABLE LOL

    18.6 of 120 miles

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  • Stoshew71
    Stoshew71 Posts: 6,553 Member
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    dawniemate wrote: »
    Stoshew71 wrote: »
    Date Miles today. Miles for September

    9/1 10.5 miles - 10.5
    9/2 6.6 miles - 17.1
    9/3 9.5 miles - 26.6
    9/4 6.85 miles - 33.45

    Recovery day today.



    exercise.png
    Come on now you're just showing off lol!!!!!


    I try not to. LOL
    I need to crack the whip since December will be here soon (my second try at the Rocket City Marathon). So weekly mileage has to be maintained. With the tempo workouts and my Monday/Tueday overloading, I need what are called recovery days.

    Now while I can't afford too many full rest days (Sunday's are the only days I plan in where i do nothing), I do what is called active recovery. These are days where I still run but the run that I do is not designed to trash my legs. The purpose is to just get the blood moving and the heart pumping just a little bit harder so it can clear everything out. Also, immediately afterwards, the uptake for protein and glucose into the muscle cells is increased for a short window. So part of my recovery run is to immediately drink my protein shake and down a 32 oz bottle of Gatorade within a half hour of my run. This means I need to depend more on my down weeks (or cut back weeks) for full recovery.

    My tempo pace is just above the 7:00 minute/mile mark. I will try and get about 3 miles in at this pace on Tuesday and Thursdays followed up with 6 strides or pickups which are done between a full out sprint to 5K pace (5:30-6:30 pace) which I will try and hold for only 30 seconds. Tuesdays and Thursdays are intense workouts for me and I end up doing about 9-10 miles on these days. That means my Wednesdays and Fridays have to be much easier. My legs are trashed so I couldn't go fast even if I wanted to. Today I was having a hard time maintaining a 10 minute pace and ended up running those 6.85 miles at an overall average of 10:37 pace. That is what is meant by a recovery day or a recovery pace.

    This may seem pretty advanced for a lot of you, but the actual speed is relative. The point I was making is that there is a difference between a 7 minute pace and a 10:30 pace. I make my hard days hard so my easy days are relatively much easier (but still tough). Some of you may have 10 min paces that seem very intense and that is OK (I was there at one time). That just means on recovery days or long runs you will be around 14-15 minute paces.

    I use a tool called the McMillan Training Calculator to help with determining my proper paces. What you do is you go on this website, enter in a recent race finish it it gives you a ton of information on training paces and even predicts other race distances for you. It's at https://www.mcmillanrunning.com and if you are interested in learning more about what the different paces mean, just let me know. I got links and stuff on all of that.

  • Stoshew71
    Stoshew71 Posts: 6,553 Member
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    I'll need to catch up on all the posts later, gotta get to school and get Skip

    9/1 - 3.5 miles - way too many pushes on the snooze this morning! :smiley:
    9/2 - rest day walked the doggie instead
    9/3 - 5.1 miles
    9/3 - 10 miles last 2 were HOT HUMID and MISERABLE LOL

    18.6 of 120 miles

    exercise.png

    :open_mouth: What is wrong with Skip?

  • Stoshew71
    Stoshew71 Posts: 6,553 Member
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    snha wrote: »
    I am so happy I joined these challenges. This group is awesome and watching your amazing results (and the good spirit behind them) definitely pushes me forward.

    Newbie Question: I see many of you run daily and sometimes even twice in a day. I always thought I should alternate by running one day and resting the next. Do I (does the body) need a rest day after each day of running? From the patterns here, it seems many of you take one day of rest a week, but not every other day. Any words of wisdom?

    I'm late on the uptake with this question, but I'll answer anyway! :)

    You could give 2 days in a row a try and see how you feel. You never know until you try! I think a person can definitely run 4 days a week if you don't suddenly up your mileage. For a long time, I've run 5-6 days a week, but now that I'm running so many more miles, I find it easier to do 6 runs in 5 days, doubling up on Thursdays, so I can also get an extra day of rest in while keeping my mileage relatively high. You just have to work up to it so it's not a total shock to your legs/body! There's no way I could have run this often (or these distances!) even 6 months ago.

    I was actually thinking of doing this since I did want to get an extra full rest day without sacrificing the mileage. The strategy is to replace my active recovery day on a day all by itself and combine it with a day of my tempo day or speed day.

    So I have some choices. Continue doing my tempo days with my morning group like I am doing now (which usually means I end up running ahead of the main pack and run a bulk of it solo) and then do the recovery run later that evening. Or, I can do an easy run with the main group in the morning (and get to run with some really cool fun people the whole way) and do speedwork on the track at night. There are actually 2 speed groups in town. One meets at the elementary school track on Tue night and the other meets on Thurs night at the HS track. Both start immediately after work so I would have to rush out of work early to make either one. And some days that is not possible. But if I did either strategy, then I would get to sleep in late on Wed or Fri and not run. Something I only treat myself to during cutback weeks.

  • corinne1977
    corinne1977 Posts: 144 Member
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    9/1 - 3 miles
    9/2 - 2 miles
    9/3 - 3 miles