June 2017 Running Challenge

girlinahat wrote: »

@MNLittleFinn - I've heard of people having (arm) sleeves that they can drench in water to help keep cool. Maybe try this before ditching them?

That was my other though, just douse them at a few water stations. I have 6 days, 23 hours and 54 minutes to be sure...LOL

Date :::: Miles :::: Cumulative
06/01/17 :::: 2.4 :::: 2.4
06/02/17 :::: 0.0 :::: 2.4
06/03/17 :::: 8.4 :::: 10.7
06/04/17 :::: 3.1 :::: 13.9
06/05/17 :::: 3.3 :::: 17.2
06/06/17 :::: 3.5 :::: 20.7
06/07/17 :::: 5.0 :::: 25.7
06/08/17 :::: 0.0 :::: 25.7
06/09/17 :::: 3.6 :::: 29.3
06/10/17 :::: 7.8 :::: 37.0
Goal = 100 miles

Long run today - weather was very nice, so it was great to get it done before it starts heating up later today. My running buddy and I started out with a decent pace but then slowed down considerably after she tripped on something and almost rolled her ankle. She was fine fortunately, and we were both tired so it was okay with us to do a slower pace. We saw a large heron of some kind along the canal that was very close to us when it took off in flight. Very cool. Plus a family of geese with babies in the teenage awkward stage and lots of large carp (or something) flopping around with big splashes. Fun to spot the wildlife while chugging along. They were also holding a sprint tri at the park so we got to see some of that. A different kind of wildlife, if you will.

Taking a bit of a rest break and then will take my girl Stella out for a good hike. She's pacing around the yard, ready to hit the trails, but I'm still enjoying sitting and sipping my iced coffee.

Great running, everyone. Stay cool. By the way, the idea of wetting the compression sleeves is interesting. I can't imagine wanting the sleeves on in anything over about 50 degrees but maybe that would feel good.

@MNLittleFinn Ah, that makes much more sense now!

Gym today, no run. Good luck to everyone racing today!

Congrats @MobyCarp on besting your mile PR and winning the race, and for staying in front of your rival!

@MNLittleFinn - Hey, I do a similar recovery drink of a scoop of protein powder, a scoop of Gatorade powder and 16oz of water shaken up in a blender bottle.

@nFoooo and @garygse I must have come across incorrectly somewhere because I was saying (or trying to say) that I had to slow down on basically every type of run except ones with a short period at maximum effort. That means easy/recovery runs, long runs, tempo runs, and many speedwork intervals. That's because my target HR should be lower than I have been training at this year and in prior years.

Probably the disconnect is over running vs walking as my slowest pace I can run is currently a bit faster than my estimated 5k pace. Any slower and my form breaks down making running slower a bad move.

That segues into another posible source of confusion about how I can take my pace at which I can maintain running a mile to pergaps 5k at and work within it to get faster by training at shorter distances. There is more than just one way to improve running pace. Bear in mind that while I receive the physiological benefits of running slower and longer, the actual physical mobility structures being targeted for strengthening are walking as much as running (more walking than running now that I have to slow down from my roughly 50/50 time split of running/walking that I had been doing). Thus why I mention a focus at shorter distances in order to target strengthening of actual running and running form and increasing pace by a period of training at shorter distances at higher efforts. These would be called speedwork or sprint workouts in many plans, and in periodization is the type of workouts done during the peak phase. The idea is to take the gains you built in the base (endurance) and preparation (stamina) phases and get faster by recruiting your fast-twitch muscle fibers, increasing VO2Max and strengthening your muscles and connective tissue. While I may have done both my base building and preparation phases at a higher than recommended effort, I did them. I built my base, doing regular weekly 3 hour long runs, two mid-week runs of 2 hours each (with tempo/speedwork efforts in the middle the last 4 weeks), and one hour easy runs. That I did so at higher effort means there was a lot more stamina work than I realized, so I'm definitely plateaued in that preparation phase. So, on to peak phase.

While I had considered my race target to be half marathon, with weekly mile in the 40-45 mile range and regular 13.5 mile long runs, I have also been running those 13.5 mile runs close to HM effort, and coming in much slower than the race pace should be. That is unlikely to change after a few weeks of peak training. What I can realistically target is a 5k at my estimated 5k pace by doing peak training to build up the added muscle strength (including fast-twitch) and increasing VO2Max. My goal would be to run an entire 5k with no walking at or near my target 5k pace.

Once that is done, I would then start back to a base building phase again, where the focus would be on easy effort mileage, with the goal of increasing aerobic capacity and establishing a higher weekly mileage.

No matter what phase you are in, at some point the law of diminishing returns will come into play. For the speedy stuff it's about 6 weeks. So my target 5k should be about 6 weeks from now. For the performance phase or stamina building stuff, again 6 weeks is a pretty good limit. I have exceeded that timeline based on what my past efforts were compared to what my newly found MaxHR is. Knowing that I came back from a 6 month running hiatus to running 40+ miles/week over a 12 week period is a base building period, even if I did do it at harder than recommended effort. As for limits in base building, you can go longer than 6 weeks but there is no firm limit before you hit diminishing returns. Maybe there isn't one. But you are not going to run your fastest possible 5k or mile by doing nothing but the same thing forever of long, slow only runs. If you only ever focus on one set of muscle fibers or a single subset of cardio/metabolic functions you are only improving in just those areas and letting the others atrophy in essence.

Someone recently said something to me when I was discussing a book by Joe Friel. The book is about how if you do not push each of your abilities, you begin to lose their function, this is what people do when they say, "I'm too old to do that any more". Simple, obvious, yet still overlooked by most people daily. The person I was discussing it with said it reminded them of a sign in a park they took walks in regularly that said, "People don't burn out, they rust out". @MobyCarp is a great example of avoiding this. He just ran his fastest mile ever. Despite being a long distance addict he pushes each and every system he can to keep them engaged and is doing truly amazing things that make my 45 year old self feel so incredibly small. It's nice to have people whose performances you will likely never match in order to help propel you along. I hope to at least be as capable in another 10+ years (outside of pure speed of course) and this means looking at everything. Not just distance, and not just how to get to that distance fastee. But at all of it. How well am I running? How strong are those muscles, of all fiber types? How durable is my running chain? Can my heart pump a higher volume of blood? Can I deliver more oxygen, burn more fat, increase lactate threshold, etc?

It kinda sucks to have been so far off in my estimated MaxHR, but unless you actually push yourself to it you can only guess at it. I thought mine would have been closer by the way I calculated it. Turns out I was off though. I'm not injured and can simply take what I now know and go forward.

I'm none too thrilled about doing long runs slower than I already run/walk them. But I will because I have to in order to make it to that point 10+ years from now.

Great job @mobycarp

@WhatMeRunning Ah, I see now...sorry, my bad for misinterpreting what you originally said!