ATP, very good to hear from you. You call low 11 3K for M70+ "mediocre"?! I would call it outstanding!
I agree with your thoughts regarding AG and RofD. As for me, it indeed provides a certain motivation to climb up AG% while the years go by.
RofD is somewhat different. E.g., there is a guy here in my AG (65-69) who ran roughly 13:30/5K and 28:15/10K in his youth. And at that time I could not make 5K under 15 and 10K was slightly below 32. Now I am less than 1 min slower than he at 10K, which means his decline curve was steeper than mine. But so what? He is still a way faster.
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On a related topic. The positive influence of shoe technology is a huge factor, both for training and racing. How much? Hard to say, but 3-5% is realistic. A once 4:12 high school miler is now 4:00, or 9:15 2 miler goes 8:50. Less stress at faster training paces. My experience has seen similar benefits as a masters athlete.
Training; Thursday I'm planning 2x3x300 3:00rest and 5:00 rest between sets. Goal is to average 48.5. Decent speed session for the 800m I think. Feedback welcome.
Complicated stuff - rate of decline, etc. You can just use it to see what it takes to get a medal at a U.S. Champs as an example. Sure every year or event is a bit different and more or less competitive. Men 50 and 55 steeple...well draw your own conclusions looking at seed times.
M57 2:14 = 90.17%. Will these types of performances medal? Yes.
Although you'd be lucky to make the final in a world champs with a 2:13 in M55 800m Out of my league, but I have gold and silvers from USATF masters champs in the 800m an plan to compete in Sacramento next Summer. Not really worried about injuries as I have a lot of cross training and run very low mileage.
AG factorials have interested me for decades. Very useful for lots of stuff. But I like to look at lots of numbers so twenty one years ago I was tired of Grubb's interface. I borrowed his data and built this interface . Still works! It is structured loading any set of factorials. I perfer the softer ones from 2000. The screenshot shows me just how more difficult it become to break 6 minutes over time:
I am three months away from turning 50. One of the things I’ve looked forward to over the last couple of years is being old enough to post in this thread. You guys have been an inspiration to reframe 50 as something to train toward instead of something to fear!
Ultimate running shoe tech will be a shoe that functions like an alter G. on landing but not pushoff.Bottle neck with running volume is eccentric impact damage. Imagine being able to run as much as riding! Sand absorbs impact but is unstable, hard surface stable but does not absorb impact. I am sure this will be the next big advance in running shoe tech.
Block 6 ,6 weeks to go Goal: Sub 6 minute time trial mile in early Sept 2023 after 67 birthday. Block consists of 2 runs: Alternate strength and endurance using Galpin's ideas. Take 3 days of no running after every run . The no running days are easy cross training with occasional endurance efforts on the bike when I feel good.
Monday planned for strength but could not get my HR into zone 5 . My cardio/metabolic got ahead of my muscle strength dev. So I just messed around.
3x2 minutes R 4 minutes 8%x8 mph (5:29 mile pace) HR peaks at 155 well below 160 maxed out muscles.
Friday endurance went really well. Experimenting with rest.
8x5minutes zones 2-4 at various grades stuff like 4%x8mph or 2%x9mph or 7x7 ect.
Recovery tried something new. instead of walking for a set length of time I did range of motion and massage gun stuff untimed started each 5 minute run by feel. I paused timers hr during rest to keep the time from influencing my recovery. At the end of the day interval repeat type training for faster paced "easy" runs is exciting.
Lemonade(mfg happiness?) I like only doing a few races per years. Last year's 3k was a dud but that dud made this year's mile all the more meaningful to me. Ya see you do not have to be a top age group runner. Few are but the reward of getting the most out of yourself is well worth the effort to me. I am proud of this race! If I want some motivation I just watch this race. It triggers how bad I felt and how close I came to giving up only to get a surge of energy on the last lap.
good luck to all who are dealing with extreme heat. DC has been very humid per July custom but not actually crazy-hot (highs around 90 most days), so I guess we're getting off easy relatively speaking
M 1:00 + 1:00 x-t
Tu 1:15
W 1:10 with 6 X 200 (200 jog) at 5k (avg. = 46.4) effort, then 3:00 jog, then 6 X 200 (200 jog) at 3k effort (avg = 44.8)
Th 50:00 + 1:00 x-t
F 1:00 + 1:00 x-t
Sa 1:20 with 5 X 4:00 (3:00 jog) at 5k effort (not in a place to get very accurate measurement, but I think roughly right for 20:00 5k pace)
Su 1:20 + 1:00 x-t sandwiched around watching great Wimbledon men's final
Greetings, fellow 50+ers and Happy National Ice Cream Day! 🍦
Got back on the horse a bit this week, but could only muster 9+ actual running miles. I’ve been maxing out at a tad over 3 miles per run of late, but some days I can’t even muster that much. Today was a good example as I stopped to walk after running only 2 miles. I’m not sure if it was the oppressive humidity or radiation fatigue, but I just didn’t have it. The plan is to continue getting out there three times a week and hope that the humidity backs off. I’m told the radiation fatigue typically fades a couple weeks after the treatments end, so I may need to deal with that until late August. Time will tell.
Sun: off
Mon: 36’ CR; body wt ex + med ball routine
Tue-Wed: off
Thu: 39’ running (2); 16 oz curls
Fri-Sat: off
Sun: 29’ running (2); swim; body wt ex + med ball routine
Greetings. Hot. Yesterday 3 miles 101° 20% humidity- 1st mile 6:40, last 1.25- 7:28.
Today- hit 100° by end of track workout- low humidity though. 3 laps warmup 4:20- too quick. No strides. 2x400 67.05- 67.21 2:00 rest between
3:00 walk 2x200 with 1:00r 31.95/32.15
2×120m 3:00r between. 17.24/16.81, also tagged on a fast but relaxed 150m in 22.50. Just looking at a few weeks previous workouts, I should be able to run an all out 1:40.5 600m right now. I got a long way to go, but have a year before U.S. outdoor masters champs.
The only complaint I have about getting old is the unpredictable random injuries. I had a solid 51 mile training week with a good 6x800 workout on Wednesday, 12mile trail run yesterday, and 7 mile easy run this morning, all without so much as a twitch of pain. After this morning's run I came home, ate breakfast, read some news, and went upstairs to change and get my clothes for a load of laundry. I bent over to pick up the laundry basket and immediately knew I had pinched a nerve in my lower back. I have spent the rest of the day hunched over and barely hobbling around. I have been religious about my back and core stretching and strengthening exercises and have had zero back pain problems for more than a year. I expect that my back will settle down and the pain will clear up over the next several days, but it would be nice if I could see a cause and effect connection between my activities and this injury other than advancing old age. Oh well :<(
On the subject of decline, sort of, Charlie you may remember my summer of training for the masters mile in 1998 while we were all new to posting stuff online on the GOF about our training and racing. It was 25 years ago today that I ran 4:38.9 to beat the hometown favorite by a second, after relinquishing the lead on the final lap but having more over the final 250 m. In that quarter century I have lost 42+ seconds, which seems like a lot. However, I still love running and the process of training and preparing--actually racing the mile, not so much. I'll take a 15K or 10 miler!
Like Coyote, I still enjoy the hard runs, the track workouts, the medium runs, the tempos, the long runs, the strides. I run the easy runs, but I grit my teeth over how slow are those runs. I come from starting distance running in the mid-70’s when I ran fast and raced faster. My race pace has fallen with age. I don’t check my AG performance cuz I can see it when I compare my current results with my much faster times when I was young. I never really thought about how I look running on the track or doing tempo runs on the bike path. If it’s speed day, I run speed. Same for tempos, long runs, and fast runs for fun. I still love the process and the racing. It feels the same as long ago; I just know it ain’t so. M-8M: 7(800/400) @ 4:02/10:50
T-9 @ 10:35 pace
W-7M on hilly course @ 10:31 pace (PB for the course)
Rationale life style can really impact your rate of slowing down. 2016 I cleaned up my diet and added lots of super easy exercise as well as some supplements. My AGP have slowly improved as well as many biomarkers(fasting glucose, blood pressure, post prandial trigs,ect.) OtOh Once done it is done you can't unsmoke smokes. One of the best changes I made was not eating a bunch of junk food before bed!
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Charlie, thanks for your video. What a beautiful race and sound and wise win!
The previous week was an easy one for me. First, felt a bit tired after 2 relatively hard weeks. Second, decided to have a tampering before the 10K race on Sat. though the race was not an important one (rather a rust buster or TT after no competition since May 14). The race itself went not bad in spite of a very slow course. It was hilly, with a total climb some 100+ m (300+ ft), but the most annoying were 5 tight U-turns and a dozen of 90-deg turns per a 5K lap. Ten “stop-and-go”, crazy. A couple of fast 31-32/10K guys I spoke to said that the course was about 1 min slower than a flat one for them. I assume that for me it was 1:15-1:20 slower. So, finally my result was 40:36, 38th OA among 391 men finished. There were no age groups, but only three 50+ guys were ahead of me (and no 60+). And 3 young girls. Think that it is OK, but yet have to work hard for 2 months left before the national masters 10K.
The week: Mon – off Tue – 7 miles, incl. an interval session (4 days prior to race). After w/u, 2x500 m at 1:58 and 1:53. Then 2x1500 at 5:46 and 5:39. Wed – elliptical 0:57, easy Thu – off Fri – 3 miles easy Sat – 9 miles incl. a 10K race Sun – 5 miles easy
Happy and injury-free running to all!
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I know I sounded down on age grading, I’m really not. The age grading is slowly getting more accurate with more raw data being added, Maybe I missed it but I have not heard of a statistical method being used to limit the outliers. Anyway, feel free to correct me, I’d really like to know if so. Simply waiting on more data is NOT the way to go. In my old job I had to create bandwidth reports that were our “official” values for internet speed. The outliers and weird numbers would totally screw up the report if they were not handled.
Probably just to sooth my ego I created my own age grading tables based on my personal PR’s instead of world records. I like these numbers better.
On training stuff: M64 here. I’ve found that if I stick to trails I can be more consistent in training. Hopefully I can turn around my string of injuries and report some positive progress. Will trail running fix me? Guess I’ll find out.
Rtype, I think trail is anyway better than road. I run in the forest all my life and enjoy it. Just let your feet be aware of lateral stability.
My week was as usual, and this is quite good as the main goal now is to avoid injuries while keeping the same average mileage (better say, training time per week) and workout profile (intervals, tempo, long). The summer is cold and rainy here, only 65-70F. But the air is fresh and AQI is very low/good. Perfect for running/training, but kids would prefer 80-85, of course.
Mon – off Tue – 1:03 elliptical, incl. 12 min progressive up to the LT+ effort in the end Wed – 7 mile running, incl. a 6.5 km tempo on road, 4:08/km pace +/- 2 sec (my HM pace in "supershoes", but in “slow” trainers this time) Thu – same as Tue, but up to LT effort only (no LT+) Fri – same as Thu Sat – about 10.5 miles slow long run with 8.5 min/mi average pace, 1:29 Sun – 5 miles easy
Happy and injury-free training to all!
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Good morning to all! I was able to bounce back from my pinched nerve relatively quickly. By Tuesday I could stand up straight again, and Wednesday I felt like I could walk with a normal gait again. I started back with walking on Thursday, and finished the week with strong runs yesterday and this morning. Our local XC series starts in 4 more weeks, and I'm starting to dial up the intensity for the racing season. 40 miles for the week -
M to W- rest and recover
Th- 9mi walk, AM 5mi, PM 4mi
F- 11mi, AM 9mi walk with 100m stride every 1/2mi, PM 2mi walk
So many great performances coming out of U.S. masters champs this weekend. Excited about having it back in California 2024. August 20th Pacific association masters meet- I'll plan to race 800m.
I hope to jump in a 400m a couple weeks before to test leg speed. Goal 62.0