50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

nice going on getting your collection restarted. As St. Benedict (in my mind the patron saint of injury-prone runners) said, "Always we begin again".

ok training week for me, highlights being

--tuesday 1:00 with 4 X 3:00 hard (2:00 jog)

--Friday 2:00, with progression to marathon pace

Enjoying the Olympics a lot -- the time difference actually works well for me as an early riser on flexible work schedule till classes start late August. Very proud of Katie Ledecky, who went to my grade school......a few years after me. No doubt she was inspired by my success as a swimmer (good enough to earn certificate of "can make it from one end of the pool to the other if absolutely necessary")

have a great week,

Dave

I didn't check in the last couple of weeks because my son and his family, who live in NZ, were visiting and we were doing a lot of fun things like them running me at my red line every other day. After my disappointing July 4th 10k I decided I needed to do something different with my training. I decided to go with more of an Ed Whitlock approach. I set a goal of 90 minutes/day at whatever pace I could handle, with a general plan of one hard day followed by two easy days. I now have three straight weeks of 90 minutes of running /walking every day. It's probably about 50/50 running and walking right now, with the goal of getting to about 2/3 running and 1/3 walking. It's been tough to stick to consistently putting in that much time, but so far so good. I have 4 more weeks until the first race of our local XC series.

Good running to all!

M. 13 km mtn bike ride. 54 mins. 3 km hike, 3 km jog 19 min. 3 km hike.

T. 14 km mtn bike ride 51 mins. 3.5 km hike, 3 km run 15.50 last km in 5. 3.5 km hike.

W. 14 km mtn bike ride 51 mins. 2 km hike and 3 km run finishing in the dark (no streetlights in the Whipstick Forest) 16 mins. 1.5 km hike.

T. 3 km hike, 4 km hilly run in 22 mins last km in 4.55 1 km hike. 14 km mtn bike ride 51 mins.

F. 90 min river kayak session, started out in a heavy fog.

S. Wet and muddy 21 km mtn bike ride in 79 mins.

S. Cold and windy easy hilly trail trot of 11 kms in 73 mins.

Running a bit more smoothly than I have since 2022.

Our local star Andy B got a last minute call up as a sub in the marathon for injured Brett Robbo in Paris. A great kid who does heaps for local running and runners.

Also an "old guy" I knew from my running youth John Meagher set a pending O/60 10000m WR of 33 something.

This is one of the most interesting posts on LR! Can't wait to read your updates on how it works! (My 2 cents: Throw in some easy "strides' on one of those two easy days.)

happy August! Really enjoying watching the Olympics. Even my wife, who is very uninterested in running, joined me in screaming during last couple laps of men's 10,000. Given that Grant Fisher's coach Mike Scannell used to post regularly on the Masters Weekend Runs and Races thread, I'd say the key lesson is that young people who aspire to greatness should pay attention to older runners who post on letsrun.

....In terms of actual running instead of watching running, I had a fun week, highlights being:

M 2 X 10:00 at half-marathon effort (right around 4800 meters total)

W 2:00 with 15:00 at marathon pace (thru 2 miles in 14:45)

Sa parkrun in 19:47 (4th OA, 1st AG)

have a great week,

Dave

We are really enjoying watching the Olympics as well. Since my wife was/is an elite swimmer (has the fastest US 1500 meter free time in the 75-79 age group this year) we have been watching almost all the swimming as well as cycling and now track action. I got in another week of my training plan of 90 minutes of running/walking every day, which got me 51 miles for the week. I feel like I am making some progress on fitness, but it will take another 3-4 weeks to really know how it's going.

Good running and Olympics viewing to all!

I, too, am greatly enjoying the Olympics and I love being able to watch just about anything I want at any time with my Peacock subscription.

The past two weeks have been low-mileage affairs for me due to a combination of hot weather, hiking and backpacking trips, and a minor quad strain suffered during one of those trips. During the past 14 days I've spent four of them out on the trail (3 days backpacking and one day hike), ran only 5 days for a total of 37 miles, cycled 5 days for 120 miles, and swam 7 days for about 9.4 km. However, the runs are getting faster despite being less frequent, so I'm not complaining. I hope to get the running mileage up a little in the near future, and do some more races in October and November to see where I am.

Oh, and after 2 days of competition (I think) I am in 54th place out of 1492 in the LetsRun Olympics prediction contest. That's exciting, as I usually finish in the bottom quarter in these contests. I suppose that by the time the Olympics are over my luck will have run out and I'll be back in the cellar where I belong.

Greetings!

My previous three weeks were low-profile because of too much work and many family-related events on weekends. Could hardly reach 5 hours of total training per week.

However, managed to do one interval session and one tempo each week. Intervals usually looked like 5x(4:35-4:50) (with 2 min jog in between) on a trail @5K effort. Tempos (7-8K) were on road to monitor and control the pace and HR. Tried to maintain a constant pace of 4:30/km (7:15/mile) and monitor the HR drift. It varied from 125-128 after the first km and then progressively went up to 142-143 in 30+ min. Assuming my LT HR is now 147-150 it was a real sub-threshold workout.

Happy running to all!

Went over 1000 miles for the year this morning.

I was sick all night but wasn’t going to skip this workout. It was 94 degrees at 2:45am. I had some of my colon removed in 2013 but still suffer, I think from IBS still from time to time unless I’m really disciplined in what I eat..

Ive run 1000 miles at least, every year since 1977, maybe 30 years over 2500 and a few over 3000.

At the end of the workout (4:10am) I stood in the empty lot next to my house and under my breath so I wouldn’t wake up the neighbors, I gave myself 3 cheers ha

I actually got just a little emotional. It may be the last time. Cancer labs today and Wednesday. May hurt this weeks numbers.

Longish post.

First, it’s been a blast watching Paris T&F. Congrats to Skinandbones for helping Grant podium. Loved the M1500! And, Rooks, wow, thanks for me waking up this morning with a smile on my face! Looking forward to the remaining finals!

Regarding us older male runners on this forum and elsewhere, many of us will age into prostate cancer. I did last year, my 4th different cancer - strange career grand slam. I’m posting a link to a recent prostate cancer and exercise study. The lead investigator, Lee Jones, PhD, is my quasi-mentor. He’s also partly funded by AKTIV Against Cancer, co-founded by the late, great, Greta Waitz. If you can’t access the PDF you can read the abstract and click on the “Interviews” tab to hear 19 minutes of him discussing the study. This study determined the exercise dose that they are now using in a Phase 2 clinical trial: ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT05751434

Study link:

jamanetwork.com

Neoadjuvant Exercise Therapy in Prostate Cancer

This nonrandomized clinical trial examines 6 escalated exercise therapy dose levels ranging from 90 to 450 minutes per week for men with treatment-naive localized prostate cancer.

Link:jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/...

Surprisingly, this study is the first to investigate exercise as a dose similar to how drugs are dosed in clinical trials. Yep, it’s 2024 and no one had investigated exercise like this. Sad, but now you might understand my frustration with exercise research that I posted on here about 10 years ago.

These subjects averaged 93kgs in weight, had an average BMI of 29 (obese), and were inactive with some co-morbidities. As a lifelong exerciser, I can’t help but imagine what my prostate tissue might have shown, if anything, plus, I was very fit going into the prostatectomy surgery. However, my tissue was probably incinerated. But I bet there are other runners/endurance athletes with training diaries and/or wearables who are willing to donate their tissues to able investigators or to a tissue banks, and maybe leverage a small fundraiser to help pay for the costs and storage, if not some fitness sponsors i.e., Garmin, Adidas, Strava.

I have been down this road somewhat before when I hand carried my paraffin block of lymphoma tissue, slides, and images from Hong Kong where I was diagnosed with my first two lymphomas, but between two NCI Cancer centers, they lost my tissue, slides, and images. I also approached Komen's breast cancer tissue bank in Indianapolis and was successful in getting them to include a physical activity questionnaire (IPAQ-short form, self-administered) along with their donated tissue samples' histories. I'll inquire with Komen again for any suggestions they might have and I'll also try the Prostate Cancer Biorepository Network.

Hello, M67 is here.

For the last 6 weeks, I live and train at a high altitude of 2100 meters, running 80+ km/week.

I adapted well, can easily run 12 km at 5:20 min/km pace and recover for the next day's training. It is a breakthrough pace for me.

I made major lifestyle changes in the last 1-2 years; diet, training, + cross-training, benefiting sunlight more closely; I lost a lot of weight, getting into shape again is great.

My summary of lifetime experiment;

Running since 1971, I had 80% age grading in my forties and fifties. In the summer of 1981 after reading Fred Wilt's "How They Train" , I trained according to Lydiard's Conditioning Phase for the summer months only and had 85+% age grading for an eight km race.

I registered for a September 10K and a 1/2 M a week later both sea level races; my latest 10 K result is 49:30 this April, sea level and a plain course.

Good running to All.

Greetings!

An average training week for me. 5 hr 40 min of training. An interval workout on Tue: 4x(4:33-4:43) on a trail course @5K pace by feel/effort. Trail running competition on Sat: 12+K on a dirty course with thick roots. Was 14th overall of 100+ though I was the oldest one there (66).

Happy running to all!

I just finished watching the replay of the women's Olympic marathon--what a race! It's been a wonderful week of Olympic T&F and I'm sorry to see it go.

I managed to put in a good week by my standards--30 miles in 4 days of running, 72 miles in 3 days of cycling, and 5350 m in four days of swimming. Today's run was the best run I've had since being hit with RA four years ago. I felt good running 7.4 miles in 72 minutes--my first training run under 10 min/mile. Four years ago I was routinely doing 10-12 mile runs at 9 min/mile pace and racing at better than 8 min/mile, so I still have a long way to go. I guess the nice thing about having suffered a huge decline is that it is possible to gain some of it back, even at age 66.

I'm planning to take off for a four-day backpacking trip tomorrow with my husband and dogs. My husband had a nasty bike crash last weekend, and while he didn't fracture anything, he has massive road rash and banged up both a knee and a hip. Since this is our last chance for a major backpacking trip before the academic year starts, he insists on doing the trip hoping that a miraculous recovery will occur (sort of like O'Keeffe in the marathon), but we may end up coming back after zero or one night. Keeping my fingers crossed. If we do the whole trip next week will have very little running, but hauling a backpack up and down the sides of mountains at 7500-9000 feet is pretty good cross-training.

Happy running to all!

Women's marathon was fantastic. Great way to end a terrific Olympics. My early-to-rise pattern enabled me to see final 10k live. Hope your trip goes well.

Good week for me as Hurricane/Tropical Storm Debby mostly left us alone with just one day of windy rainy conditions, but nothing like what those to our south got.

M 2:00 double

Tu 1:00

W 1:40 with 5 X 3:00 fairly hard hills

Th 1:25

F 1:20

Sa 2:15 with 30:00 at marathon pace (about 7:25/mile)

Su 1:20 + 1:00 x-t

have a great week,

Dave

Cut back to 39 miles for the week, but I was tapering for a half marathon at the end of the week. It was sort of the race where I ran my first half marathon the year I started running, but only about 9 miles is the same as then. Different start, finish, and group running it. I got an award for second in my age group then, which I wasn't expecting, but it helped get me hooked on running. After about 6 years of getting faster I'm slowing down again, but I'm still faster than I was 14 years ago when I was new to racing. Another second place in my age group, but at 70 in a 60+ I'm ok with that. I had my share of first place age group wins there in the years in between.