Eat no more calories than you use. It works. It just requires discipline. Yeah not eating when and how much you want to eat might suck. If food means so much to you, by all means go for it. Just don't say it's impossible. It's all relative. For obese people not eating all that junk is also a big sacrifice, when all they have in life to stimulate those pleasure centers in brain is food. But if you are disciplined you just get the same amount of pleasure from less food and your body feels better for it.
This is the kind of simplistic, "people are fat because they lack discipline" logic.
What is discipline? If you don't eat ice cream because you don't crave it, or even you hate it, you feel nauseating when thinking of it, that takes no "discipline". Same goes to all cravings for unhealthy food. If you don't have the crave, there is not discipline involved in not eating them.
Do your body automatically know how much calories it needs? is there even a definitive answer to the question "how much should you eat". In an environment that food is scarce, a sound strategy is to eat as much as you can, because storing up energy as fat enhances your chance of survival. It's only in a food-rich environment that this strategy becomes problematic.
Food intake is governed by hunger and craving. All these feelings are chemistry in nature, and it works differently for different people. For a large part, weight control is a subconscious process. When this process fails you, you have to fight it, that's when things get hard.
If you are naturally a lean person there is little to no discipline involved in staying slim. I know this because I am one.
People tend to magnify their own achievement and belittle others. They give themselves excuses for failure and judge other people harshly for the same failure. After all, I know all the effort I made, all the excuses I have. What had other people do? What are there excuses? At least I don't know. I make a little bit of effort to stay slim that's discipline. Other people hard as they tried still cannot do it because they lack discipline. I always face the same if not bigger obstacle in achieving my goal when compared to other people, so if I can do it and they can't, the only reason is they are lesser people than me.
For people who have to fight the crave every day, every moment to stay within healthy weight, It's the balancing of two harms to quality of life: unhealthy or driven mad by the crave for food. It has less to do with discipline than making the choice of totally sucks and even worse.
I probably know more about cravings than you do, having experimented with certain substances and low carb diets quite a bit. The thing is, if you control your craving, it gets much easier with time. If you don't - you get into a loop where next time you need more to be satisfied. I am talking about relatively healthy people here, the majority of the population. Eating at your caloric needs, not more, not less (on average, not any given day). It's not like you're starving yourself, it's not a big sacrifice. It's a life choice. As you correctly noticed, an animal in almost every human wants to eat more than he needs, just in case. We have a lot of animal desires, but we generally are in control of that.
In particular, Mariko Yugeta regretted not reaching her potential as an athlete earlier in her career. She was in contention for an Olympic team spot, but "she fell short of a rival she would ordinarily beat, who ultimately earned the spot on the Olympic team that Yugeta coveted."
So you have an exemplary profile of someone who fits a lot of of what people have been saying in this thread -- someone with the raw potential to achieve running excellence, someone who stayed active through their middle years but didn't "burn out," and someone who maintains a consistently high drive to put in all the work and sacrifice to be an elite runner.
Finished top 25 for masters (40+) age grading at Boston last week and top 15 in my 10 year age bracket. There is nothing truly special about my training or diet or ancillary activities, just common sense.
Consistency with decent mileage and cross training; enough prehab and rehab work/core/stretching/plyos to keep sharp/efficient and injuries away; emphasis on recovery between hard sessions; open-minded attitude, to go with the flow (don't get too caught up in stringent goals) and know that some days or training/racing blocks will be better than others; watch my diet somewhat but not overly strict: low sugar, low fat, but well balanced; overall in good health; enjoy the process as much as or more than the outcome.
Finished top 25 for masters (40+) age grading at Boston last week and top 15 in my 10 year age bracket. There is nothing truly special about my training or diet or ancillary activities, just common sense.
Consistency with decent mileage and cross training; enough prehab and rehab work/core/stretching/plyos to keep sharp/efficient and injuries away; emphasis on recovery between hard sessions; open-minded attitude, to go with the flow (don't get too caught up in stringent goals) and know that some days or training/racing blocks will be better than others; watch my diet somewhat but not overly strict: low sugar, low fat, but well balanced; overall in good health; enjoy the process as much as or more than the outcome.
Where are you getting these results? First, what is a "10 year age bracket"? Boston age groups are 5 years. Where'd you place there? Second, I'm not aware of any "age grading" result lists for Boston -- where is that "top 25" from?
seems funny to claim a top this and a top that but no age group result
Did actually do an experiment today make sure I'm not kidding myself about recovery runs.
So, Steady recovery run of 5 miles, with 88ft ascent/descent, slowing down every time HR reached 120. Ended up with 5 miles at 7:44 per mile and HR average of 116.
That's just borderline on McMillan "Recovery Jog pace by % max HR (upper limit 115) and below the borderline based on HR Reserve (upper limit).
It looks, then, just based on cardio, 5 miles 7:45 is a genuine recovery pace. For me it's easier to do that after a shorter faster session (like the 3x1000m) than after a longer run, even if it's lower intensity. The long run - when I do it - is the one that I find toughest.
I'm pretty sure that I'm a slow sprinter with a fairly big V02 Max :)
Give me a race time and I'll tell you what your recovery pace should be. I don't know about that HR stuff. What have you run recently?
No races recently, but I'd think about 19:30-19:45 5k, and 41:00 for 10k
HR is generally what you would use to stop yourself from going too quick. Generally on my low/high - 38 - 165, under 120 is a "Recovery Jog" in McMillan terms.
I'd done 3x1000m with 2 min recovery in 3:48, 3:48, 3:44 the previous day before the 5 miles at 7:45 On the recovery run, I was actually consciously slowing myself down to keep HR below 120, if I hadn't been wearing a watch, I would have been running quicker, so this felt very comfortable.
I terms of cardio, if I do a rep/interval session on the track, I'm running the recovery at 8 min per mile, and HR drops a lot. If I'm doing something like 6x4 min with 4 min recovery on the road, where the 4 min is between 10k/10mile pace, I'm recovering at about 7:40 per mile.
I'm probably getting away with it because my recovery runs are relatively short. If I was trying to do 50 miles a week, with a couple of hard sessions in between, I'd probably have to some slower mileage.
I do the occasional 'long' run of 8 to 10 miles, I would say generally at about 7:30, but did to 10 miles at 7:12 once last year.
I probably know more about cravings than you do, having experimented with certain substances and low carb diets quite a bit. The thing is, if you control your craving, it gets much easier with time. If you don't - you get into a loop where next time you need more to be satisfied. I am talking about relatively healthy people here, the majority of the population. Eating at your caloric needs, not more, not less (on average, not any given day). It's not like you're starving yourself, it's not a big sacrifice. It's a life choice. As you correctly noticed, an animal in almost every human wants to eat more than he needs, just in case. We have a lot of animal desires, but we generally are in control of that.
Have you tried to get your body fat percent down to 6%, or even 3% like body builders, so that you can have a ripped or shredded body, and stay that way indefinitely? If you do, you can tell me that you know about cravings.
Weight control is not the same as fighting addiction. With addiction, once you stay away long enough from it, it really gets easier, or even effortless. You do need to be on guard though, you have to kill the thought of "how about I just try it a little bit, cannot be so bad right?" Don't give it any chance, and you will be fine quality of life wise.
Not the same with weight control. If you stay at 6% body fat year round, your life is like hell. It's not worth suffering for most, and so most don't do that. Body builders only cut when needed.
Now imagine if for someone, staying at a much higher body fat percentage is just as difficult is you staying at 6%. What exact percentage depends on the purpose and is not important for the sake of this discussion. It could be 10% for optimal race weight or 25% for a relatively healthy, non-obese weight. As said previously, people are different.
The crave for food is regulated very differently from addition. As my ID indicates, it's to a large degree about leptin. Once your fats gone, your leptin level will drop, and it doesn't matter how long you stay at this new leptin level, it creates the same crave as day one. It doesn't gets easier. Most people who had tried weight loss know this. it's for this reason that weight loss almost always bounce back.
Once again, it's less about discipline, but more of a choice between two bad situations.
Finished top 25 for masters (40+) age grading at Boston last week and top 15 in my 10 year age bracket. There is nothing truly special about my training or diet or ancillary activities, just common sense.
Consistency with decent mileage and cross training; enough prehab and rehab work/core/stretching/plyos to keep sharp/efficient and injuries away; emphasis on recovery between hard sessions; open-minded attitude, to go with the flow (don't get too caught up in stringent goals) and know that some days or training/racing blocks will be better than others; watch my diet somewhat but not overly strict: low sugar, low fat, but well balanced; overall in good health; enjoy the process as much as or more than the outcome.
Where are you getting these results? First, what is a "10 year age bracket"? Boston age groups are 5 years. Where'd you place there? Second, I'm not aware of any "age grading" result lists for Boston -- where is that "top 25" from?
seems funny to claim a top this and a top that but no age group result
Hey I ran and placed as said. As far as where did I get it, found my age grade score and went through the lists. Pretty simple and it took about 45 minutes of wasted time. As far as 10 year group, well Boston Globe publishes 10 year age categories, and it's pretty simple math to add that up. As far as being a little vague, well this is letsrun and more often than not posters can be pretty mean and will throw shade on you no matter what. With precise placing A) could get doxxed, B) ridiculed and berated because, well, that's what people do here. Apologies in advance if you not approve.
Thanks for the explanation. I wasn't the one who asked the question, but I was wondering the same things. For what it's worth, I think that this is very good advice:
Consistency with decent mileage and cross training; enough prehab and rehab work/core/stretching/plyos to keep sharp/efficient and injuries away; emphasis on recovery between hard sessions; open-minded attitude, to go with the flow (don't get too caught up in stringent goals) and know that some days or training/racing blocks will be better than others; watch my diet somewhat but not overly strict: low sugar, low fat, but well balanced; overall in good health; enjoy the process as much as or more than the outcome.
Attitude is underrated. Not in the stupid sense of "positive attitude will make you a winner," but in the sense that you have to find just the right balance between being ambitious and being lazy. At Boston, it's the difference between rolling on the downhills (good) and pounding your quads in an attempt to hit some arbitrary pacing plan. You put in the work, come up with a plan, and then what happens, happens.
Give me a race time and I'll tell you what your recovery pace should be. I don't know about that HR stuff. What have you run recently?
No races recently, but I'd think about 19:30-19:45 5k, and 41:00 for 10k
HR is generally what you would use to stop yourself from going too quick. Generally on my low/high - 38 - 165, under 120 is a "Recovery Jog" in McMillan terms.
I'd done 3x1000m with 2 min recovery in 3:48, 3:48, 3:44 the previous day before the 5 miles at 7:45 On the recovery run, I was actually consciously slowing myself down to keep HR below 120, if I hadn't been wearing a watch, I would have been running quicker, so this felt very comfortable.
I terms of cardio, if I do a rep/interval session on the track, I'm running the recovery at 8 min per mile, and HR drops a lot. If I'm doing something like 6x4 min with 4 min recovery on the road, where the 4 min is between 10k/10mile pace, I'm recovering at about 7:40 per mile.
I'm probably getting away with it because my recovery runs are relatively short. If I was trying to do 50 miles a week, with a couple of hard sessions in between, I'd probably have to some slower mileage.
I do the occasional 'long' run of 8 to 10 miles, I would say generally at about 7:30, but did to 10 miles at 7:12 once last year.
No races? What's all that speed work for? Anyway Tinman's calculator which seems pretty good to me says easy pace for a 41:00 runner is 9:00-9:20. Very easy pace is slower than that. FWIW.
Consistency is the key, for being a great Masters runner, just like it is for any age runner. The issue with older athletes is that as you accumulate years, you tend to accumulate injuries, and even the small niggly ones eat into that consistency.
One year it's a calf, then it's an Achilles, then 2 years later a knee... the cumulative toll leads to awkward form and stride (which leads to more issues) and a ton of lost training. The result is a training log graph that looks more like a mountain range, than a nice steady increase in training/performance.
I probably know more about cravings than you do, having experimented with certain substances and low carb diets quite a bit. The thing is, if you control your craving, it gets much easier with time. If you don't - you get into a loop where next time you need more to be satisfied. I am talking about relatively healthy people here, the majority of the population. Eating at your caloric needs, not more, not less (on average, not any given day). It's not like you're starving yourself, it's not a big sacrifice. It's a life choice. As you correctly noticed, an animal in almost every human wants to eat more than he needs, just in case. We have a lot of animal desires, but we generally are in control of that.
Have you tried to get your body fat percent down to 6%, or even 3% like body builders, so that you can have a ripped or shredded body, and stay that way indefinitely? If you do, you can tell me that you know about cravings.
Weight control is not the same as fighting addiction. With addiction, once you stay away long enough from it, it really gets easier, or even effortless. You do need to be on guard though, you have to kill the thought of "how about I just try it a little bit, cannot be so bad right?" Don't give it any chance, and you will be fine quality of life wise.
Not the same with weight control. If you stay at 6% body fat year round, your life is like hell. It's not worth suffering for most, and so most don't do that. Body builders only cut when needed.
Now imagine if for someone, staying at a much higher body fat percentage is just as difficult is you staying at 6%. What exact percentage depends on the purpose and is not important for the sake of this discussion. It could be 10% for optimal race weight or 25% for a relatively healthy, non-obese weight. As said previously, people are different.
The crave for food is regulated very differently from addition. As my ID indicates, it's to a large degree about leptin. Once your fats gone, your leptin level will drop, and it doesn't matter how long you stay at this new leptin level, it creates the same crave as day one. It doesn't gets easier. Most people who had tried weight loss know this. it's for this reason that weight loss almost always bounce back.
Once again, it's less about discipline, but more of a choice between two bad situations.
You're a bit off here. 3% is simply impossible in a living person, when you hear such things it's a bs or error in the measurements. Remember, the brain is very fatty. 5% is probably the lowest bodybuilders go in competition, but they use pretty dangerous chemicals to get there (google DNP, for instance) on top of low carb diet. I stay below 10% year round and go down to 6-8% give or take when in the serious marathon training. I have to wake up at night and eat just to keep the same weight. My life is not hell, in fact it's pretty sustainable. Remember, we are talking about masters running marathons. High mileage suppresses your appetite, while at the same time making you crave carbs. It also boosts your cortisol levels, so that you're pretty catabolic all the time. Once you get to certain mileage you don't have to limit yourself at all, as long as you're making good food choices. I am talking about the middle of the bell curve, of course. There will always be outliers.
Speed-work is for the 3000m at Hayward Field, first week in May.
I'd also hope to do the World Senior Games in October, being at the 'young' end of the 65+ age group.
Did feel fresher today than yesterday, despite the 'easy' run being way too quick. Four miles today including some strides at 7:49 per mile (HR average 119). Again deliberately holding back a bit. If I wasn't getting ready for the race in 12 days, tomorrow would be 8 miles, including 6x4 minutes fast, 4 minutes steady (came out at average of 7:17 last week), easy day Wednesday, hill sprints Thursday, easy Friday and track on Saturday.
In part, what, I think has happened is this. For several months I've done longer track sessions like 6x1000m with 800m recovery; 12x400m with 400m recovery; 16x200m with 200m recovery - all runs done with recovery at about 8:00, and warm and down - the whole session as a continuous run. I've also done some 75-80 minute trail runs the day after track, deliberately to be pre-fatigued (I'd a hilly 15 mile trail race in November, and would have run another one on the coast here in March had it not been cancelled). Now I'm doing more quality (say 4x800m or 3x1000m) and not doing anything longer than 8 miles, it's leaving me less tired.
I think at the moment, I'll do the steady runs by HR, and if I get very tired either take a day off, or do 3 miles at 8:00+. I do feel a little fatigue going into the track sessions at times, but since I'm hitting target times (or quicker), I'm not too worried.
I'm sure it wouldn't work for a marathon (or even a half), but I don't have any ambition beyond a 10k on the road, and I think the strong 8 miles with reps every is giving me enough aerobic maintenance.
I also think for me unless I was exhausted trying to run 9-9:30 miling would be quite destructive to my stride/form as someone who is only aiming to run in the 6:10 - 6:35 range (I know Kenyans are supposedly starting some runs at that, but I'm guessing they are the third run of the day, and are just a shakeout).
One other interesting thing - the 7:45 - 7:50 runs are coming out on Garmin as well inside Zone 2 "maintaining."
Cavorty, did you ever mention your height/weight? I am really, really intrigued reading your posts as I feel like I'm in a similar place as you (I'm 61, 40-163 or so for HR min/max) but if I keep my HR at 120 I might be hitting 9:45 paces! I usually run my easy runs at HR right at 130. I struggle to keep it below that as I always feel 'better' running at 135 - 140 HR but I don't think I should be up there on easy runs. Today I did 8.5miles and tried to keep the HR down, just to see what would happen. I ran 8.5 miles with average HR of 122. Pace? 9:22/mile average. this is a massive difference from your 7:45 at HR of 120. I've recently run a 10mile race at 7:18 pace and then an 8K race at 7:04 pace. The 10miler had my avg/max HR of 151/159 and the 8K had it at 151/159 as well. Hmm, wonder what that means - same HR profile for races 2X in distance apart? I use a chest strap to measure.
You're a bit off here. 3% is simply impossible in a living person, when you hear such things it's a bs or error in the measurements. Remember, the brain is very fatty. 5% is probably the lowest bodybuilders go in competition, but they use pretty dangerous chemicals to get there (google DNP, for instance) on top of low carb diet. I stay below 10% year round and go down to 6-8% give or take when in the serious marathon training. I have to wake up at night and eat just to keep the same weight. My life is not hell, in fact it's pretty sustainable. Remember, we are talking about masters running marathons. High mileage suppresses your appetite, while at the same time making you crave carbs. It also boosts your cortisol levels, so that you're pretty catabolic all the time. Once you get to certain mileage you don't have to limit yourself at all, as long as you're making good food choices. I am talking about the middle of the bell curve, of course. There will always be outliers.
How do you define "like hell"? For me, having to think about eating every moment is hell. It may not be for you. Or perhaps you are not facing that kind of craving even at 6-8% body fat. The thing is, if you are not fighting that kind of craving, then it doesn't take a lot of discipline. So once again, it's not about discipline. Consider yourself luck and also do realize not everyone is as blessed.
Where are you getting these results? First, what is a "10 year age bracket"? Boston age groups are 5 years. Where'd you place there? Second, I'm not aware of any "age grading" result lists for Boston -- where is that "top 25" from?
seems funny to claim a top this and a top that but no age group result
Hey I ran and placed as said. As far as where did I get it, found my age grade score and went through the lists. Pretty simple and it took about 45 minutes of wasted time. As far as 10 year group, well Boston Globe publishes 10 year age categories, and it's pretty simple math to add that up. As far as being a little vague, well this is letsrun and more often than not posters can be pretty mean and will throw shade on you no matter what. With precise placing A) could get doxxed, B) ridiculed and berated because, well, that's what people do here. Apologies in advance if you not approve.
Haha poring over race results is never a waste of time, I do tons of that myself. And I get the desire for anonymity. Whatever your real place in the real AG, you ran a helluva race and kudos to you.
Give me a race time and I'll tell you what your recovery pace should be. I don't know about that HR stuff. What have you run recently?
No races recently, but I'd think about 19:30-19:45 5k, and 41:00 for 10k
HR is generally what you would use to stop yourself from going too quick. Generally on my low/high - 38 - 165, under 120 is a "Recovery Jog" in McMillan terms.
I'd done 3x1000m with 2 min recovery in 3:48, 3:48, 3:44 the previous day before the 5 miles at 7:45 On the recovery run, I was actually consciously slowing myself down to keep HR below 120, if I hadn't been wearing a watch, I would have been running quicker, so this felt very comfortable.
I terms of cardio, if I do a rep/interval session on the track, I'm running the recovery at 8 min per mile, and HR drops a lot. If I'm doing something like 6x4 min with 4 min recovery on the road, where the 4 min is between 10k/10mile pace, I'm recovering at about 7:40 per mile.
I'm probably getting away with it because my recovery runs are relatively short. If I was trying to do 50 miles a week, with a couple of hard sessions in between, I'd probably have to some slower mileage.
I do the occasional 'long' run of 8 to 10 miles, I would say generally at about 7:30, but did to 10 miles at 7:12 once last year.
If "no races recently" then what was your last race? This is a lot of bark for no bite.
The masters winner at Boston is a former pro runner from Italy. The 50+ age grouper is Ken Rideout. He is a pure amateur and did a lot of Ironman races. Once you get closer to 50 than 40, you have to really be dedicated to cross training, strength training and be very smart about your mileage and and recovery time.
No proof of course, but if any 50+ guy is doping, it's Rideout. Look at his build (chunky for a runner), his background (boxing), his progression. I'd bet $1,000 that he's on TRT if nothing else.
Not saying that's true about all fast masters. In fact, I think most are clean. But some of them don't pass the sniff test for various reasons and Rideout is one of them.
I’m always nervous when we toss people under the bus on this forum. I believed Kevin Castille. I was obviously wrong. His incredible performances were an outlier but his previous pedigree gave him some credibility.
Cavorty, did you ever mention your height/weight? I am really, really intrigued reading your posts as I feel like I'm in a similar place as you (I'm 61, 40-163 or so for HR min/max) but if I keep my HR at 120 I might be hitting 9:45 paces! I usually run my easy runs at HR right at 130. I struggle to keep it below that as I always feel 'better' running at 135 - 140 HR but I don't think I should be up there on easy runs. Today I did 8.5miles and tried to keep the HR down, just to see what would happen. I ran 8.5 miles with average HR of 122. Pace? 9:22/mile average. this is a massive difference from your 7:45 at HR of 120. I've recently run a 10mile race at 7:18 pace and then an 8K race at 7:04 pace. The 10miler had my avg/max HR of 151/159 and the 8K had it at 151/159 as well. Hmm, wonder what that means - same HR profile for races 2X in distance apart? I use a chest strap to measure.
Hi,
About 5ft 8 1/2 ins and 148 lbs - was down to 143 lbs after some long runs when training for a long trail run, but that's more dehydration than anything. I was at a very similar weight, or even a couple of pounds heavier when running my best 800/1500m nearly 40 years ago, so would expect to be healthy much under 146 lbs or so.
Lasat two days I did consecutive days of 5 miles in 7:44 (HR average 116) in Nike Next and 4 miles with 4 strides in 4:47 (HR average 119) in 7:47 in very lightweight road shoes.
Nothing in the way of races recently, but the day after the cancelled Prefontaine 10k last September I ran a solo 5.56 in 36:36 (out and back course, total elevation 108ft up/108ft down) an average of 6:35 per mile. HR average was 136, max 152. I think on a flat course in a race, I could have held a similar pace for 10k, which would have been about 40:40.
Back in May last year, I see a solo 10 miles in 72:38 - 7:16 pace - on a hilly course (234ft up/258 ft down) at an average HR of 134 and max of 153.
For what it's worth, I've been training and competing for over 50 years, and haven't ever had more than a few weeks off. I also spent a lot of time in the last few years grinding away at 7:00-7:45 pace day in day out when an injury precluded speed work.
