50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Charlie,

Of course I am sure you realize too much volume can cause issues. I was very fit in 1975 and after a 175 mile week I wasn’t the same. Same in 2005 after a 100 mile week at age 55. Even as a coach I occassionally pushed people over the edge. Fortunately some easy low intensity running for a few weeks does the trick. In 2005-2006 I had my best masters year and a good part of that was the marathon base training.

Igy

Great, I'll get that.

Yes, I've been looking to Daniels for the big picture and then others, mostly Pete Magill, for practical ways to go about creating a plan around the Daniels philosophy. Magill's Running Body is packed with helpful concise explainers - it's where I first learned about mitochondrial adaptations and why you don't want to do 16x400 too soon before a race.

It's all a lot to take in at once but so what, bring it on. Periodization's a good example - I'm building volume and should be minding that. Thanks, Igy.

Charlie wrote:

All of those HIIT studies are way too short term try 20 months of that SHIIT;)

ahahahahaha. Maybe I don't understand HIIT but my takeaway from this discussion about volume is that you need it even in a LSD heavy diet.

KCgeezer,

Daniels will use volume percentage recommendations on the marathon schedules. You can use them as your guide. So let’s assume your peak volume is 60 miles, that becomes the 100%. The early base is 50%, so that becomes 30 miles, and so on. Then you translate that to the periodization plan that is calculated by using the formula to your key race. If you are confused on this explanation just ask.

Igy

I will, thanks. I'm going to NIH for my annual checkup on Sunday so I have airplane reading now.

Best on that. Second day of RT with no issues so far.

This will be a bit "embarrassing" to admit to, but I tend to not use much of my exercise phys background (Master's from Ball State, plus one added year of study). At that time, I was running 70 mpw, and ran a 2:55 and 2:54 marathon within 6 months of each other, and was age 32-33. Hard days (intervals or hills) T and Th, race some Sats and long runs Sunday.

These days at age 67, and still working 30+ hours/week on my feet, I am running about 30 miles/week, varying from 25-35. Long runs can be 10+ miles and intervals once weekly, if at all. This summer's heat and humidity kept us from feeling like doing much work at the track at all. My log from the last couple years has including how many hours of running/week and any elliptical work. On average, I'd say that I have ABOUT 5 hours/week of running, and that is keeping me at my same 150#, and then 2 x 30 minute upper body weight lifting to add. My runs tend to be 3 to 5 miles during weekdays, a bit more on weekends.

I'd race, but doing that in heat/humidity, then work? No thanks. So spring and fall racing. Point to all this is that I just run the pace that feels good for the day, whether 9:30 pace, or 11:00+. I find I need two days of recovery, minimum, for hard efforts, and don't use a heart rate assessment, except at the track, races, and for the long runs, and that is only after the runs to see what I know, that it was a hard effort.

I cannot imagine running 10 hours/week, I'd be so exhausted I could not get out of bed, but maybe that is cause after 41+ years, this is what my body views as it's comfort zone. And I don't want to fall asleep while waiting on a customer or watching "Late Night".

Yes, I am hoping to be competitive in next month's 1/2 marathon and then some 5 km's after that. And I hope that I can get in a longer run this weekend of 13 or 14 miles to feel more ready for it. Would like to go longer, but seems that that really hurts my recovery and fatigue levels. So I may go a bit too easy on myself with "listening to my body" and not practicing my science better, but my aerobic base gets tempered with my "living the rest of the day well" base. Or maybe I should have just gotten that Master's in Psychology instead of Ex Phys!? :) :)

Mike,

As I am sure you have noticed the ranks of those racing in the older age brackets gets shorter by the year. So your flexibility approach is a winner.

Igy

Mike Lundgren wrote:

I'd race, but doing that in heat/humidity, then work? No thanks. So spring and fall racing. Point to all this is that I just run the pace that feels good for the day, whether 9:30 pace, or 11:00+. I find I need two days of recovery, minimum, for hard efforts, and don't use a heart rate assessment, except at the track, races, and for the long runs, and that is only after the runs to see what I know, that it was a hard effort.

I cannot imagine running 10 hours/week, I'd be so exhausted I could not get out of bed, but maybe that is cause after 41+ years, this is what my body views as it's comfort zone. And I don't want to fall asleep while waiting on a customer or watching "Late Night".

First off Mike, kudos for bookending your post with David Letterman references ("Ball State ... 'Late Night'").

Second, I too have serious reservations about racing in these parts after the first of May. In July as an experiment I ran a 5K following heat-adjusted pace calculations. That worked pretty well, so I would do that in the future if I really wanted to race (say the 18/Vine event in June which has ca$h prize$).

Where do you do your track work? We're near the abandoned high school in Westport which has an asphalt track with weeds coming through the cracks. It's maintained by the CID and is far from ideal, but allows me to do speed work at 7am, as opposed to waiting until 6pm to run with the track club at the high school, when the heat index is 95.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Best on that. Second day of RT with no issues so far.

Igy—scrolled by this the first time. Best of success with that. They don’t give it to you unless they’re absolutely sure it’ll do something.

KCgeezer, how cool that you connected the "Late Night" with BSU's Letterman, I was only thinking of the current Late Night shows, but that certainly works, and is very cool coincidence.

We split our work between SMN and SME, depending on whether we go during the week (only SME remains unlocked) or SMN for a weekend workout (close to grocery stores afterwards, plus it reminds us of KC Corporate Challenge 1 mile races there). We go to work by noon/1 PM, and so will run mid-morning, dawn still finds us in bed from "Late Night". We don't keep a tight schedule, we might be at the track at 2 PM on a Sunday, or 10 AM, we are rather like semi-retired "whenevers" :)

Igy, thanks, I appreciate your comments, what we're doing makes sense to us, though sometimes my wife wants more structured workouts based on current fitness and goals. Yesterday, we did do 4 x 0.4 (yes, 0.4) miles between to main roads in our little 'burb. She averaged just under 3 minutes and complained about her lack of fitness, and I averaged 3:10.5. I thought that was pretty good for a rolling road (neither flat, nor significant hills) and no ID markers like a track would have. Had to work afterwards, so didn't take time to drive to our local track. It was a good rust-buster, and we saw our new Kenyan friend/mailman, who we're going to connect with for a run next week. He's psyched from seeing the WR marathon last weekend, too. Could be a real fun run!

Good luck to all Master's runners going to Buffalo for US Master's cross 5 km, we love our friend and coach there at UB, Vicki Mitchell.

KCgeezer wrote:

Charlie wrote:

All of those HIIT studies are way too short term try 20 months of that SHIIT;)

ahahahahaha. Maybe I don't understand HIIT but my takeaway from this discussion about volume is that you need it even in a LSD heavy diet.

I had to research it - there's a very compelling study on it that involved both younger & older subjects. Since I can only run 3 days a week (~15 mpw) because of arthritis, on the other 4 days I'm either spinning, swimming or strength training at the gym (I try to excercise daily). Using HIIT for spin bike workouts seems to be very effective in getting a decent non-weight bearing workout at the gym.

The study utilized 4x4 min @ 90% VO2max with a 3 min recovery (excersise bike). I increased the intervals to 6×4 min with the same recovery and come out with a pretty good workout in less than hour that's easy on my joints.

I'll say "HIIT" has been a big hit for me. ?

AOS that is GREAT!

HIIT worked for me for awhile and I plan on keeping it in my rotation.

My beef is with articles that enhance the benefits of studies so I usually try and muddle through the source:

Also the article you referenced refers to a study in cell metabolism

So I shocked / defibbed my mitos and muscles back into decent working order with hiit I just got curious and did it too long ignoring some pretty basic training truths. However I was walking 3 hours a day and adding in some miko miko running so I might be sneaky smart?

Here is the article in all of its glory it is very readable.

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(17)30099-2

My concern with doing hiit all the tiime is wag based the chronic stress of hard workouts is unhealthy over time this stress may cause disease or lower your bodies ability to fight disease. A long term comprehansive study would be nice and them guys who did the study agree

"A comprehensive approach to different exercise programs and the specific physiological and molecular adaptations and the potential impact of age on these adaptations remain to be determined."

I was actually referring to high intensity work that one does on the road or track, that is, running. That said, I know I would be doing some of the work you are doing if I were injured or otherwise limited from doing an all running routine. I just have to make sure that hi intensity workouts don’t make up more than 20% of my running in a given week. This week it was 21%. I guess I should say, give or take. But that’s what we always say isn’t it?

This has been an excellent discussion and always food for thought about how to train more efficiently. However, it seems that the definition of what is HIIT training is getting kind of mushy. My understanding from prior casual reading was that people talking about HIIT were usually talking about 60-90 second efforts at higher than 90% effort with similar recovery intervals. Reading the Cell Metabolism study, they were using a protocol of 4x4 minutes cycling at 90% of VO2 max with 3 minutes of no-load recovery 3 times per week. That to me is sounding a lot like a traditional mid-distance workout of maybe 4x1200 with 600 easy run recovery. If the definition of HIIT training is that flexible, that's fine, but it really doesn't sound like it advances the ball much from the basic run hard and recover training that a lot of us have been doing for decades.

When you are doing your miko miko recovery run, someone, somewhere, on TRT, is doing HIIT. When you meet, he will defeat you.

TRT Tom wrote:

When you are doing your miko miko recovery run, someone, somewhere, on TRT, is doing HIIT. When you meet, he will defeat you.

Man biohacking makes that trt stuff trivial

Josiah genetically modified himself with CRISPR. He used the system to edit a gene in his muscles, to make them grow faster, to be bigger and make him stronger. He did this as a proof of concept to show people how easy it is, even for biohackers operating out of small labs, to manipulate genes.

Just waiting for my CRISPR kit then I am gonna biohack my way to a sub 5

old guy II wrote:

This has been an excellent discussion and always food for thought about how to train more efficiently. However, it seems that the definition of what is HIIT training is getting kind of mushy ....... If the definition of HIIT training is that flexible, that's fine, but it really doesn't sound like it advances the ball much from the basic run hard and recover training that a lot of us have been doing for decades.

That’s right. Once one has a feel for the sport much of this becomes intuitive. It is a bit of salesmanship to put labels like HIIT or LSD on an idea. If one fails to integrate these concepts into a workable schedule it leads to a disjointed program without harmony of purpose. Daniels’ Running Formula does a fine job systematically breaking down the training elements into a useable format and one that can be customized. For a 60 year old Daniels’ Q1, Q2 and Q3 in a week may be a bit much, but a 10-14 day schedule that incorporates the same elements seems workable. I believe allen1959 may be doing a variation of this.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

... For a 60 year old Daniels’ Q1, Q2 and Q3 in a week may be a bit much, but a 10-14 day schedule that incorporates the same elements seems workable. I believe allen1959 may be doing a variation of this.

Yeah, something like that. Last year I took an old Pfitzinger schedule, and stretched his 7-day weeks to 9 days. But also added a second workout to include both VO2max and LT workouts every 9 days (along with long run and medium-long run).

This year, I have dropped the medium-long run, and have been flexible with the micro cycle -- not always nine days.

I am still formulating plans for 2019 as I target a marathon next fall at age 60.