Women's training thread - week of 10/26/08

go to runners world..WOMAN!!!

hjghghg wrote:

go to runners world..WOMAN!!!

I'm sorry. Did you say something?

Humbled, have you got any upcoming races planned? Seems like you've leaped back into things quickly -- it's inspiring to hear about.

I went from 5 miles during my post-marathon week to 39 this week. The weather has been lovely and my legs have felt great. I did some faster running this morning, a 10 miler. I'm excited to get back into training, with a long period of reestablishing my base and some racing for fun before I hit the next training cycle in mid-January.

What's everyone else doing?

Hi All-

Well, not much to report here. I ran 55 miles this week with one tempo run. My half is this coming Sunday and I have the typical taper nerves and am worrying about my time goal. It seems so hard now. I think I will try to start out at a 7:00 pace and see if I can speed up along the way. Ultimate dream goal pace would be 6:52. Hopefully the weather is OK. It is a one-way race and of course I'm worried it will be into a headwind now! Not much I can do about that, though. I am looking forward to getting back into the gym and starting weights again more regularly. I think I am doing the Green Bay marathon in May.

PP, glad you are back at it and feeling good. Humbled, you are inspiring with your mileage and return to racing! Have a good week.

Good luck Cats in your half marathon. Enjoy your taper this week and try not to worry. With 55 per week you should run well! Let us know how it goes.

I ran 20 miles this week(lowest this year) and am putting it in writing that I will do 30 this week. It helps me to tell others what my plan is (not really much of a plan).

Here are the highlights of my 20 mile week:

1) First night run of the "winter" with a little hail and lots of wind to make it exciting. I actually enjoyed the run.

2) A huge badger crossed my path on an out and back run. On the way back a baby badger walked across in the same spot. I called my husband to tell him there were strange animals in my path. He didn't seem too concerned because I was bigger than them. He was probably watching a football game.

Good luck Cats in your half marathon. Enjoy your taper this week and try not to worry. With 55 per week you should run well! Let us know how it goes.

I ran 20 miles this week(lowest this year) and am putting it in writing that I will do 30 this week. It helps me to tell others what my plan is (not really much of a plan).

Here are the highlights of my 20 mile week:

1) First night run of the "winter" with a little hail and lots of wind to make it exciting. I actually enjoyed the run.

2) A huge badger crossed my path on an out and back run. On the way back a baby badger walked across in the same spot. I called my husband to tell him there were strange animals in my path. He didn't seem too concerned because I was bigger than them. He was probably watching a football game.

i had an enjoyable week, logging just under 70 somewhat schizophrenic miles. i did my first-ever 400s workout, which went well (3x(4x400 at 4-5 sec faster than hoped-for 5K pace) with 200 m/400 m rest -- thanks for the suggestions last week, especially not a chick and sarah), and it went just fine. but instead of doing a couple of miles cooldown on the windy track, i instead trotted over to the nearby state park and enjoyed the trails for, um, another hour and a half. the day after, i ran an easy 10 on roads with a friend who wisely told me that, although i might insist on simultaneously training for 5K and 50K, i should at least specialize a bit on a given workout day ;-)

humbled, it's great hearing you building up and running happy week after week; pfitz phan and MM, enjoy getting back into the groove (and the wild animals and weather!); and here's wishing cats all the best next weekend.

Nice job Humbled, I am delighted to hear of your progress. I managed 50 miles this week with a day off, one of them was run in the "mother of all down-pours" can you say RAIN! Ah well after trying to avoid the massive puddles I went into kid mode and stomped through them. I must say the warm shower at home later felt especially good.

Feels like I am back in the running groove at long last and will continue to work on my base while hopefully adding some speed play in this week.

Yes NLS I highly recommend not mixing the 2 very different types of training between the 5km and 50!

I hope each of you have a splendid week!

This was your FIRST EVER 400s workout?!?

no longer stressed wrote:i did my first-ever 400s workout, which went well (3x(4x400 at 4-5 sec faster than hoped-for 5K pace) with 200 m/400 m rest

Seriously? Cool. Hope you enjoyed it. 400s are always REALLY HARD the first time you get back onto the track. Your choice of 3 sets (instead of 2) a little slower than was suggested (I think I had offered 1:33/400 assuming ~1:41 to be 5k pace, if memory serves) makes it more like a tempo effort than one that will stimulate the kind of adaptations toward faster running you really need to make. Still a good strong piece of work, but don't shy away from the faster stuff. It's probably exactly what you need - both for the upcoming 5k, and in the longer term to improve your economy when you gear back up for 50k training.

If you want something tastier this week, maybe try 3x(4x300), aiming for 5k pace minus 8s/lap, with the same rest as last week. Just a suggestion, mind you, but it just might put a little jump into your legs. :-) Have fun, eh?

here are the details (or at least the shortened version), not a chick: i ran roughly a 20-min 5K a week ago (my time was 19:54, but the course was a few seconds short, it seems; my PR on a certified course from a few years ago is 19:59) and my hope is to be able to manage closer to 19:45 or maybe even better on thanksgiving. for the sake of argument, call my goal pace 6:20. i ran 1:30-1:32 for all the 400s in the workout, which is surely faster than 5K pace, but only by 3-5 sec/lap, and now i see that when you say 8 sec faster than 5K pace, you mean 8 sec faster per lap, not 8 sec faster per mile (2 sec faster per lap). nevertheless, this was the right pace for me; i couldn't have gone faster and remained consistent. anyway, yes, my first time with 400s, and it was both fun and a challenge.

and, yes, sarah, i'll be good and do my longer stuff on other days -- but it's really tough to resist the finger lakes trail at watkins glen state park, when it's just a couple of blocks from the high school track :-)

no longer stressed wrote: i ran 1:30-1:32 for all the 400s in the workout, which is surely faster than 5K pace, but only by 3-5 sec/lap, .... nevertheless, this was the right pace for me; i couldn't have gone faster and remained consistent.

As a slower (bad, I guess) but stronger (GOOD!) runner, you will probably always struggle with the faster work, and also never enjoy it the way some of your speedy (but with less endurance) friends do. But you should still do it. Moreso than them, even.

If you think the faster pace is too hard to hang on to through the whole session, it's OK for you (as a strength-based runner) to (at first) try fewer reps OR (better) give yourself longer rests, but make sure to work that higher gear and hit a faster pace.

With your background as a 50 miler, you don't need much endurance-focussed work at all now to prepare for a 5k in a few weeks. You need to get the wheels turning! Oh, and have fun too.

Not a chick, I've found your posts to be very helpful. That last one especially (as I am a slow twitch princess with absolutely no natural speed). I hope you'll continue to hang around this weekly thread.

NLS, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of a 1.5 hour cooldown!

Cats, good luck with your half. (By the way, it's interesting to learn that you're married to dht. I wonder how many other letsrun couples are out there?)

Granny, badgers?? I've never seen a badger, much less two. Sure it wasn't just a very fat raccoon? Or a mutant groundhog? Badgers . . . wow!

Not a chick, you offer good workout advice, and even better advice on how to bag a workout. Seriously! I think there's a lot of us (including me) who hold back on speed workouts in order to complete the prescribed # of repeats. You've got me seeing how that's not necessarily the most beneficial way to go.

Humbled wrote:you offer good workout advice, and even better advice on how to bag a workout. Seriously! I think there's a lot of us (including me) who hold back on speed workouts in order to complete the prescribed # of repeats. You've got me seeing how that's not necessarily the most beneficial way to go.

OK, but it's NOT ALWAYS a good idea to do less, faster. It depends on the context of training background, personal aptitude and goal race(s) (and proximity to goal races). In NLS's current situation, a dose of "speed" work seems to make good sense. Plenty of strong, relaxed strides (not hero strides, just strong and relaxed) 2-3 times a week will make that kind of work feel easier in a couple of weeks, too.

There's always a time and place to bag a workout. If the repeats are getting harder but slower, in most cases (not always) that's an indication you've done enough for the day, and there's no shame in calling it a day (and it's better for you, anyway). Sometimes, mind you (not more than a couple of times a season, maybe), it's OK to go right to the red line.

So, I delayed posting on here but, I've had it confirmed I have a tibia stress fx. Probably looking at 6-8 weeks off of running so, I'm interested in any good cross training advice you ladies can provide.

Thanks!

p.s. before I knew about this I did a 5X2k workout at 6:40 mile pace, with 400 jog recovery. Unfortunatly two days later I couldn't finish and 1 mile jog without excruciating pain.

So, I would like to maintain some fitness and would appreciate advice!

mrPAC, i send you my heartfelt condolences -- been there, done that, too many times (in fact, stress fracture recovery is the basis of my screen name). my very first one was in my tibia, although that was in a former life, so to speak, when i was a dancer in college. since i began running, i've had three (femur, calcaneus, and fibula). in all cases, i was able to bike ride without pain (although with the fibula it took maybe three weeks, since at first it really hurt to clip into my pedals). so i rode -- a lot. enough to retain my fitness. swimming is also a great thing, and if it doesn't hurt to go pool running, and if it doesn't make you go bonkers with boredom, go for it.

i've not quite hit menopause (age 48), and probably wouldn't have known that i have low bone density if i hadn't been putting the stress on my bones that i was, so the blessing in disguise is that i received an early diagnosis and have hooked up with a good endocrinologist who also is a noncompetitive triathlete, but active enough to understand my mindset, which makes all the difference in the patient-doctor relationship. getting back to the matter at hand, the rule of thumb with stress fractures is to not do whatever hurts the injured area. that's it. and to be patient. i took 2.5-3 months off running with each instance and then resumed as follows: 3 min run/1 min walk on grass, repeat three times; do this every other day for a week. having an "awareness" of the site during this tryout is okay, but pain is not. it's a great exercise in listening to your body. it has been recommended to ramp back up very very cautiously thereafter, but i've sorta jumped right back in after a week or two of extreme care, although i've kept very attentive to the return of pain.

i wish you all the best in your recovery and do continue to post here for encouragement. oh, what i didn't mention above is that i gave myself permission to feel sorry for myself, but only for at most a week; then it was time to move forward, find something else to keep me happy, and know that i'd heal.

a couple of other thoughts:

humbled, i'm glad you don't find the male presence objectionable here. the goal, as i see it, is to have a comfortable and supportive place for us women, and if men want to contribute on those terms, that's great. and, not a chick, we all thank you for not living up to the usual letsrun male stereotype, and i obviously appreciate your training input and will have fun seeing what it produces for me. later this week i'll make a go of 400s at 1:27-1:28 (200-300 m rest) and see how many i can do; i'll also keep doing strides during easy runs.

about the looooong cooldown, i'm really good at plodding when i need to, and i could tell that the fast(ish) stuff left me feeling stiff and needing to keep moving for a while, so i did the out (and mostly up) portion of the trail run really slowly and then kept the pace easy but not plodding on the way back. the way the water has carved the rocky hillside makes watkins glen gorge one of the most beautiful places i know, so it's uplifting under any circumstance -- well, not when the slate underfoot is icy.

oh, i haven't seen any badgers (lately or ever), but i startled a great blue heron from a pond yesterday evening (5x 2/3-mile muddy uphill reps). for such large birds, they are so graceful taking off and in flight, especially compared to the other prevalent large bird around here: the wild turkey. turkeys look pretty nice on the ground, but are laughingly ungainly when they start flapping.

NLS, aim for 8s/lap faster than CURRENT FITNESS indicates for 5k pace, not goal pace (that would be too demanding), so maybe aim to average 1:29, say starting at 1:31-32 and trying to close with 1:26-27 (or faster, if you can squeeze one out at the end). Since this will be quite brisk for you, maybe first time at that pace give yourself either 400m slow jog or 2-3 minutes standing rest (at your preference).

At the start, you will probably think you can never finish this session, but just do it!

(I can live up to that male stereotype too, and often do, but there are better threads for carrying on locker room chat with the boys than this one)

Since I'm returning from an injury, I've only recently started running a few miles a day again.

I was running 50 mpw before the injury, and after just a month off, I have lost ALL my fitness. I've been seriously considering quitting any real training (although looking forward to a race is my main source of motivation), because after years of running, I've had some setbacks that should have been relatively small, but each one seems to totally destroy my running ability. I've gotten worse and worse and worse. And I'm at an age where I should still be setting PRs.

Yetanotherchick... I want to encourage you I too had a weekly diet year round of base mileage at 50 miles a week sometimes higher and other times a bit lower but that was the average, year after year. I would jump up to 75-80 for the marathon and sometimes down to 40 more quality miles for shorter races 5km on down.So the point I want to share is that I am coming back from 3 yrs of an injury that shut down my right quad after 10 mins of running. I really struggled to try and press on with the pain ( an entrapped femoral nerve) but often the pain won and I would go from a compromised 30 miles to 12 to 8 to nothing and kept that cycle for as long as it took me to find someone to help me ( that's another story)!So please be patient with yourself, 8 weeks into training normally I am back up to 50 miles a week. Fitness can feel like it is lost but if you have been running for any length of time you have set a huge base and you can come back. I had to not be concerned with pace at all, who cares if it was a 10 min mile or slower ( I did, at first) because I have always loved the feeling of speed and racing, but that was the way I came back, slowly but surely. Now some runs are well below 8s although I try not to have any worry if it is a plod day, after this long I am just so pleased to be running again without my leg killing me.Just do what you can do for the day, slow down if you have to and try not to put your body on any sort of schedule to come back. Also do the little things that are easy to over look. I am a Massage Therapist but have neglected getting body work myself and yet for me I do very well from regular work, if you do then carry on with it.Also hydration is key and something I overlook too often. Make sure you are getting good fuel/food and plenty of sleep and also stretching a little or a lot whichever your body responds too.Don't lose heart, if I had I would not be where I am now. Try to enjoy the journey of getting fit and racing instead of stressing about it, I know this is easier said than done but at this point I have struggled enough to be able to share and hopefully encourage someone else, always keep your hope alive!NLS Badgers are prevelent in England, amazing creatures quite aggressive though. I also saw a blue crane on my 8 miler today, it took off in graceful flight close by me and made my day. Very windy though I was nackered on the return trip of my out and back!

yetanotherchick wrote:

Since I'm returning from an injury, I've only recently started running a few miles a day again.

I was running 50 mpw before the injury, and after just a month off, I have lost ALL my fitness. I've been seriously considering quitting any real training (although looking forward to a race is my main source of motivation), because after years of running, I've had some setbacks that should have been relatively small, but each one seems to totally destroy my running ability. I've gotten worse and worse and worse. And I'm at an age where I should still be setting PRs.