Masters Weekend Runs and Races

My boys team repeated as State CC Champions yesterday! they had a great day and stepped up to the challenge. We will be greeted at the edge of town later today with a welcoming home parade lead off by the local fire and police sirens escorting us through town. It is an amazing thing to see.

Runinthesun,

Congradulations, what state is that.

Skinnbones,

It was good seeing you yesterday at the state finals. You've done a great job with the boys team. My number 1 girl finished 4th. She had a shot at winning the whole thing, but we are still very pleased. Sorry that I can't make it to Spokane this year, say hello to Tracy and the guys.

(Congrats to RUNINTHESUN !!!!)

Hi. Nothing much new here. The girls cross country team in my little town won the WI state championship with no seniors. They have an excellent coach, I wish he would have been around when my sons were in HS. I didn't run a whole lot this week. 5 miles yesterday and 3 miles each day Monday thru Thursday. It's nice that by cutting back a little on the miles my legs feel much better. Wisconsin football kind of sucks. The Packers play the Titans today and that will be an interesting game. Take care. TC

Skin, Run, and Laurie - Congrats one and all on the great performances of your kids! Man, sounds like some top-notch wisdom is being transferred on down to the younger generation!

Another tough week here. Have been able to do some low volume workouts (after 3+ weeks of flu/cold), but I finish every workout wondering if I'm going to relapse. And even though things seem to be holding steady, I always have a pseudo-asthma thing going on, where my chest constricts and I'm wheezing and dizzy.

On the bright side, there's still 6 weeks until Spokane, lots of time to recapture fitness. And that's where being older and experienced really pays off. Because if I was young, I'd be trying to recover my conditioning in leaps and bounds. I'd push it too hard, too fast - and end up injured, sick again, or overly fatigued (i.e.--slower). But now I know just to take workouts a day at a time. To do what I can today in order to be a little bit better tomorrow, and then the same thing again. Or to rest if that's what my body is telling me. And mostly to have confidence that I'll run better faster if I take my time, while if I push it too hard I might end up not running at all.

... that's what I'm telling myself anyway! ;-)

Okay, hope everyone has a great week!

Greetings all. Nice 1000's Skin.

Am back among the running with 9 days in a row. Easy stuff but all good and it has felt good to put together this string. Yesterday was 10 x 400m at slower than slug slime pace but it just felt so good. Earlier in the week I was running in Portland and out in Richland, running along a great bike trail that follows the Columbia River.

Am excited about Nationals being in Oshkosh, looks like a great facility.

Skin, you're gonna drop my on the run to the falls and have to carry me back!

It's all about my HS team last week and next (region was Friday, my girls won with 26; state is next Saturday). I get in what I can. Ran a 5-k last night that turned out to be 1.64 miles!

Man, tough week here! 74 miles with four pretty good days. Started the week off last Sunday by racing a 10k like a little girl in 35:26. Just couldn't get going. Came back with 10 in 65 minutes on Tues, 2x2mile @ 11:00 on Thursday, prog 10 tempo in 65:20 on Saturday, getting down to 5:54 then finishing up the week this morning with 16 @ 6:42/mi, with the last 8 on/off around 6:00/6:45. Mile 15 staggered me...I need an easy day tomorrow...

I think I'm hoping the strength plan, rather than the speed plan, get's me to the finish line in Spokane.

See you on the roads,

Dave

Congrats to all the HS XC kids. Sounds like some great races took place.

Just my usual workouts on the track and in the weight room, nothing new to report. However this past week seems like it was our last one of warm pleasant weather. We had dry sunny conditions in the high 70's, but the rain started on Friday and this weekend has been soggy. Luckily there was a break between storms and this morning was perfect for a hard hurdle workout.

Good luck to all of you gearing up for XC nationals in December. And how about the news re: Outdoor Nationals in Oshkosh? I've never been to that part of the country. Looking forward to sampling some beer and brats!

Train hard, have fun!

RUN, Major props !

Congrats on your team. A parade for your team ? wow, sounds like a great town.

Steaming some blue crabs here, probably the last of the season. Have a great day all !

RUNINTHESUN,

I had to read that twice....Your boys team REPEATED as state champs! Very impressive. Congrats!

Ghost, get ready! Make sure you have a headlamp because it get dark early. I'll send you a packing list.

What a cool feeling to coach your kid's to two State titles! Congrats Runinthesun. Our Boys and Girls qualified yesterday for State (Boy's won by beating the rival team that beat them last week at the County Championships and Girl's did well with a good second place). My son won the race by just sitting and kicking the last 800m (15:29). His first victory over his talented Sr teammate. They have an incredible 1-2-3 punch and the 5th guy is down to 1:10 gap. It will be close at State.

I ran another XC race today on our (brutal to me) but beautiful PNTF course. I always go out too fast each year for this course and suffer on the last 2k loop. I got away with this when I was younger (40-44), but now our #1 guy just picks me off when he wants. Still fun though.

Brutal watching the kid's run the 10k afterwards with some sub 30 guys not breaking 32. I wonder if my face has that weathered look of angst on the last loop.

Mon Hills

Weds Mile breakdown (4:48, 3:34, 2:18, :66) some short hills

Sun 6k XC 20:18 2nd

Cool to see a lot of folks out there today. A bunch more in Spokane in December.

Cheers,

ty

About a 65 mile week.

legs are starting to come around since chicago. I did two sets of 1200/800/400/200 with 90/60/30 seconds rest today, it felt pretty good. I read somewhere it's a good idea to get your speed back before your mileage up after a marathon, so that's what I'm going to try to do this time.

I did get confirm from chicago that I won male master, but I aint seen no check or nuthin money talks...

I'm enjoying letting the miles come to me, it feels like I'm actually recovering.

Hello everyone,

Ran every day this week for a total of 48 miles - highest total since mid August. 13.1 of thos miles were in a local HM this afternoon. My plan was to run it at tempo run intensity - around a 6:30 pace, which would have been a good workout after several hours of manual labor to make 10 gals of homebrew this morning. But I pulled even with the leading master at the 6 mile mark, and my competitive juices started flowing. I ended up gapping him by over 2 minutes, finishing 6th overall in a 75 second PR (with a little help from the elevation change).

My legs felt pretty heavy after 10 miles, but was able to focus on turnover and maintain a decent pace. I'd have to say that the plyos and core strengthening are starting to pay off.

dotato wrote:

legs are starting to come around since chicago. I did two sets of 1200/800/400/200 with 90/60/30 seconds rest today, it felt pretty good. I read somewhere it's a good idea to get your speed back before your mileage up after a marathon, so that's what I'm going to try to do this time.

I did get confirm from chicago that I won male master, but I aint seen no check or nuthin money talks...

I'm enjoying letting the miles come to me, it feels like I'm actually recovering.

Why don't you just use that keyboard of yours and draft up a polite letter that inquires to the timing and method of payment?

In my dealings with race directors of solid events, they are reasonable and professional. (Chicago has been amongst the races that I have had to contact. They treated me fairly and professionally)

What I would not do is post an insinuation on an internationally read web site.

Masters are lucky that races like Chicago provide prize money for Masters. Personally, I think it is charity. The ROI on Masters prize money is probably nothing, and with posts from the winner of said prize money posting insinuations the ROI just became a cost.

REPEAT Champs, Yes it was a good day. There was a lot of pressure on us this year.

We are a small Oregon school. we compete in a combined 1a/2a/3a league. the big schools are 6a, 5a and 4a.

we are barely a 2a school with only 120 students at our entire school. we actually had 5a schools ducking us this year, it was fun.

we put three runners in the top 10.

mplatt. what the hell are you talking about?

you're reading way too much into my post. I was trying to be funny, even if I didn't succeed. you could have simply asked if i was joking instead of going way overboard in your response. i got an email about two weeks after the race, which I thought was pretty good.

i think your writing you think master's money is charity says more about your stance on the issue rather than me writing a bad joke. I don't remember you responding when I wrote two weeks ago about how I wasn't sure how it was all supposed to play out, nor how I was then (as I am now) uncertain about how the race communicates.

If you really think I made insinuations, then by all means forward my comments to all master money races and let them be the judge.

I'm not sure who you are or why you're the expert on masters racing, but for what it's worth, I think it's defiantly worth it for races to recognize that older runners are still in the game. If master's running can stay clean and times continue to be respectful, then it keeps other following, which keeps them in the sport, which keeps them contributing.

Did your position on charity ever prompt you to decline accepting masters money? Forget it, it doesn't matter.

Petey, do me a favor and repeat that to me a few times, okay?

I also was at the state meet yesterday (congrats RUNNINTHESUN - someday I'll meet you! ;-) ) My only entrant (in her 4th state meet appearance) got a stitch somewhere around the 2k mark (she looked very good until then) and wound up running 2 minutes slower than her district time last week - and well behind girls she's easily beaten. The tough thing about the course is that, as a coach, you have no contact with the kids during the 2nd mile and by the time she passed me again (just before 4k), I had no idea why she was so far back. It was hard to see her struggle and know she wasn't having anywhere near even an average race for her (it was one of her slowest runs ever). She's been a great athlete to c coach and I wished for her final race to be something special.

I drove up to Seattle to run our club race this morning (thank god for the return to regular time - I convinced myself it was really only 7 am). Our women's team is really deep and quite fast, and sadly, I'm last. I did my best, but I'm really disappointed with how slow I've gotten. I'll be totally irrelevant at nationals, unless we decide to send a B team (and isn't it about time for the USATF to have the masters women score 5 people rather than 3?? ). I'm pretty bummed and as Pete says while there is the natural impulse to jump into doing more to get faster, it might be counterproductive. sigh. It will take effort not to dive into the left-over Halloween candy as solace.

Congrats to Laurie and the rest of you great coaches for your xc seasons!

I am an expert on how to contact people and gather information.

If you are not sure of the proper method of contacting the administration of Chicago Marathon I will provide help. I have the information and will share it with you, but I will not post it on this site.

As to your crude joke: Some might infer that you were concerned about being "stiffed" by the race. I need not explain why this is negative for Chicago and Master running.

Actually, I donated much of my Masters Prize money into the coffers of the club for which I was running to support the open runners.

mpplatt(ATSIGN)aol(dot)youkow the rest