2020 Marathon Training and relevant COVID 19 discussion echo chamber (Read 700 times)

Yes, unless they are huge which they will likely be. I'm 6' but my wife is 5'11" so there is a chance my son ends but being 6'4 or bigger judging by the size of my brother's kids whose wife is 6' (he is 6'2). His daughters and son are all on base to be pretty tall. They are all literally a head and shoulder above everyone in their grades.

DPS - great photo, so cool. You going to get your kids into running, make it a multi-generational thing?

 

Re: "days off" - what is considered a day off?  I regularly take 1-2 non-running days a week, spending those in the pool.  But I don't log those as "off."

I do agree with having one day a week that's dedicated to absorbing the hard work - for me that's usually Monday, where I do a very gentle yoga class and then pool-run for an hour or a bit longer.  But while that's very easy, that's not "off."  Off means NOTHING.

For myself, I don't generally like taking days completely off - it's not about a fear of losing fitness, but rather that I get really stiff and achy, and feel I'm better off with gentle activity.  It's also worth noting that I telecommute exclusively, so if I don't do SOMETHING, I'm utterly sedentary that day.   I will take the occasional day off if I'm traveling or have some other all day commitment (going to an amusement park, etc) - but in those cases, I have gentle activity that keeps me mobile the same way that pool-running and yoga do otherwise.

Another observation - I think that a 70 mile week spread out over 7 days of running is completely different from 70 miles over 6 days of running, or even 5.  For that reason, I've always thought that it's a mistake to focus too much on weekly mileage - it's a flawed metric.  I've had 60 mile weeks where I've only run 4 days that week (those four days were 12.5, 14, 12.5, and 21).  And yes, those were hard weeks.  Harder than when I've run 70 over 6 days.

JT - Thanks! Running every day is a pretty new thing for me - I've only been doing it for maybe 3 months. I don't think that odd short/easy run really adds much of any stress to my week, but it does help me keep things a bit looser for my next run. It also helps further my wife's opinion that I'm a bit crazy and/or have a running addiction. There are worse things...
I'm taking a bit of a new approach this cycle - one week with a single workout and a longer (20-22 mi) LR, then the next two workouts but a shorter (16 mi) LR. We'll see how it works.

DWave - Spot on about mileage over a "week" of running and the number of days that entails.

 

Sorry - I should have been clearer.  I meant a specific day off from running.

 

I also don't like having days completely off - they tend to make me lethargic.  On my days off from running I generally do some light strength training at the gym, although I vary up the routine and intensity based on how the legs are feeling and how many non-running days I've got that week.

The same is true for me; my day off is off from running but is one of the 2 days/week I do my strength routine. But that is not very much work (takes about 15-20 min) so it is pretty close to a day totally off. 

Hi all.  Sorry to be late to the party but here we go... Scott, 49 I live about 15 miles outside of Boston with most of my midweek miles run along the Charles River. Started running at 42 to loose weight and quickly became addicted.  Progressed from 3:50-3:15-3:08-3:04 finally sub 3.  I lurked in the old RW sub 3 forum which provided great motivation and makes me feel like I know (virtual) many of the runners here.  From 2015 until recently I've run without any goal or purpose (other than to keep the weight down).

My goal is to train hard this spring and hopefully qualify for Boston 2021 (I'd like to get 3:15).  My new years resolution is to incorporate morce shorter distance races into my spring training.  I have used Pfitz 18/70 and 18/85 in the past but for this cycle I plan to keep it simple with a tempo every week and alternating speed and hill sprints every other week.

DOH! I just discovered that this year's NZ National Half Marathon Champs is going to be hosted at Auckland Waterfront HM on April 5.  I've already committed to doing Southern Lakes Half Marathon on... April 4.

I'd figured this was unlikely to happen because NZ Marathon Champs is only 4 weeks later in early May at Rotorua and HM Champs has generally been in the second half of the year, but I guess you never know.

I'd like to try and defend my National Masters HM title, and I could pull out of SLHM, but I'm still leaning towards running SLHM.  Despite being a net downhill course, it'll be much better preparation for Christchurch Marathon as the weather is likely to be far closer to Christchurch race day weather (Auckland could still potentially be quite warm at that time of year).  As a smaller race, it'll probably also be solo running which is what I'd expect most of the Christchurch Marathon to be.  Plus, it's a bucket list race I've wanted to do for a while, and I've run Waterfront the last 2 years.

The other black mark for Waterfront - as JMac and Keen may recall - is that last year they forgot to turn the finish mat timing on.  Now, I know the guys that run this race, and they are good operators and felt terrible about it, but that's still a near-unforgivable mistake in my books.  To make it worse, they had live timing every 1km of the race, so they managed to turn 20 timing mats on and forgot the most important one!  Even worse considering it is marketed as a PR-type course (it's dead flat).

The race director made amends to the faster athletes by using time-stamped finish line video footage to provide official finish times for the top 15 or so athletes, but the rest had to make do with an extrapolated 'official' time based on average pace at the 20km mark.  Of those top 15 I know at least 4 who ran PR's that day (including me) so who knows how many below that have a not-quite-right 'PR'.

Adderall

 

Brew - you've got to run a tighter ship here!!

To the best of my knowledge it isn't on the WADA list so I'll allow it.