Competitive Jerks Racing and Training - 2023 (Read 574 times)

When did Gen Y get erased?  I always thought millennials were born closer to the turn of the century and Gen Y was 1980- mid 90s.  Wikipedia tells me Gen Y and millennials are the same but I'm sure that wasn't always the case.

I am the last boomer and act like one. one thing i do remember is that when i was young we didnt talk so much about certain generations being a certain way so perhaps part of the change is that people like to classify and generalize more at least in that way...like they talk about dogs. people always ask me "what kind of dog is he?" so they can make all kinds of judgements about him. his name is Cody and he's a good dog.

reading along has made me want to lift weights again. it's hard when your arms are like pencils!

for those of you who Don't know Western States is the USA's granddaddy of trail mountain 100 milers. congrats to Courtney at WSER, amazing! 1st male was Brit Tom Evans about 30 mins off CR. hell congrats to everyone with a buckle, especially those out there for 30 hours plus!

When did Gen Y get erased?  I always thought millennials were born closer to the turn of the century and Gen Y was 1980- mid 90s.  Wikipedia tells me Gen Y and millennials are the same but I'm sure that wasn't always the case.

I think Gen Y/Millenials got blurred together.

I'm a 1974 edition, and I consider myself to be Gen X, but on the latter side of it.  My partner is a 1967, and is an early Gen Xer.

IMHO, the most prominent aspects of being a Gen Xer (at least in the US) are:

- our childhoods were a weird hybrid of abandonment and freedom, in part because we were the first generation to come from households that consisted of either divorced parents or parents that both worked full time.

- we were the generation that truly experienced the jump from analog to digital - we started our educations learning from books and then had to rapidly adjust to relying on electronic sources of information.  My law school class was both one of the last to learn how to do legal research in a physical library and one of the first to learn how to do legal research on line.

- every generation rebels in its own way.  Some generations demonstrated their individuality/rebelled via drugs, or sex, or flagrant display of personal information and emotions online.  Generation X's signature was physical activity - X sports, moshing, headbanging,  breakdancing, hiking.   We are the generation that thinks combat boots and/or sneakers are proper attire for nearly any occasion. (I'm not saying that Generation X didn't also indulge in drugs, sex, or oversharing of info, just that it's not our generational signature).

 

 

Generations - I don't believe these classifications mean anything, they're like the horoscope. I mean, you might make a case for it say in the US, but not anywhere else (Even then, rural US versus east coast US are vastly different). The "rules of the game" and how society behaves are not the same in all places.

I'm coming at this from a US-centric perspective, but at least here, the divisions are very real.  I think a lot of it is because the background against which one are raised is formative.

For example:  Some generations learned how to find information through card catalogues and phone books and indexes at the back of books.  That teaches one way of problem solving - a mostly linear approach.

Younger generations learned how to find information through Boolean key word searches, and so learned a completely different way to answer questions and solve problems - one that is more star shaped.   (and of course, now there is natural language searching, and in the future searching and information retrieval will be heavily guided by machine learning and AI).

The result is that different generations information-gather and problem-solve in different ways, because that's how each generation was formed.

A buddy of mine (age 59) just finished at Western States in 27:42. What a beast. And some of you may know Baboon from the forums here; he’s doing IronMan Coeur d’Alene today. Shooting for <12:00. Another beast. I tell my wife about these things so she doesn’t think my shit is so crazy. It doesn’t really work. 

Anyway, back to more pedestrian activities, like my week. I went into my track workout not knowing whether I was going to do 800s or 1000s. But either way, I was going to try to add a bit of speed to the warmup in attempt to resolve the slow early reps. All I did was include 3 strides in the end of the 3.5 mile easy jog warmup. Worked like a charm! I like my paces to be 6:20-6:30, and I was coming in right around 6:30 from the get-go. Decided while running the first rep to make them 1200s. First two were in the 6:25-6:30 range, then damn, my watch dies in the third. Oh well, still a good workout, and mission accomplished.

Planned on my usual Saturday AM group LR. But a lot of the group including most of my usual partners were doing an 8k race instead. On Friday I started to feel the FOMO, and registered at 7 PM. I’m not really in racing shape plus I had just done that Wednesday workout. So I did an ~8 mile easy jog before the race, and decided to make the race sort of a progressive fast finish. Started around MP with mile 1 at 7:29, then 7:18, 7:10, 7:02, 6:54. Mission accomplished there too. Finished in 35:31, which despite not racing all-out, still ended up good enough for 2nd AG. And my first ever 8k, so it’s a PR!

Solid week. 

Weekly for period: From: 06/19/2023 To 06/25/2023

Totals: Time: 08:07:29 - Statute: 56.00 mi - Metric: 90.10 km

Is there any subject that darkwave isn’t clued up on.

Racing 5Ks in a time equivalent to one's marathon performances.

And also, as Piwi noted - garage carpet.

 

I met him before the 2018 London marathon as I gave him my bib because I got injured and he happened to be in London at the time!  Glad I didn’t run it as it was a heatwave. 

I remember that - a group of us trained mostly for Boston in the spring of 2018, but we had one member who was doing London, and just rearranged his schedule so he could train with us.  So he watched us freeze in Boston, and then got roasted the next weekend.

***

My week: 7 miles of running (all today) and 9 hours of pool-running.

M: 90 minutes pool-running.
T: 90 minutes pool-running.
W: 90 minutes pool-running and streaming yoga.
Th: 90 minutes pool-running and upper body weights/core
F: 90 minutes pool-running and lower body strengthwork
Sa: 90 minutes pool-running and streaming yoga
Su: 7 miles (9:40) and live in person yoga.

This was a recovery/end of season week. Just a lot of pool-running and junk food, with some other stuff added in.  I know the pool-running looks really miserable, but it wasn't.  I had friends to chat with every day, and 90 minutes was just the right amount of time to stretch my legs and be social without feeling like I was doing any work.

The only things really interesting were:

a) I went to my first in-person yoga class since early 2020. I haven't been avoiding in person yoga because of fear of others; it's just that most of the yoga studios in my area closed, and the ones that are still open don't offer classes that I am interested in at times that I am interested in. But I decided to make time for an afternoon in-person yoga class today, just so that I could check myself in a studio with mirrors, and hopefully also get some corrections from the instructor. The latter didn't happen, but at least I got a chance to eye-ball myself and note some things to correct.

b) I have been convinced that I need to start doing some hiking, and maybe even a bit of trail running, to build ankle strength. Fortunately, I don't live very far at all from some short trails/hiking areas, so I spent some time there this weekend on both Saturday and Sunday.  Honestly, I can't say I enjoyed it that much - I'd rather be in the gym (less sunshine, less bugs). But it did feel like it was making my ankles and feet work in a way that gym rehab work doesn't.

Steve - FWIW, I think you and your coach are asking all the right questions here.  I hope you truly enjoy the upcoming 5K!  And congrats on doing so well on the exam.

Dave - congrats on the 8K PR, and I'm glad the workout went better with a few strides.  (it still blows my mind that people can run fast off of jogging plus a few strides)

Merkle - a belated answer to your training question.  Honestly, if there's even a question in your mind as to whether you should take a week without workouts before going into marathon training, I would take that week.

I don't think one has to take a break between shorter distance training and marathon training as a general rule.  But I've learned two points on the subject from observation over the years:

1) it's always better to err on the side of taking a break at the end of a season or between seasons, rather than try to push things and have to take a down week later in the cycle.

2) any time a highly motivated runner has even a subconscious question as to whether they should pull back for a week, the answer is YES.  Your subconscious is telling you something - I'd listen.

Flavio  congratulations on a negotiation win in today's run!

Piwi - good luck chasing the course record for your age group!

Hash- congratulations on the half!

Jmac - good luck with the shockwave - I'll be very interested in your experience with and thoughts about it (I've never done it, and hopefully never will need to).

Marky-Mark - that's some nice vert (this is me trying to sound like a trail runner).