Forums >Racing>2018 Sub-3. No rules. Run.
Mikkey, Finbad, Kram and JT - awesome weeks.
RunInHK, Lela, Weather, TN, Andre and whoever else I missed - good weeks.
Weather - big congrats on the 2:48 marathon.
Moving the weekend before last meant low volumes for two weeks. I was originally planning on running the Tuesday after the move, but was just too tired. I'll get a 65 km / 40 mile week in this week.
The RWOL app is not working, when I go to previous week it's comes up with an error. Not that my two weeks were much to write home about.
PRs: 5km 18:43 (Dec 2015), 10km 39:59 (Sep 2020), half 1:26:16 (Sep 2016), full 3:09:28 (Jun 2015)
40+ PRs: 5km 19:31 (Oct 2020), 10km 39:59 (Sep 2020), half 1:29:39 (Jun 2018), full 3:13:55 (Sep 2022)
2023 PRs (hope to beat in 2024): 5km 20:34, 10km 41:37, half 1:32:32, full 3:21:05
2024 PRs: 5km 20:25
Yup. Prev-week on RWOL app ain't working. But...
Last week was lots of Zwifting. A couple of post-Zwift 2-3 mile TM runs. And an almost 10 miler on Sunday (which was kind of a cutdown from 8:54, 8:22, down to the last bit at sub-7 (6:59 )
Don't think I'll become a "runner first" guy until end of Feb/beg-March. Might actually try to run 30-40 mpw then.
My week was good, with me hitting my volume aim. I will add 4km / 2.5 miles next week. Tempo run was solid, as this was my longest tempo of the year. Intervals were pretty good too, except the second to last which was quite up hill and I took a wrong turn as I'm still getting used to my new location. My left knee was felt slightly Saturday and Sunday, but quite minor.
Watson: Nice building week and a solid tempo in there!
For me: 2nd week back from my 26.2 (two weeks ago today). Was up in western NY last weekend where I ran at 7 degrees with a wind chill much lower. Then today's run was in the mid 70's with a dew point of 70 so I've seen quite the 2 extremes this week!
Got the volume back up a bit and included a very short session of 200's on Tuesday for turnover, EZ with hill repeats on Wednesday, and then ran a local 3K (mixed surface) event at our local zoo yesterday. Legs were sluggish and rusty in the first part, but there was a lot of weaving and narrow trails (one person wide in parts) through the zoo so I kind of had to race for position. Once back on open road (zoo parking lot really) I was able to crank down the pace a bit which felt good, but nowhere near my full speed again. Think this 3K was at a much slower pace than the 5K I ran in October, but that's to be expected after a tough marathon.
Today I jumped back into a mixed Daniels type LR that included 1T and 5M at my fiend's paces which aren't all that far behind mine anyways. Looking at jumping into a 10K a week from today to see where I am at. Not sure if my legs will be in tip top shape to fully race to potential yet, but I figure 3 weeks is probably okay to give it a go at least at something close to tempo effort or slightly faster. Will try to run that around a bunch of EZ miles to make it a bigger day though.
Weekly Summary Monday, Feb 05, 2018 thru Sunday, Feb 11, 2018
1mile: 4:46 (12/20) | 5K: 15:57 (3/21) | 10K: 33:40 (4/20) | 15K 51:43 (4/21) | HM: 1:15:03 (12/20) | FM: 2:40:30 (1/20)
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing. It's written in a way that if you're either for it or against it, you can get something out of it, but if you're neutral, doesn't help all that much. I'm neutral, and what I've taken away from it is it's still too early to tell how useful it is. Seems like it's not really power that the meters are measuring (I read something similar about a review on dcrainmaker). Ray Maker's and this article seem to suggest that the different products just kind of spit out a number that somewhat correlates to power, in whatever way that they've decided to correlate it. And as of now, there's no real way of determining whether one power reading is more accurate than another (and they each seem to vary significantly). As for it being the key to Dan's success, I have some doubts. Or at least I think that's a smaller part. From my limited overview of Dan's last cycle, it seemed like there were two new things that he introduced: 1. a coherent training agenda put together by a coach somewhat specifically for him; and 2. the power meter. Dan seems to have messed up the balance with high mileage, high quality, and the coach laid out some stuff for him that let him get even more quality, but spaced in a way that he didn't over do it. He also seemed to have a problem with running things by whatever the prescribed effort was for the workout. The meter helped that. My guess is that the coherent plan had way more to do with his success than the tool that helped him run within the right guidelines. I also think that if you already do a decent job of staying within the guidelines, or below, a power meter may not be all that helpful for you. In the end, I don't see myself getting a power meter any time soon. It's not something that I want to be dependent on and obsess over it by constantly checking my watch, becoming overly reliant on some tool that tells me what I should do. Kind of like the Office episode where Michael drives himself in to the lake because his GPS told him to turn at the boat ramp instead of the bridge.
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing. It's written in a way that if you're either for it or against it, you can get something out of it, but if you're neutral, doesn't help all that much. I'm neutral, and what I've taken away from it is it's still too early to tell how useful it is. Seems like it's not really power that the meters are measuring (I read something similar about a review on dcrainmaker). Ray Maker's and this article seem to suggest that the different products just kind of spit out a number that somewhat correlates to power, in whatever way that they've decided to correlate it. And as of now, there's no real way of determining whether one power reading is more accurate than another (and they each seem to vary significantly).
As for it being the key to Dan's success, I have some doubts. Or at least I think that's a smaller part. From my limited overview of Dan's last cycle, it seemed like there were two new things that he introduced: 1. a coherent training agenda put together by a coach somewhat specifically for him; and 2. the power meter. Dan seems to have messed up the balance with high mileage, high quality, and the coach laid out some stuff for him that let him get even more quality, but spaced in a way that he didn't over do it. He also seemed to have a problem with running things by whatever the prescribed effort was for the workout. The meter helped that. My guess is that the coherent plan had way more to do with his success than the tool that helped him run within the right guidelines. I also think that if you already do a decent job of staying within the guidelines, or below, a power meter may not be all that helpful for you.
In the end, I don't see myself getting a power meter any time soon. It's not something that I want to be dependent on and obsess over it by constantly checking my watch, becoming overly reliant on some tool that tells me what I should do. Kind of like the Office episode where Michael drives himself in to the lake because his GPS told him to turn at the boat ramp instead of the bridge.
That article is reasonable, in that calling Stryd a "power meter" is misleading. I've come to think of it as an effort meter that is very consistent across different runs. The biggest way this helps me is to get the effort level right on the workouts.It's 100% fair to point out that working with a coach has helped as well. But I don't think it's fair to say that I had "messed up the balance with high mileage, high quality." I ran without power leading up to both Boston 2016 and Boston 2017, and in both cases had injury-free cycles at/around 100mpw. While I did have an injury coming into fall of 2016, that was me getting dumb with hills in SF on the heels of a 50k, not anything my normal training regime did to me. I think I had basically figured out how to run 90+ mpw and stay in one piece.The biggest change I see with the power meter and the coach are best explained via the concept of the power/duration curve. Prior to working with Steve, I thought of training roughly like this: the FM is an endurance event, so I need to run a lot, and my progress is driven by LT work, so do a lot of that. Note that this a reasonable approximation of what you want to do to train for a FM!The reason the power/duration model has likely worked so well for me is that it better describes the goal of training: being able to sustain a specific level of effort for a specific length of time. (There's a semi-marketing-y writeup on Steve & the PDC here: https://blog.stryd.com/2017/08/17/steve-palladinos-training/). If you look at the whole curve and not just single points, you can see where your deficiencies are, especially the ones likely to prevent hitting your goals.Now, the big training change I got when Steve started planning my workouts (he gives me 3 workout targets for the week, I set the overall mileage and fill in all of the non-workout days) is that because the Stryd is a more accurate effort meter than HR (or anything else that I'm aware of), he can build a pretty good model of the cumulative fatigue I'm carrying. (For those of you use to TrainingPeaks, this is very much like the PMC. For me, PMC based off of HR never reflected how I subjectively felt, but the power-based one seems to do that well.) He uses that info to dial my workout stress up or down. This appears to have allowed me to get in way more workouts, with (so far) a lower incidence of burnout/injury. So I'm basically using data to move closer to my potential; this is clearly better than my previous brute-force approach. Note also that I have a literally empty calendar for next week right now - I won't get workouts penciled in for Tu/Th/Sa until Steve looks at my data from this past week and assesses my fatigue level. So how much of that is Steve and how much of that is Stryd? Those things are somewhat inseparable for me, but part of the reason I'm working with him is to learn about how he's tracking my fatigue, how he makes workout budgets, and how he chooses workouts based on my PDC and races. I'm pretty geeky about this stuff, but I'm still very much learning. My guess is that after another cycle or two I'd be able to do this for myself. You might look at this and say "duh, if you just learned to run by feel you could get 80% of the way there." That might be true, but A) I'm bad at that and B) the difference between 80% and 99% is meaningful, at least to me. One thing I know for sure: it's complicated enough that it's a big investment to move to the power/PDC/PMC way of doing things and do it in a non-haphazard way. Stryd is trying, but they're still pretty far away from canned plans using power (or at least ones that would be useful to me). All that said, with all of the warts and deficiencies, it seems to me to be a clearly better way of training, because 1) there's some feedback week-over-week to put into the next week's plan and 2) the PDC gives a nice frame of reference for tracking progress / picking areas of improvement. Is it worth it if you're already hitting your goals / don't like being incredibly nerdy about running? Prolly not.
https://www.strava.com/athletes/5795019
Watson: Nice week with a good two quality sessions.
Weatherboy: That certainly is a big variation in temps! I have now gotten to that point (happens around this time each year) where I am tired of winter and ready for the warmer weather. Nice week, looks like the return from your marathon is going smoothly. That 3k time looks pretty good considering the course and traffic.
I got the bloodwork results back from the second round and this time hemoglobin was up to 13.0. Still below normal but better than 11.8. The doctor said the variation could be related to my hydration level at the time of the first test. There were seemingly dozens of iron-related metrics, all of which fell into the normal ranges, though often at the lower end of the range. The other thing of note was Vitamin B12, which was barely in the normal range (220, range is 200-1100). Anyway, he recommended to take an iron and a vitamin B12 supplement. So hopefully that boosts things to the normal range. I'm not vegetarian but I don't eat a lot of meat, and that could contribute. He looked back at previous results and my hemoglobin has been in the 13's for at least the past 14 years, so that may just be my body's setpoint.
Running-wise this week went well. I had a good TM session of 3 x 2 mi on Wednesday, and since the temp was going to warm up to 40 deg F on the weekend, I targeted Saturday for a 10k time trial on the track. It was a pretty even effort, 18:43 first 5k, 18:38 second 5k for 37:21 overall. The last 5-6 laps were tough and I did consider bailing at 8k but am glad I held on for 10k. That time beats my previous best of 38:59 by a lot, although that was from March 2016 so quite dated.
Weekly SummaryMonday, Feb 05, 2018 thru Sunday, Feb 11, 2018
2:52:16 (2018)
Hey all, just dropping by to say hello. Had a couple of light running weeks while we were on holiday snowboarding in Canada, but a decent 75km week last week, including a HM race in fairly horrible, hot humid conditions which was a bit of a shock to the system after the snow! ITB niggles seem to have largely cleared up aside from a little tightness so hopefully it stays that way.
3,000m: 9:07.7 (Nov-21) | 5,000m: 15:39 (Dec-19) | 10,000m: 32:34 (Mar-20)
10km: 33:15 (Sep-19) | HM: 1:09:41 (May-21)* | FM: 2:41:41 (Oct-20)
* Net downhill course
Last race: Waterfront HM, 7 Apr, 1:15:48
Up next: Runway5, 4 May
"CONSISTENCY IS KING"
Toledo Week 6/16
M 01 18 02 9.3 tm w/ 9x 20s hills, ~4@10%/7.5mph, 2@11/7.5, 3@12/8.0
T 01 22 54 11 tm w/ 3x2@5:52 + 2x200@12mph + cd, rec: 120s static, 0.5%
00 34 15 3.63 recovery
W 01 22 55 10 tm easy
Th 01 17 15 10.43 tm w/ 8@7:03 8.5 last mile -->8.9 (6:44)
00 35 45 4.18 recovery F 01 04 30 6.16 so much snow!!!
S 02 12 29 18.0 tm w/ 2wu + 14@7:03 + 2cd
S 01 46 35 10.51 lots of snow
====
83.21
Solid week. Got a good threshold session in on Tue and a decent long run Sat. I was hoping to do a few more, but I think having to use my foot/leg to help dig my car out of the snow beforehand took out a little more than anticipated. Hopefully, we'll get a bit of a melt on around here over the next day or so because snow removal is a joke in this state.
JT: That's good news on the health front. I would have probably guessed that your diet was the issue with that piece of info. It's all too easy to miss out on the better things in life by eating leaves I like how you're converting to the tm lifestyle too. Great weekend work especially!
Weather: Nice job getting back into it so quickly. I typically find the mental wear and tear post marathon to be the larger issue than the condition of my legs.
iam: Cheers for the power meter input. For the likes of us idiots trying to run and have a full time job etc., judging when to back off is key. It seems like you've got a really good method for that now. Fingers crossed for all of us!
Marky: You'd be a popular physio if you prescribed a snowboarding holiday as a fix for ITB issues Great job on a rough and soupy looking HM course yesterday.
TN: Good to see the build up continuing. Six days with a MLR has to mean there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yup, I pretty much stick to the TM, my left ankle doesn't like the track and I like the specificity of the TM and I happily wimp out from the MI winter.
Swim: Ditto with you. Some quality work on Sat followed by a double digit run. Some final patience required and you're back.
Laura: Hope week 1 went well.
5k: 17:32 (11/18) -- 10k: 38:47 (07/17) -- 10m: 60:23 (08/17) -- 1/2: 1:22:32 (11/17) -- full: 2:49:26 (04/17)
2020 Goals: Assault on 2:40! Next up: Toledo (Apr 26)
Kram - great week. Why do you post some paces as miles per hour, but others as min:sec per hour?
JT, Mark and Weather - good weeks.
Iam - nice explanation. It is also very impressive your consistent big volume.
Watson, JTReeves, nice looking weeks.
Weatherboy - that is good going moving into 3k stuff already
Marky - your sonowboard week wasn't too slouchy on the running either, good effort. And, nice race.
Kram - Lovely tempo stuff
my week
Total = 76M
Tu - 14 w. 5x 1M
Sa - 20 w. 4 tempo near the beginning and a few pick up bits near the end
Finding it very hard to get to proper tempo pace at the moment but am just going to assume it's accumulated fatigue that will shake off. Pretty happy. General plan is slightly bigger week this week then front-loaded cutback next week before cross country race.
Upcoming; 14th Sep Scottish veterans XC trials, 289th Sep Great Scottish Run 1/2, 12th October TAMA half marathon, 27th October Leeds Abbey dash 10k
- Fin fitness is coming along
-JT I hear ya on the blood work, the move to
7000 ft through mine out of wack also. Looks like you are getting a handle on it
-weather nice bounce back, probably takes a good month for all the energy systems to bounce back after a FM so it ll
come.
-Kram the Daniels king that threshold WO was nice.
As for me 55 with 2 pool WO s and some strides. Cooked a couple of them under 4:00 mile pace which is pretty good up here.
this week 60 with two Road WOS. Short ones but will
be fun to see just how out of shape I am
HM: 1/17 1:18:53. FM: 12/18 2:46:04
127.6 miles of Zwifting (6hr10min), 14 miles of running (1hr50min). Did 10 miles on Saturday, with 8 harder in the middle with a local running friend. 8:48, 7:38, 7:27, 7:26, 7:26, 7:24, 7:23, 7:20, 6:44, 8:20. Nice to run a 6:44 as the 8th mile. Felt good the first half mile of it, then I had to work. And that wasn't done wearing my Vaporfly's
Might start a Pfitz plan in two week or I might not, and it would be the lowest mileage plan. So a 25k on first March weekend would line up nicely with the first MP run.
Laura
Hey all! Catching up a bit here!
Watson: Nice Tues/Thurs workouts, hope the knee is okay...just a twinge?
Weatherboy: Nice to have a bit of turnover I'm sure...the 10k will be good to bust any remaining post-marathon rust, where in Upstate were you???
Iamdis: clearly the power based training is working for you,and great you have a coach to work with you and help with that. I like numbers and feedback and objective information and when I had a coach it was helpful for me because I let them worry about some of that stuff. I've gotten better about running more by effort at least for my easy stuff. I admit, it took years to get there and still have my days where I'm like...man I feel like I'm running so slow when I see some paces. The runners ego is a tricky thing!
JTreeves: Great mileage and 10k trial! I think wanting to bail at 8k of a 10k means you are running the right effort...10k is a bear let alone in a solo TT without race adrenaline or other people to help push!
MarkyMark: Hope you had a great trip, how was the weather...any issues dressing for the colder/snow?
Kram: Snow removal is a workout and often leaves me feeling more out of shape than a hard running workout does. Killer T workout and finishing with 200's at 12? on fiiiirreeeee.
Finbad: 5 x 1 mile is a tough workout, sometimes I really enjoy front loading my week miles when I can because it's just so nice to have a backhalf and weekend where you aren't piling them all on.
Swim: The transition to roads as the weather starts to break is a true love hate relationship.Excited to be outside, but it can be awkward and humbling after piling on all the miles and workouts on the treadmill (and I say that as someone who really doesn't mind the treadmill)
First week of Buffalo training is down. Nothing crazy noteworthy really just good to build back up after taking recovery week the week before. I had to shorten Tuesdays workout since I wasn't expecting a 45 minute commute to the gym at 6 AM, so missed a few miles and chunk of the workout but made do (though admittedly it annoyed me more than it should have). I ended up having to do Friday morning's workout Thursday night but ended up being a good thing. I hadn't done a wave tempo in a long time so ripping off the bandaid was probably for the best. I alternated between 6:40-50 and 6-6:20 for the 50 minute block for 6:33 avg. It's so strange to me how doing it that way feels easier than running straight at the 6:33 pace. But, that is also the purpose of the workout making the 6:40-50 feel like a recovery and easier pace. I was really happy with the workout though and felt strong, so that was good to make up from Tuesdays annoyance and lackluster feeling workout. Again, not a crazy week and had to change things around a bit but happy with it.
Was hoping to run an 8 mile race this week but sometimes I get in the working-running-mom trying to be superwoman mode and accidentally double booked myself for things going on Saturday morning. There should be another race (though shorter) that I can jump in the next weekend instead. I think I will still do an 8 mile solo TT this weekend though in place of the race, weather is looking conducive to getting outside and seeing where I am at so I can adjust my training paces. Someone come play rabbit so I can chase you please.
Pre-Baby PR's (all from 2015): 5k: 18:46 10k: 38:37 HM: 1:24:51 FM: 2:58:13
Postpartum PR's: 5k: 18:18 (2018) HM: 1:21:14 (2019) FM: 2:57:02 (2019)
Next Up: Unsure - but most likely some solo TT's
{Strava}{IG}
Lela - knee is pretty good, just some ACL tendonitis. Developed it last year as a niggle, peaked as an injury just in time for my marathon. So this year, am gradually building up.
Mmmm Bop
Watson - Nice week and hope the knee is feeling better.
Weatherboy - Great week and 3k race and with your mileage I think you’ll be able to run a decent 10k 3 weeks after the marathon.
JT - I’ve been very impressed with your training and you’ll definitely be going under 37min in a proper 10k race!
Kram - Really liking your TM workouts and it’s making me think I need to up my game on the machine!
Finbad - Another impressive long run and great stuff getting the miles in!
DCV - You are turning into a weekend hobby jogger! Let me know if you want to sell the Vaporfly’s.
Lela - Really good couple of weeks and you’re obviously starting Buffalo training in excellent shape! I liked your previous Sunday progressive run and I tried one myself (which I loved) and will definitely do more this cycle. I’ve always done tempo/MP intervals and sometimes I think that’s cheating!
Swim/TN - Great to see you both on the mend and building up again!
Cinnamongirl - Hey!
5k - 17:53 (4/19) 10k - 37:53 (11/18) Half - 1:23:18 (4/19) Full - 2:50:43 (4/19)