Official Workout/Fitness Thread (Re-born)

[AFM]

Some fitness advice for this board:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alxXqErsEWs[/youtube]

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

AFM, that was certainly most helpful.

[dobrojim]

Finished my 16th 50 mile run on Saturday. Had a really good day. At age not quite 59, I finished
solidly mid-pack after being back of the back at the same race last year when I ran 6 months
following major leg surgery.

11 hours and 6 minutes. Gotta stay healthy and get that 5th 100 mile finish this summer.

[Dark Faze]

I usually stop running because of leg pain (shin/calf strain) long before lungs give out. Not sure what to do about it. My knees are great. My feet are normal. Regular running gait.

[nate33]

Finished my 16th 50 mile run on Saturday. Had a really good day. At age not quite 59, I finished
solidly mid-pack after being back of the back at the same race last year when I ran 6 months
following major leg surgery.

11 hours and 6 minutes. Gotta stay healthy and get that 5th 100 mile finish this summer.

666 minutes?

[nate33]

I usually stop running because of leg pain (shin/calf strain) long before lungs give out. Not sure what to do about it. My knees are great. My feet are normal. Regular running gait.

Maybe do some weightlifting exercises.

Calf raises.

These things are good for shin splints:


Squats are good for your entire posterior chain.

[dobrojim]

Finished my 42nd marathon Sunday. Challenging course, not particularly well trained
(plus I'm old as dirt). A friend who is a CPA pointed out to me that I've now gone
42km 42 times.

4:02

Fell significantly short of my goal of requalifying for Boston.

[nate33]

Finished my 42nd marathon Sunday. Challenging course, not particularly well trained
(plus I'm old as dirt). A friend who is a CPA pointed out to me that I've now gone
42km 42 times.

4:02

Fell significantly short of my goal of requalifying for Boston.

That's still a great time. Way better than what I can do right now.

[dobrojim]

(bump)

I went to Manchester TN this weekend to run this thing called A Race for the Ages (ARFTA).
This event is for old farts. The way it works is the race ENDS at noon on Labor Day.
The race begins at different times for different participants based on their age.
You get the number of hours equal to your age in years with the goal being to
complete laps around a one mile course, as many as you can. You are completely
free to stop and start according to your own personal feeling at the moment.
If you were 40 or younger, you got forty hours, that's the least amount of time you would have
to run. Most people were well older than that and had much longer time with which
to log miles..


So I got 62 hours to ‘run’ which I put in quotes because the preponderance of
participants are generally walking most or all the time. In my 62 hours, I completed
120 laps (or miles) which placed me 34th out of the 133 people entered.

This race scene has the _coolest vibe ever_. The oldest participant was 87. He completed
100 miles! The winning man (74) had 230 miles and 2 other men also went over 200 miles. Unbelievable.
The winning woman had 175 miles. An 82 yo woman did 153. Again, unbelievable.
At one point in the race I walked about 3 miles with the 82 year old woman. Wonderful lady
and we got a chance to get to know each other a little bit. I also spent time walking and
some running with the 2nd place man (56) who wound up with 215 miles.

Ties in mileage at the end of the race are settled by age with the older person, even
though they probably had more time to complete the distance, being favored in the standings.
This race is all about older runners.

With everyone concentrated on the same one mile circuit and so many people walking
there were many many opportunities to meet, and talk to, and make new friends.
I made at least a half dozen new friends, typically interesting people from many different
parts of the country.

Just amazing and inspiring. Food during your allotted racing time is catered from
Cracker Barrel and brought in fresh every 6 hours and served in a air conditioned building.
I was able to park in a mostly shaded spot just off the course so I had easy access to my things.
This is a two edged sword since it becomes easy to take a break. I also had an EZ up style
canopy set up with a zero gravity recliner underneath. I generally took breaks during the heat of the day
and ran much more before 10 AM or after 5 pm, typically running at least 5-6 hours after
eating dinner. The first night (I started at 10 pm) I ran until almost 4 am which is obviously late but I had
initially thought I would try to run for about 12 hours and then sleep until late afternoon
on Saturday. My body imposed a different plan and I woke up early (I was sleeping in
the back of our station wagon) and started running again at maybe 645 AM.

Most of the course is completely exposed and it was very sunny all weekend making
the temperature, being mostly a parking lot, quite warm and completely exposed
to full sun. It got HOT (during the middle of the day). But you didn’t need to carry much
if you didn’t want to since you went past a cooler with COLD water and Sports drink every lap.

You also got performance information on every lap when you went by the start finish line.
The race is electronically timed and your numbers would be displayed scrolling down a
screen just beyond the S/F line. I was number 76 and started with one other person at
10 pm Friday night. So when you start you’re at the back of the back with everyone else
having no less than an hour head start on you. In the case of the 87 yo man (who turned
out to be parked next to me), he had already done 50 miles in the 25 hours he had been
allotted to that point in time.

Bib numbers were issued in order of age, actually reverse order. The oldest person (87)
had bib # 1. So you could tell by a person’s number if they were older or younger than you.

Since I had been able to finish a one hundred mile race in the mtns on a brutally hot
day in July in just barely under 30 hours (the time limit for that race) I was quite
confident of getting to a hundred miles in the 62 hours I had and did so with about
12 hours to go. I decided 120 was a good place to stop with about 90 minutes left
on the clock. Stopping then cost me a few places in the standings but even though
I was feeling fine and could have easily walked another 90 minutes and probably
gotten over 200 km by doing so, I was happy to be done and was able to take
advantage of the ‘free’ time by starting to pack up and so I would be more ready to
leave after the concluding awards banquet which commences shortly after the
noon end of the event. Also there was no shower immediately at the race site
but I did notice a hose/faucet adjacent to a bdg I was parked near took advantage
of that with a face cloth and some soap and shampoo to do most of what a
shower would have accomplished making the 600 mile trip home more comfortable.

What a weekend!

[pancakes3]

lol, incredible dobro.

[dobrojim]

Amazing community of folks. No politics!

[nate33]

Interesting. So 120 miles in 62 hours. That doesn't seem all that hard at first glance. It's just 2 miles per hour. But doing it for 62 straight hours is something else entirely. I imagine a lot of joints and muscles started to hurt after a while. An 82 year old woman doing 153 miles is crazy!

[nate33]

Since dobrojim bumped this, I figured I'd take the opportunity to brag about myself

I have been playing pickup basketball with a group of guys on Wednesdays for about 6 years now, but a year ago, I found another group of guys that play on Sundays. I now play full court basketball twice a week for two hours each session. It's great! I'm 47 years old and I'm honestly playing better than I was when I was 38.

In my late 30s, I had a mild deterioration in my defensive reaction time but that stopped by the time I was about 41. Since then, there has been no apparent physical decline athletically, either with quickness or reaction time. I'm not even sore when I'm done. It's like I've stopped aging. And my basketball skill set has improved. Over the years, I've fully converted from being a SG to being a pure PG. I'm much better shooting off the dribble and I'm now murder running the high pick-and-roll. And since I play with the same guys all the time, they know my game and there's always a big man who want to give me a high screen. Playing ball with the same guys all the time is really the way to go. Everyone knows each other's game so it becomes a much more strategic battle.

I'm still working out, doing the same basic stuff. I lift twice a week, run twice a week (one 10 mile run, one 3 mile sprint day) and play ball twice a week. I try to take it a bit easier on my long runs to avoid injuries, holding an 8:30 pace when I used to hold an 8:10. Other than that, there's not much deterioration in my strength, speed or endurance. I still bench 195, 5 reps on a good day. I can do 15 pull ups. I can hold a 7:15 mile pace for 3 or 4 miles.

Dietwise, I've fully committed to intermittent fasting. I never eat breakfast now. My first meal is usually around noon and dinner is around 7:00 so I'm going 16-17 hours each day with no food. (Every third day or so, I cheat and have dessert after dinner.) My noon meal is always 4 eggs, usually with cheese or sausage, and with an English Muffin or potatoes. Dinner is whatever the wife makes. There's no militant effort to eat healthy, but we make sure the meal has meat and vegetables, with the carbs typically being a smaller portion.

My weight is steady at 164 pounds or so.

I'm hoping I can keep playing ball effectively until age 55 or 60.

[dobrojim]

You're right. At first glance it doesn't seem so hard. It's a two edged
sword to have complete freedom to stop and start on a personal whim.
I did the VT100 in July which has a 30 hour time limit and a number
of intermediate time cutoffs that you have to make. A race like
that is much harder as you are under constant pressure to maintain pace.
But at a glance even that doesn't seem that hard. You just have to
keep your average pace under 18 min/mile for 30 hours.

This race could be more like a number of longish runs with breaks in between.
I took 6 breaks of at least an hour, most were longer.
Here is the mile I took them in and the resulting split for that mile in hours:min.
Nearly all my other miles were 20 min or less and in some cases, even late in the race
as I approached a hundred miles, were as low as 11 min/mile.

longer mile splits at ARFTA
Mile - hours:minutes
23 - 3:43 (about 3 in the morning to 730 ish, 1st night)
44 - 2:41 (heat of the afternoon on Saturday)
52 - 1:06 (Dinner Sat night night)
61 - 6:27 (overnight after a ~ forty mile day)
87 - 4:54 (heat of the afternoon on Sunday, I went to a nerby Rec center and got a shower)
106- 7:28 (Sunday night after I had gone over a hundred and could have stopped whenever and been okay with it)

On Saturday night I had a strange experience in which, for reasons which are unclear,
I was seemingly having an allergic reaction with my skin crawling and a lot of itching.
This was after several days of repeated cycles of sweating and cooling off. I had
also used sunblock earlier that day. And I had just taken a liquid dose of Advil
which had enabled me to pick up my pace substantially to where I was running most
of each lap and getting mile splits of 11, 10, 11 and 12 minutes. I stopped and
grabbed dry clothes and towels from my car, went to the bathroom to change
and was aggressively rubbing my skin with the towels. My skin felt really greasy.
Oh yeah, I had also applied body glide the night before. At one point in the BR,
I felt like I was going to faint. I managed to get back on the course for about 150 meters
to a place where there were some steps next to the course and I sat down for
perhaps 5 or ten minutes. I got up and trudged maybe an 1/8th of a mile to
my car and laid down for what ended up being 6+ hours. Didn't immediately
sleep but when I got up, I felt reasonably good. Breakfast was being served
and I grabbed a quick bite then walked a few miles and later when it was still
cool in the morning put in 6 miles at sub 13 min pace. Stopped for lunch, went
back out and walked a few more miles before stopping for the heat of the afternoon.
On Sunday night after breaking a hundred I got on social media for a little while,
with my running buddies back home looking at the live results telling me to get
back out there since I could pass a cluster of people who had stopped at a hundred.
So I did another 4-5 miles, walking. Then stopped, had a beer and went to bed
ending the day at just shy of 106. Got up early, still feeling pretty decent, finished
the lap I was on, had breakfast and did another 12 laps to finish at 120 miles with
90 minutes left on the clock. It would not have been hard to do ie walk another 5 miles
although it was getting hot and the earlier shadows on parts of the course were
gone with only about an 1/8th of each mile being shaded.

[Kanyewest]

I couldn't find the old abandoned workout thread
but will post here instead. Hope I'm not forgetting
that I already posted about this.

I ran the Annapolis 10 miler last Sunday. I was
pretty darn slow but I still managed to get an
Official finish in 2:22. My first and only other
finish there was 20 years ago in a little less than
half the time.

Bump. I am trying to improve my 1 mile time significantly - which currently stands at 8 minutes territory . I have been running quarter mile intervals, long runs (I did 9-10 miles the last few weeks but did only 5 this week). I also started doing pylometrics,hip exercises for a boost in speed. I generally try to weight lifting 3 times a week although I have taken a bit of time off because I have a slightly sore shoulder.

[nate33]

I couldn't find the old abandoned workout thread
but will post here instead. Hope I'm not forgetting
that I already posted about this.

I ran the Annapolis 10 miler last Sunday. I was
pretty darn slow but I still managed to get an
Official finish in 2:22. My first and only other
finish there was 20 years ago in a little less than
half the time.

Bump. I am trying to improve my 1 mile time significantly - which currently stands at 8 minutes territory . I have been running quarter mile intervals, long runs (I did 9-10 miles the last few weeks but did only 5 this week). I also started doing pylometrics,hip exercises for a boost in speed. I generally try to weight lifting 3 times a week although I have taken a bit of time off because I have a slightly sore shoulder.

A workout run I do often is 1-minute progressions over 4 minutes.

I warm up first (.75 miles easy). Then do some mild stretching of the quads, hamstrings and calves for 2 minutes or so.

I then do a 4-minute run where I increase the speed each minute.
- The first minute I do an 8:30 pace (easy pace for me)
- The second minute is a 7:30 pace (a good sustainable 4-mile tempo run pace)
- The third minute is a 6:30 pace (fast with long, smooth strides, but not "ugly fast")
- The last minute is a 5:30 pace (as fast as I can sustain for the last minute, running form starts to break down a bit)
- I then rest for 75 seconds (usually 15 seconds stopped with hands on knees, followed by a 1 minute walk)

Repeat 4 times. It usually amounts to a 3.25 mile workout or so. The goal is to hit your theoretical max heart rate (220 minus age) during that last sprint minute. Training at max heart rate is how you strengthen your max heart capacity and improve your VO2Max.

I found this is the best way to get to my max heart rate. If I just do sprints, I start to get lactic acid build up before I get to my max heart rate, and I can't maintain the sprint. Basically, by doing it this way, I start that last sprint minute after I've already gotten my heart rate up to 95% of max, so I can rapidly get to that 100% level before the lactic acid buildup starts. The other nice thing about the workout is that you never really sprint all out like you would in a 100m dash or something. Sprinting like that is how old people like me pull muscles.

I do this workout once a week. One other time a week, I do a 4-mile tempo pace run (usually around 7:20 pace). Between those two runs, I've been able to maintain a VO2max of 56, even though I'm only doing about 7 miles a week total (plus basketball twice a week). It's a very efficient workout plan and it should help very much with your 1-mile goal. It'll boost your VO2max while also challenging your lactic threshold during that last sprint.

I haven't timed myself in a mile in a long time, but I'm pretty sure I can still break 6 minutes. If not, I can definitely break 6:15.

[dobrojim]

530 m/m is really pretty fast. My recollection is that
my fastest timed mile was just a smidge under 5:40.
Or basically 4 consecutive 1:25 quarters.

My current goal for speed would be a full mile under
8 min and eventually get that down to 7-730.

But right now the longest I can sustain a moderate
pace of 10-12 min/mi is maybe a quarter mi.
That's ironic considering I usually felt like a was a
better runner in the 5K-half marathon range than
shorter distances up to a mile.
My half marathon PR is 1:30 on a hilly course that
incl included an unpaved section. My marathon PR
is and always will be 3:08.

Thanks for bumping. I looked back 20 pages or so
and never saw it.

[Kanyewest]

A workout run I do often is 1-minute progressions over 4 minutes.

I warm up first (.75 miles easy). Then do some mild stretching of the quads, hamstrings and calves for 2 minutes or so.

I then do a 4-minute run where I increase the speed each minute.
- The first minute I do an 8:30 pace (easy pace for me)
- The second minute is a 7:30 pace (a good sustainable 4-mile tempo run pace)
- The third minute is a 6:30 pace (fast with long, smooth strides, but not "ugly fast")
- The last minute is a 5:30 pace (as fast as I can sustain for the last minute, running form starts to break down a bit)
- I then rest for 75 seconds (usually 15 seconds stopped with hands on knees, followed by a 1 minute walk)

Repeat 4 times. It usually amounts to a 3.25 mile workout or so. The goal is to hit your theoretical max heart rate (220 minus age) during that last sprint minute. Training at max heart rate is how you strengthen your max heart capacity and improve your VO2Max.

I found this is the best way to get to my max heart rate. If I just do sprints, I start to get lactic acid build up before I get to my max heart rate, and I can't maintain the sprint. Basically, by doing it this way, I start that last sprint minute after I've already gotten my heart rate up to 95% of max, so I can rapidly get to that 100% level before the lactic acid buildup starts. The other nice thing about the workout is that you never really sprint all out like you would in a 100m dash or something. Sprinting like that is how old people like me pull muscles.

I do this workout once a week. One other time a week, I do a 4-mile tempo pace run (usually around 7:20 pace). Between those two runs, I've been able to maintain a VO2max of 56, even though I'm only doing about 7 miles a week total (plus basketball twice a week). It's a very efficient workout plan and it should help very much with your 1-mile goal. It'll boost your VO2max while also challenging your lactic threshold during that last sprint.

I haven't timed myself in a mile in a long time, but I'm pretty sure I can still break 6 minutes. If not, I can definitely break 6:15.

I did my best approximation of this today. It was significantly slower (my hard max got to 7:30 mile pace and didn't approach it on half the intervals), but maybe I will see some improvement in this if I keep doing it weekly. I followed it with a slow 2 mile jog to cooldown to lower lactic acid for the next day for a total 4.75 miles.

[nate33]

A workout run I do often is 1-minute progressions over 4 minutes.

I warm up first (.75 miles easy). Then do some mild stretching of the quads, hamstrings and calves for 2 minutes or so.

I then do a 4-minute run where I increase the speed each minute.
- The first minute I do an 8:30 pace (easy pace for me)
- The second minute is a 7:30 pace (a good sustainable 4-mile tempo run pace)
- The third minute is a 6:30 pace (fast with long, smooth strides, but not "ugly fast")
- The last minute is a 5:30 pace (as fast as I can sustain for the last minute, running form starts to break down a bit)
- I then rest for 75 seconds (usually 15 seconds stopped with hands on knees, followed by a 1 minute walk)

Repeat 4 times. It usually amounts to a 3.25 mile workout or so. The goal is to hit your theoretical max heart rate (220 minus age) during that last sprint minute. Training at max heart rate is how you strengthen your max heart capacity and improve your VO2Max.

I found this is the best way to get to my max heart rate. If I just do sprints, I start to get lactic acid build up before I get to my max heart rate, and I can't maintain the sprint. Basically, by doing it this way, I start that last sprint minute after I've already gotten my heart rate up to 95% of max, so I can rapidly get to that 100% level before the lactic acid buildup starts. The other nice thing about the workout is that you never really sprint all out like you would in a 100m dash or something. Sprinting like that is how old people like me pull muscles.

I do this workout once a week. One other time a week, I do a 4-mile tempo pace run (usually around 7:20 pace). Between those two runs, I've been able to maintain a VO2max of 56, even though I'm only doing about 7 miles a week total (plus basketball twice a week). It's a very efficient workout plan and it should help very much with your 1-mile goal. It'll boost your VO2max while also challenging your lactic threshold during that last sprint.

I haven't timed myself in a mile in a long time, but I'm pretty sure I can still break 6 minutes. If not, I can definitely break 6:15.

I did my best approximation of this today. It was significantly slower (my hard max got to 7:30 mile pace and didn't approach it on half the intervals), but maybe I will see some improvement in this if I keep doing it weekly. I followed it with a slow 2 mile jog to cooldown to lower lactic acid for the next day for a total 4.75 miles.

Awesome! It's a fun workout, isn't it? Fun, but hard.

Depending on your conditioning level, you can tweak the structure of the workout a bit if you want. Maybe it'll work better for you as a 3:00 runs increasing in speed every 45 seconds. The main goal is to build up so that you are up near 90-95% of your max heart rate at the end of that third interval, so then you can sprint for 45-60 seconds to get up to 100%.

[payitforward]

Proud of you guys -- I really am! In ten days I turn 83. Just took the dog for a walk around the block....