2024 Advanced Training and Racing Thread (still competitive jerks) (Read 211 times)

 

I had a 7 question interview today. A follow up question was something to the effect of "if you want to make an impact why not use your background for (medical research/cure cancer) to which I honestly told them the research community is more interested in job security than curing anything. On a drive later I was thinking "actually its more like they'd rather prove someone else wrong for not thinking the same as them instead of work together as a team." I also recalled how some document I read said not to speak poorly of previous employers, and I'm all about that honesty button. "don't ask me a question you don't want the answer to." 

Not running-related, but I had to respond. I think the difference is more that research is something that takes a long time and the answers are found very slowly. The immediate response and aid you give as a police officer means that you get an immediate satisfaction of knowing that what you've done has value, rather than those who work their whole lives and may actually never arrive at that satisfaction, or just do it once or twice.

And the job security-- while it may look like most research is done by folks trying to earn job security, most of the real research is done when you're not nervous from year to year if you're going to have a job, or even going around teaching at multiple institutions (and not having time for research) because you may not have that stable job yet...

The lack of teamwork and just trying to prove someone else wrong thing isn't totally off the mark, though often people are working as teams (with maybe one or two folks getting all/most of the credit)  to prove other teams wrong (or, less frequently, right).

 

• training uphill develops power in the posterior chain.  It also enables you to hit a higher heart rate with less impact to the body (since your stride is shorter and your foot is landing higher than where it pushes off).

 

Speaking of uphill running and a shorter stride, I have been arguing for years that it is counterproductive to deliberately shorten your stride when running up hill.  Your stride will naturally shorten because of the slope of the hill.  The hill adds a vertical component, so rather than shortening your stride, you should be getting higher knee lift and greater extension of your back leg.

 

Do you adhere to that for both training and racing?  To my mind, what you write above makes perfect sense when doing hill repeats in training.  But when racing, I want to get up the hill as efficiently as possible and without oxygen debt, and shortening my stride deliberately is a helpful technique.

Definitely in racing as well.  It is more efficient as you are taking less strides and getting more from each stride. You aren't putting in more effort, just changing your stride to accommodate the hill.

ETA: I strongly suspect that many years ago someone observed that people had shorter strides when running uphill and decided one should shorten their stride rather than seeing it as a natural result of running uphill, i.e. confusing the effect as the cause.

The Goat was tough.  As expected there were some really, REALLY steep hills (at one point you literally climb up alongside a waterfall), but unless you were a very experienced technical trail runner (which I am not), I'd say maybe only around a third was actually runnable.  Apart from the first couple of km, it was rare to get a runnable stretch of more than 300-400m before some sort of challenge.  Lots of loose rock, a bit of mud, about 6 or 7 stream crossings, and the downhills almost ended up being slower than the uphills unless you had a distinct lack of self preservation.  It's not really until you're climbing up that final hill and you look back and see Lake Surprise (no really it is called that) around 6km off in the distance with a couple massive ridges in between you realise that just completing this is some sort of achievement.  It's crazy to think I've run marathons, more than twice as long, in less time.  Easily the toughest trail event I've done by some margin.

This will be controversial but in some ways, events like this are tougher than a marathon.  You don't get the chance to switch your brain off and just run, or hit anything vaguely resembling a rhythm.  There's always some sort of challenge to deal with and you don't really get any respite from that.  Some of them (like the waterfall climb) include moments where you realise that if you slip and misjudge things, you actually could get seriously hurt or worse - and that's after you've been battling away for two and a half hours already (at least in my case).  Tapping out isn't even an option because most of it's so remote there's no road access apart from around the start and finish.

Pretty proud I did it, tbh.  It was very satisfying to complete, as well as fun, in a weird way, had some incredible scenery to enjoy and that medal rates as one of the most hard-earned in my collection.

A few tight spots today and a few scrapes, but luckily seem to have escaped more or less intact.  My next HM race is in 3 weeks and is generally regarded as quite hilly... but this will put it in perspective lol.

(incidentally, I agree completely about the value of including hills in training, but they don't need to be as extreme as this lol)

Weekly for period: From: 15/01/2024 To 21/01/2024

Totals: Time: 06:58:59 - 🦅Imperial: 44.34 mi - Metric: 71.35 km

Everybody - I'm not gone from this thread, just feeling like s&%"# since Monday. No  activity to speak of except cursing the bug that does this to me. I'll be back. Stay healthy.

I forgot to mention:

Tuesday I wanted to run "marathon effort", and that's why I landed on that 3h04 marathon avg pace.

I just didn't want to force a faster pace.

Mark - that's an interesting name for a shawarma place though its probably the name of the owner instead of the very famous place in Portugal (at least amongst catholics).

Anyway, now you have to there and find out for us heh

Josh - get better !

mmerkle - Agree with the others about the benefits of training on hills even for flat races.  Since I really upped my hill game I feel so much stronger.  Running on the flat feels so much easier too.

Definitely think a PT appointment is the way to go to knock it on the head quicker.

Josh - Hope you feel better soon.

Flavio - Very wise to listen to the body.  Still a very solid week with the unplanned day off.

Mark - Brutal!  Some people might find it easier than a marathon, depending on their strengths.  Not me, I'd definitely find a marathon easier and marathons have not been remotely easy for me.

My week - A pretty solid one with some very warm weather.  I feel like we've had a couple of pretty average summers but this one is turning it on for sure.

I had a gig on Friday night so my main session for the weekend was yesterday, a steady long run slower than marathon pace but in the same zone.  It was pretty warm, 27C and I ran at the worst time, about 11am so high sun and no wind making it feel warmer.  This was a good day to hopefully avoid my cramp issues that I get in this zone as early as 25km in races.  I took 2 gels and planned one pass of the car to get a 700ml bottle containing 2 doses of Endura electrolyte + carb drink.  In hindsight I should have planned on 2 passes, I lost a ton of fluid on this run.  Interestingly, I felt the same soreness in my inner left quad that I felt at Selwyn that then led to cramp.  I first felt it as early as 10km and thought this may be a tough day with the lack of sleep and the heat.  It did give me an opportunity to practice my mental skills - I had a ton of negative thoughts, from very early.  At halfway I was thinking it was unlikely I'd finish the prescribed distance.  But I hung in there and kept ticking off the kilometres and the further I got the better I felt mentally and I noted that energy wise I was feeling good and the sore spot wasn't getting worse.  There was very little shelter and at about 25km it started feeling really hot and I went from feeling cooked to almost shivering a couple of times.  At 27km I felt the quad get a bit worse and thought cramp was imminent - I backed off the pace just a touch for a couple of minutes then felt fine again, with no real hint of any cramp again.

So a really good one to get under the belt, hopefully without too much damage done.  My legs pulled up fine but the heat had some impact.  I was a bit lightheaded and moving very slowly for the rest of the day.  I had 4 litres of powerade and water before I felt hydrated again.  Even with all that I felt very dry when I woke up this morning.  Some lessons learned on planning my nutrition better on warm days.

Weekly for period: From: 15/01/2024 To 21/01/2024

Totals: Time: 09:05:04 - 🦅Imperial: 65.69 mi - Metric: 105.70 km

While the covid side-effects are basically gone, my knee becomes more and more annoying. I did finally get my first PT appointment for the end of next week, so that should hopefully help. Weirdly, it’s my other knee weighing on the knee while sleeping that causes the most pain atm. My achilles issue also flared up a bit this week, but it seems to be much more sturdy than it feels sometimes while running, as it seems to be okay despite stepping wrong off the ladder while doing yard work this afternoon.

Slowly upping the mid-week mid-long runs. Another week of this, a half marathon that I’m just going to try marathon pace for, and a recovery week, and then the real training starts. 

Weekly for period: From: 01/15/2024 To 01/21/2024

Totals: Time: 6:18:19 - 🦅Imperial: 42.25 mi - Metric: 67.91 km

Thanks for clarifying about your 3000m, Flavio. I see… you did have a goal in mind for it that wasn’t your PR. Sorry you're not feeling as fit as you'd like to feel (?). Any idea about a future race? 

And re: glasses,  you could always bring those clip-on lenses back in fashion :-) I get what you mean about traveling light, though! The case is more the problem than the glasses themselves are, usually. 

A day off when you’re feeling like you were multiple days in a row seems prudent. Hope you’re feeling better tomorrow! 

Steve, glad you described your hydration for this week’s long run, because it wasn’t clear from the last one… and I was going to say make sure you’re not just hydrating with water. I would definitely say you want at least 1.5 liters for that length of running. Sounds like another good run testing specific marathon issues. Is the sore spot still there? 

Marby, your trip sounds amazing! I think it’s really important/helpful to have phases in the year where internet quality is sketchy, at best. Time slows down and you reconnect with activities and people. Those looked like some beautiful routes! 

Ditto mt79 on “comparison is the thief of joy.” But also darkwave “and the soul of competition.” Though I do think there’s a difference between comparing oneself to someone with equal circumstances or oneself versus someone who got dealt a different hand in life.  

Did your daughter like U of Tennessee, Fishy? And I can tell most of us on this thread are non-treadmill runners. I will get on it if I’m in the gym and also need to run, because it seems silly to leave the gym and come back and sweat all over the machines with outside-induced sweat. 

And how ironic that the gym was closed the one day that the roads were impossible to run or bike on… was it because they didn’t expect anyone to be driving in that weather, mmerkle? 

Also, I wonder if it would make sense to see a doctor first and let them diagnose you, so that you can tell the PT what they need to do… I was surprised by my knee diagnosis, and some things can only be seen with an x-ray… 

Re hills: I felt like I was a better runner when I regularly had hills to run (the closest I get here are the overpasses… in Berlin I would get 1000-2000ft vert a week from the Grunewald trails). I would’ve written “hills pay the bills” if Flavio hadn’t beat me to it. I am also of the (perhaps misinformed) belief that things that make the running harder must be better for you in some way. 

Mark, it slipped my mind that you had that race this weekend. It sounds brutal! But also like a lot of fun! That being said, 13+ miles is a long time to be watching every step. Glad you didn’t die! I agree that there seems to be a need for total recklessness to run fast down some inclines. When I was a kid, I was much better at it than I am now. 

Hope you feel better soon, Josh.