2019 Endurance Athletics Thread - Page 7
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MarcoJ
Germany146 Posts
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L_Master
United States7946 Posts
On September 14 2019 06:48 Nocci wrote: Thanks for the offer, so far I've been improving steadily with what I've been doing, orienting myself & structuring workouts mostly after Jack Daniels' Running Formula. As long as I stayed healthy anyways. That's the one thing I struggle with, staying injury free. These days I've been noticing my right shin again after hard running, but that might be just some post injury oversensitivity. Gotta pay close attention to that and be honest with myself. Here's my 2019 so far: Hardly any running since may, so I'm all the more pleased to still be able to run sub 19min 5k Plan for the next 4 weeks is to go by feel, probably low total volume but mostly quality workouts on the track (like twice a week), because I also want to spend some more time in the gym while my subscription still lasts. Then after the race in october I'll see where I stand health wise and hopefully start a long base building phase, no more racing planned this year. In other news I went tryhard mode today and got my 5k rowing down to 19:15 Hehe I hear you, I came home from my vacation with 3 additional kg and kept them through all of august. Now I'm back down to 71kg and I aim to be somewhere sub 70kg for the race in october. At least my diet's been pretty clean the last 2 weeks. Party with alcohol tomorrow, hopefully I'll bounce back to healthy habits right on sunday. I just looked at that 5k. Looks like a really well executed race. Also...there were a TON of turns. Enough to cost 10-20s from a straighter course. Good starting point. Stay healthy and consistent and should be challenging 18 in October and 17;30 or better in Spring | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
If my legs feel okay will do a track session on Tuesday, and then go from there. Right now A/B/C goals are 21:00 / 20:30 / 19:xx. | ||
KelsierSC
United Kingdom10443 Posts
I had my 10km race early August and on balance I was happy with it. Went out a bit too hard and it made 4-7 really un-fun but I held my pace and managed to overtake a guy at the end, took 4th place with 37:09 which was a massive PB for me. After running 39 in June I was thrilled to take 2 minutes off. Unfortunately since that point I've had a pretty bad time. Not enough recovery time after the race and jumped into trying to train for a 5km relay duathalon. I've learned that it's really hard to stay in peak shape for an extended period and it really started to wear me down. I had a week long vacation and I decided I would benefit just taking the whole week off and coming back refreshed. I had a couple of runs when I got back and felt great, Unfortunately I must have picked up a bug at some point and was ill all last week which stopped me from running again. Poor race recovery then 2 weeks of not really doing anything means I am not in any shape for the race (13th October), feel like I must have lost most of my fitness gains. I spoke to my relay partner and we agreed to just go and enjoy it rather than shooting for any PB's. If I can do both legs in under 20 minutes that will be great. After the race I haven't got anything booked so I might train for a 5k PB end of November time then have that as the end of season before I use the winter to do some base building/gym work. | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
On October 01 2019 17:48 KelsierSC wrote: Quick update on my progress I had my 10km race early August and on balance I was happy with it. Went out a bit too hard and it made 4-7 really un-fun but I held my pace and managed to overtake a guy at the end, took 4th place with 37:09 which was a massive PB for me. After running 39 in June I was thrilled to take 2 minutes off. Unfortunately since that point I've had a pretty bad time. Not enough recovery time after the race and jumped into trying to train for a 5km relay duathalon. I've learned that it's really hard to stay in peak shape for an extended period and it really started to wear me down. I had a week long vacation and I decided I would benefit just taking the whole week off and coming back refreshed. I had a couple of runs when I got back and felt great, Unfortunately I must have picked up a bug at some point and was ill all last week which stopped me from running again. Poor race recovery then 2 weeks of not really doing anything means I am not in any shape for the race (13th October), feel like I must have lost most of my fitness gains. I spoke to my relay partner and we agreed to just go and enjoy it rather than shooting for any PB's. If I can do both legs in under 20 minutes that will be great. After the race I haven't got anything booked so I might train for a 5k PB end of November time then have that as the end of season before I use the winter to do some base building/gym work. Wow. Sick improvement! Bummer about the rest of the season, but it seems like you're learning from it. Not sure it's worth it to do anything between Oct and Nov, that's like 4 or 5 weeks, but if you're really motivated to blast some workouts it won't hurt you. If you want to have a really great next season, I'd mentally refresh, basically just run easy for personal enjoyment and build the volume. Try to build to 20-30% more than peak volume from this past season. Run hard only unstructured, and if you're really feeling it. Some sprint work and strides are always good to throw in, and gym can be as well. This phase could easily last Nov-Feb, then going into some specific work for a target race in Apr/May time frame. | ||
KelsierSC
United Kingdom10443 Posts
On October 02 2019 05:14 L_Master wrote: Wow. Sick improvement! Bummer about the rest of the season, but it seems like you're learning from it. Not sure it's worth it to do anything between Oct and Nov, that's like 4 or 5 weeks, but if you're really motivated to blast some workouts it won't hurt you. If you want to have a really great next season, I'd mentally refresh, basically just run easy for personal enjoyment and build the volume. Try to build to 20-30% more than peak volume from this past season. Run hard only unstructured, and if you're really feeling it. Some sprint work and strides are always good to throw in, and gym can be as well. This phase could easily last Nov-Feb, then going into some specific work for a target race in Apr/May time frame. Thanks for the feedback, I'm going to do what you suggest with regards to building my base from November through to Feb. There is a 10k series that usually starts middle of May and runs till middle of July. Think there are 8 races but only 5 count so no need to run all of them. It's pretty competitive so i'm excited to see what I could do. If you have any advice i'll take you up on your free coaching offer. | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
On October 01 2019 06:58 L_Master wrote: Race coming up Saturday. We shall see how it goes. If my legs feel okay will do a track session on Tuesday, and then go from there. Right now A/B/C goals are 21:00 / 20:30 / 19:xx. Workout was decent....except the nice track I thought was public turned out to be PRIVATE ACCESS >.< So...I settled for a workout on the Oval at CSU. Cool place, and sorta like a track. About 600-700m a loop, but probably 5-10m of elevation gain per loop, so not a pancake. Workout, from an execution standpoint, was great. I was perhaps a touch ambitious, moving up in pace a bit too much in laps 2 or 3, such that the last 2 reps were quite hard. Wanted it to feel controlled and with plenty in the tank. Ended up still controlled, but the tank was running low. One more rep would have been a big ask. Ended up being 5x4:00 reps with a 1' jog recovery around 10:30 pace. First rep started slow in around 6:35 pace, getting down to around 6:17 pace by the last one. Average right around 6:25 pace. The good news is that I did average A goal pace for 5x1k on slightly tougher terrain than my race. The bad news is I was working hard for it. Still 50/50 on whether or not I'll hit it. In a race I usually can run what I can average for reps in that workout, but usually I like my workouts a touch easier. Basically, I think if I'm on a great day I'll squeak under, but it's hit or miss. Goals remain as they are. In case it's helpful, I've attached a picture of what a well executed interval sessions above threshold should look like: + Show Spoiler [Reasoning] + I'm a big believer in at least maintaining pace, or having a subtle increase in pace. Starting hard and slowing down creates far more strain and teaches the wrong aspect mentally (slowing down as it gets hard). You can also see the steady climb in HR over the course of the repeats. First one ended at 160bpm, the final one ended at 173bpm, which is about 91-93% of HRmax for me. As mentioned, that's inline with a session being particularly hard. Anything above 90% or so starts to really flood with crazy lactate and feel brutally challenging. You're usually better having your final interval hit high 80% or very low (90-91%) of HRmax. It creates less stress, usually allows you to keep better mechanics, and allows for much greater time above threshold and time is the only stimulus the body "understands". Outside of one or two very race specific workouts or mental training, it's not any more beneficial to go at 95% of max than it is at 88-91% of max, so you can collect significantly more minutes going a few % easier. | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
On October 02 2019 21:07 KelsierSC wrote: Thanks for the feedback, I'm going to do what you suggest with regards to building my base from November through to Feb. There is a 10k series that usually starts middle of May and runs till middle of July. Think there are 8 races but only 5 count so no need to run all of them. It's pretty competitive so i'm excited to see what I could do. If you have any advice i'll take you up on your free coaching offer. PMed. | ||
Nocci
Germany108 Posts
Awesome improvement, only breaking 20 in the 5k in april and now already running a 37min 10k, congrats on that! @L_Master Thanks for posting that intervall session, it's a good reminder for myself to stop and think about why I'm doing a certain workout at a certain pace and not be all "hold my beer, whoooop I can go faaast!" I got carried away on monday and for some reason I really wanted to do 5*1200m session (too much in the first place for my current mileage) at a pace too quick for my current fitness level. While I managed to nail the pace (3:35/k) and did all 5 repetitions in 4:15-4:18 it felt awful and I definitely notice the strain it put on body and mind alike. It's thursday and I still don't feel fresh, also it made me a little anxious when thinking about the next intervall session, because it was so damn hard. 4 reps in 4:25-4:30 would have been much more appropriate and I would've been fine again yesterday. Just stupid. | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
On October 04 2019 03:03 Nocci wrote: @Kelsier Awesome improvement, only breaking 20 in the 5k in april and now already running a 37min 10k, congrats on that! @L_Master Thanks for posting that intervall session, it's a good reminder for myself to stop and think about why I'm doing a certain workout at a certain pace and not be all "hold my beer, whoooop I can go faaast!" I got carried away on monday and for some reason I really wanted to do 5*1200m session (too much in the first place for my current mileage) at a pace too quick for my current fitness level. While I managed to nail the pace (3:35/k) and did all 5 repetitions in 4:15-4:18 it felt awful and I definitely notice the strain it put on body and mind alike. It's thursday and I still don't feel fresh, also it made me a little anxious when thinking about the next intervall session, because it was so damn hard. 4 reps in 4:25-4:30 would have been much more appropriate and I would've been fine again yesterday. Just stupid. Yea, it's so easy to do. That little extra from "solid session" to "going to well" can really push you over the edge, especially when going to the well means driving that lactate way up over 10mmol (usually 95% is HRmax). It feels awesome to complete those hero sessions, but in the overall flow of the week, or even over cycles, it can really add up. I think I mentioned it before, but I'm a huge believer in not pushing your intervals by pace, but by duration. I've seen nothing anecdotally, and especially in literature, to suggest that doing intervals at 93% of maximum give any better gains than at 90% of maximum...but there is HUGE evidence both anecdotally (elite athlete total mileage and interval mileage is consistently much higher than college tier, which in turn is much higher than local/High school tier) and in studies that accumulating more minutes above threshold yields greater increases in fitness. Put simply, if you have planned 6x800 repeats and you do the first two and it feels easy don't drop the pace 10s a mile....extend the repeat to 1k, or do 7 or 8 repeats. It's also less of an issue for runners who seem to do better, but cyclists are notorious for setting their threshold wrong. They will use a 20' test, often on a climb, and then take 95% of that and say that's my threshold (FTP). But, 20' power is not threshold and depending on anaerobic cap, FTP can often be 93% or even 90% of 20' power/speed. Moreover, on a climb cyclists output is usually higher, so when they do intervals on flat ground, with a bloated FTP it becomes impossible quite quickly. Runners, for whatever seem to do better; particularly with interval paces, likely because those are set usually keyed of mile/3k5k//10k paces which are well known. I will say, the overwhelming majority of runners (and cyclists) do their tempo runs too fast, their easy runs way to fast, and their recovery runs...usually almost non-existant. What I call "intensity discipline" is probably the bigger area for easy improvement in amateur athletes. | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
7am start though....wtf is that?!? Why can't fall/winter races start at a decent time like 9 or 10? | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
Had in my mind that if everything went really well 19 high might be possible. Close, but no cigar. Today I started out right where I wanted, 6:40 for the first uphill mile and lost at least 80 spots. You should feel like an anchor going backwards in the field if you do it right. Watch your pace over the first half mile and, if anything, make it a touch easier than goal. Much easier and positive feeling to have a furious finish to make up some time than blow up and be in agony by mile 1. Unfortunately, by mile 1 I was feeling it more than I wanted. Here's where I messed up, it was still early and I knew I wanted 2nd mile around 6:25...so I sped up and started picking people off. I went 6:00 pace from M1 to M1.5. That did me in, as I was suffering brutally then. I've often thrown in the towel here, but I was proud I hung tough and suffered with the pain as much as I could. Still faded a little with a 6:40 from M2 to M3...but I suffered for it and didn't give up and ease off. Probably a little fatigued, not much sleep last night and HR just didn't quite come up...although data seems a bit suspect. Not quite the goal, but a mentally good race and an 8/10 on execution. Good place to build from | ||
Nocci
Germany108 Posts
Did another hard workout today that went much better than my last interval session. I did 3 mile repeats @3:45 min/km with 400m easy jog in between (5:58, 5:57, 5:57 for each 1600m, so pretty much dead on 6 minute miles ). Compared to that 5*1200m @3:35 it was a difference like night and day. First rep felt kinda easy, then they got hard & somewhat uncomfortable but manageable. I think this might be about my 5k race pace right now, at least I'm going to try and hit that on sunday. After that I'm really unsure how to proceed, me leg is still giving me trouble. Today it felt surprisingly fine, other days my shin hurts just walking around. I'm definitely leaning towards being extra careful this time around, maybe even taking 6 weeks completely off if it flares up again... | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
On October 09 2019 01:39 Nocci wrote: Race for me on sunday. Did another hard workout today that went much better than my last interval session. I did 3 mile repeats @3:45 min/km with 400m easy jog in between (5:58, 5:57, 5:57 for each 1600m, so pretty much dead on 6 minute miles ). Compared to that 5*1200m @3:35 it was a difference like night and day. First rep felt kinda easy, then they got hard & somewhat uncomfortable but manageable. I think this might be about my 5k race pace right now, at least I'm going to try and hit that on sunday. After that I'm really unsure how to proceed, me leg is still giving me trouble. Today it felt surprisingly fine, other days my shin hurts just walking around. I'm definitely leaning towards being extra careful this time around, maybe even taking 6 weeks completely off if it flares up again... Good workouts! Injury wise if Im remembering right this is the third or fourth time this year you're dealing with injury. What's your weekly mileage at? What's your running frequency, like how many times a week? What's your typical easy and recover run paces? What supplementary and PT work are you doing? | ||
Nocci
Germany108 Posts
On October 09 2019 04:13 L_Master wrote: Injury wise if Im remembering right this is the third or fourth time this year you're dealing with injury. It's been the same spot every time, just mentioned multiple times and never really fully healed. It popped up in april when I had constantly been ramping up my mileage and was around 60-70km a week. My first guess was "uh oh I think this might be a tibial stress fracture...", took it easy for only 2 weeks after the half in early april and started noticing it again when ramping back up so I took it very easy for about 4 weeks (see Strava screenshot above). Right around the time I was completely pain free again and planned to ramp it up again, I had that sharp stinging pain again. Went to a sports doc and he guessed it wasn't a stress fracture (yet) but I never got any radiological confirmation of that diagnosis. My plan was to take 2 months mostly off (see july & august) and spend time in the gym rowing & stuff. But I took some courses in that gym with lots of jumping & sprinting...really the opposite of low impact work as was my original reasoning for going to the gym. I've been back to running a little more for ~6 weeks now, averaging less than 25km a week. It felt a little tender in the beginning and I was trying to figure out if this was residual "learned" discomfort from the past injury or if it wasn't healed yet and I was just making it worse. It's been hard to figure it out since it's somewhat on and off. Currently I'm thinking of having a talk with my GP and have him refer me to a radiologist to make sure the bone is ok (or not...). What's your typical easy and recover run paces? What supplementary and PT work are you doing? Paces would be roughly 3:45 for interval work, about 4:00 for tempo runs and easy runs around 5:20-5:45. I used to do a strength and mobility routine, calf stretches, lots of lunges, foam rolling but currently rather little of that is going on, my mind just isn't in "running mode" like I was in early spring. | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
On October 09 2019 01:39 Nocci wrote: Race for me on sunday. Did another hard workout today that went much better than my last interval session. I did 3 mile repeats @3:45 min/km with 400m easy jog in between (5:58, 5:57, 5:57 for each 1600m, so pretty much dead on 6 minute miles ). Compared to that 5*1200m @3:35 it was a difference like night and day. First rep felt kinda easy, then they got hard & somewhat uncomfortable but manageable. I think this might be about my 5k race pace right now, at least I'm going to try and hit that on sunday. After that I'm really unsure how to proceed, me leg is still giving me trouble. Today it felt surprisingly fine, other days my shin hurts just walking around. I'm definitely leaning towards being extra careful this time around, maybe even taking 6 weeks completely off if it flares up again... Okay, I had a chance to go back and look at your history. I'm not surprised. It's easily 50% or even more, by duration, hard interval training. Currently, it's close to 75%, but even when you are running some miles earlier in the year its like 40-50% by volume, and like 50-70% by distribution of workouts. No wonder you're getting injured like crazy. For good athletes, there is usually an 80/20 distribution of intensity by distribution of workouts (e.g. for every 8 runs they do easy, 2 runs are interval/hard sessions), and around 90/10 distribution by actual duration spent going hard/easy. You're almost flipped. At you're training volume, you should have maybe 10-15' of hard running...the entire week. Zero would be fine. You're triple or even quadruple that, and I see almost no easy running in there. This is especially true for people like yourself. You're not super light (very lean, but not light in terms of BMI) and you've got a big combination of either an athletic background or lots of natural aerobic ability, and the first thing you do is....start running a big volume of hard intervals. Injury 101 right there. Your tissues, ligaments, tendons, and skeleton aren't ready for those kinds of forces, especially with an engine like that. Aerobically, you can handle what you're doing. Physically, the body is lagging behind. Take a look at what people like NonY, Bonham, Myself, etc. are doing. Bonham is a 1:12 or so HM guy (likely 15 high, 16 low 5k) with far more running conditioning and aerobic base than you. He, like you, is on the mend from an injury. His mileage is 50-70+...and almost all of it is at high 7s or low 8s pace. Nothing hard. Scale that for yourself and that's running at 9:xx mile pace, spending 7-10 hours a week like that, probably building towards 12-13. Same thing for myself, I'm building back up, and doing most of my running at 9:xx-10:xx paces with a 20' current 5k pace. I've run 3 mini workouts in the past 5 weeks. Every other run has been easy jogging. If you want to get past the injury issues, this is where you need to be as well. Find a good PT, figure out if you have anything that needs fixing or strengthening. Do those exercises like your life depends on it. Then start running easy. 60% or so of HRmax, or like 150% of 5k pace. Build that to 40 or 50mpw...then think about some hard stuff. As a new runner, it's your aerobic system that is most lacking, so the biggest gains to be found are from this easy running anyway. | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
On October 09 2019 06:03 Nocci wrote: Paces would be roughly 3:45 for interval work, about 4:00 for tempo runs and easy runs around 5:20-5:45. I used to do a strength and mobility routine, calf stretches, lots of lunges, foam rolling but currently rather little of that is going on, my mind just isn't in "running mode" like I was in early spring. See my above post for overall stuff. Pace wise, with around 18:40 5k that's fine for interval stuff, which case be at whatever pace. Threshold work is fast by 10s a mile at least, especially for a less aerobically developed, likely punchier runner like yourself. Starting threshold at 4:20 or so, rolling down into the low 4:0x range by the end would be a better fit. A HRM would be nice for determining that, but 4:00 is certainly not threshold. Easy runs aren't too bad. That's reasonable. Only thing to note is that post hard workout days should trend more towards 5:40-6:00. | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
Esteve-Lanao et al. (2007) randomized 12 sub-elite distance runners to one of two training groups (Z1 and Z2) that were carefully monitored for five months. They based their training intensity distribution on the 3-zone model described earlier and determined from treadmill testing. Based on time-in-zone heart-rate monitoring, Z1 performed 81, 12, and 8 % of training in Zones 1, 2, and 3 respectively. Z2 performed more threshold training, with 67, 25, and 8 % of training performed in the three respective zones. That is, Group Z2 performed twice as much training at or near the lactate threshold. In a personal communication, the authors reported that in pilot efforts, they were unable to achieve a substantial increase in the total time spent in Zone 3, as it was too hard for the athletes. Total training load was matched between the groups. Improvement in a cross-country time-trial performed before and after the five-month period revealed that the group that had performed more Zone 1 training showed significantly greater race time improvement (-157 ± 13 vs ‑122 ± 7 s). So, pretty simply, 3 zones. Zone 1 is up to AeT (aerobic threshold, around MP ish), Zone 2 is Aet up to AnT (traditional threshold), Zone 3 is above Threshold (10k pace and harder). They kept the zone 3 time the same for both groups (same amount of hard intervals) and kept the total training time the same. What they changed between the groups was time spent at "easy" intensity vs time spent at "moderately hard" intensity. The results speak for themselves, the moderate intensity group showed less performance improvement than the group training easier. I think that's not what most people would expect. Group 2 had the same intervals, and did more of their other running faster than group 1 (who went really easy almost all the time). Despite that, Group 1 solidly outperformed Group 2. In that same vein, here is another: Most recently, Ingham et al. (2008) were able to randomize 18 experienced national standard male rowers from the UK into one of two training groups that were initially equivalent based on performance and physiological testing. All the rowers had completed a 25-d post-season training-free period just prior to baseline testing. One group performed “100 %” of all training at intensities below that eliciting 75 %VO2max (LOW). The other group performed 70 % training at the same low intensities as well as 30 % of training at an intensity 50 % of the way between power at lactate threshold and power at VO2max (MIX). In practice, MIX performed high intensity training on 3 d.wk-1. All training was performed on a rowing ergometer over the 12 wk. The two groups performed virtually identical volumes of training (~1140 km on the ergometer), with ±10 % individual variation allowed to accommodate for variation in athlete standard. Results of the study are summarized in Table 5. Sixteen of 18 subjects set new personal bests for the 2000-m ergometer test at the end of the study. The authors concluded that LOW and MIX training had similar positive effects on performance and maximal oxygen consumption. LOW training appeared to induce a greater right-shift in the blood-lactate profile during sub-maximal exercise Again, same thing here. This is rowing, 2000m performance is about 6' or so, similar to a mile or 2k in running. Both had similar improvement there. But notice what happens everywhere else? In 2mmol and 4mmol lactate power is dramatically higher for those training low intensity. 2mmol is around MP, 4mmol is around 10M to HMP. So, put simply for 2km the MIX group saw a little higher gain from anaerobically, but made only subtle aerobic gains. The LOW group, going easy, saw FAR greater aerobic gains. At the mile, they were basically the same, but the LOW group would rapidly pull away at all longer distances. Notice also, that the "LOW" group, never went above 75% of VO2Max. That's basically saying that all they did was training below MP effort. Total training volume was the same. In other words, the guys going easy maintained ground at around mile race intensity, and obliterated the harder interval group at long distances. To be honest, I could go on and on for days with this stuff, but the point here is clear and it's the #1 problem for serious recreational athletes. They tend to suck at intensity discipline. Too hard on easy days, too much interval volume relative to training volume, too hard on recovery days. | ||
Nocci
Germany108 Posts
I kinda know most of that, it's what I used to do most of the time, what I keep telling friends when they ask me for running advice, I go on and on about capilarization, mitochondrial density and how development of those is mostly a function of time spent exercising not intensity, that running more is much more beneficial than running hard and to be able to run more it's only logical to take it easy, that interval & threshold training should just be the cherry on top. I mean I went from non-runner to 41min 10k on purely easy running. It's just, that I'm suffering from a big case of "fuckarounditis"... My head's not really in it (and not just running) and I'm flailing about in many areas of my life right now. The reason I'm running at all is because I have the strong urge to exercise and it helps keeping me sane and I mix it up with strength training so I'm doing something at least 4 days a week. I wouldn't have signed up for the race if it wasn't for a bunch of friends also participating. So I joined that 5k 5 weeks ago as a fitness check and then thought "hmmm I wonder what happens if I do just 2 interval sessions a week til the next race?". Like I said, fucking around instead of being smart Weirdly, the only thing going right is nutrition (mostly anyways) and weight/fat loss, I'm back down to 70ish kg and I might have reached a new level of shreddedness. But as I posted somewhere earlier: the plan after this race is to slowly base build (= purely easy running) either way, the only question is if I take some time off completely. It might not be a terrible idea to take a break for physical as well as mental reasons, especially since I wanted to have a go at cross country skiing this upcoming season. | ||
L_Master
United States7946 Posts
On October 10 2019 15:06 Nocci wrote: Thanks for posting all that, but it's not so much a lack of knowledge on my side... I kinda know most of that, it's what I used to do most of the time, what I keep telling friends when they ask me for running advice, I go on and on about capilarization, mitochondrial density and how development of those is mostly a function of time spent exercising not intensity, that running more is much more beneficial than running hard and to be able to run more it's only logical to take it easy, that interval & threshold training should just be the cherry on top. I mean I went from non-runner to 41min 10k on purely easy running. It's just, that I'm suffering from a big case of "fuckarounditis"... My head's not really in it (and not just running) and I'm flailing about in many areas of my life right now. The reason I'm running at all is because I have the strong urge to exercise and it helps keeping me sane and I mix it up with strength training so I'm doing something at least 4 days a week. I wouldn't have signed up for the race if it wasn't for a bunch of friends also participating. So I joined that 5k 5 weeks ago as a fitness check and then thought "hmmm I wonder what happens if I do just 2 interval sessions a week til the next race?". Like I said, fucking around instead of being smart Weirdly, the only thing going right is nutrition (mostly anyways) and weight/fat loss, I'm back down to 70ish kg and I might have reached a new level of shreddedness. But as I posted somewhere earlier: the plan after this race is to slowly base build (= purely easy running) either way, the only question is if I take some time off completely. It might not be a terrible idea to take a break for physical as well as mental reasons, especially since I wanted to have a go at cross country skiing this upcoming season. I gotcha. You're the outlier case of someone who does structured workouts in the midst of low focus. Most people wont do that kind of stuff when hearts not into it. They focus on tnn just unstructured easy/moderate. | ||
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