Yes was careful and good advice for others too thank you, did have a planned stop halfway for a much deserved McDonalds and coffee and a good assessment of myself. Did consider camping that night but bed and shower was too appealing
I’ve done an audax in the past, near 22 hours on the bike and that day travelling back afterwards I glad it wasn’t a long journey. Won’t let myself do that again, so do consider that side and if I had started to feel tired or driving at any point felt wrong I would pulled over and rested/slept.
Form question! Anyone have any advice for getting more power/extension though the back of the stride? Working on some hill sprints at the moment and my coach commented on my lack thereof
I’m more of a forefoot/high turnover runner and at 5 foot FA I doubt I’ll ever manifest Kipchoge-level strides, but I’m sort of inclined to agree with him- feels sort of awkward and like I can’t get the power down properly during those sorts of efforts. Suspect the hill sprints might be the most helpful thing anyway, but wondering if there’s any strength/drill type stuff that might support that? (ended up fairly underweight recently and lost a lot of muscle/power as a result, so I suspect there’s probably some low-hanging fruit there)
Hill sprints. Hill running when no hill sprints on the menu for the week. As for the gym, you want hinge exercises, e.g., deadlift, single leg deadlift.
There are drills you can do. I try a few years ago and it was a mix bag… I was able to change to more of underpronator/front of the foot striker than dragging my heels like I used to (now the back of my shoes stay pretty much like new condition while the side get trashed).
I did try to change and add more reach so i could lower my cadence (currently 195 @ E pace, 220 at race pace). But afrter many weeks i gave up… nothing changed…
I’m starting to feel improvement: not yet faster times, but less fatigue and easier recovery. I’m comfortable at a consistent 250 weekly TSS right now, and very gradually building because I’m not training for any event, just aiming to run and bike forever, and get faster at both over time. So I think I’ve settled into a good weekly cycle… what do y’all think?
Mon - short Z2 run, 30 min
Tue - medium Z2 run, 55 minutes
Wed - intense bike (SS, TH, VO2 as needed and with progression)
Thu - medium Z2 run, 55 minutes + 30 min strength session
Fri - short Z2 run, 30 min
Sat - Z2 bike (1hr now, will extend to 3hr)
Sun - long Z2 run, 80 min + 30 min strength session
Right now I’m abbreviating some runs and the Z2 bike ride to cap at around 250-300 weekly TSS. Over time, doing a sweetspot progression or threshold/vo2max work on the bike and extending the Z2 bike ride will raise the weekly TSS almost to 500. Also, right now I’m doing about 5-6 hours/week, which would gradually grow to about 8.5 hours/week. I expect that growth in weekly TSS to be less than 5% per week and take at least six months… no more overtraining for me if I can help it!
I’m trying to run as close as I can to the BarryP style (2 short runs, 2 medium runs, 1 long run), and do two bike rides (1 intense, 1 Z2) so I’m doing something every day. Again, the goal is to build the kind of habit I can continue forever.
Does anyone see any obvious red flags? Am I missing something? So long as I’m careful not to increase the workload too fast and overtrain, does all of this look reasonable?
While TSS is a metric many like to track, not all TSS is equal. That is an entirely different discussion so I’ll leave it at that. Key points you made are that you’ve been consistent, feel less fatigue, and improved recovery. Forget about the TSS. Keep gradually increasing your volume. For example, take the long to 90min and the medium to 60min. This isn’t much of a change from where you are now. I’d do both this week. Then stay there while working to gradually lengthen the Sat bike towards 3hrs.
Agreed, and I’m aware of the issue. I like to track TSS carefully because my natural tendency is to overdo things, so keeping a lid on TSS (while also ensuring a proper balance between low and high-intensity work) helps me to keep the workload healthy (or at least healthier).
Thanks for the input! Your recommendations match well with what I’m thinking, which I hope means I’m finally getting the hang of setting up a good training regimen for myself.
Hope everyone has been enjoying their summer, slogging thru the heat and/or humidity! It’s time to start the build cycle for fall races. Here in Taiwan, the big fall races will be Standard Chartered Marathon in Nov and Taipei Marathon in Dec.
@adenega@MAGNUStm Both of you are doing the NYC marathon. That’s ~13wks out. Are you doing 20wk or more typical 16wk builds?
Anyone else w/some fall race plans to add to the list?
I had 5wks off due to a bad case of Covid. I’m slowly coming around. Good news is I have until December (Taipei Marathon (21k event) to get fit.
I hope to finish the year with the Daytona challenge and immediately switch to marathon training to do Boston…needs to be a quick turn around so I hope I don’t get injured like last time
Hopefully a solid 10k in 6 weeks for me. Marathon is the flagship event which I’d love to do as I’ve never done a proper all-out marathon, but the turnaround is a bit tight with duathlon state champs. (10 usually gives me enough time to recover, and a pretty decent estimator of where my run is at for a sprint)
Kind of hoping for a podium (mostly for the money haha), but I think the 10k will be just as competitive and probably tougher for me to crack then the marathon based on last years results. Definitely a ‘that’d be real nice’ rather than a hard goal, but I’ve seen some big improvements in my aerobic/base paces recently so I’m interested to see if I can round that into race shape over the next month or so. Nothing motivates like the lingering threat of uni fees, I guess
I’m doing the NYRR 9+1 program for entry to the NYC Marathon for next year, since there was no way I’d be ready to run 40K+ this year. And even next year seems a little rushed, honestly… So this year has been, and will continue to be, full of races.
I set a new 10K PB (8:39/km, 13:55/mi) in June, and then beat it by 16 sec/km (26 sec/mi) with a new 5M PB last weekend (8:23/km, 13:29/mi). So I won’t be winning any prize money this decade, but I’m definitely improving and enjoying the process.
Important races coming up are the Staten Island Half on 8/Oct, my first half-marathon ever, and the Saving The Elephants 10K on 11/Nov, which is my A race for the year and where I’d REALLY like to be under 1:20:00 (8:00/km, 12:52/mi).
Neither. I am making it up as I go along. Late June to Late July I had an encouraging 4 weeks where I maintained 60 miles per week with some good threshold work, but then the humidity finally got me and I crashed and burned last week.
I’m starting a Pfitzinger 12-week marathon training plan (35-55mpw) on 8/14 in preparation for this year’s NYC Marathon (got in through lottery). This will be marathon #12, but my first in 7 years. I’ve been focused on HIM’s/tri more recently. I’m planning to follow TR low volume polarized base/build plans in conjunction with the Pfitz running plan. I’ll certainly scale back on rides as the running mileage gets near peak volume.
This will be my first time incorporating cycling into marathon training—looking forward to it!
I don’t think there is. It seems most people switch to a standard marathon training and abandon swim and bike altogether.
I’m thinking of extending some of my 16-21km long runs, making my club runs progressively harder and adding a trail/track interval to my routine. One long swim, one long bike and heavy lifting cross training.
I dont… its up to you…
I do lower the bike time… and not do super hard stuff…
It can be done… you need to up your run millage and lower your bike time.
You can swim on your rest days or on easy run days…
The main difference is the focus, on marathon is running instead of bike
I think I mentioned this before in the Tri thread, but many of the full IM guys here I ride and run with only run 3d/week when in full marathon mode. Swim and bike become all easy. No easy runs. A typical week might look like this:
Mon: 1hr easy bike or swim.
Tue: AM: light bike or swim PM: 1hr run intervals
Wed: 1hr easy bike or swim.
Thur: AM: light bike or swim PM: 1hr run intervals or tempo.
Fri: 1hr easy bike or swim.
Sat: easy 2hr on trainer 3-4hr easy outdoor ride.
Sun: long run 20-25km. NOT LSD. progression run towards marathon pace, steady to fast finish, marathon pace run.
While their tri results vary greatly across the bunch, they almost all run about the same for open marathon, 3hrs.
edit: the run training is group training. everything else is mostly solo. the group run training definitely helps mentally.
Training has been a bit of mixed bag all summer due to lots going on with work and personal life. I’m staying active with some structure but unfocused. Coupled with the excessive heat we’ve been experiencing (30+ days over 100 degrees) has made for some very hard days. A few months back I moved my treadmill/bike making things quite miserable. With all of that (ie. excuses lol) I ultimately started viewing NYC as an ‘experience’ more so than a PR attempt.
A few weeks ago my buddies were all talking about Waco 70.3 and we all signed up. Training is still a mixed bag but I will do what I can there. I’ll have three weeks until NYC which gives me a week to recover, a week to train and a week to taper.
Should be a fun few weeks.
Hope everyone else’s training goals are going as planned.
