Yeah, I’m this way too. Both letting myself go and getting fit are positive feedback loops. It’s just that one is a lot easier to get on than the other. But once I get on, I can go for a while.
2 Likes
Yeah. This is the same for me.
That’s one reason why the elbow injury has been so catastrophic. It’s just very hard to be motivated to train without any real progression or PR to beat.
Now the weights are pushing back up, I’m thinking about the gym much more positively again and that’s leading to more motivation to eat better as well.
We signed up my youngest for cross country this fall, and this is the second week of practice. (He’s not historically been a runner, outside of playing soccer.) Last week was pretty mild - each practice is a 75 minute window and I think they ended up running between 2 and 4 miles each day after all the stretching and talking and whatnot.
But today when I picked him up, he looked absolutely wrecked. When he showed me his Garmin, it showed that he ran just over 5 miles at an 8:20 pace. I have no idea how he managed that, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to be aching all day.
2 Likes
Sub 20 min 5k or bust!
1 Like
haha I’m like the exact opposite, when I’m burning a ton of calories all i want are carbs and fat
It’ll drive me nuts if he goes sub 20 before I can. I’m just stunned that he was able to do 5 miles at all, let alone at that pace, with no running background.
1 Like
Ain’t nothing like having young legs.
5 Likes
Lol I went for a run yesterday for the first time in months when the temperature here was under 20 Celsius. I was FLYING.
Set a new PR for 5K with 24:3x this morning. That hill at the end of the second mile was some bullshit. My normal training route has several hills, although not that steep, so I was able to attack it pretty well. But a lot of people were really struggling there. I’ve been getting in a lot of volume in recent weeks, but no real race-specific training. While I’m happy to get a PR, I think I could have gone under 24:30 if I had paced a little better. My first mile was 8:09, which seems a little slow even accounting for the steady climb.
5 Likes
nice man that’s awesome. You could 100% go below 24:30 if you didn’t run that funny course. The rule of thumb for hills & wind is oversimple but idk it’s still pretty good: in terms of time, downhill & downind you only get back half of what you lose on the upstream stuff. Just a guess but your pacing was probably pretty good for the first mile. With hills and wind I vote shoot for equal effort not equal pacing. In reality most everyone at a weekend race does uphills too fast and then they pay for it in time and misery. Combine that with the other weekend race reality of how most everyone does the first half-mile way WAY too fast, and I’m surprised there weren’t 73 heart attacks in the last 200m of your morning run on mount sinusoidal. On the plus side the homestretch race pictures are going to be a slaughterhouse.
but seriously on uphills imo don’t stress if people are edging by you, just make sure you’re really using your butt muscles and your arms are helping and that you feel light on your feet and your knees are popping up and most of all make sure that your turnover isn’t slowing down and that you’re not weirdly compensating for the uphill by taking astronaut meets apple II canyon climber strides. If you’re doing all that and youre focused on working equally hard but no harder than you were on the flats then yes for sure don’t worry if people are clumping past you, just smugly note to yourself how they’re all breathing like napoleon dynamite and that you’ll be seeing them again soon.
btw if you’re trying to beat some particular asshole then I think the best time to move past them on a hill is a little before the crest, just when they’re maybe starting to relax and just when you can mentally commit to gliding right by them while also not making the other mistake that people make on these diagonals which is going too slow on the downhills. Downhills aren’t an intermission, it’s equal effort there too. Also formwise many people tend to stand up a little on the downhill to tap on the brakes a little, but no sir, no no no, on the downhill man you want to go with it, flow right down that fucker, use every single bit of free sweet energy that gravity is offering you, just lean down the hill, lean with the hill, keep your feet light and your cadence quick and be athletic and feel weightless while also making up your mind to keep it going on the flat that’s coming, or I guess in the case of this race, which I assume was run on the track of a wooden roller coaster, to keep it going as you run up Tilted’s V5
if you gave a good hard effort in this race then econophile you’re closer to 24:00 than 24:30. If you ever find a flat course on a cool day then idk maybe try that first mile at ~7:40 (but good god no faster) and see what happens
8 Likes
Congrats. I once ran a 5k in the range 19:10 to 19:20 I think. That was like 20 years ago though, lol. I will never touch that again.
Its wild that the Olympians do it in like 13 minutes.
1 Like
Feeling better about work outs lately.
Scrapped the 4 day routine dictated by my physio and restarted a 3 day I’m much more comfortable with.
3 days much easier to do before work monday to friday. And I can push to a weekend if I have to miss a day.
I’ve also been making choices to prioritize the time for workouts. Did a WFH on Monday and arriving late today. I do long hours, but I have a lot of flexibility if I just choose to use it.
It makes a big difference mentally to be progressing every workout. A lot more satisfaction. Plus I feel I’m missing out if I dont do a workout.
Physio was a loose “3 or 4 days a week” doing the same thing for two weeks. Absolutely no joy in that.
Weights still tiny. 150 pound bench. 155 DL. But at least they are going up by 5 pounds a work out now.
And. Because I’m feeling better about workouts. Diet has been better. I really need something to train for.
1 Like
I ran a one-mile race today and got 6:59. I wanted to go under 7:00, but I thought it might be a stretch based on my times in longer races. It felt pretty comfortable the whole way – definitely not as hard as the last mile of a 5k. So I guess that means I can push harder next time. The most encouraging part is that this means there’s a lot of room for improvement in my 5k and 10k times, and my marathon goal for next year seems very doable.
3 Likes
This absolutely rules:
https://twitter.com/AndyRoweOnline/status/1576688721205731328?s=20&t=n8qTQb7Bfrj9zrNJiVutow
This random guy sprinted out to start the London Marathon so that he could say he was leading the race. Which is super cool on its own. But that headline obscures a really interesting story:
- 6 years ago, he was watching the London Marathon with a friend and was like, “I could lead that race.” Friend says lol no, so this guy goes for it.
- This isn’t as simple as signing up for a race, starting at the front, and sprinting. For two reasons: First, the winner’s marathon pace is about 4:45. The random guy on the street probably can’t even achieve/maintain that pace for more than 15 seconds, if at all. More importantly, the elite runners are corraled separately at the start. So the only way to even try this is to qualify for elite status in order to start in that corral. That threshhold for London was 2:40:00.
- So this fucking lunatic trained for years to get an absolutely incredible 2:37 marathon time in order to qualify for the elite corral, and then sprints full out to start the race solely to be able to say that he was the leader of the race at one point. Just amazing.
Of course, that initial sprint killed him, and he ended up finishing in 3:23.
8 Likes
Haha.
Yeah. It’s hard to fathom quite how fast they run
I remember being fairly fit back in 2008 and I ran a 6 minute mile (just one of them). It killed me. I came back and was dying on the couch watching the Beijing Olympics marathon to hear the commentator say “they are 10 miles in at a fantastic pace of about 4:30 per mile.”
In my best shape ever I could run 8 minute miles for distance, but like 10 miles or so not 26. How would that translate to a single max effort mile? Like maybe a 6:30 or 7:00 minute mile?
Way less I reckon. I’m not an expert though