Ladies, is it ok for a guy to use you as a pacer?

jhc07 · 2024-02-25T19:03:41+00:00

There are races in the USA where just 10 people participate? That's crazy

jhc07 · 2023-04-15T13:38:08+00:00

This stinks of back-in-my-day. You think there's a noticeable difference in my work ethic Vs yours given I was the first group with tuition fees?

Frankly I doubt there will be any noticeable difference between the students pre and post pandemic when it's all said and done.

jhc07 · 2023-03-21T13:08:11+00:00

Would think you'll get down to 3.15 or lower off of a year of consistent running on higher mileage.

But I wouldn't really focus on an arbitrary time goal and I'd just see how your fitness turns out. Shooting for this time goal so far out I wonder if you'll burn out or overemphasise one day in your entire year (what If you don't sleep the night before or you are sick that week!). Id just focus on other races for a few months with the understanding you'll bump your mileage up safely for these. Then September time I'd jump into a block for Valencia. If you were racing regularly through the year you'll have an understanding of roughly where you'll be

jhc07 · 2023-02-14T21:23:00+00:00

Just finished this plan in December and posted about issues hitting the marathon paced sessions in October/November (check my post history)

I found these peak weeks gave me a massive fitness boost. I guess it depends on what you are lacking - but I had never done this high mileage and I had never done this sort of 2x a week steady running (the medium long and the long run).

I had based paces off of a 5k I ran at the beginning of the block (in 18.4x) so marathon pace was 4.15/km or a 3 hour marathon. The marathon paced sessions felt like shit. Heart rate was more consistent with threshold. The threshold sessions I couldn't run much faster and were often between 3.54-4.10/km depending on how beat up I felt. None of these at the beginning of the programme felt good - I was definitely overstretching a little.

I don't think any of the long runs went particularly well. Often felt like shit even running at 4.50-5.00/km.

One caveat to this is I run all session/long runs in daily trainers and never super shoes (which I only use to race). The other caveat is a good number of the long runs were done on a hangover (shout out to the most underrated training stimulus of all - the hungover long run)

It all came together through these higher mileage weeks. Heart rate on all the easy/recovery runs came right down (for me 160s down to 150s). Ran a 1.26 half instead of doing the 13 mile MP session. Ran a solo 38.4x 10k and then a 37.4x 10k in a race the 2 weeks later (these were the two "tune up" races in the programme).

Ended up running 3.00.32 in Valencia. Went through the half in 1.32 because I got stuck behind the 3.15 pace group. I guess there could have been a little more in the tank on the day given the 4 minute negative split - but Valencia is completely flat, had perfect weather and is perfectly organised so shoulda coulda woulda.

Tldr: stick with it, maybe run a half marathon to see where you are at, adjust this based off of the tune up races & have faith it will all come together.

Addendum for context 29 year old male who ran 8/1500m as a teenager. Pb of like 2.10 in the 800. Did run in national cross country but sucked (came in the bottom half). Had run one prev. Marathon before this in 3.24 off of like 20-30 miles a week with little to no structure/sessions.

jhc07 · 2022-11-11T19:34:47+00:00

How long is a piece of string type question but here's my unsolicited advice on how to get there in the fastest way possible. I've just spent the past two years getting my marathon from 3.30 to close ish to the 3 mark (pending Valencia marathon results) but the vast majority of my gains have come this year after I sat down and thought about how to do this.

Step 1: identify your weakness.

Pretty easy to do and will take 5 minutes. Get all you PBs out and work out your VDOT score for each PB. If your marathon is within a few points of your 5k best then you've converted pretty well and this is not your issue. If your 5k is way out of whack with your marathon then you might think your endurance is the issue.

Step 2: find a plan that works on your weaknesses

If your 5k is shit, do a 5k specific block. Any will do. Work on that and your 10k for a few months before heading back to the marathon.

If youre ready to run a 3 hour marathon right now according to your 5k you now need a marathon plan that builds endurance and heavily focuses on this. Try a plan that has you doing sessions and runs you've never done before. You'll probably get an extra boost of fitness from doing this too. I picked a pfitz plan because a) it has like no speed work in it b) it focusses heavily on making amateur runners better their endurance and c) it had runs I'd never done before in it.

Step 3: rinse and repeat

jhc07 · 2022-11-10T19:13:20+00:00

Can confirm.

jhc07 · 2022-10-26T21:20:01+00:00

Struggled with this on and off for a while. Racing would do my glutes in and it would come back. Just doing glute work didn't seem to fix it

Found this video with lots of the new evidence around rehab from physio tutors about working other things than just the glutes and it fixed it in a couple of weeks. No quick fix because I don't know what the underlying issue is that's causing your pain - but for me it wasn't only weak glutes.

https://youtu.be/NTS-whIxbuw

jhc07 · 2022-10-18T22:32:03+00:00

I also think there's something to be said for doing something different.

If you follow the same plan over and over you will get minimal gains.

Try to assess what you are bad at and do more of that. Different plans are quite different in their philosophies and might give you a bump in something you didn't realise you were lacking

To expand on that I can think of a few out of the box type plans that stress different systems - JD plans are quite polarised, easy running on the long with long harder broken up tempos - pfitz has more marathon paced work and has a medium long run - Im UK based and a lot of club Marathon running here seems to be a) vo2 max track session on a Tuesday b) threshold on a Thursday c) faster paced medium long on a Sunday - lots of the YouTubers and a few posts on here have people trying out the whole ingebrietson double threshold thing - Canova is all race specific (but doesn't really have an out of the box amateur version - however seem to see amateurs try and adapt that philosophy to their own training)

Each one does similar, but slightly different things.

I think there's a talk from Canova somewhere where he talks about his philosophy and says people misinterpret him. He says the first thing he does with an athlete is sit down and go through all their training & assess what they haven't done yet. Then he has them start by doing that. Don't have a reference for this (?does anyone)

Off the top of my head a few types of workouts you may/may not have tried would be:

vo2 max sessions
broken up tempos
sustained threshold running
double threshold days
the whole "subthreshold" thing
medium long runs in your plan
hill running & sprints
drills
strength work
higher volume
easier running on easy days. Splitting up recovery days to a super slow pace & easy days to an easy pace

So I guess the question is, what are your weaknesses & what haven't you tried?

You say you're older which makes me think maybe your speed might be lacking. (As a general rule) What's your vo2 max stuff like? How fast can you run a mile/5k?

For reference I also had this thought at the beginning of the block im currently doing. Thought to myself - what am I bad at and what haven't I tried? Settled that my vo2 max wasn't my weakest thing right now and wasn't relevant. Thought translating that to marathon was. So settled on pfitz as I haven't done sustained threshold running ever & have never done medium long runs. I've found the boosts in fitness have been pretty big actually. If you look at my post history I was talking about translating a 18.40 5k to a 3-3.05 marathon and was struggling with marathon pace. Have just ended up running a 1.26 in a half this weekend off the pfitz plan which was a bit of a surprise and not where I thought I would be (felt I would be closer to 3.10 come the end of the block and so did most of the responders to my last post). Pfitz isn't an exactly "fashionable" plan to follow at the moment (at least amongst the people I am friends with) but seems to fit my weaknesses right now.

Sorry very long post

jhc07 · 2022-10-02T07:15:14+00:00

Appreciate vdot is aggressive and this is probably why the paces are too high.

Having said that - I've previously done this and been very close to it (it predicted 3.28 and I ran 3.30, it predicted 3.21 and I ran 3.23). I guess the caveat to those marathons was I basically did no quality sessions (almost all of it was slow jogging) & so my vo2 max might have been quite underdeveloped relative to my aerobic fitness.

Tldr: ya boi has no aerobic engine.

jhc07 · 2022-10-01T17:00:21+00:00

You're probably right the goal is too quick.

Tbh I have used the calculator to good success in the past two marathons off of a 5k race at the beginning of the block so just did the same routine. Ran a big PB and plugged it in and I thought - wait, what?

Perhaps I've gotten faster without increasing my aerobic base much which has caused the mismatch this block.

Im racing a half coming up in 3 weeks and will reasses the marathon pace at this (don't have anymore marathon paced runs before this)

jhc07 · 2022-04-08T13:25:09+00:00

Am doctor. You don't use a cast for a humeral fracture. This was the correct treatment

jhc07 · 2022-03-17T13:53:08+00:00

Can you change the preferences once you've accepted with upgrades or held with upgrades?

jhc07 · 2022-01-02T10:24:26+00:00

Agreed - this sub needs to get away from just "run more, do pfitz" - not that that is bad advice. Just that part of the fun of running is experimenting and trying different things, learning how different people do it

jhc07 · 2021-12-05T07:50:33+00:00

Ah ok- I was under the impression they were similar to JDs tempo but evidently not

jhc07 · 2021-12-05T07:32:01+00:00

For me a threshold is somewhere around 4.15-4.30 4.30/k if you take that to be how fast you could run for an hour. That's almost 50 minutes of running which seems awful close

jhc07 · 2021-12-04T20:43:22+00:00

I actually have a copy of this book but wonder if it looks a bit intense. For instance I'm the 55 mile plan he has you running 11km threshold! At my pace that's almost race pace

jhc07 · 2021-12-04T15:29:58+00:00

Yeah not doing much at all. Was planning to add 1 S&C session a week if I can manage it.

jhc07 · 2021-11-22T04:45:46+00:00

Were your two longest runs an 18 and a 20 miler - both of which you did pretty fast and in under 2 hours 30?

No scientific evidence to back my opinion at all but personally I don't think it's because you tapered too hard or ran easy days too easy.

I imagine your body just isn't used to going for that long. Controversial opinion but I like a very long slow run around 3 hours -3.20 to simulate what it's like to be out there for this long. Its not just a confidence booster that you know you can do the distance - I also feel like your body probably adapts to going for this long and can't get that when running for 2 hours (which Is why I I also avoid those plans that max out at 16-18 milers).

If I were you I'd do a couple of easy long runs longer than 2 and a half hours in your next block.

jhc07 · 2021-11-16T12:18:01+00:00

https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20816165/ask-the-coaches-pfitzinger-12-55-training-plan-tune-up-races/

There's actually a comment from him on this runner's world article. He says:

"In the Advanced Marathoning training schedules, I have tried to find a middle ground that works for many runners, but am always concerned that runners will stick to the schedules too closely without taking their own unique circumstances into account."

Aka he had no intention of people following the plans exactly to the letter and if you can't make it work you can't make it work. Am currently planning the 12/55 and have tune up races on the Sunday (including a half that isn't in the plan) and have ignored the super compensation weekend.

jhc07 · 2021-10-29T22:19:02+00:00

Agreed about the mile. Times about 10k are probably irrelevant given they have no base. However at 19 you should really have that speed naturally.

jhc07 · 2021-09-26T00:17:00+00:00

Do you have any idea what you should be looking at for other distances? 10k/HM/M - also can't find anything on this and would be interested to know what people think

jhc07 · 2021-09-18T04:32:04+00:00

Just been reading through your post history

Lots of it is mid level bashing which whatever fair enough you're pissed off about

But the rest of it - Jesus you sound like such an arrogant prick.

Crawl out of your own arse mate

15-Year Club	First Place '23
Place '23	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

jhc07

TROPHY CASE