Excellent! Well done on making that change. As mentioned, I can't see a whole lot wrong with having a couple of coffees a day. Many super healthy people in their 90s will have had coffees every day of their life. And getting rid of nausea is a huge bonus too. I'm glad you're able to enjoy your workouts again, and they will also improve your health a lot if you can enjoy them and as a result stick with them for life.Been killing it in the workouts. Coffee for preworkout hasn’t slowed me down and don’t have any of the nausea symptoms from preworkout. I do take creatine though everyday
Walking is a great one to maintain when time for other things gets tough to find.Life got crazy hectic with work and family since October started and I’ve been very sporadic with exercise. But I got in a ton of walking over the weekend and last night I did over 3 miles of intervals on the treadmill.
Yes. The walking that I did was just part of the day. My son was working a charity event downtown. So I parked a decent distance away and walked there with him. Then I walked to my office and worked for a couple of hours before walking back to pick him up and then to our car. According to my watch I got in almost 3 miles. Then we went to an art festival that spanned several city blocks. We walked through that and then walked to meet my wife and other son and walked to a music competition he was playing in. Then we walked back to the car. For the day, it was around 8 miles of walking.Walking is a great one to maintain when time for other things gets tough to find.
Awesome on the intervals. What intervals did you do? Do you vary it each time or use a similar strategy each time?
Great to get a whole bunch of walking in just getting things done during the day, it's like a freebie. Do you use a step counter to measure your steps too? Can make it more fun, especially if like me you love seeing numbers and love seeing them keep going up.Yes. The walking that I did was just part of the day. My son was working a charity event downtown. So I parked a decent distance away and walked there with him. Then I walked to my office and worked for a couple of hours before walking back to pick him up and then to our car. According to my watch I got in almost 3 miles. Then we went to an art festival that spanned several city blocks. We walked through that and then walked to meet my wife and other son and walked to a music competition he was playing in. Then we walked back to the car. For the day, it was around 8 miles of walking.
I basically use my same interval method.
5 minutes at 5.8 mph then alternate between 1 minute run and 1 minute walk. For the runs I start at 6mph and increase by .5 mph each interval. I went 31 minutes, so the last minute was at 12 mph.
I do my intervals on treadmill and I do them manually, not on a program. And yes, the 11-12 mph intervals are tough! It is kind of crazy that my 5k pace 30 years ago was close to the 11 mph interval. It is very humbling.Great to get a whole bunch of walking in just getting things done during the day, it's like a freebie. Do you use a step counter to measure your steps too? Can make it more fun, especially if like me you love seeing numbers and love seeing them keep going up.
Those last few intervals must be tough! My fastest one is below the 12 mph mark for now. You do these on a treadmill right? Does the treadmill you use have an interval workout mode? I only just found out how the one I use works and it makes it so much easier than manually changing the speeds every time. More useful if you're only going to use a fixed jogging/walking speed and fixed interval speed, but if so you just press a button to alternate between the 2 speeds.
I want to do intervals that will help improve my 5k time. Looks like many suggest doing longer intervals like 5/6 x 1k. I might try this at a slower speed or just try and extend my current 500m intervals gradually. I'm happy that on the treadmill at least I can already do the intervals faster than goal 5k time (long term I want to get under 20 mins). There's just a huge disparity with what I can then achieve outdoors so maybe I need to get even faster and longer with intervals before that will translate to sub 20 outdoors. For now happy to consolidate after big improvements on intervals since I started.
Also with parkrun courses with hills I am useless at the moment and it probably costs me an extra 3 minutes. Not only going much slower than other runners of my ability while running up the hill, also feeling destroyed after and taking a fair bit of time to recover and get back to my pre-hill pace. Maybe I need to start incorporating hill sprints/repeats into the routine somewhere. Also will keep the hilly parkruns in the rotation so that I hopefully eventually improve at them.
Feels like an absolutely crazy pace to keep up for the whole distance lol. At least you have it in you somewhere and if you had the time and the will to dedicate to training should be able to get to an age adjusted time from that base (minus any longstanding injury restrictions).I do my intervals on treadmill and I do them manually, not on a program. And yes, the 11-12 mph intervals are tough! It is kind of crazy that my 5k pace 30 years ago was close to the 11 mph interval. It is very humbling.
I agree with you on hills for 5ks. That’s always a challenge. But I think that overall, incorporating intervals as a periodic workout is very helpful for longer runs. Intervals really force you to regulate breathing and the sprinting really makes your cardio get a workout.
I don’t know about you, but if I’m just doing distances, I feel like I get a “cardio plateau” at some point. It is like I can probably go longer, but not faster. I think that a lot of this has to do with breathing and also the mental side of things. But intervals gives you best of both worlds. I really like them as part of a well rounded workout at least a couple days a week.
My only knock on intervals is that the pounding puts some pressure on my spine after a while. So I have to be somewhat careful because of my herniated disc.
Thanks for this encouragement! But I’ve put a lot of miles on my body since then. As a teenager, I was a runner. Now as a middle age man of 50, I’m a guy who runs. There is a difference and I am happy with that. At 16 years old, I was 130 lbs of lean, fast twitch muscle. And I had more energy than I could possibly imagine now. But now I have arthritic knees and ankles and carry an extra 50 lbs more than those days. But I’m still healthy and I really enjoy being active. I can also hold my own with my athletic teenage boys when it comes to most sports (aside from sprinting with my youngest.) So I have no complaints.At least you have it in you somewhere and if you had the time and the will to dedicate to training should be able to get to an age adjusted time from that base (minus any longstanding injury restrictions).
I get it, as someone only a few years younger. I had put down my 1 min per mile slower pace every time I came back each year from a new injury down to ageing. But right now I've proved it wasn't that with the distances and speeds I've reached which are going to be my best since I started running and way beyond what I thought I was capable of. But at the same time I was very content just going for regular runs with no targets on distance or pace. That's what I liked about counting mileage. Whatever I did felt positive. A "failed" run where I managed 2 miles out of the 4.5 on the way home meant a positive of +2 miles that I wouldn't have otherwise done and who cares about pace or any other stat that might limit my enjoyment of that.Thanks for this encouragement! But I’ve put a lot of miles on my body since then. As a teenager, I was a runner. Now as a middle age man of 50, I’m a guy who runs. There is a difference and I am happy with that. At 16 years old, I was 130 lbs of lean, fast twitch muscle. And I had more energy than I could possibly imagine now. But now I have arthritic knees and ankles and carry an extra 50 lbs more than those days. But I’m still healthy and I really enjoy being active. I can also hold my own with my athletic teenage boys when it comes to most sports (aside from sprinting with my youngest.) So I have no complaints.
But to your point, I do set some realistic, but challenging goals for myself. I would like to do one more marathon before age 55. And I want to do a 28 minute 5k this year. And I’m currently 6lbs in toward a 15 lbs weight loss goal.
Excellent work! That’s very respectable!24 minute 5k parkrun today! Getting around PB level now and feel like I didn't have to bust a gut to get there - feels sustainable and with more weeks and months of training should be able to get well beyond that. Altogether ran 10.3 miles including getting there and back and on the way back joined in on another good vibes organised run where people were having a lot of fun and encouraging each other a lot.
Oct runs: 96.9 miles / 155.9 km
Thanks, very happy with that! I'm hoping to break into the 23s asap and then happy to consolidate in this ballpark (with slower times for harder/hillier courses) for a good while.Excellent work! That’s very respectable!
Good to hear. What kind of pace are you aiming for? My paces for fast runs, parkruns/intervals/tempos is much better now but my standard jogging pace with which I do most of my runs is still not much faster.I had a good run on Saturday morning. I was really busy yesterday and wasn’t home at all until really late. Hoping to get out and run tonight.
But I’m working on getting my pace down a bit for 2-3 miles then start working on maintaining that faster pace.
I’m trying to get to running distances at below 9 minute pace. I hover around 10 minutes these days. My jogging pace is more like 11 minute.Good to hear. What kind of pace are you aiming for? My paces for fast runs, parkruns/intervals/tempos is much better now but my standard jogging pace with which I do most of my runs is still not much faster.