High Five By 55

Current Training Focus: 10K training to build some leg speed before beginning Chicago Marathon training. Current Training Plan: Jack Daniels 5K/10K Phase II Week 1 Plan Week's Intention: run easy, continue to let the tweaked hamstring heal, perhaps test the hamstring with some strides to see if I'm ready for some faster work. Summary: after last week's hamstring strain, I was leery to push very hard this week. I had felt fairly good after running all easy last week, but did have some soreness and tightness in the hamstring after last Sunday's long run. So this week I went in expecting to run all easy miles. Overall, the week went well, the hamstring was slightly sore from time to time, but nothing of any consequences. I was even able to run some decent strides and a tempo run without any negative consequences. Good progress, and I'll return to the 10k training plan next week, but backing the interval paces off a bit. Monday: (Nike Vomero 17) 6.30 miles @ 8:39/mile ...

I'm thinking I'm going to take a shot at writing a weekly training review each Sunday after my long run throughout this High Five By 55 project. No particular goal with this, just a summarizing of what I've written in my training log and my daily planner. A space to process the week a bit. I'm not quite sure of the format to do this best, so will just try some things, not feel too constrained, and see what works out. Current Training Focus: 10K training to build some leg speed before beginning Chicago Marathon training. Current Training Plan: Jack Daniels 5K/10K Phase II Week 1 Plan Week's Intention: this was a repeat of last week's focus. Last week, I used it as an introduction to this type of speed work without making a big effort to hit the various prescribed paces. This week, I intended to go through the plan again, but with much more focus on hitting paces. Summary: this week was derailed on Tuesday, day 2. I headed out for the first quality session of the ...

As I've turned my attention to Bighorn 100 in June, I have wondered what to make the focus of my preparation. I had decided early in this project that I wanted to give each Hardrock qualifying race a very specific purpose, some area of weakness or lack of knowledge I could build on while training. I have not been quite sure what I wanted to make the focus of Bighorn 100 and had even kind of decided just to make it a kick off to the project without any real focus. Just do good training, plan well, and have a good day and night out on the course. I think I'm going to scrap that plan. Of course, I'll still do all those things. But I have such a glaring area to begin working on that I think I'll make it not just the focus of Bighorn 100, but of 2024 in general. Nutrition. Both race day nutrition and general training nutrition. The Miami Marathon experience of a week ago really drove home how much I need to work on this. At marathons, I'm struggling with GI distress. At ...

As I really begin to dive into this project, into this entire idea, I'm wondering what to focus on for this year. There is lots I know I have to figure out, and lots more that I don't even know I need to know and figure out. But for 2024, I think I'll keep it simple. Focus on fitness. Specifically focus on getting stronger. Both stronger as a climber and descender, and building a stronger body overall. And stronger from a muscular endurance perspective. And stronger from a recovery perspective. I think I've pretty much picked up the vast majority of the aerobic capacity my body is capable of building. Sure, there's always more, but I have a feeling I'm in that area on the diminishing returns curve where the amount of effort needed for even minor gains is so lopsided as to make it a total waste of time. So, I'll just work to maintain my current aerobic capacity with the minimal amount of work required to do so. And that will open up time to work on strength i...

2023 is a wrap. And I wrapped up the year with one final race on December 31, a local 10k race that allowed me to set a personal best at the distance…mostly because my personal best was very soft since there aren’t a lot of opportunities to run 10ks around here. So I woke up, had a small breakfast, and ran the two miles from home to the Florida Atlantic University football stadium where the race would be starting. I had only ever run one 10k, years ago in preparation for my first time trying to qualify for the Boston marathon. At the time, I surprised myself by running a 40:30 time which seemed way faster than I should have expected. This time things would be very different. I just wanted to check off that under 40 minute 10k thing in an official race, though I had unofficially done so during longer races. That meant I could run a nice, controlled pace with effort, but not having to really take any risk or push too hard. And that’s really all I wanted to plan for, having run very littl...

I'm terrible about taking time off from running after races. I usually take two or three days a little easier, then jump right back into a structured and disciplined training pattern. I am committed to not doing that on this occasion. So, I've set myself a little challenge. I have a short 3.5 mile loop in my neighborhood that I often run as a double or on recovery days. I'm challenging myself to see how many days in a row I can run nothing more than this 3.5 mile loop. Nothing longer. No joining the Sunday long run group. The only exception would be the short runs I take with my dog. I'd love to make it to through the month of December doing this. I have not had an unstructured running period since I took 10 days off after Ouray 100 in 2022. I'm just three days in so far, and I'm feeling real joy in having no running focus or structure. But I know I'll struggle to make it nearly a full month. I do really enjoy the structure of a set plan and having to practi...

Today I ran the California International Marathon, regularly called CIM, in Sacramento. About 18 months ago, I had decided to see if I could take the next leap in marathon finishing time and find out if I could finish in under 2 hours and 50 minutes. I decided I’d do all the things and take one big moonshot at the time, chasing a time that seemed probably too big for me. I hadn’t thought I’d be able to run under 3 hours, but did so a few years ago and fairly comfortably. So I wanted to make sure I wasn’t leaving that next big 10 minutes improvement on the table before I gave up marathon time chasing. I picked what is often considered one of the fastest legitimate marathon courses in the country. I worked through a variety of shoes to pick just the right pair. I tested lots of nutrition options. And I followed my training plan almost perfectly, missing only one workout in about 16 weeks. I did the work. And I failed. But even more so, I succeeded. And I’m totally satisfied, even happy, ...

I always forgot, yet it always happens. To me, there's one true sign that I'm deep in marathon training. That sign, I have heavy legs for every single run. The intensity and volume just keep piling on top of one another. And the legs feel heavy day after day after day. But that's not the sign. That's just a product of the training cycle of hard and/or fast run, then long recovery. The real sign is that while the legs are heavy, it doesn't matter. A run starts out with a thought like "no way I can do what's planned today on these heavy legs." The thought somewhere during the run is more like "hey, this is going totally fine despite the heavy legs." It's just heavy legs. The heartrate is where it's expected. The rate of perceived exertion is on point. It's just heavy legs. Layers and layers and layers of training not every quite allowing the legs to fully recovery. Always just enough recovery to be able to do the next workout well. ...

It finally happened. October 16th we finally experienced our first cool fall front in South Florida. Lows in the mid 60s and highs in the mid 70s. Even more exciting, low humidity by our standards...in the mid 50% range. It was wonderful. It is wonderful today. A warm up returns shortly, but these are a glorious few days and the warm up doesn't appear to bring us back to the mid-summer heat of last week. And with that weather change, my running paces instantly changed, too. A promising development as CIM quickly approaches. Mondays are recovery days from my Sunday long run. Mondays almost always include a double, a really really easy run in the morning followed by a still easy but more conventionally easy effort run in the afternoon for a total of about 12 miles. These runs are heart rate based to make sure I actually stay easy. The morning heart rate band is super low with really no bottom end. I feel like I basically can't run too slow in this particular run. Anything goes. T...