Breaking the Wall

Do you think, that as a master's runner, there may now be a benefit to changing your training and doing something completely different, which might open up a new door in how your body responds--now that you are older and respond differently. I keep reading about the benefits of super polarized training and the surprising benefits to endurance runners of high intensity interval training, which is counter-intuitive for a marathoner, but maybe it would help kick start a sluggish adrenal system?

April:

What I observed this year is that I have been responding best to what I thought was less than ideal. I had a hard time scheduling long workouts for myself due to the need to run with younger kids, so I started doing milder but more frequent workouts. This gave me a course PR of 1:15:04 at UVM half and a good performance in the Murray Fun Days 5 K (taking in view the slow nature of that course). Then it seems once I figured out how to find time for long workouts things started slowly going downhill culminating in the 1:28 second half at TOU after what should have been a moderate start which did not feel moderate at all.

So my conclusion so far is that the rules of training the hormones are very much different from the rules of training the heart and the muscles. In my entire running career I have focused on training the heart and the muscles. Over the course of 33 years given this long of a time I have on occasion accidentally stumbled upon success in training the hormones, and that was when I had my "super-performances".

The hormones are much more difficult to understand. Consider this, for example. On Tuesday I was feeling not that great but not terrible as far as I could tell in the morning and raced 1 K in cross-country in the evening - feeling I would say positively average. The time unfortunately did not say much due to the nature of the course. This was on the heels of the marathon on Saturday. On Wednesday morning I was feeling strong and decided to do a test that I know for me correlates very well with success across the board - a quarter mile pickup at the end of 8 miles uphill near the house. I ran it in 75. Last Monday it was 83 at the end of 10. On Thursday I ran easy feeling about as positive as on Wednesday. Then on Friday (yesterday) I paced Joseph on the mile on the track towards the start of my run. I felt on the negative side of things and could barely manage 5:30. Out of curiosity I repeated the quarter mile test at the end of the run and 83 was all I had. What the heck?

There was a factor - it got a bit colder, there was a drizzle, and humidity was 96% but this does not explain the slump. Except if you maybe consider the dark sky affecting emotions, or some weird air pressure sensitivity. Interesting enough, all of the kids and Sarah struggled on their runs that day as well for some odd reason.

Then today I ran a total of 16. First Chad and I paced Sarah down the canyon for 3 miles in 23:40, and then I paced Chad for the first 2 miles of a 3 mile tempo starting and finishing at the same spot, and then ran hard. From the start it felt good. I got 17:36 total time, and felt very strong in the last mile 3/4th of which was uphill into a headwind.

Then I repeated the quarter test at the end of 16 on the same stretch and got 76. What the heck?

I am still scratching my head trying to understand the fluctuations. They do not seem to be related to anything that a runner would think as significant. Sleep was mostly the same. Diet was mostly the same. Prior day training loads varied a bit, but it seems that the performance was better with the higher prior day training load. I am beginning to wonder if they are rooted in deep underlying emotions that I am barely aware of.

So my experiment over the next three weeks or so is to construct workouts that I am looking forward to - challenging enough that I would feel that I accomplished something but with targets set on purpose to the levels that are quite well within my limits. And something that can be done 4 times a week or maybe even more. So something like a 2 mile tempo down the canyon at 5:40 pace maybe with the last quarter fast. At this point I suspect that what the workout itself does physically is not as important as what it does emotionally. Then we can see if that does anything.