03 January 2015
The weather was warm today [~63°F, 52% RH (relative humidity)], when Janet and I returned from meeting her younger step-brother and his family for lunch in Floresville, TX; and, since the sun would not set for more than an hour and a half, I changed into running clothes and headed out for an Easy Pace Training Run.
I had jogged less than a 1/2 mile, when I realized that I, really, had not allowed myself adequate time for recovery–old geezers need to allow more time for recovery than younger runners. In particular, both my hamstrings and quads were still sore from my Long Run on New Year’s Day 2015. I soon found that, if my running form was correct, my quads and hamstring muscles were not stressed; i.e., I didn’t notice that they were, in deed, sore (DOMS) [At least, my feeling their soreness was lessened].
Endurance Running – Week 7 of 13 Weeks, Day 3 of 4 Days
I think that my sore leg muscles, actually, helped me to keep good running form, even though I, also, felt tired overall. By the time I had crested that steep hill, I was huffin’-n-puffin’ and was having to apply some effort just to keep my cadence up (close) to what I want to maintain (180 spm). So, I decided to just try to maintain an easy, consistent effort (by feel) and to keep an eye on maintaining my running cadence; thinking that, due to feeling tired, would produce a slow, even pace.
I was wrong about the slow, even pace! Or, maybe, I have seen an improvement in my pace due to stronger glues and just haven’t allowed myself to run faster paces thus far in my training. Mostly, I have tried to keep my training pace limited between 10:00/mi and 11:00/mi; I haven’t been altogether successful in doing that; but, better than today’s running pace.
As I understand the principal, in “Base Building,” the object is to develop the body’s cardiovascular system (which includes developing the body’s ability to utilize the oxygen transported to the muscles cells in burning the glycogen stored in those cells and in converting fat to glycogen for fuel) by slow paced runs and by slowly increasing the distance or time spent in the running session each four to six weeks period during the base building cycle. So, what does that mean for a runner? That, while developing some speed during the cycle is important, the runner has to run those unbearably slow running paces; and, even though, the runner feels like the effort is an easy one, the runner absolutely must train, for the majority of running sessions, at the easy paces developed by Running Coach Jack Daniels, PhD, and prescribed by his formulae and tables.
Coach Daniels’ paces are those for the individual runner and are based upon the runner’s current fitness (not the fitness that the runner hopes to be on race day, but the runner’s current fitness). [For finding your own set of paces, use one (or both) of the VDOT online Calculators by RunBayou and by AttackPoint, links in sidebar frame.] Technically, as I understand Coach Daniels‘ book, his prescribed paces are for training and for projecting races paces for various racing distances…assuming that the runner’s endurance is sufficient for the distance; e.g., those calculations give me a projected running pace [~9:46/mi] for a full marathon [4:16:03] based upon my current VDOT [35.68, usually round down to the integer 35]; however, today I’m not capable of running that distance (26.2 miles, or 42.2k).
Happy Running!!!