"Impossible" goal achieved. Hope for everyone

Good for you..you deserve kudos....but if we take a good look at this....I don't think you could
characterize it as "impossible",...in fact in context it's pretty much standard. In sum, according
to your words, "for a year or so" and after joining a racing club and seriously training...your 10K
went from an AG% rating of 68% to 75.5%.

I don't mean to rain on your parade....but that's nothing astonishing or unbelievable at all. In
fact I would say that's pretty much standard for any male 40-44 running at an AG% rating of 68% who
joins a racing team and seriously trains for a "year or so". Oh...I know it's hard work....serious
training...and reflects a great deal of determination and focus on your part and you should be
applauded for that. But again...you went from 6:41 or so / mile to 6:03 in a year or so in your
early 40s after joining a racing club. I say that's pretty much par for someone who seriously
training for a year or so who's already clocking 6:41.

I in no way mean to diminish your personal achievement....my intention is to place this is realistic
context and I think a 7.5 AG% jump is attainable by anyone who seriously trains as you have over the
time you have. You've probably got much more in you...that's yeat to be realized. Good Luck in
continued progress.

OK, you jogged, and then you jogged a little faster. NEXT!

I expect the course was short
:-)
J "Dee" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi

I had been running and training, quite hard as I thought, for a year or so when I did my first
10K. This was not my first race as I had been reguarly running mountain races of various lengths,
finishing about two thirds down the field and looking on the guys at the front as supermen.
Anyway, my first 10k time was 41:30 of which I was really pleased but as I was training quite hard
I could not at my age see where the improvement was going to come from.

I joined a running club and set myself a lifetime goal of 37:30. Joining the club was a revelation
as I saw straight away how hard "runners" were prepared to train. At least one person told me I
would never get down to 37:30, he had never been there himself and had been running for many
years. I also read the genetic stuff on the web on how some of us could never ever run quicker
than a long 38. The seeds of selfdoubt were sewn in my mind. The extra training soon took it's
toll with injuries now a regular occurance. I perservered and upped my milage to 40+ miles while
doing two hard sessions midweek. I ran a 39:00 dead, brilliant but injury followed, this time
plantar fasciitis, a real nasty one. I felt like I was back at square one and the goal was
disappearing in the distance. The club coach recommended orthotics, difficult to get used to at
first but got me running again. I trained hard again and after 9 weeks ran a 39:35 10K. Four weeks
later I was injured again, this time with pains in my knees. I thought about giving up as I was
now turning 43 and life was just too short for all this.

I decided to give it one more go but change my approach. I would gradually build up my mileage
using the 10% rule to 60 a week with absolutely no speed work or racing. I was patient and found
this easy running to be enjoyable. After 12 weeks I felt I was as fit as I'd ever been and this
was without the hard work. I then gradually introduced speed work and increased the duration but
not the intensity over a period of about four months. I ran a few short races and I could feel
things starting to come together. I then went four weeks without a race but trained hard. Last
Saturday I did a 10K and Bingo "37:30". Now I believe I can go quicker.

Never give up!

In article said:

I decided to give it one more go but change my approach. I would gradually build up my mileage
using the 10% rule to 60 a week with absolutely no speed work or racing. I was patient and found
this easy running to be enjoyable. After 12 weeks I felt I was as fit as I'd ever been and this
was without the hard work. I then gradually introduced speed work and increased the duration but
not the intensity over a period of about four months. I ran a few short races and I could feel
things starting to come together. I then went four weeks without a race but trained hard. Last
Saturday I did a 10K and Bingo "37:30". Now I believe I can go quicker.

Thanks for posting this. I've tried the "train hard" approach with similar results to you -- I ended
up spending a lot of this year on reduced milage due to achilles tendon problems. I'm about 3 months
or so into what I hope is a smarter approach to training.

My new and improved training philosophy discourages thinking along the lines of "imagine what you
could do on 50 miles per week", and replaces it with slogans like "imagine what you could do with 6
months of consistent, uninterrupted training".

I think avoiding being too swayed by the stuff on "genetic limitations" is a good idea. Whatever
your potential is, it's a safe bet that you're nowhere near fulfilling it on less than 20mpw, no
matter how much effort you put into speed work and races.

As Global noted, your performance is a 75% AG% rating -- which is a very competitive performance,
good enough to win smaller races (Bob Glover calls uses the term "local champion" to describe
this rating)

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗

Nice result!

We seem to be on parallel courses. I ran my first 10K in 42 mins a few years ago. Joined a running
club and had a few injuries. 10K time down to 39:30. For the past year I have been slowly building
mileage with very little "speed work". I am now at 60 miles per week, I'm 42, and ran a 10K a few
weeks ago in
37:35.

You're not planning a sub-3 marathon attempt in the near future by chance?

Good luck!

Anthony.

Dee said:

I decided to give it one more go but change my approach. I would gradually build up my mileage
using the 10% rule to 60 a week with absolutely no speed work or racing. I was patient and found
this easy running to be enjoyable. After 12 weeks I felt I was as fit as I'd ever been and this
was without the hard work. I then gradually introduced speed work and increased the duration but
not the intensity over a period of about four months. I ran a few short races and I could feel
things starting to come together. I then went four weeks without a race but trained hard. Last
Saturday I did a 10K and Bingo "37:30". Now I believe I can go quicker.

You will only be able to hold this peak for number of weeks and you will need to toss in some easy
weeks and then ramp up again. Very Smart training but don't think you are now invincible. Think
about periodization and who knows how fast you can run.

Quoted message said:

Never give up!

I realize this just one anecdotal happy ending but if more people reading this forum would
appreciate your story and go at racing slower we would a lot more positive reports.

I just love it when someone says "I'm new at running and I want to run faster" and someone replies,
"well, do some speed work." Soon to follow comes the post, "Hey, my something-or-other hurts."

I know words like patience and rest are dirty words but they need to be everyone's daily running
vocabulary.

--
Doug Freese "Caveat Lector" [email hidden]

In article said:

so" and after joining a racing club and seriously training...your 10K went from an AG% rating of
68% to 75.5%.

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I don't mean to rain on your parade....but that's nothing astonishing or unbelievable at all. In
fact I would say that's pretty much standard for any male 40-44 running at an AG% rating of 68%
who joins a racing team and seriously trains for a "year or so". Oh...I know it's hard
work....serious training...

Exactly (-; Maybe you should try it some time ... (serious training, that is). A sub 3hr marathon is
about a 73% performance rating for your age, so you need a similar performance gradient to have a
serious chance at either sub 7 min/mile or sub 3hr in Boston.

Personally, I find this anecdote rather inspiring -- I'd be pretty happy if my performance rating
were to jump by 7.5% or so over the next year.

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗

[email hidden] (Dee) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Hi

<inspirational stuff snipped>

Quoted message said:

Never give up!

My stats are very similar to yours. Never thought I would get under 40m for 10k. Then managed to get
under 39. A couple of years later sneaked under 38. Last year (aged 45) ran 37m 02s. Believe I may
get under 37 next year.

It can be done. But I doubt I'll ever run an official sub 3hr marathon now <sob>.

Best

Edward
--
The reading group's reading group: bookgroup.org.ukbookgroup.org.ukOpen ↗

Quoted message said:

I had been running and training, quite hard as I thought, for a year or so when I did my first
10K. This was not my first race as I had been reguarly running mountain races of various lengths,
finishing about two thirds down the field and looking on the guys at the front as supermen.
Anyway, my first 10k time was 41:30 of which I was really pleased but as I was training quite hard
I could not at my age see where the improvement was going to come from.

Quoted message said:

I decided to give it one more go but change my approach. I would gradually build up my mileage
using the 10% rule to 60 a week with absolutely no speed work or racing. I was patient and found
this easy running to be enjoyable. After 12 weeks I felt I was as fit as I'd ever been and this was
without the hard work. I then gradually introduced speed work and increased the duration but not
the intensity over a period of about four months. I ran a few short races and I could feel things
starting to come together. I then went four weeks without a race but trained hard. Last Saturday I
did a 10K and Bingo "37:30". Now I believe I can go quicker.

If the time is indeed legitimate and for a female as it appears, some people here are WAAAAY off
base. Yes, a sub-38 time for a masters female IS damn-near impossible for most people: It is almost
elite! By the WAVA charts, a 37:30 for a 40-44 female is an age group of roughly 85%. Among masters
athletes, an AG of 80% is considered "national class" and an AG of 90% is considered "world class".
If you can run this kind of time in a track event (masters or open), you can get an "All-American"
patch to wear: See nationalmastersnews.com for details. And the people trying to give you advice
should be listening to YOU, not the other way around.

Your 10K time equates to a 2:50-something marathon, so you might think about the Olympic Marathon
trials. It's too late for you this time, but you might have a shot next time, if you can handle the
mileage needed. There's a woman who used to be in my club who went to the Olympic Marathon Trials
TWICE as a masters female. Her name's Marina Jones, and there might be something about her on the
web somewhere.

Listen to your coach. Don't listen to the naysayers who tell you anybody can do that, or you can't
get any faster unless you do it my way. You obviously have some talent, and you have a program that
works for you, so STICK WITH IT.

Lyndon

"Speed Kills...It kills those that don't have it!" --US Olympic Track Coach Brooks Johnson

In article said:

so" and after joining a racing club and seriously training...your 10K went from an AG% rating of
68% to 75.5%.

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I don't mean to rain on your parade....but that's nothing astonishing or unbelievable at all. In
fact I would say that's pretty much standard for any male 40-44 running at an AG% rating of 68%
who joins a racing team and seriously trains for a "year or so". Oh...I know it's hard
work....serious training...

Exactly (-; Maybe you should try it some time ... (serious training, that is). A sub 3hr marathon is
about a 73% performance rating for your age, so you need a similar performance gradient to have a
serious chance at either sub 7 min/mile or sub 3hr in Boston.

Personally, I find this anecdote rather inspiring -- I'd be pretty happy if my performance rating
were to jump by 7.5% or so over the next year.

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗

Globaldisc said:

I don't mean to rain on your parade....but that's nothing astonishing or unbelievable at all. In
fact I would say that's pretty much standard for any male 40-44 running at an AG% rating of 68%
who joins a racing team and seriously trains for a "year or so".

Andrew, your speed snobbism is showing. I don't think she gives a [censored] where she fits into the world
female running stats. She set a personal goal "for her" and tried the too much too soon and too damn
fast, probably hanging out with speed freaks, and spent most of her time injured. WHAT IS IMPORTANT,
through trial and error she found a method of training with a slower growth rate and did get faster
and closer to her goal. A theme more people should adopt.

--
Doug Freese "Caveat Lector" [email hidden]

(Globaldisc) said:

Good for you..you deserve kudos....but if we take a good look at this....I don't think you could
characterize it as "impossible",

Well, duh.

Did you notice the quote marks around the word impossible? Perhaps that was a clue that she didn't
think it was really impossible?

She was told by several "real" runners that she'd never do it, that it was impossible.

She proved them wrong.

Good for her.

Mike Tennent "IronPenguin"

In article said:

If the time is indeed legitimate and for a female as it appears, some people here are WAAAAY off
base. Yes, a sub-38 time for a masters female IS damn-near impossible for most people: It is
almost elite! By the WAVA

If "Dee" is indeed female -- "she'd" win most of the races here in NY by a margin of minutes. An 85%
performance could pass for elite, depending on the difficulty of the course. We've had races in
central park where elites participated (you'd know their names) and once you're in the high 80s, you
stand a reasonable chance of beating several of them.

However, I'd consider it somewhat more probable that "Dee" is actually male, there are considerably
more males posting with female names than there are females who run elite times.

Either way, these times are quite impressive, and the steady improvement resulting from smart
training is inspiring. It's made me rethink my approach to training and made me consider racing less
frequently.

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗

In article said:

Personally, I find this anecdote rather inspiring -- I'd be pretty happy if my performance rating
were to jump by 7.5% or so over the next year.
__
Well I saw you run 6:26 in a 5Mi, and a month later do 6:06 or 7 in a 4Mi. Since you've managed to
get almost half way there in a month.

Since I ran a 6:11 for 5k in April (The Rabbit Run), it wasn't really a 3% jump, more like a 1% jump
since April. I'm still pretty happy with it though. We'll have to wait and see what another three or
so solid months of training will lead to.

I agree that it's possible to make substantial gains with reasonable high milage training if you're
consistent. This guy's gains are, like you say, impressive, though probably not that unusual for the
few who are prepared to do what it takes.

FWIW, looking up one of our experienced club runners, was able to drop his NY marathon time from
2:57 to 2:50 then to 2:44, by about 15sec/mile each time. The 2:57 wasn't his first marathon, so
there would have been a good solid year of training preceding that (he ran the previous year though
probably without much prep, he did a 3:49)

So I have little doubt a 30sec/mile drop in times is possible, though how long it takes depends on
what part of the curve I'm on now.

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗

In article said:

If the time is indeed legitimate and for a female as it appears, some people here are WAAAAY off
base. Yes, a sub-38 time for a masters female IS damn-near impossible for most people: It is
almost elite! By the WAVA

If "Dee" is indeed female -- "she'd" win most of the races here in NY by a margin of minutes. An 85%
performance could pass for elite, depending on the difficulty of the course. We've had races in
central park where elites participated (you'd know their names) and once you're in the high 80s, you
stand a reasonable chance of beating several of them.

However, I'd consider it somewhat more probable that "Dee" is actually male, there are considerably
more males posting with female names than there are females who run elite times.

Either way, these times are quite impressive, and the steady improvement resulting from smart
training is inspiring. It's made me rethink my approach to training and made me consider racing less
frequently.

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗

Donovan Rebbechi said:

My new and improved training philosophy discourages thinking along the lines of "imagine what you
could do on 50 miles per week", and replaces it with slogans like "imagine what you could do with
6 months of consistent, uninterrupted training".

---Ahah!! Egg, chicken; chicken, egg? Yes, imagine what you could do by upping to 50 mpw. However,
it will only help you if you can do it on a consistent basis without getting injured. Being able to
handle X training load consistently is a prerequisite to getting benefit from X training load
because you must be able to sustain
it. I was in terrific shape back in June because I was consistently running about 105-110 mpw, but
by July I couldn't hack it anymore (but kept doing it anyways) and suffered both slowing times
and reduced training quality as a result. In retrospect, I would probably have been better off
hammering 95 week after week all summer instead, getting better training and avoiding
over-training. For the relatively untrained athlete, the limiting factor is most certainly
aerobic capacity, not speed. I am not surprised that this individual succeeded by dropping the
intensity and putting in their base work before returning to speed. That is the smart route but
one not taken by a lot of people. They want quick results...which the track gives, but only
briefly. While not an impossible feat (though it certainly looked like one to them at the
outset), it required a bunch of hard work to acheive and congrats are in order. Few people
stick it out to do that kind of improvement. Now imagine what you could run with a few more
miles per week and a little more intensity here and there.... 😉 Andy Hass

Donovan Rebbechi said:

My new and improved training philosophy discourages thinking along the lines of "imagine what you
could do on 50 miles per week", and replaces it with slogans like "imagine what you could do with
6 months of consistent, uninterrupted training".

---Ahah!! Egg, chicken; chicken, egg? Yes, imagine what you could do by upping to 50 mpw. However,
it will only help you if you can do it on a consistent basis without getting injured. Being able to
handle X training load consistently is a prerequisite to getting benefit from X training load
because you must be able to sustain
it. I was in terrific shape back in June because I was consistently running about 105-110 mpw, but
by July I couldn't hack it anymore (but kept doing it anyways) and suffered both slowing times
and reduced training quality as a result. In retrospect, I would probably have been better off
hammering 95 week after week all summer instead, getting better training and avoiding
over-training. For the relatively untrained athlete, the limiting factor is most certainly
aerobic capacity, not speed. I am not surprised that this individual succeeded by dropping the
intensity and putting in their base work before returning to speed. That is the smart route but
one not taken by a lot of people. They want quick results...which the track gives, but only
briefly. While not an impossible feat (though it certainly looked like one to them at the
outset), it required a bunch of hard work to acheive and congrats are in order. Few people
stick it out to do that kind of improvement. Now imagine what you could run with a few more
miles per week and a little more intensity here and there.... 😉 Andy Hass

In article said:

Globaldisc wrote:

Andrew, your speed snobbism is showing. I don't think she gives a [censored] where she fits into the
world female running stats. She set a personal goal "for her" and tried the too much too soon and
too damn fast, probably hanging out with speed freaks,

This is probably right on the money ... since joining a club, I've discovered that Global certainly
isn't the only runner who races nearly every week.

Quoted message said:

and spent most of her time injured. WHAT IS IMPORTANT, through trial and error she found a method
of training with a slower growth rate and did get faster and closer to her goal. A theme more
people should adopt.

Especially those who want to drop 20 minutes or so off their marathon time in 6 months ...

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗

Donovan Rebbechi said:

In article said:

If the time is indeed legitimate and for a female as it appears, some people here are WAAAAY off
base. Yes, a sub-38 time for a masters female IS damn-near impossible for most people: It is
almost elite! By the WAVA

If "Dee" is indeed female

google search of r.r by e-mail indicates a male.

but also notice the mountain running (=strong) background for contributing to performance.

Dot

--
"Success is different things to different people" -Bernd Heinrich in Racing the Antelope