You guys are so far away from any races right now, it might be hard to get yourselves motivated to start running. You're even further away from any races that count. The connundrum is that if you aren't doing stuff now that will keep you in shape, or get you in better shape, you'll be in no condition to run any good races when it does count.
So, I'm going to write about my own training in order for you guys to see how small goals can be strung together to help reach large ones.
I'm almost 49, which means I'm basically one year away from 50. I'm at an age where it becomes harder and harder to see fitness gains, simply becuase I've got less testosterone circulating in my blood than I did last year, and that year I had less than the year before....you get the picture. However, since we've been on "Lockdown", I've been pretty consistent in my workouts. I'll try to give you a picture of where I've been, how I got to where I am now, and where I want to try and go in the future.
So, for me, the long term goals are: 1, Break 6 in the mile again. 2. Break 20 for 5k again. I'm super far from either of those goals, but I'm close now than I was at the beginning of March. At that point, I was barely able to run 2 miles without any pain. When we went on lockdown, I set myself 2 goals
1. Try and exercise 2 times per day
2. Get to where 2 mile runs didn't hurt anymore.
It took me a couple of weeks to get where 2 mile runs were easy and pain free, but on March 30 I was able to run 3 miles. So, I had reached one goal. I still wasn't worried about how fast I was going. A couple of days later, I tried a "tempo" run. I went 1.75 miles in 16 minutes (slower than 9 minutes a mile). So, my next goal was to try and be able to run "tempo effort" without any pain.
I'll show you my last 10 days of my log so you can get an idea of how I got to my current state of fitness (which still isn't very good). And how I want to progress to my next fitness level.
On 4/11 I ran a 6 minute test and got 1350m. This gives me a tempo pace in the mid 8:40's per mile. So, that was my goal, get to where that pace feels comfortable for 20 minutes
4/13:
AM - Hike 5 miles at Red Hills
PM - 13 miles on my mountain bike on the canals
4/14
AM - 1 mile WU, Drills, 4 x 3 min on, 1 min off
PM - 10 minute core workout
4/15
AM - 3.5 miles easy
PM - Weights
4/16
AM - 4.2 miles total. 1.75 easy then 1.75 @ 8:47 pace on canal. + 4 x 120m strides
PM - Weights
4/17
AM - 2 miles super easy then mountain bike 1 hour
PM - Weights
4/18
AM - 19 miles on my road bike
PM - Weights
4/19
AM - 5.1 miles with Miguel Nuci (former national class marathoner)
PM - 4 mile hike in Mariposa (steep hills)
Totals for week
17 miles of running
50 + miles of cycling
5 days of strength training.
4/20
AM - 2 mile wu, drills 4 x 120m strides (tight hammy, tired)
PM - Weights (put up 210 on the bench!....best in years, 5 pounds off of lifetime best)
4/21 (super tired today)
AM - 1 mile easy, planned to try again later, never felt good, took the rest of day off
4/22
AM - 1200 warm up, 4k tempo @ 21:42 (splits of 8:43, 8:41, 4:18 last 800), 3 x 100m stride, 1200 cd.
PM - Weights.
So, over the course of 3 weeks, I was able to achieve a short term goal of comfortably running 20 minutes of tempo @ the pace predicted by my 6 minute test. My next goal will be to comfortably extend that tempo effort out to 3 miles. Once I can do that comfortably, I'll run another 6 minute test to establish a new, faster pace for my tempo runs and start the process all over again.
21 weeks is a long time to train on your own, break it up into chunks, set small goals....you'll get to your big goals eventually.
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