Sorry to hear about your crash, Subby. I was wondering earlier where your daily ride to work was. Hope you recover soon!

Lee Majors?

Ouch, Subby! Sorry to hear!

Get well soon, Subby!

Hope you get well soon Subby :(

Oh no! I also wondered where your updates were. Sorry to hear, hope you recover quickly!

So... who's Will Brown?

Present!

Ouch sorry to hear Subby, really bad luck with your bike lately.

Figured it was you... just wanted to double check :)

Sharing this just in case anybody else suffers from chaffing because of their HRM strap:
How to fix heart rate strap chaffing issues | DC Rainmaker

It doesn't happen to me on every run, mostly on longer runs, around the bottom of the sternum and somebody pointed me to this tip from dcrainmaker. Just applied a bandaid, no clue if it'll stop the chaffing, we'll see...

FM

I had some chaffing issues from my HRM strap for a bit after it got a little loose due to weight loss. I used body glide there a bit which helped some, but I found after I re-tightened it so it did not move around as much the chaffing seemed to stop for me.

yeah, been tightening it after almost every run where it happened and sometimes it was very tight and it still happened. Figured the bandaid thing was worth a try. dcrainmaker is a pretty good source for a tip ;)

Just did 20 minutes of the infamous Ben Lewis 15% treadmill incline walking workout and well, it sure gets you sweating :)
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/385379927

HR went to 150+ towards the end when I was walking at close to 4 mph.

Footpod's on the way from amazon so I'll be able to track distance with my Garmin. Treadmill says 2.1 km so a little over a mile or so.

FM

Quick question - I'm not particularly athletic but I jog and play soccer ... my amblings have gotten to a reasonable length (5 miles every other day roughly) and I'm finding my calf muscles seem somewhat 'tight' during normal life (ie. when I'm wandering around during the day) ... this isn't a huge issue and I find if I go for a run they loosen up and don't prevent any exercise, but its 'odd' and I was wondering if anyone knows anything which could mitigate against this (I'm already trying to stretch after running etc.).

Marc - I think something like this could help you.

Cool - looks interesting (if I can find out what you're meant to do with it ... seriously I'm a total newbie with regards to sensible exercising).

Marc, simply search "foam roller calf" on youtube and you should get plenty of hits.

Thanks :D

oh, and it will hurt ;)

FM

I've thought about a foam roller. I just haven't sold myself on it yet. Of course, my idea of stretching before my morning run is waking up.

Day 6 of the Hal Higdon novice 15k plan. 2 miles, too easy.

Thinking I may join the gym that's less than a mile away so I can knock out various types of cardio/cross training stuff.

15k in December. Half marathon in April.

Every running coach that I have talked to have discouraged their clients from stretching before the run. Evidently as far as I can tell, the science shows that it adversely effects performance and possibly even increases the chance of injury.

Stretching and/or after the run though seems to be pretty universally approved of.

First 10 miler this afternoon. Slightly sore, but not as bad as I thought I might be. Stairs were more challenging than usual though :D

OK, vets. My first race (Half Marathon) is two weeks from today, and I could use some help with the whole taper thing. Below is what I've done the last few weeks, and my current plan for the next two. I don't have a lot of options for the weekend before the race, as I'll be traveling to my hometown with my 4-year-old and without my wife. There's a wicked hill right in front of my brother's house (where we'll be staying). I won't have time to work out on Friday or on Sunday morning before I leave, so I'm thinking my best bet is to get some hill work in on Saturday and to incline treadmill Sunday night when I get back to the Lowcountry. Apart from that weekend, I'm flexible. Here's the plan:



Also, at this point, I am a little foggy on what my goal speed should be. I didn't have a chance to do a "self-race" post-surgery. I did get in a Tempo Run and a fairly up-tempo long run. The Tempo Run crushed my 5K and 10K PRs, and the long run, beat my previous HM by 3ish minutes, but neither run was all-out. That said, here are my current best times from training:

5K: 23:33 (during a 45-min tempo run)
10K: 47:55 (45-min tempo run plus part of cooldown)
HM: 1:48:52 (part of 14.5 mile run)

I'm thinking maybe a 1:40 goal for the race. Is that too conservative, too aggressive, or does it look about right? Also, I'd love a link or some insight on how to pace my run. I know that I want to go for a negative split, but beyond that, I guess I'm thinking to let my heart rate guide me. I did most of the 14 1/2 mile run referenced above in the 155-160 range. I'm thinking something like 155-160 up to around the 8-mile mark, then 160-165 from 8 to 11, 165-170 for 11 to 12, then 170+ for the final 1.1. (My max is around 185.)

I know that's a lot. I really appreciate any advice from you vets. Thanks in advance.

I had bought a pair of PMX680, the previous version, on eBay but bought a pair of these Sennheiser PMX685i and they are absolutely amazing. Good sound, they sit in my ears very well and they've got volume and play on/off control as well as a mic if I ever get a call that I feel like taking while running.

FM

Ben, just my thoughts on your various questions..

Regarding the taper.. my belief is that you want to cut back on the distance AND the intensity, but more importantly the intensity. Gains that you get from the speedwork reportedly don't show up in your performance until 2 weeks after the exercise. So any speedwork you do during that two week window up until the race will not add to your fitness for the race but it will add to your fatigue. So your goal for the taper should likely be to try to keep some form of routine going, to keep your legs moving up until the race but try to recover the fatigue as much as possible during that time.

I think what worked well for me was going from 6 runs a week to 5 runs two weeks before the taper, with one speed work that week. Then the week of the race, I did one speed work, and ran only 3-4 days, taking off the two days prior to the race. Some people like to do a very easy run the day before the race just to get their legs moving, but I personally haven't done that myself.


For your race pace... you have been running enough miles and enough long runs that I think your aerobic fitness from your race paces should be able to hold through your race. Your 10k VDOT score is of a higher quality than your 5k one and suggests that you should be able to handle 1:45:43 in your current fitness from that time.

You mention negative splits, but I think the true goal is even splits, but that is pretty near impossible to nail perfectly (maybe you can if you're a professional I suppose). So most science indicates negative splits will give you a better time than positive splits will. So starting off the race with a more conservative pace is better, but you don't want to start a long race too slowly, or those 30 seconds per mile will add up to be several minutes without much gained from it.

I created a race route in strava and shared it with you in strava Ben just to try to learn what the course looks like. For the most part it seems very flat.. less than 100ft elevation according to strava in the entire thing, which is almost nothing for 13 miles. Even though Strava seems to underestimate elevation, it looks like you finish the race lower elevation than what you start which should also help your time. It seems the first half of the race is run on one street at a slightly higher elevation than the second half. I would probably use that downhill stretch that is close to mid-way as the point of a mental check to see how you feel during the race.

I think the "conservative" pace of 8:04min/mile which would equal a 1:45 half is probably a good start for the first half of the race in my opinion. On the down hill stretch (looks like mile 7-8 somewhere) you go down about 30-50 ft during that mile, which is not much but a nice mile of downhill that you can speed that up some. After you flatten back out on North Ocean Blvd you probably want to find your final good pace. You'll have less than a 10k left at that point, so if you feel like you can do a 7:43 pace for the remainder go for that.

I don't have much experience in heart rate monitor pacing for a race, My experience is at race pace my HR ends pretty high and stays there the entire time, so don't know if I have any suggestions if you want to go that route.

Anyways this is just my thoughts on what I would do with your fitness, but I probably am more conservative than you too, just don't blow yourself up too early or it will be a long 13 miles :)

They have held up very well too. Between the wind and my excessive sweating, I usually go through several pairs of headphones through the season. I received these from my wife in early June for my birthday and they're still going strong.

I agree with Alan regarding the negative splits. I think it's a fine concept if you can make up the time at the end but I know my ability in this area is lacking. YMMV, of course, but running even splits was my main focus my last time out. The last two weeks I cut down on my runs and distance and just practiced my pacing. This probably isn't recommended by any real runner but I thought it helped me a lot.

I agree with this, except I would try to maintain the 8:00/mile pace a little longer (through mile 10 maybe) and see how you are feeling. If you can let it out for the last 5K, go for it. 1:45 seems right. 1:40 a little too fast.

So in my efforts of searching for a decent hill around my relatively flat neighborhood, I finally found one only 5 miles away from my house, using the strava route creator. A 1/2 mile stretch with a 8% grade, just over 200 feet elevation gain.

Now, what to do with it? I've never run hills before. Should I just do a few repeats up and down that hill? At what pace or effort? Jog or walk back down?

I'll probably go and check it out today after work.

Trying to find this shared route and I can't. Little help?

Thanks to both of you (Alan and digamma) for the good input. That helps a ton.

I'm not exactly sure how it shares with you. My guess is either you will have a message in your strava notification center that you can click on to go to it, or it would show up in your "my routes" page in strava perhaps? Let me know if you can't find it, perhaps I messed up on the sharing, and I'll resend it to you or try sending it through facebook or something instead.

Hill repeats and long hill repeats generally have you running like 1/10th or 1/8th of a mile for short hill repeats to 1/3 of a mile for long hill repeats at roughly your 5k or 10k pace. ( So pretty fast for a climb). Some people do longer hill repeats of 1/2 mile or even a mile but at a slightly slower pace. It basically works like intervals though where the goal is to have high effort on the pace in the interval part.

The rest in between the intervals is solely for decreasing your heart rate to be ready for the next interval. You don't need to run/jog/whatever at any certain pace there. You simply want your HR back down to be ready for your next repeat.

Most people I know either jog slowly down the hill or even walk down the hill before the next one.

DC Rainmaker had a blog entry a while back where he was doing 1 mile hill repeats and planned it out to run on a hill between two bike share locations in paris. He would run up the hill, check out a bike and ride the bike back down the hill to the other station to check it in and then do the hill repeat again, pick up another bike and ride back down, etc. :)

Way to work the system!

I figured it out. It was in notifications. I was looking in "My Routes." Thanks!

So, this newfound hill is pretty versatile for me then? I can do short hill repeats (partway up) and long hills (the entire 1/2 mile stretch) on the same course? Cool!

Recommendations for a HRM?

Generally you will want one that works with whatever watch/app that you use. Having a stand alone HRM could be useful but for the price is not really as good as one that you can record your data with.

That said, generally most people seem to believe Polar HRM are among the best, but usually people are not as high on their watches that they connect to. I use a Garmin watch with a Garmin HRM myself, and the HRM has been fine until just recently the strap has started to give out on me and I've ordered a new replacement one (just a $20 replacement).

One of the things I recently read about that I am going to give a try is people found a specific Polar Wearlink+ strap can be used with the Garmin HRM and you can have the best of both worlds.. so I'm going to see how that works out for me.

If you're looking for bang for the buck and use an iPhone when you run, then the Polar H7 is a great buy. It works with all the major iPhone apps. I've used it with iSmoothRun, RunKeeper, Endomondo, MapMyRun, Polar Beat, and a few others and it works great. (I recommend using the free Polar Beat app with the H7 if you're wanting to get a more exact net calorie burn count.)

I've been doing this for a few months now and have had no issues so far at all. I'm hesitant to blame the Garmin strap for being a piece of crap, because I learned that I wasn't cleaning it as frequently as I should have been... but I sure found a lot of site/forums/posts with people who were very unhappy with the durability of the Garmin one who were also quite happy after switching to a Polar strap.

unhappiness has also been wildly reported by the runners on the Lose It! forums.

FM

I got my polar wearlink+ soft strap in, and it worked with my Garmin transmitter without a problem. Looks like I'm good to go. I didn't have any problems with my Garmin strap though for 6+ months, so guess we will see how long this one lasts. It might just be that they wear out eventually too. Who knows.

is this Polar replacement strap the one you mention that you got for only 20 bucks?

If so, that's a prettyy cheap change to make if it works. I'd read on the dcrainmaker that he had it work for him...

FM

Yes technically I got it for $15 with a discount through my running club but normally it is $18.

Amazon.com: Polar Soft Strap Set (XXX-Large): Sports & Outdoors

That's the one I bought, it works perfectly with the HRM I got with my Garmin Forerunner 410.

Do note that that link will take you to the largest size strap they sell, you'd want a smaller one I am sure.

Sorry, didn't realize you were asking which one I got. I couldn't actually find the medium size at amazon for some reason, but got it at runners warehouse.

http://www.runningwarehouse.com/descpage-PWLS.html

Should have clarified a little on the HRM. I am using Android phone(S3) and currently the only running app that I'm using is Strava.

Also, I think it's finally time to get some real running shoes. The inside of both of both feet are getting bruised from my running style and my current shoes. Makes for a painful run.

Finally, would my feet falling asleep after about 2 miles be attributed to my shoes being too tight or just not the right shoes or something else?

this happens to me as well (well my toes) but i do not know why. For me, I don't think it's the shoes being bad or too tight, because it happens for multiple shoes and even when laces are loose.

I have the same thing happen sometimes on longer walks (3 miles plus).

Your feet swell (sometimes up to several sizes) in running and walking activities. Having your feet fall asleep or toes go numb are both signs of a possible issue with the box of the shoes being too small. This can also present itself by eventually with longer distances possibly getting black toenails or even toenails coming off.

Both running coaches and runners at the nearby running stores recommend to me to get a running shoes larger size than what you normally get for every day shoes.

My recommendation would be to go to a running store to get looked at and have them recommend shoes or shoe size to you. (Not a sports authority or multi-sport place, but a true running store)