The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast New Year 2022 Episode (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/ NewYear2022.mp3] Link RunRunLive New Year 2022 Welcome my friends to the new year. NewYear2022 There will be no net-new episode this week for several reasons. In no particular order, first, it was the holidays for me, second, I was on vacation this week from work, third I had a cold… I could go on making up rationalizations like a crazy man listing alternate realities on the street corner of a dirty industrial zone – but I’ll leave it there. The biggest reason we are not doing a ‘regular’ show is that I didn’t find anyone to talk to. Instead, today, I’m going to catch you up on my training and give you some frameworks to think about for your beginning of year retrenchment. … On the training front, I’ve continued to increase my mileage and the knee feels good. I do notice a couple little twinges still, when I’m toeing off on uphills, but nothing crazy. I’m slow, unfit and heavy – but had a good week of training and feel very confident about the future. Been getting some solid runs in and lots of cross training. I’ve been following a Galloway based plan that is 3 runs a week. My long run last weekend was 11.5 miles. It’s funny how all training plans converge. Meaning the elements of this plan are the same as any other plan when you look at it from the building block perspective. One day is basically speed work. The other day is basically tempo and the third day is the long run. In between days are cross training. Some pool running, some biking, some swimming and some walking. The Galloway part of the plan is taking walk breaks. That’s the difference and we’ve talked about that before. The actual plan structure is the same as most marathon training plans that are based on a weekly cadence. Speed, Tempo, Long and cross training to build base. It’s a 2-week macro-cycle. Meaning the long run gets longer every other week. Long week, fall back week. This every-other-week macro-cycle is designed to give you the most recovery possible. The whole plan is about recovery. It’s about gaining mileage without stress. The 4 days that you aren’t running are supposed to be cross training. The plan isn’t all that prescriptive about cross training. You can bike, walk, swim or any other type of light cardio. It really likes pool-running as a cross training workout. Pool running gives you many of the benefits of running without stress. … Why am I training this way? Because I’m coming off a long stress injury in the left knee. This is allowing me to train and heal at the same time. My goal in this training cycle is not a time or distance goal. My goal is to get to the starting line healthy. Since it’s a Galloway-based plan, we have to talk about running and walking. I started out with the bare minimum of running because I was frankly terrified of how my knee would respond. That bare minimum is a 30 second run then a 30 second walk. Let me tell you, my friends, if you think you are at rock bottom and are afraid to start your running practice, the 30/30 is the way to go. You cannot get hurt, you cannot get tired, you can’t get sore running a 30/30. From there I have started to judiciously increase the run segments. Last week I ran my long run at a 60/30cadence. This week I’ve been using a 90/30 cadence. The difference is, well, besides the obvious, that it allows you to work your pace a bit better with the longer run intervals. It allows your heart rate to come up into the higher zones. And it significantly lowers your pace per mile. I’m going to keep pushing that cadence as I progress through the training cycle to see if I ca get to something like a 240/30 which would be 4 minutes of running with a 30 second walk break. Based on my calculations, believe it or not, that would make a sub-4-hour marathon possible. I also ran a test mile at the track a couple weeks back. I think I came in right around an 8-minute mile. I can work with that. As I change age groups this year, I only need a 3:50 marathon to requalify. Which is an 8:45 minutes per mile. If I add this data to the flashes of competence that I get in my workouts – I’m feeling quite positive that I’ll be able to do something good with my fitness in this next season. The world is my oyster. And what the hell does that mean? Well, my friends, we have our old friend Billy Shakespeare to thank for that one. It’s dialogue in “The Merry Wives of Windsor”. “The world is mine oyster and I shall open it with my sword.” But, the modern usage is that when you have a nice fresh oyster, you can open it up and maybe there’s a pearl in there? So – ‘the world’s your oyster’ simply means it’s like an unopened gift, full of potential, waiting to be found. Speaking of Boston, I’m going ...
