re: Official Running Log/Marathon Training Thread

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I had a slight scare after my last 10+ mile run in the heat and humidity and have been avoiding them.

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Did you cramp up like crazy?

Yikes. Was it from running or from some other medical issue? Since you mentioned the heat and humidity, I figured you must have suffered from heat exhaustion. I've had that happen to me twice before after running 15+ miles in July. I cramped all over for a couple of hours. If I made the slightest movement, it would start up and spread all over. It was miserable. It's one of the reasons I now run in the early morning hours. During the middle of the summer, it's the only way to avoid the oppressive heat and humidity.

Good deal. Glad it sorted itself out.

Has anyone ever strained their soleus?

My calf is back to where it was 4 weeks ago. It's sore in odd places that seem to move around, and it doesn't feel like a normal calf muscle pull (gastrocnemius strain). It feels like it's on both sides of the back of the tibia and flares up in different spots while I am sitting and it hurts all over when I try to run.

FYI-I had a bad ankle sprain 2-3 years ago on the same leg.

Any words of wisdom?

Thanks, non-doctors of the H&F Board.

15k to half marathon pace. Should be uncomfortable but be sustainable over several miles.

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I cramped all over for a couple of hours. If I made the slightest movement, it would start up and spread all over. It was miserable. It's one of the reasons I now run in the early morning hours. During the middle of the summer, it's the only way to avoid the oppressive heat and humidity.

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Did the same thing and made the same decision a couple of weeks back. Had to have my wife bring me some Gatorade and salt tablets and just laid on the floor for about an hour until I absorbed them. Of course, I tried to get up about 5-10 times like a fricking idiot until I accepted my fate.

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Did the same thing and made the same decision a couple of weeks back. Had to have my wife bring me some Gatorade and salt tablets and just laid on the floor for about an hour until I absorbed them. Of course, I tried to get up about 5-10 times like a fricking idiot until I accepted my fate.

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It’s the worst.

What is your max HR?

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I did 6 miles with 4 attempted at tempo. My HR was between 171 and 186 for that effort. It felt manageable, but I wonder if it was too fast. I think it was probably pretty close to my 1 hour/15k max effort pace, but I have not raced that distance before.

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You should be good between 170 and 180. 4 miles of tempo is a lot to do at once if you haven't been doing much up to this point. That is probably why your HR drifted up above your target zone. The goal of LT training is to provide your body with small doses of intensity to stimulate lactate buildup and the adaptations that take place in response. You should start with small doses and increase them over time. Eventually, you will begin to notice that you are running a faster pace at the same effort level. Then, you can increase the size of the dose by either increasing the number and/or the length of LT repeats.

You can break this up in your training or do it during a single weekly workout. IMO, breaking it up is probably better if you run like 6 days a week. You can do 10 minutes a few times a week or 20 minutes 1-2 times per week. You can start at 15 minutes and increase by 5 minutes each week until you reach 30. You can start with 2 X 1 mile with 5 minutes of easy running as a recovery interval and progress from there. There are a lot of options.

What I generally do is start with about 20 minutes a week during the second phase of my training cycle. I might do 10 minutes of LT during a tempo run on Thursday and 10 minutes towards he end of my long run on Sunday. From there, I might do 2 X 12 minutes with a 5 minute EZ running interval the next week and add 5 minutes of LT towards the end of my long run. The next week, 2 X 15 and add 5 to LR. The next, 30 minutes with not recovery interval. You get the idea. You can break it up however you want. That's just an example of how I do it. The key is to progress over time to continue forcing adaptations.

These workouts transition nicely into race specific workouts later in the training cycle. The track style intervals you might be doing for speed work and the LT training should eventually merge into race specific workouts in the sharpening phase. In essence, you want to take all of those various adaptations you cultivated in the first 2/3 of your training cycle and translate them into increasingly longer efforts at race pace so that you peak at just the right time for your target race.