Saturday, November 29, 2008

Saturday group run.

It was a great group this morning.. small but quality. Jeff, Jenni, GZ, and Phil... sort of a blogosphere meeting. Shayne Culpepper and Jason Hartmann were there too but didn't want any part of the smack down we were about to bring.. HA. Shayne is faster than all of us on our best day and Jason ran 2:15 at the Olympic trials marathon. They were doing hill repeats- 6-8 X 1:30 at the speed of sound. It would have been fun to join them (they were kind enough to ask us if we wanted to join) if anything, just to watch!
GZ educated me on the world of mountain running, I don't think Google has anything on him. If we get the mountain home (it's STILL not for sure and I'm losing sleep over it now), I'll need to educate myself a bit on the Grizzly Adam's school of thought. How to do a long run and eat only bark. How to hydrate with elk dung. Things like that... I've got a good start on the beard. I'm fairly certain that a few trails require a beard.

And just a heads up for next Saturday the 6th- We are going to be performing a MAF/ aerobic test on the track for the group run. If anyone is interested, we'll be talking about the benefits and the protocol for testing and answering any questions people may have. Bring a HR monitor. Here's and outline of what we'll be doing.

7 comments:

kerrie said...

i decided that it was too cold and snowy to leave the house this morning.....soon somebody will have to roll me out the door.

Anonymous said...

Lucho, your legs are freaking shredded!!! Holy crap Batman!

I like your post on Wednesday Nov 26 about open marathoning. Specifically the point that a focused Ironman athlete never really explores their open marathon potential because they are too focused on their Ironman training. That was a good use of inverted thought process.

It's amazing how much one month makes us feel mentally and emotionally about our fitness. I feel so "unfit" right now and could barely hit basic workouts.

Does your client who did the ultrarunning focus before nailing IM Arizona have any nuggets that you could post on what he learned, worked, or would do differenty?

It doesn't even have to be Ironman specific but rather how you could focus on other things to keep things fresh and still keep rolling on Ironman fitness.

It's something I've been thinking about because I am more interested in running and feel a bit unmotivated to smack Ironman training day after day this winter.

Brian said...

Dude,

That is an awesome version of Bleeding me. I forgot how good that song is, haven't heard it in a while.

Lucho said...

Kerrie- After all the trash talk you do to us? Man...

Paul- The fact that you feel 'unfit' is a great thing! You need that down time and recovery to do better next year. I've always gone through that same motivational drop off and it always comes creeping back in. You just have to wait it out, it'll happen though and you'll start training again fully recharged and healthy.
John is very similar to me so we were a good fit. He hates swimming- so his 3 swim workouts per week were hammer fests with long intervals. Get in, get it done, get out. He did short warm-ups and cool-downs and his main sets were brutal. I knew if I gave him plain volume he would not do as well.
On the bike we focused a ton on race speed. When he rode outside all of his hard work was performed with nothing more than a speedometer and I had him riding 20 mile intervals at goal race speed. We also watched his HR from time to time to make sure he was not going to fry out at goal pace. Tons of hill work.. Long rides of 7 hours.
His run was simple.. he already had it. The only thing that would hold him back was his cycling fitness.
I tried to plan his diet out to get him to lean up for race day and he ended up feeling terrible and losing a lot of energy. His diet needed to be more relaxed and flexible. John is unique in his mental profile of which I won't go in to here, so it was crucial that he didn't place 100% focus on the Ironman.. he needs (requires) far less than that to do well. He's very old school and I think this is something that more athlete's need to examine from a brain perception point. We learn by observing.. so the watch is teaching us how to feel. He was much more free and relaxed in his development and it was easy to reset his preconceived ideas about his limitations.
Thanks for the question!

Lucho said...

Brian- Metallica S&M is by far my favorite album. They played with the San Fransisco orchestra.. All their songs have more depth (IMO) with the orchestra behind them. The songs are more mellow yet at the same time more powerful.

Dave said...

Lucho, random question:
Are you still running in the Lunar Trainers? I ran in mine the other day and forgot how much I loved them....Just wondering.
Rock on,
Dave

Lucho said...

Dave- Definitely.. they're the best shoes I've ever owned. I think the wide toe box is what is keeping my neuroma from flaring up.. stupid of me to not wear them at KC.